Chapter 31
Gabby left Phil’s room with her head spinning. She was officially too overstimulated to solve any national security crises or get her job back. Every time she thought the answers were coming into focus, the whole board would reset.
It had seemed like Sheridan might be the prime suspect, sending pictures to the press to smear President Simon’s reputation.
She had the access to stories. She had opportunity.
It would have tied up the case with a bow.
But no, her only contact with the outside was her damn cat sitter. Leonard and his poopy tail.
Back five squares.
Forward two squares and back another five.
Jasmine—all those huge payments were certainly suspicious. Apparently, the answer was dumb and all hinged on Brad, a guy Phil had golfed with three times. Gabby wasn’t holding her breath.
The men in her life were not making this easier. Phil and his jealousy, Markus and his double-crossing. Her mom.
Just thinking of everything, Gabby stalled out so hard that she couldn’t go one step farther.
It’s not like she wanted to sit down in the poolside chair.
It was more like she wasn’t able to stand any longer.
Gabby succumbed to inertia and collapsed by the side of the pool in a chaise lounge.
She would just live here now. It was over.
“Would you like a mocktail, ma’am?” a waiter asked.
She gave up. “Can you make it a cocktail? Charge it to my room.” Valentina could buy her a drink at least.
The waiter laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A minute later, he dropped by with an umbrella drink and handed it over with a wink.
“I might as well order the next one now,” she joked. “Keep ’em coming.”
He laughed. “One of those days, huh?”
“Yes.”
Fuck the game. What was the point in playing? She was going to live her best life unconscious by the pool. She pulled her sunhat low over her face and sucked down a pineapple-guava-whatever.
Only halfway into her drink, she heard voices. It was her mom, Phil, and Markus. Gabby pulled the hat lower and sucked harder. What the hell was Markus doing with her mom and Phil? What fresh hell was this?
“When is the wedding?” she heard her mom ask. Gabby’s mercury rose so fast that she tried to get out of the chair, but between standing up too fast, uncontrolled rage, and too much pineapple-guava-whatever, she fell out of her chair.
Markus gave her a shocked look.
“I’m working,” she said from the pool deck. Even to her own ears, it sounded ridiculous. She was day drinking by the pool.
Her mom inhaled sharply. “What time is it? Are you drunk in the morning?” Looking around, Elena said, “Where did you even get the alcohol?”
Gabby wasn’t sure if that was judgment or sincere inquiry.
“What are you doing?” Gabby asked, still hanging on to her glass.
“Just talking,” Phil said.
Gabby narrowed her gaze.
Looking at her mom and Phil, she said, “I need you two to stay out of the way. You both showed up uninvited to interfere in my life and…” Gabby couldn’t say anything else out loud because, even if she was about to be let go, she was still a spy, at least for today.
Instead, she said, “I’m so mad at you two!” She sounded like a child with a limited vocabulary, but it felt good to get it out.
Her mom looked shocked. Phil shrugged.
“I’m done,” Gabby yelled. “Don’t talk to me for the rest of the trip.
” She was gesturing too wildly with her second drink, and some of it sloshed over the rim.
Whatever the waiter had put in this cocktail was serious.
Or maybe it was hitting her harder after two days of healthy living. Her body no longer recognized alcohol.
Markus gave Gabby a hand and helped her to stand. He brought her in for a hug. “It’s okay. We’re gonna get through this.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, tears pricking the back of her eyes. It didn’t feel like they were going to get through any of it intact.
The voice of reason, Markus said, “I think this has been stressful for all of us. Weddings are difficult. If we could all just relax and support each other.”
Gabby snorted. They weren’t even getting married.
Her mom didn’t look sold on anything. “Wait till I tell Mason about how unwelcoming you’ve been to me when I only came down to help.”
To help—now that was funny. “Who’s Mason?” Gabby asked. “Do you mean the dog sitter?”
“I tell Mason everything. I have a better relationship with him than I do with you.”
That wouldn’t be hard.
Gabby tried to recall a Mason. He’d been a neighbor for a long time, one of those older men with a lot of weird opinions on everything, the kind of guy you couldn’t get to stop talking once he’d started.
