She makes a move to pour some more whisky into my coffee cup, but I cover the mug with my hand.

“You sure? It’ll help,” she says.

I shake my head no. “I’m okay,” I say.

“Well, it’s helping me.”

She pours herself some more and moves my hand out of the way, topping me off. I smile at her, even though I have barely taken a sip of what I already have. I’m too stressed, too physically off—too close to standing up and busting into the living room, pulling Bailey by the arm into the kitchen with me just to feel like I’m accomplishing something.

“Have you heard from the police yet?” Jules says.

“No, not yet,” I say. “And why isn’t someone from The Shop banging down the door? Telling me what to do when they show up?”

“Bigger fish to fry,” she says. “Avett was their primary target and the police just took him into custody.”

She circles the rim of her mug with her fingers. And I take her in—her long eyelashes and high cheekbones, the one wrinkle between her eyes in overdrive today. She is nervous, the way she gets, the way we both get, before we have to tell each other something that we know isn’t going to be fun for the other person to hear—like the time she told me she saw my quasi-boyfriend Nash Richards at the Rye Grill, kissing another girl. It was less that she thought I’d be upset about Nash, who I wasn’t particularly into, and more that the Rye Grill was Jules’s and my favorite place to eat french fries and cheeseburgers. And when she threw her soda in Nash’s face, the manager told her we were permanently banned.

“So are you going to tell me, or what?” I say.

She looks up. “Which part?” she says.

“How this is all your fault?”

She nods, readying herself, blowing out her cheeks. “When I got to the Chronicle this morning, I knew there was something going on. Max was giddy, which almost always means bad news. Murder, impeachment, Ponzi scheme.”

“He’s a peach, that Max,” I say.

“Yeah, well…”

Max is one of the few investigative journalists still at the Chronicle—handsome, smarmy, brilliant. He is also crazy about Jules. And, despite her assurances to the contrary, I kind of suspect Jules feels the same way about him.

“He was looking particularly smug, hovering around my desk. So I knew that he knew something and wanted to gloat. He’s old fraternity brothers with someone at the SEC who apparently had the scoop on what was going down with The Shop. With the raid this afternoon.”

She looks at me, not wanting to continue.