Jordan used this principle to forge a partygoer who had been mingling. Her lips carried a holdover laugh from a funny conversation she’d just left. She let out an audible breath as she stole a quick look at her phone, as if she’d just grabbed a moment between chats to check her business email. She nodded over her shoulder as she walked from a group, subtly suggesting she had just had a good talk. When people tried to catch her eye, she lifted a finger and pointed to a group in another room, indicating, Catch you in a bit, I’m on my way to a preexisting condition.

In this way she existed in the party without being of it, gathering information instead of giving it away.

Which was how she discovered that these were clients. She wasn’t sure what they all thought they were here to purchase, but they were decidedly here with wallets at the ready. What could this spangled company all have in common with each other? What could they possibly have in common with her?

“Jordan Hennessy!”

An older woman had drawn alongside her. She was far more dowdy than the other partygoers, dressed in a houndstooth dress with a hedgehog pin over her right breast. She had a glass of wine in her hand and she was a little messy in the way people sometimes are when they’re drunk, but Jordan could tell she was not drunk. She was just like that. “Jordan Hennessy, it’s been a GD long time.”

Jordan peered at her, trying unsuccessfully to place her. She must have met Hennessy or one of the other girls.

The woman’s face turned cartoonishly worried. “Oh, you don’t remember me! Don’t worry, I know some people around here get a little S-H-I-T-T-Y about these things, if you know what I mean, but not me. I’m Barbara Shutt.”

She held out her hand to shake and Jordan was running, running, running the scenarios, testing out replies that would work to make her seem reliable, like the real Jordan Hennessy, replies that didn’t promise knowledge she didn’t have, replies that didn’t have trapdoors with crocodiles underneath them.

They shook—Barbara did that shake with just her fingers—and Jordan said, “Oh, right, DC, yes?”

Barbara wagged her finger at her. “That’s the one. I’m so glad, just so glad, you could make it here when I’m sure you haven’t even settled in. I’m sure Jo’s already touched base with you to talk about apartment options. Jo? Jo Fisher?”

“Oh, no, I’d remember a Jo,” Jordan said.