I thought of all that there, waiting for Carrigan. It had been so long since I’d done a case myself. Once, I’d found it thrilling. I wondered how it would feel, now.

People started to filter into the bar, young professionals mostly. There was a big tilted mirror above the bar’s top shelf, which I liked—I could see anyone who came in behind me without being caught looking. Even at four in the afternoon, the bar had a few regular customers, well-dressed women in brightly colored silk blouses, meticulously groomed men. Everyone appeared to be speaking at each other, not to each other, and no one was looking at me at all.

I made eye contact with the bartender, a pretty woman with a mane of dark curly hair and hundreds of dollars of ink crawling up her arms, and ordered another gin and tonic. A double.

“You don’t want to try something more exotic? Our small-batch elderflower syrup is pretty rad.” She grinned at me, a gap between her front teeth big enough to wedge a tongue into.

I grimaced.

She laughed and made the double. I studied the campaign brochure Lou and I had swiped from Carrigan’s office. I examined his face from as many different angles as the pixelated photographs would allow. I wanted to be sure I would recognize him. I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t make any more mistakes.

Behind me, a large group entered the restaurant and seemed to be trying to decide between sitting outdoors in the gray soupy heat or pressing a few sticky tables together inside. It was a different group from the others that had wandered into Sole del Mare—older, for one thing. A man in a gray suit with his back to me talked to a few of his peers, gesturing up and down as he spoke to emphasize his point. An office party? A happy hour group? Or a campaign strategy meeting?

“Another, love?” The bartender broke my concentration on the mirror. I wasn’t pacing myself and I’d downed the drink in twenty minutes. I was drinking too fast and I didn’t care. I nodded, checked the mirror again.

The man in the gray suit was turning, I could almost see his face—I leaned forward toward the bar. It was possible it was Mitch Carrigan, although I wasn’t certain. He was laughing, at his ease. The same dimpled chin from the brochure. The dark and graying hair.

Somehow, he was better-looking in person.

The bartender slid my drink to me. Carrigan was moving toward the bar. He’d stopped to chat with a couple, older, posing for an invisible camera. The man was good. He was always on. I knew that feeling. I scratched my thumbnail along the condensation of my glass as I watched.