“Mason brought Prince to the vet last week after a chocolate scare. He didn’t have to do that, but he did. You didn’t even invite me to your wedding.”
An idea smacked Gabby right between the eyes. If her mom was buddy-buddy with Mason, then maybe, just maybe…
“Ohmygod. I have to go.” She just needed to quickly call Sheridan’s cat sitter and see if Sheridan had a Mason in her life too.
Her mom looked extremely disgruntled.
“Thank you, Mom!”
“Gabby, are you hormonal? What is going on with you? Where are you going now?” Her mom called after her, but Gabby was already headed back to the second floor.
Markus trotted after her.
Gabby kept her head down, focused on the mission. She wanted to take the stairs, but the pineapple-guava-whatever had been stronger than she’d thought, so she hit the button on the elevator.
Once inside, Markus pulled the emergency stop button. “What are you doing?”
“I have a hunch. You’ll see.” She made angry eyes at him. “Sheridan told me you returned her phone. Why didn’t you tell me that? Why didn’t you tell me where you found it?”
“Sorry,” he said, “it slipped my mind. After getting fired, it didn’t seem like it mattered anymore.”
“Oh, it mattered,” she said.
“Gabby,” he said sharply, “what about ‘sit in your hotel room and wait to be evacuated,’ didn’t you hear?”
“All of it,” Gabby retorted. “What part of Die Hard did you miss? The part where Bruce Willis is abandoned by the department and then does the right thing on his own? Or Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon. There is nothing more American than a rogue cop. It’s who we are.”
Gabby was a little drunk, but she was also right.
“This isn’t a movie,” Markus said.
“If Glen Powell got fired, he wouldn’t quit. End of story.” She’d seen most of the Glen Powell movies on Netflix.
“Who’s Glen Powell?”
“He’s in everything the last couple of years.
I don’t totally get it. I mean, he’s cute and all.
” She took a breath to stop the rambling.
“But anyway, you can thank me when you get your job back.” She depressed the Stop Elevator.
They rose to the second floor, and the doors opened, everything normal but them.
She marched down the hall to her mom and Sheridan’s place.
Sheridan answered the door right away in one of her mom’s shirts, with her hair piled in a messy bun. “Agent Greene, what are you doing here again?”
“I’m here for security reasons,” Gabby said. “I need to see your phone.”
“Fine,” Sheridan said, “I don’t know what you want with it, though.” Sheridan didn’t look worried at all.
When Sheridan handed it over and unlocked it upon Gabby’s request, Gabby hit redial on the cat sitter.
“What is Lainey going to tell me?” Gabby asked Sheridan, doing her best impersonation of a hard-boiled detective.
Sheridan groaned. “Ugh, I shared too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been a little bored. Lainey asked me to tell her about everyone here, and I blabbed my theory about Naomi and Jasmine.” She cocked her head. “Well, it’s not really a theory. They just don’t talk about it openly.”
The pieces in Gabby’s mind reshuffled to see the picture: the way Naomi and Jasmine looked at each other, the snapshots in Jasmine’s closet, and that time Naomi had finished Jasmine’s sentence (just once, but still).
They must have been the women Gabby had overheard the night she was hiding in the closet. Two women making out. One of them had mentioned iMoan…
“I was chatting about Jasmine’s affair,” Sheridan said. “Lainey has a big mouth, but I certainly didn’t sell anything.”
“Did you tell your cat sitter anything else?”
Sheridan shook her head.
“Has that story gone public?”
Gabby wasn’t sure, but it seemed like there was a good chance that Lainey had been doing a lot more than cleaning Leonard’s poopy tail.
“I’m taking your phone,” Gabby said.
Sheridan handed it over.
“If we clear you, you can have it back. At the moment, it’s evidence.”
After they shut the door on Sheridan, Gabby said, “What do you think? Did Lainey cause all the trouble?”
Markus chewed his lip. “I would have HQ look into Lainey, but that’s not an option. If Valentina finds out we’re doing EOD work, she will have the Portuguese authorities arrest us. You are not lying low, Gabby.”
“If you hadn’t been talking to Genesis behind my back for this whole mission, I’d be more inclined to trust you.”
Markus stopped in place. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”