The food was delicious-much better than anything that came out of a box-but it was hard to give it the attention it deserved. Under Peter’s careful questioning, I fleshed out the details of the Thunderbolt deal. We weren’t supposed to discuss work with people external to the firm, but it was common knowledge that nobody obeyed that rule with spouses and significant others.

“I knew there was something wrong with this whole thing,” I told him. “The company’s practically in the toilet but meanwhile Nicholas Perry wants to do a buyout and Gallagher can’t wait to help make it happen. I bet Gallagher’s part of the ‘they’ somehow.”

“At the very least, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out what Perry’s done before, or even if Gallagher was involved, too.”

We left the dishes on the table and returned to the study. My desk chair wasn’t really big enough for two, but we squished onto it together. It was probably a good thing I’d passed on the third helping of lasagna.

A page on Thunderbolt’s own Web site providing biographies of its management team quickly yielded the answer to our first question. Several years ago, Perry had been CEO of another company, this one, like Thunderbolt, a major defense contractor. I recognized its name-Tiger Defense Enterprises-immediately. One of the Lucite deal mementos lining Gallagher’s credenza bore its logo.

“What do tigers have to do with tanks or body armor or whatever this company makes?” asked Peter.

“Nothing. But a tiger is the Princeton mascot. That’s where Gallagher and Perry met.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“It’s better than Thunderbolt.”

“Not by much.”

Apparently the Tiger buyout, under Perry’s leadership, had been very successful. Perry had not only added the Tiger to the company name, he’d implemented an impressive turnaround. The company then sold shares to the public at a price considerably higher than the buyout price. Perry’s investor group more than tripled their money in a comparatively short timeframe. And Ryan Brothers, Gallagher’s old firm, had handled both the original buyout and the offering when the company went public again. Perry was lauded as a management guru and left Tiger shortly after to join Thunderbolt as CEO.

“So they have done it before,” Peter said.

“Yes. But I don’t know what’s dirty about it. If anything, it’s a textbook LBO. Take a failing company, buy it out, improve operations, and then sell it at a nice fat profit.”

“Why don’t we just ask him?”

“Who? Perry? Or Gallagher? I don’t think either of them is going to be too receptive to my asking how their last joint venture was corrupt. They didn’t seem too forthcoming when I tried to figure out what’s going on with the deal they’ve got on the table now.”

“No-not them. I meant your new friend. Man of the People.”

I thought about this. It was one thing to talk things over with Peter, but it was quite another to engage in any sort of discussion with an anonymous correspondent. “If anything, I should probably be reporting him somehow. Communicating about a deal underway with somebody whose real name I don’t even know is the sort of thing that falls into the strictly verboten category.”

“Give me a few minutes to play around a bit with the e-mail address. Maybe I can find out more about who this guy is.”

“How?”

“Rachel,” he reminded me, “I’m sort of a geek.”

“So that’s why there are suddenly all of those Star Trek episodes on the TiVo.”

“Worried that I’ll record over your Dawson’s Creek reruns?”

“I still get a rush every time Joey chooses Pacey over Dawson.” I went to clear the table.

I rinsed the dishes and added them to the dirty pots and pans already in the dishwasher, another rarely used appliance. I rummaged under the sink, located a box of detergent that bore the logo of a long-since bankrupt grocery chain, poured some powder in, and selected the Power Scrub function.

The casserole was still half-full of lasagna, so I covered it with tinfoil and slid it into the refrigerator, noting with yet more astonishment that I actually had to rearrange one of the shelves to find room. Peter had bought more than the ingredients for lasagna. It was peculiar to see my fridge, which usually held only a limited selection of life’s basic necessities-Diet Coke, white wine, and hot sauce-harboring a more usual assortment of groceries. There was actually butter in the butter compartment and eggs in the little indentations on the shelf alongside.

Peter was hunched over the computer when I returned. “Any luck?” I asked.

He sounded frustrated. “I’m not as much of a geek as I thought.”

“That’s probably not a bad thing,” I said, perching on the arm of the chair beside him.

“All I could figure out is that he’s using an e-mail resend service. It’s pretty sophisticated, too. It’s not a commercial service but a program that some hard-core techies set up for themselves.”

“So you think he’s a hard-core techie?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just friends with one. Either way, I can’t get to any information about where the e-mail may have originated. Usually you can track down the various stops a message makes as it goes over the Internet, but the service he used erased all that. I’m afraid that the only way we’re going to find out more is if you e-mail him back.”

“I’m tempted to. But it’s a bit of a quandary, in terms of professional ethics.”

“If the deal is dirty, don’t you have an obligation to find out how?”

“I think I’d be supposed to report it to Winslow, Brown’s legal department or the Securities and Exchange Commission or something. But I don’t even know it’s dirty, and if I make a stink at the office without any proof, Gallagher will probably try to have me fired. He’s already gunning for me.”

“Maybe this guy can give you some proof. Would it be such a big deal to e-mail him and ask for more detail? You wouldn’t be sharing any privileged information.”

I was torn. The easiest thing to do would be to delete the e-mail as if it was another piece of spam, but I was too curious to do that. The by-the-book thing to do would be to show the e-mail to the firm’s legal department, but I had no desire to incur further Gallagher wrath. And the tempting thing to do was to e-mail Man of the People back.

“You know, there are ways to cover your tracks,” said Peter.

“You’re like the little devil guy standing on my shoulder, trying to lead me astray.”

“But I cook like an angel.”

I had an idea. “Maybe I should call Jake and tell him about this. Get his opinion.” Peter was used to the more rough-and-tumble startup world, without the bureaucracy and lawyers and regulatory oversight. Jake had a better sense of the context than Peter, and he would also have an appreciation for my concerns about things like Gallagher and the SEC.

“Jake? Jake from work?”

“Maybe he’ll know what to do.” I checked my Black-Berry for his cell phone number.

“Are you sure you can trust him?”

“Of course I can trust him.” Jake and I had been friends even before we’d started working on this deal; several grueling days spent under Gallagher’s command had further cemented that bond. Besides, I would never have told him about Gallagher’s pass if I didn’t trust him, and Jake had been kind and supportive, eager to rush to my defense while also being discreet.

But I couldn’t explain all of that to Peter without opening up a whole can of worms I’d prefer to keep closed. “One mysterious e-mail and suddenly you’re suspicious of everyone,” I said instead.

“You barely know him.”

“I know him well enough. He’s a really good guy.”

It didn’t matter anyway. Jake’s phone went straight into voice mail. I hesitated but didn’t leave a message. It was late-he was probably asleep.

When I disconnected, Peter was looking at me, his fingers poised over the keyboard. And I was still torn.