Page 23 of Shades of Grey & Gold

I look at my notes. I look back at him.

“I might be able to find her,” I say. Many years of vetting Becca’s Tinder dates prepared me well for this. People don’t disappear. They just make it inconvenient to be found.

He looks at me for a long moment. His expression is the one I remember him getting when he’s deciding which cards to show—like there’s something underneath the composed surface that wants to say something, and he’s deliberating whether to let it out.

“Yeah,” he says, finally. “Do it.”

By the end of the first week, I have found the missing witness—currently living under her married name in Vermont, working at an elementary school, and very willing to testify once I explained what her statement could mean for the defendant. I have also successfully avoided Patrick Ellison four times by learning (just like I did years ago) his calendar, which is not a difficult thing to do.

Patrick’s schedule is Patrick’s identity. He has never, in all the years I have known him, done anything spontaneous—well, if you don’t count all the cheating. He is a nine-o’-clock-meeting-with-coffee-in-hand man; he is a twelve-thirty-lunch-reservation man; he is an end-of-day-scotch-in-his-corner-office man. He has the predictability of a tide chart, and I am very good at not being where he’s going to be.

But of course, Cal notices.

He doesn’t say anything, which is how he has always been—especially when it comes to Patrick. He notices everything and says very little of it out loud.

He noticed on Wednesday when I took the stairs to avoid the elevator that was already occupied by Patrick and Brenda.

He noticed on Thursday when I rerouted through the conference room to get to the kitchen.

He noticed this morning when I went to stand up to switch chairs, so I didn’t have to stare at Patrick having an impromptu meeting in the middle of the office with one of the associates. And Cal came and sat in the chair in front of me without being asked, opened his laptop and said nothing about it.

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.

“Do what,” he says too calmly, which was a lie, but a politeone.

“Position yourself so I don’t have to look at him.”

He is quiet for a second. “I’m not. I have a meeting in twenty minutes, and this is a comfortable chair.”

“You have never sat in this chair before.”

“I’m branching out.”

I look at him. He looks at his laptop. He gives away exactly nothing.

“Thank you,” I say, quietly.

He looks up then, briefly, and his eyes feel like they trail over every inch of my face before he covers it immediately with whatever the Cal Reed version of composure is when he’s trying not to let something show.

“The Halbrook witness,” he says. “Good work finding her, Sims.”

He goes back to his laptop. I go back to mine. And if I was smiling at my screen for approximately the next twenty minutes, that was a private experience and had nothing to do with Cal.

The first time I run into Patrick without warning is eleven days in.

It’s early—I came in at seven-thirty to get a head start before anyone else arrived, which I thought was a reliable strategy—and I’m standing at the espresso machine in the kitchen when he walks in.

He stops. I do not acknowledge his existence.

I focus on the espresso machine like it’s a complex document requiring my full attention. It’s not, it requires approximately seven seconds of my time and I’m giving it twenty.

“Max.” His voice acknowledges my presence carefully. Rehearsed.

“Morning,” I say to the machine.

A pause.

He walks to the cabinet.