Tariq picked up his phone before I could answer Jesse. “I need your help,” I blurted out. “You said something last night about having an investigator working for you. I need him to look into something. Please.”

There was a pause. “My resources are at your disposal, Lily.”

“Can you have him find out whatever he can about a woman named Kaylee Quan? And everything about…” I had to take a couple of breaths; my heart seemed to rattle in my chest. “Everything about her connection to Martin Sklar.”

CHAPTER 27

The Oracle on Lispenard looked even gaudier than Martin’s other hotels. It wasn’t just ugly, it was a behemoth that was out of scale with its surroundings. Martin’s company, Pantheon Worldwide, was known for the grand scale of their buildings rather than the tastefulness or innovation of their design. If that was its claim to fame, I wasn’t sure whether the Oracle represented a new high, or a whopping low. I knew that looking at the Oracle left me with an empty, hopeless feeling about what Martin was willing to do for a profit.

I debated whether to go inside, and decided I had nothing to lose. The foyer was a cavernous space that peaked at the top. I turned in a circle, trying to take it all it in. “Amazing, isn’t it?” said a voice beside me. There was a short smooth-faced man in a navy suit and striped tie next to me. He wore a little gold pin that identified him as a concierge.

“Didn’t there used to be a church on this site?” I asked.

The man nodded solemnly. “Yes. That’s part of the reason the lobby was designed this way.”

“Oh? Designed… what way?” The room was a giant barn that had been fashioned out of glass.

“Like a cathedral,” the man assured me. He misread my startled expression for admiration. “Pretty cool, right? That’s also why the windows are arched. Like stained-glass windows.”

I was lost for words. The man smiled and told me if I needed anything, to just ask. I took one last look around, and headed back out to the street. Jesse was right; Martin really was going to hell.

It was Friday morning and I was trying to keep myself from going crazy. I’d started the day early, hitting the shelters that I knew Claudia had used before. I figured if I arrived before they turned their homeless guests out onto the streets, I could catch my sister by surprise. But she wasn’t anywhere I looked. No one seemed to be following me as I made my rounds; maybe Martin really had called Gregory Robinson off.