Page 7

A second later, her mom clicked on. “Hi, honey bear.”
“There’s another picture, Mom.”
“Call the cops, El,” Dad ordered.
Right.Ella walked toward the conference room phone.
“What are you doing?” Jay asked.
She looked at him. “Calling 9-1-1.”
“Are you stupid?”
She recoiled. “What?”
“Are you going to say a picture scared you? We’ve been down that road.”
“The picture…” She glanced at the conference table but couldn’t quite look at the collage. “Someone obviously broke in and put it here.”
Jay reached for the conference table phone. “This isnotan emergency. It’s a picture. Where do you see any signs of a break-in?”
“This isn’t an emergency?” She balked, but then again, he was right. “Why does everyone play this down?”
“El,” Dad snapped. “Stop listening to him.”
She focused back on her parents. “I’m here.”
“That guy is not right sometimes,” Dad said. “Now let me get this straight. Where are you?”
“Tara’s office.”
“And someone broke in?”
“Well, there’s a picture here. I don’t know how it got here.” It’s not like the door was busted or a window was broken.
“Let me talk to your dad,” Jay said.
She shooed his hand away. That was all kinds of a bad idea.
Maybe she was overreacting. An intern could’ve received it in the mail and tossed it on the conference table, assuming Ella or Jay would be back and thinking one of them should see it. Okay, calling 9-1-1 seemed like overkill. The collage was totally screwed up, but maybe not an emergency.
“Hang up already so we can deal with this,” Jay snapped.
Ella pulled the phone away from her mouth. “You’re being a dick.”
He grumbled. “Yeah, well, you’re not dealing with this exactly how I think you should either, Ella.”
“Glad you have a script written.” She rolled her eyes, going back to her call. “What should we do?”
“Ignore it and go home,” Jay answered for her parents. “If you’re that worried, stay with me.”
“Jeez, Jay.” She spun away from him, needing to talk to the reasonable people in this conversation. Ella wanted to approach the situation as calmly as she would any other activist-environmentalist problem when she was in danger.
“Jay’s a piece of work,” Dad lectured. “You know who we should talk to? Where’s that email from your parents? The one about that man going to Spain and the business card…” Her dad’s voice faded away, and in the background, her parents lobbed a conversation back and forth.
“From Gamma and Pop-Pop?” Ella asked, confused about how her grandparents had been brought into the conversation.
“El,” Mom said. “They know somebody in private security we’re going to ask.”