Her, Too by Bonnie Kistler

Author:Bonnie Kistler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

19

IT WAS RAINING WHEN SHE arrived in New York. The taxi line at Penn Station was a mile long, and it was nearly nine by the time she got to the hotel. She’d made a bad choice there: there was a convention underway, and the lobby was mobbed. After she finally checked in, she hurried to her room to drop off her bag. Her hair was wet and straggly, and, with no time to dry it, she slicked it back into a bun even more severe than her usual style. She frowned at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t out to seduce Rick Olsson, but she couldn’t risk scaring him off by looking like a schoolmarm either. She swiped on some lipstick and left her glasses by the sink.

The lobby buzzed with the hoots and squeals of partying conventioneers. She followed the loudest hubbub to the hotel bar, tucked away in a dim, low-ceilinged space at the far side of the lobby, a room of mirrored surfaces and turquoise velvet, with a long bar to the right, booths to the left, and a string of high-top tables down the middle. Dozens of people were on their feet in that space in the middle, elbows on the tables, drinks in hand.

She spotted Rick Olsson toward the back, standing beside a corner booth while he talked to a couple other men. It looked like they’d buttonholed him on his way to his table, but he was acting his usual genial self. He wore a dark suit and an open-necked shirt in a shade of blue that looked good on him. He didn’t see her yet, and she hung back by the host stand to let him finish his conversation.

Her phone pinged in her bag. She pulled it out and was puzzled when the screen was blank. Then she realized: it was the other phone. The one she forgot about the second she texted Done to Emily. She rooted for it now in the bottom of her bag.

A dozen texts had landed since she left Benedict’s mansion. First from Emily at five thirty: Haven’t heard from Tiffy yet. Another at five forty: She’s not answering. Either phone. Then a text from Ashley: She got cold feet. I told you she was our weakest link! Emily: Kelly, what now? Ten minutes later: Kelly? Ashley: Fuck! She got cold feet, too? Emily now: Still no answer from Tiffy.

Kelly felt suddenly dizzy. Today at five o’clock. Go Time. Ashley, Kelly, and Tiffy would simultaneously execute the code to alter the UniViro files. That was what they’d planned. That was the only way this would work. If Tiffy hadn’t come through, that meant that Benedict’s office computer still had all the original lab notes and none of the new emails. Kelly had ten pages of documents in her bag, carefully selected to whet the journalistic appetite of Rick Olsson. They were worthless if Benedict could refute them with the unaltered documents on his office laptop. And he could.

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