Page 2 of Safari Murder Party
“He looks displaced, off-center”—Fletcher’s eyebrows raised when she grazed the lines cleaved against his hip bones. What came next disappeared off the bottom of the page—“delicious.”
Ford flicked her hand away where it lingered. “Have you forgotten your farm-fresh boyfriend so quickly?”
Fletcher couldn’t possibly roll her eyes far enough into her head. When work best friends became real-life best friends, there was always an uncomfortable overlap in professionalism. Even more sowhen the best friend in question was Ford Jepson, who had never once conceptualized personal privacy. They were purely platonic—Ford exclusively dated men with Guy Fieri goatees or people of any gender who could bench-press his body weight, and being that Fletcher was neither, her long-distance love life was frankly none of his concern.
She settled on saying, “Kent and I are fine.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” Ford asked. “Phone sex can only sustain someone for so long.”
She didn’t bother informing him that she wasn’t having phone sex at all because Kent said it made him feel vulnerable, which made Fletcher feel like a jar of homemade kombucha that needed a release. But when you’ve been with someone as long as Fletcher had been with Kent, that was totally normal, right?
Satisfied there wasn’t any juicy gossip to squeeze out of her, Ford’s eyebrows cinched as he reverted his focus to the photo and picked at his thumbnail. A terrible habit. Fletcher stopped destroying her nails cold turkey in high school when college applications and internship interviews came front and center. She needed to be pristine, right down to the cuticle.
Just like the November issue if Ford wanted to keep his job.
“You know I’m right,” she said, looping her purse over her shoulder and chucking the dregs of her lo mein into the garbage. “Jackie will thank you.”
“Will I?” A voice, bright as the midday sun, chimed behind her. “Spending lunch on my floor again, Fletcher?”
Jackie Caldera was known for three things: becomingJet-Setter’s youngest editor in chief three years ago at a ripe thirty-nine; once beating the CEO’s son at a company outing to Topgolf; and wearing a bold red swatch of Chanel lipstick every day without fail. This afternoon, it was smeared under her bottom lip, the aftermath of alunch meeting with the C-suite at the new Nordic-Japanese fusion bistro in Hell’s Kitchen.
Even slightly smudged, she was still the HBIC. Jackie commanded every room she walked into—especially the Art and Design Lab on the forty-third floor of Cartwright Media’s Fifth Avenue office.
“On my way out,” Fletcher said, her voice sliding easily back into its corporate-girl cadence as she propped the door open with her hip. “Don’t worry about the centerfold bleed on page thirty. Ford’s on it.” She answered Ford’s petrified look with a mouthedYou’re welcome.Stepping into the hall, she scooped her phone out of her purse at the exact moment it started ringing, crooning, “Good afternoon, Mr.Cartwright. How was your lunch?”
On the other end of the phone call, her boss’s crackling tenor was cut off by sirens. Which meant he was outside the building. It’d give her plenty of time to get back upstairs into position. “You know I love Japanese whiskey, Miss Spence. Remind me what’s on my calendar this afternoon?”
Fletcher jammed the elevator button for the penthouse. There was awhooshon the other end of the line as Dyer must have stepped into the front lobby. Right on schedule.
“I canceled your afternoon appointment with Dr.Hawks like you asked, so all that’s left is for you to finalize the guest list for the Lydell trip, and I’ll send out invitations before the end of the day.”
“It’s on my desk,” Dyer said.
“Fabulous.” Fletcher prayed he didn’t hear the hopeful way her words tipped upward.
She shimmied through the elevator doors the second they pried open. Walls of unstreaked glass showcased the Upper East Side sprawl, glittering windows teetering upon two-hundred-year-old streets. She didn’t need to glance at her reflection to know how shelooked: Her white polyester blouse was tucked into a T.J. Maxx pencil skirt, a pair of secondhand black heels clicked with every step, and her strawberry blonde hair was slicked into a low ponytail that draped over her shoulder. Absolutely no frizz. No wrinkles.
Weaving around a couple leather armchairs carefully positioned beneath a crystal chandelier, she headed for the frosted-glass door at the far end of the floor—Dyer’s office. “Also, Jackie had a late-morning meeting with Melv Lexington, something about an ownership dispute, but it might be worth a debrief if you’re up for it. It’s her third meeting with Legal this month. Not sure where the holdup is.”
Dyer hummed. “Send him up to me after my one o’clock. I need him to look over some paperwork before the trip.”
“You don’t have a one o’clock—” Fletcher was saying as she swung open the door.
Some things Fletcher had grown to expect to see when stepping into Dyer’s office.
A display of the world’s finest liquors, some with six-figure price tags.
A glass case housing a hand-carved ivory cane and the vintage Remington poaching weapon, both inherited from his grandfather: the publishing mogul who created the eponymous Cartwright Media in 1924 to catalog his world travels.
The first issue ofJet-Setter, framed in three-ply glass. Dusty and yellow, edges curled and ink faded. A snapshot of a hammock between two palms stamped with the same swirly retro lettering still used today.
But in all the years she’d been by Dyer’s side, Fletcher had never walked into Dyer’s office expecting to seehim.
A coil of dread wormed its way into her stomach, but she pretended it didn’t exist the same way she pretended to orgasm frompenetration alone: quietly suffering. She plastered a forced smile on as fast as she could, but the man in the wingback chair definitely noticed her stunned expression.
There was no mistaking him. Wild blond curls, two inches over six feet tall with shoulders broad as the Hudson, and wrapped in a worn leather jacket. Waylon Cartwright sat at his father’s desk with his fingers perched beneath his chin. The last person on planet Earth who was supposed to be here.
Waylon grinned, a wide flash of white teeth, and waved like he owned the place. He didn’t, Fletcher was inclined to remind him. Not yet.
