Have You Seen Me?(63)

My eyes go straight to the sleek wooden desk, where Nicole and I sit side by side. I pull back a little in surprise. Her area is neat as a pin, as usual; mine is messy, not at all the way I ever leave it.

I move closer. At the end of the day I like to line up my desk accessories—pen holder, stapler, tape dispenser, a tray of hot-pink Post-it pads—but they’re haphazardly scattered around at the moment, as if I couldn’t be bothered. There’s also a used paper coffee cup on the desktop, along with a couple of grease-stained paper napkins, suggesting I ate a meal or a snack here.

Nowhere in sight, however, are any receipts or notes or Post-its scribbled with words, nothing that might offer a hint to what sent me on the lam from myself. I glance down at the trash can, hoping to find the bag the food came in, but it’s empty, of course. The cleaning staff would have dumped out any contents the morning after I was here.

I text Mulroney to let him know that I’ve come up empty, and with a sigh I straighten my desk accessories, toss the napkins and cup in the trash, and pull my laptop from my tote bag. Nicole won’t be in until around ten, so I have a little while to prep. I open the most recent research file Nicole sent me for the chapter I’ll be writing on credit cards and credit card debt and finally begin to peruse it. Research is the clay I craft my columns and books from, and usually I love diving in and having ideas sparked by what I read, but today it seems nothing short of tedious. My eyes keep bouncing off the computer screen, eager for anyplace else to alight.

Thinking caffeine might help, I traipse down the hall to the community lounge for a cup of coffee. A couple of familiar faces smile or nod at me from the couches. One guy, who’s sitting farther away, at one of the desks in the open seating area, gazes at me. He’s wearing a dark blue sport jacket over an orange hoodie. I’ve never seen him before, but his attention settles on me, his expression curious. Was he around when I spent the whole night here? Does he know something? When I return the stare, he quickly looks back to his screen.

Returning to my office with a coffee, I find that Nicole has arrived and is parked at her desk, laptop open, and staring intently at the screen. Hearing me enter, she glances up. She’s twenty-six, pretty, and petite, with curly light brown hair just below her chin.

“Oh, hi, good morning,” she says. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

“I am, thanks,” I say, forcing myself to get out of my own head for a minute. “You look so refreshed. I take it the trip was fun for you.”

“Fun enough, I guess. I wore SPF 50 every second, but I still ended up getting burned. . . . You want to go over what I sent you last week?”

Nicole is a terrific assistant and researcher and we get along well, but unlike Casey, she’s fairly reserved and no-nonsense, never much of a gabber.

“Um, yeah,” I say, sitting back at my desk. “And then I have a list of topics I’d like you to explore next.”

She rolls her chair closer to mine, dragging her laptop across the polished wood. Though I absorbed little from reading her notes, I’m able to fake it by skimming a few sentences ahead as we talk. I manage to ask several questions and request that she flesh out a few of her notes. But I’m still having trouble concentrating.

“You want to take a break?” Nicole says after we’ve been at it for about forty minutes. “I know you said you’d been under the weather.”

“I’m better now, but I didn’t sleep very well last night. So yes, let’s take a break.”

“No problem, I’ll get to work on these questions. And do you have any more stuff for me to proofread?”

“Uh, I’m actually a little behind cranking out new pages. Maybe next week, okay?”

She nods, not doing a good job of hiding her surprise. I never fall behind.

“You want anything from Starbucks?” she asks, rolling her chair back. “The micro roast here just doesn’t do it for me.”

“No, I’m good. But thanks.”

She rises and grabs her coat from the peg on the wall.

“Oh, before I forget,” she says, pausing. “I did a little digging on Greenbacks, per your request.”

“Find anything?”

“There’s a rumor floating around—wait, are you thinking of mentioning them in the book in some way? Because this is really gossip and it wouldn’t be right to include it.”

“No, not for the book.” I hold my breath. Could Sasha be right about something unethical going down there? “Definitely not for publication of any kind.”

“Okay, so it sounds like it’s about to be sold to some big financial services company.”

Ahh, the longed-for endgame. I take a few moments to reflect. I’d always known that a sale was Damien’s goal—without ever hearing it from his own mouth. Everyone knew it. What you aim for with a startup is to sell it eventually, take home several boatloads of dough, and be the secret and not-so-secret envy of everyone you know. A term of the sale might require Damien to stay on and run the operation for a period of time, but then he would be free (and very rich), able to start some shiny new company or sail across the Pacific Ocean or do whatever he damn well pleased. If the deal went through, of course.

“Good for them,” I say finally. “Did you hear any details?”

“About the sale? No, I’m not sure who the potential buyer is, though I could make a few guesses.”