A text from one of my coworkers brought my attention back to my phone as the notification lit up my screen, and I noticed the time. I was going to be cutting it close. I grabbed the car keys and ran for the door. I’d have to do a deeper dive into my loaded conversation with Adam later.

I sat in the driver’s seat of Travis’s air-conditioned car that he’d generously offered up again for this trip to Connecticut. The flexibility of having the car would make it so much easier to pop over to the art exhibit I was covering after lunch as well, rather than having to rely on Uber to get around. I kept thinking back on the call with Adam as I drove and it filled me with frustration. While he’d vaguely said he would meet up, the way he’d brushed me off made me feel like he really didn’t want to. But if I could get him to schedule a meeting I’d need to find out more before I committed to visiting him. Racking my brain for an idea on how to do that, a snippet of something Travis said to me and Andie a few months ago after he’d won a really complicated case came to mind. Eagerly, I glanced down just enough to grab my cell phone. Eyes darting between road and screen, I navigated to Travis’s number and hit call, putting it on speaker so I could focus on driving.

‘Hey, Liz, what’s up? Everything okay with the car?’

‘Yeah, everything’s fine. Thanks again, Trav. I just have a quick question for you,’ I said.

‘Sure, what do you need?’

‘Remember a few months ago you told me and Andie how your firm won some really complicated case by using a background check company to investigate the defendant? Sorry, I don’t remember all the specifics—’ I said, grasping at the hazy pieces of the conversation floating around in my memory.

‘Oh yeah, sure, the Hicks case I think it was. What about it?’

‘Well, I got ahold of Adam on the phone this morning. It was pretty brief but he said I could call him next week to plan an in-person meeting. I can’t decide if he was creepy or if I’m just totally overthinking everything he said, so I’m trying to figure out how I can find out more about him.’

‘Oh man,’ he said, sighing. ‘This must be so hard. I’m sorry, Liz.’