She walked into a Bank of America branch on Forty-Second Street, but the ATM had a $2,000 daily withdrawal limit. That wasn’t going to cut it. She needed $5,000 for Lesley. Plus who knew how many nights in the hotel after this. And maybe a plane ticket? And she should give Trevor something to make up for what he lost when he told Ridley to fuck off. Claudia knew she had nearly $70,000 in her personal checking. Jim Morgan transferred $5,000 from the family’s account into hers every month, and since coming to college she’d cut back on clothes and shoes and bags. It was one of her resolutions when she started at NYU: less stuff, more experiences. Aerial yoga and live music and even tasting menus were cheaper than designer dresses, so the money piled up. To get as much out as she wanted, though, she was going to have to show her real ID. Hopefully it would be worth it. From behind the glass doors leading into the branch Claudia assessed the tellers for the one she thought would ask the fewest questions. She picked well and when she told “LUIS”—clean-cut but young enough not to be suspicious of light flirting from a teenager—that she wanted to withdraw fifty thousand dollars cash because she was going to Vegas, all he asked was, “Can I come, too?”

She and Trevor both needed new phones, so the next stop was the T-Mobile store, and then Macy’s, for something to wear; jeans and T-shirts, a jacket, a week’s worth of underwear, and a pair of boots she could walk in. Downstairs at the Louis Vuitton counter she bought a duffle bag to carry it all.

At the Holiday Inn, they ordered a pizza to the room and Claudia told Trevor what she had planned with Lesley. He was, she imagined, a little bit impressed. Or maybe she wasn’t reading him right.

“What about the other one?” he asked. “Jeremy.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. But I saw him in the hall the other day. He was knocking on your door.”

“Was he carrying his guitar?”

“I think he always is.”

“Exactly,” said Claudia. “Check this out.”

She pulled up Google on the new phone, searched “Jeremy Cahill,” and clicked the first link, a local news article from a couple of weeks before: