“What can I get for you?” the barista asked me.
“Black coffee, please.” Whatever would get me out of there the fastest. To Kat’s neighbor I said, “It was really great running into you!”
She smiled as she slid up to the counter to take her turn, and I grabbed my coffee and hurried out, as if I had somewhere important to be.
Instinct is a funny thing, a whisper of trouble that we can never quite name, never quite define, that allows us to locate danger. Women are taught from a young age to ignore theirs. We’re forced to justify our instincts with evidence, or we’re taught to ignore them—as a way to keep the peace, to prioritize other people’s comfort over our own.
It’s taken me a long time to override those impulses. To pay attention when something seems off. And my instincts weren’t wrong about Kat. The inheritance story was a good one—impossible for an outsider to verify—but it lacked the background details that might have fooled me for longer. An inheritance large enough to purchase a home in Los Angeles would show up in your life in other, smaller ways. Maybe as a new car, or nicer clothes. Jewelry. Even expensive highlights from the salon. But Kat had none of those things. She drove a ten-year-old Honda. Her yoga wear was from Old Navy, not Lululemon. Her makeup was from Sephora, not Neiman Marcus.
My mind began circling through ways to cut her loose. Become too busy to show her any more properties. Avoid her calls and texts, build a wall that would keep Kat separated from what I was planning.
But then my instincts kicked in. Casting her aside wouldn’t stop her. She’d continue to target me, follow me, possibly feeding information to Scott. But if I held her close, I could control the narrative. Make sure the only things she saw were curated by me. So I made her my assistant instead.
I’m not a fool. I know Kat plans to write about me, exposing who I am and what I do. I see beneath her soft sympathy and the delicate questions she’s likely known the answers to for years. But I have a plan too, and Kat will be a useful part of it.
It’ll be easy to pull her in and feed her the pieces I need her to have. And because she’ll be so close, it’ll be impossible for her to see the whole picture. Like standing under the Eiffel Tower—when you’re inside of it, it’s just a bunch of crisscrossed steel. It’s only from a distance you can see it for what it really is.
Kat
July
Scott’s reaction is predictable. “You have no idea how hard undercover work can be. It’s 24/7. We still have bills to pay.”
What he’s not saying: How will we be able to live and pay down my debt if you’re not cranking out six or seven shit articles a week? I swallow down a sharp reply. “I’ll work in the evenings. Carve out pockets of time when I’m not with Meg. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to write one thousand words about the power of positive thinking, or to come up with five new moves to super-sculpt your abs. Besides, Meg is going to pay me.”
He rolls his eyes. “She’s not going to pay you to hang out with her. It’ll be twenty hours of actual work a week, if you’re lucky.”
“We can economize. Eat out less often. Stay home more. It’s only for a couple months,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
But I do. Meg isn’t back in Los Angeles to sell real estate to people like Veronica and her friends. I’m almost certain she’s after the Canyon Drive house, and she’s using the distraction of the election as cover. Taking advantage of a time when Ron can’t possibly be as focused as he should be.
“It’ll be over by Thanksgiving,” I hedge. “Four months. And if it’s not, I’ll step away and get some paying work.”
Scott nods and I pull him into a tight hug. By the new year, everything will be different. I can feel it.