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But I’d get unemployment.
And I could freelance until I found something more permanent again.
It would be okay.
“Right, bud?” I asked my geriatric cat as I passed him on my way to the kitchen.
He’d belonged to my grandfather before he’d passed. My family had come in from all corners of the United States to clean out his condo, eyes on the money they could sell it for in the current market. No one cared about the eclectic art collection he’d built over sixty years in the city since most of it was from no-name artists who never really went anywhere. Or the journals he’d kept of all the crazy and wonderful things he’d witnessed in this city he loved so much. And they’d been minutes away from dropping Kevin off at the shelter where he would likely stay the rest of his life, never knowing love again.
My entire guest room, that served as my home office, was full of said art and journals. And my entire apartment was now full of Kevin’s favorite things. A treehouse that stood out hideously against my more muted decor. A suction-cup hammock in the window. Three separate beds in specific corners. A scratch post beside the couch that he’d already done some significant damage to.
I felt bad when I’d taken him in, knowing I work ridiculously long hours. But he was seventeen years old. He slept pretty much all day.
And, I reminded myself, even alone in an apartment most of the time was leaps and bounds better than in an overcrowded, stressful shelter.
“We’ll be okay no matter what,” I said after setting up my fancy automatic espresso machine to make myself my favorite cookie batter hot latte with oat milk and an extra shot.
I didn’t care if it was eighty-five degrees with seventy-percent humidity at six in the morning, I was always going to have my hot coffee treat first thing.
I rubbed Kevin’s silky black fur, feeling his body vibrate as he purred. “How about some mushy, disgusting loaf for breakfast?” I asked, walking back to my marble counter, taking out his plate—because, apparently, he had an aversion to eating out of a bowl—opening a can, and plopping a square of smushy wet cat food onto it, using the edge of the container to smush it up a bit because I couldn’t bring myself to use one of my forks for the task.
I grabbed my latte before going back to my bedroom to pick out an outfit as I tried to think of how I might get Michael to confide in me about his… less than legal dealings.
He did tend to be candid with me. Often too candid, to be honest. I was the unfortunate keeper of the knowledge that anything with cumin tied him to the toilet for half a day afterward. And that he was trying out a new erectile dysfunction pill to use with his mistress since his wife, who lived full-time in D.C., wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
If I approached it in a way where I was asking about any other skeletons in his closet that I would need to cover up, or try to deflect attention from, I might be able to get him to mention wanting to call in a favor to the district attorney.
Or I could mention someone named Dimitri calling the office asking for him. See if he confessed then.
Whatever I wanted to do, I had approximately only ten more days to do it. The Senate would be back in session in eleven, and Michael always took one full day to travel back and get settled.
I sipped my latte while I hemmed and hawed the professionalism of wearing shorts, even dress shorts. Ultimately, though, the little weather station I kept on my makeup vanity told me it was literally getting hotter and more humid by the moment, so I opted not to care what people thought as I slipped into the shorts, put on a tank top, then added a lightweight blazer on top, reminding myself that I would only be sweating on my commute, and that the air conditioning in the office was always set to arctic.
I used a light hand with my makeup, shoved my tablet with its folding keyboard into my purse along with my planner, notebook, and a small makeup bag.
With that, I headed out, mind on catching my boss in a criminal scheme. Which, by late morning, proved impossible when he refused to drag his ass into the office, even though he was supposed to have a meeting with all of us and then two video calls with big political vloggers.
Which was what I was arguing with him about when I stepped out of the office, the humidity hitting me like a wall as I listened to Michael wax on and on about how vloggers weren’t worth his time, not even if they had eight million followers on their socials, and the young people polled said they got most of their news from them rather than the actual news these days.
I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. I was too busy choking on my frustration while my boss yelled in my ear.
Not that I would have seen anything.
I mean, as a woman, I was raised to be aware of strange men looking a little too hard at me, of cat calling me, of suspicious parked vans. That sort of thing.
Not to be on the lookout for random guns aimed in my direction.
The first two pops only managed to confuse me.
It wasn’t until others on the street started to scream, run, and duck for cover that I realized what was happening.
A shooting.
Then there was this blinding sort of pain across my arm, making me drop my phone to the ground as I just stood there. Frozen.
Apparently, when it came to fight-or-flight, I was born with neither.
Until a sleek black sedan with dark windows pulled out in front of the cars parked on the street, the door flying open, and a man telling me to get in.