As she pulled out of the motel parking lot she glanced to the left and spotted Jonah, head down, shirt untucked, slinking toward the motel’s coffee shop, phone in hand. The walk of shame. She knew it well.

6

Drue slipped into the bullpen at 9:55 on Friday. She went directly to her cubicle, donned the sweater she kept draped across the back of her chair and reached for her headset, congratulating herself on three days of avoiding eye contact with Jonah Kelleher. If she was careful, she could make today four days in a row.

Ben, whose cubicle was closest to hers, was on a call, his fingers racing across his computer’s keyboard as he listened. He nodded at her, then glanced meaningfully up at the clock on the wall of the bullpen.

Drue shrugged and sat down. Now Ben jerked his head toward the bullpen door. Incoming, he mouthed.

She heard the distinctive click of Wendy’s spike-heeled Louboutins on the wood floor as her tormentor approached.

Quickly, she powered up her computer and switched on her phone, praying that the next call into the firm’s twenty-four-hour-a-day phone bank would be routed to her.

“Drue?” Wendy had wasted no time in hunting her down. Her voice was low and sultry. Jonah swore that Wendy’s résumé included a stint doing phone sex. Now her pronounced Southern drawl drew out the vowels to three syllables.

Drue glanced up. “Hi. What’s up?”

“We need to talk,” Wendy said. Her voice frowned, even if her forehead, freshly Botoxed, could not. “You’re an hour late … again. I can’t cut you slack just because you’re the boss’s daughter, you know—”

The phone icon miraculously flashed yellow on Drue’s computer screen.

“Can’t talk right now,” she said, pointing at the screen. “Got a call.”

Without waiting, she launched into the scripted greeting she’d easily memorized.

“Campbell, Coxe and Kramner,” she said crisply. “You’ve reached the Justice Line. This is Drue. How can I help?”

Wendy didn’t budge.

Drue’s caller was a white male. Early twenties, she guessed.

“Yeah, uh, look here. I got hurt, pretty bad, actually, got hit by a taxi, you know? And I saw your television commercial this morning, and, uh, my leg is hurting pretty bad—”

“Sir?” Drue broke in. “Can we back up for a moment? I’m going to need your name and address, date of birth, all that information?”

She’d pulled up the firm’s questionnaire on her desktop computer, filling in the blanks and then working down the rest of the list of questions.

He said his name was Martin Sommers. “But you just call me Marty, okay?”

“When, exactly, did this accident occur?”

“I guess it’s been a couple weeks. I kinda lost track of time.”