“Noted. Get out of here because I need to write. Daphne is telling me I’m going to put her in the hospital if I don’t finish this book on time.”

Oliver laughs and ruffles my hair as he leaves.

I check my phone one last time to see if Jake has left me any messages, but the only other ones there are unread texts from Oliver, which I mark as read since he’s discharged his brotherly warning in person. After those are discarded, I’m left with an empty screen. Again I remind myself of my victories—allowing someone into my apartment who is not Oliver, Daphne, and Dr. Terrance, and having sex with a real live person for the first time in three years. And that the sex was amazing. Fantastic. Superb. Stuff worth writing about.

If he doesn’t call again, then it’s fine. I’ll be fine. Sure, it will sting. All rejections sting, but the world won’t end.

It’s not a very convincing argument, but as it’s the only one I have, I return to my office. At the very least, I can finish my book.

I close the door, place my headphones on once again, and shut out the rest of the world. The only thing that can exist for me for the rest of the day is this book.

CHAPTER TWENTY

JAKE

When Mike and Rondell, two of my employees who do surveillance work, arrive at three p.m. to start the evening monitoring shift, I give in to the impulse to call Natalie. I’d told myself that if she wanted to see me again, she’d call or text.

That she hadn’t all day suggests that she is really pissed off. Generally, pissed-off women are not appeased over the telephone. But whenever I try to grab a moment for myself, work interrupts. We get a call from a West Coast security firm that we often partner with. One of their celebrity clients had decided to make a surprise trip across the country and needed immediate protection services.

Celebrity clients are my least favorite. They require the most work and generally have unreasonable expectations. Primarily because they want to be seen at all times, only they want to control who can see them and where. Whenever I receive a hassled call from LA, it renews my appreciation for my current circumstances. I prefer to make my living off of dull investigative work rather than fending off the paparazzi.

After I convinced one of my new recruits that celebrity work was the best kind of work available and that the hot young actress he’d be guarding would get him a lot of play with the ladies, I was summoned to an investment bank that believed one of their senior employees was embezzling money. Likely he was snorting it up his nose. There is a not-so-shockingly large number of drug-addicted investment bankers and hedge fund managers who have no problem dipping into client funds to support their habits. None of these guys will ever see a day in prison because their firms don’t want to reveal anything is wrong in the company. Any dirt that gets stirred up behind the scenes needs to be swept away.

There was one particular hedge fund manager who even threatened to sue his employer for defamation if he wasn’t given a good—no, strike that—great recommendation, even after he admitted to losing several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of client funds.

I followed the senior partner around that afternoon to see if I could catch him scoring a hit or doing something that would at least give them grounds for termination, but when I hadn’t come up with anything other than that he had bad taste in booze, I passed him off to Vic and her partner.

I was able to photograph the soon-to-be ex of one of my clients kissing his secretary outside of David Burke’s restaurant on 67th Street. I hope that he enjoyed that kiss, because it was going to cost him about $5 million.

Smart prenuptials have infidelity clauses, and this one gave the wife money for any intimate physical contact including, but not limited to, hand-holding and kissing, as well as emotional infidelity. So naughty texts and pictures were out of the question. She had a good lawyer, but the husband had a lot of money and could afford to be kissing his secretary, I guess.

Sabrina once mentioned she thought that perhaps I have stayed single because I took too many pictures of adulterous couples. That’s not accurate. I just figured these people had chosen wrong. If your home life is stale, seeking to spice it up with a third party would only be a temporary fix. At some point that third party would be just as uninteresting, and you would have to move on again. And at that point, you might as well just be single. Which is why I was single. I hadn’t met a woman I could envision going home to every night.

Except that’s kind of what I want to do right now. Go home to Natalie for a second night. Upstairs is my empty bed and my sister, who is interested in asking me more questions about Natalie or more questions about Kaga. I’m not interested in providing answers on either of those topics.

So it’s either go upstairs and let Natalie’s resentment, if there is any, fester overnight or call her and make my explanations and hope she accepts them.

“Any activity over in Tribeca?” I ask. If she had a problem, that will give me a legitimate excuse to go over there tonight.

“Nothing,” Rondell answers. “It’s been quiet all around.”

Mike knocks his fist against the wood.

“That’s good. That means we’re doing our jobs,” I say to the two annoyed-looking men. It’s a hell of a lot more fun chasing bad guys than sifting through papers, spying on people, and watching security cameras.

“Since we’re getting nowhere on the note and the clown, we probably need some eyes on her apartment,” suggests Rondell.

“I’ll get those set up. I installed the sensors last night, but I think we should do cameras over the doors of the elevator, her apartment, and the balcony. I asked the property management company for permission to install those, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. I think I’ll go ahead and install the camera above her door. They can bitch me out later.”

“You installed the sensors and you’re going to install the camera?” Mike asks. His fist full of nuts stops halfway between the bag and his mouth. He and Rondell exchange looks.

“I can take care of that for you, man. No need for you to be doing stuff like that,” he chirps.

From their shit-eating grins, I can tell that they’ve heard something about Natalie.

“Was it Sabrina?” Someone ratted me out.

Rondell shakes his head. “Nah. Vic put it together. She heard that you were going over to some client’s house to do install work. Since when do you do install work? Plus she said that you went out with her man and had no interest in the floor shows. Want us to run a background check on your woman?”

“Rondell, I hope you’re not telling your girls that you run background checks on them before you go out with them. That doesn’t go over well with people.”

“Oh,” he says, nodding his head, “so you already ran the background report. Good on you. That’s why you’re the boss and we’re the peons.”

“Right, peons I pay a fortune to.”

They both laugh at me as I leave. Her phone rings a half a dozen times and I get the voice-mail message each time. Worried that she hasn’t answered my phone calls or responded to my text, I call Oliver.