“Okay, but what other forces? And what’s the big deal about a cat anyway? What’s Goodson want with it?”

“The search for the animal is not my only concern,” said Candi. The woman was a nightmare. How did she even get this job?

Anniq came up behind Candi and fluffed Candi’s hair. “You are stressed this morning?” she asked. “You seem tense.”

“No more than usual, Anniq,” Candi said. Unlike Candi, Anniq was looking luminous this morning, always looked luminous, but Candi couldn’t bring herself to say it. “I’d like a bit of a trim, today.”

“All right,” said Anniq, agreeably. “An inch?”

“You know me so well, Anniq.”

While Anniq washed and conditioned her hair, Candi thought about the cat. As much as she talked about how important finding the cat was, she thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Her talents were being wasted by chasing after someone’s pet. Why not send Toni on this errand? Let the silly little twit believe she was doing something important. But when Candi had suggested it, Duke had given her that look. The baleful, empty look that told her not to push it.

She hated that look. She hated Duke, too, if she was being honest, which she almost never was. The man was downright creepy. Not as creepy as that doctor in the Bronx, but creepy nonetheless. She couldn’t even imagine what Duke might say, might do, if she told him about the apartment building in Hoboken. What had happened, what she missed, what she was still missing.

A tiny voice spoke in the back of her brain: Why not go over his head?

She could do it, of all the blondes, she could do it. She could convince the big boss that Goodson had lost his touch. And she would be the fixer’s fixer.

She closed her eyes and fantasized about starting up her own news station, her own consulting firm. The videos she could make! The things she could make people believe! Anything, anything. It was her particular talent, more than any of the other girls. Duke would come crawling back to her, begging to be a part of it, and she would slam the door in his face. Maybe even send him to a retirement home in Minnesota. The other blond ladies could follow him.

Candi would be the one and only.

“We’re done,” said Anniq. She wrapped a warm towel around Candi’s shoulders and led her back to her chair. She combed out Candi’s long hair and trimmed an inch off the bottom. It took Anniq an hour to do it, and another for her to blow-dry, curl, and spray the finished style. By the time Anniq was done, Candi’s scalp ached and the lines in her forehead seemed worse somehow, the hair better on someone else, someone less aggravated. Maybe when she started her own consulting firm, she would get that pixie cut.