She left her mobile number.

I dialed it in and pressed Send, but then I heard the beep of call waiting. I fumbled a bit with the various buttons. “Hold on,” I said to whoever was calling as I tried to flip back to the call I’d placed.

“Dahlia?”

“Uh, no. It’s Jake.”

“Did I call you?” I asked, confused.

“No-I called you.”

“Whoops, hold on.” Jake must have been the incoming call. I pressed another few buttons but landed on Jake again. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Still trying to master call waiting.”

“No problem. Is it too late to phone?”

“No, of course not. You know I’m a night owl. What’s up?”

“You seemed pretty shaken up today. I wanted to make sure you’re doing all right.”

“I am. Thank you. That’s really kind of you to ask.”

“Glad to hear it. And no more anonymous e-mails?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t checked that account yet. I’m actually in a cab right now, on my way home.”

“And you thought I’d be Dahlia?”

I explained about her message. “I was just calling her back, and then you called.”

“I wonder what she wanted?”

“She said it was about something she’d seen on the news. But maybe she just wanted to talk. Who knows? She must be pretty shaken up, too.”

“Who could blame her? When did she call?”

“A while ago. Around seven.” Then I checked my watch. It was after midnight, and she was probably long since in bed-it was a good thing my call hadn’t gone through. “I’ll catch up with her in the office tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyhow, I’ll let you go. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Thanks, Jake.”

The apartment was silent when I let myself in, and a quick peek into the bedroom showed me that Peter was fast asleep, although he’d left the lamp burning on the nightstand on my side of the bed. I returned to the study and waited impatiently as the computer booted up. My conversation with Jake had reminded me I needed to check the new e-mail account we’d set up the previous evening.

I entered my user name and password and waited expectantly for a message to appear. But Man of the People hadn’t written back.

I felt both relieved and disappointed. It would have been nice to have some answers about the Thunderbolt deal. Gallagher’s death had created enough intrigue for one day.

I undressed as quietly as I could and slid into bed beside Peter, careful not to wake him.

And all of my late nights and early mornings paid off for once, allowing me to drift quickly to sleep. Which was good, because the last thing I wanted to do was think.

I overslept the next morning. Peter had turned off the alarm before it sounded.

“I made an executive decision,” he told me. “You’ve been working too hard, and then you had to deal with this Gallagher guy dying at your feet. You deserved a decent night’s rest.”

It was a good thought, and he did bring a nice cold Diet Coke with him when he eventually woke me up at eight, but already running late so early in the day put me off-balance.

I managed to shower and get dressed without imbibing any of Peter’s toiletries, although I knocked over his deodorant while drying my hair, which set off a domino-like tumbling of all of the products lined up on the counter next to it. It would have been fun to watch if I hadn’t been in such a hurry.

Peter was on the phone in the living room when I emerged from the bedroom and crossed over into the study. I wanted to check e-mail again, to see if maybe Man of the People had written during the night, and it wouldn’t do to log in from my work PC. I opened up the Web browser and selected “history” to get to the link for my new account. Without really looking, I selected the most recent listing, assuming that it would be the one I needed, since I thought I’d been the last one to use the computer. But instead of the page I expected, I found myself on the Winslow, Brown Web site, looking at Jake Channing’s photo and professional biography.

That was odd.

I scanned the index of previous Web pages along the left-hand side of the browser more carefully and selected the second listing. This took me to a Google search on Jake Channing.

There was only one explanation for it, assuming I hadn’t been Googling Jake in my sleep. And that was that Peter had been Googling Jake while I slept in.

“Peter?” I called out.

His head appeared in the doorway, the phone clasped to his ear. “That sounds like it meets the specifications,” he was saying, presumably to whichever one of his company’s engineers was on the other end. He held up an index finger to indicate he’d be done in a minute, and his head disappeared again. “And when do you think it could be ready? I see…” His voice trailed off into the living room.

I tried to think of reasons why Peter had been Googling Jake, but I wasn’t yet sufficiently caffeinated to come up with anything that made sense. Instead, I found the link to the new e-mail account and checked it. Still nothing. And Peter was still rambling on about specs and timetables.

Then I checked my regular home e-mail account, just in case. But while I had a whole slew of new e-mails from the Viagra folks, here, too, there was radio silence from Man of the People. And Peter was still on the phone.

I got out my BlackBerry to check messages at work, pressing Send without thinking. The number for my office voice mail was usually the last one I dialed every night, and when I pressed Send, the device automatically dialed the last number I’d used. So I was surprised when, instead of the familiar voice welcoming me to Audix, I heard Dahlia Crenshaw inviting me to leave a message.

Peter chose that moment to reappear in the study. “What can I do for you?” he asked. Startled, I hung up on Dahlia’s recording.

“I was just wondering why you were Googling Jake Channing.” It may have been a trick of the morning light, which was lending a rosy glow to the small room, but I could have sworn he blushed.

At least he didn’t try to pretend he hadn’t been doing any such thing. “I-I was curious. How did you find out? I thought I’d closed down the browser.”

“You did. But I was using the history function. Why you were curious?”

“The history function? Why were you using that?”

“To get to the new e-mail account you set up for me. But I got to your Google search instead.”

“Interesting. Did you-actually, never mind.”

“I do mind. You haven’t answered my question.” It was a good thing I was still under-caffeinated, because with more stimulation, my voice would have sounded shrewish rather than just schoolmarmish.

“Which question?”

“Why were you curious about Jake Channing.”

I was increasingly confident that it wasn’t the light. Peter was blushing.

“Well, he called last night. Which was good, because I could check to make sure you wouldn’t miss anything if I let you sleep in a bit.”

“You Googled him because he called me?”

He hesitated. “It’s just that then I scrolled through the caller ID and saw that he’d already called a couple of times, before I even got home.”

“So?”

“Rachel. This is embarrassing.”

“What’s embarrassing?”

“Are you going to make me say this?”

“Say what?”

“Say that I was jealous.”

“You were jealous?” I asked. “Jealous of what?” I probably should have been touched, or flattered. But instead I was angry.

“You keep mentioning him. And you’re spending most of your waking hours with him.”

“I work with him. We have a deal underway. I have to spend time with him.”

“It’s more than that, Rachel. Gallagher’s dead and you’re getting strange e-mails. And now that you’ve told Jake about Man of the People-I just wanted to make sure that you can trust him. So I thought I’d do a little research.”