Angie sat back in the seat. She smoothed her lips. She thought about the other things Sara had left at Will’s house. Real Manolo Blahniks. They were too big for Angie’s feet, a size more suitable for a drag queen. Black lacy underwear, which was a waste because Will could get turned on by a paper sack. Hair clips, which Angie could use, but she had thrown them away because fuck Sara Linton. Perfume. Another waste. Will couldn’t tell the difference between Chanel No. 5 and Dial hand soap.

Then there were the things in the bedside drawer.

Angie’s bedside drawer.

She reached into her bag and found a tissue. She wiped off the lipstick. She rolled down the window and threw the tissue on the ground. She could afford to buy her own Sisley now. She could afford to get her car fixed. She could buy her own Manolos, her own perfume.

Why was it that she only ever wanted the things that she couldn’t have?

There was a glint of white in her rear-view mirror. Dale Harding’s Kia came from around the side of the building. The car slowed to a stop four spaces away. Dale was eating a McDonald’s hamburger. The door opened. He shoved the rest of the burger into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto the ground. His meaty hand clamped onto the roof. The car shook as he wedged himself out.

He asked Angie, ‘Where is he?’

Angie was offering an exaggerated shrug when Dale turned toward the street.

Sam Vera circled his van through the parking lot in a lazy figure eight. The idiot probably thought he was doing surveillance, but he was actually drawing more attention to himself. His van was painted a dull gray with a FEEL THE BERN bumper sticker on the back. The gray was a primer coat, broken up by patches of yellowing Bondo. Which Angie only knew about because of Will.

She got out of her car.

Dale asked, ‘You find anything out?’

‘Fig is beating his wife.’

‘No shit.’ He obviously already knew. ‘I talked to the team fixer in Chicago. They had to make a couple of nine-one-ones go away.’

‘You didn’t think to share this with me?’

‘No big deal. He doesn’t strangle her.’

‘What a gentleman.’ Cops were taught that an abuser who strangled a woman was statistically more likely to kill her. Angie asked, ‘Anything else you’re hiding?’

‘Maybe. How about you?’

Angie dug around in her purse so he couldn’t see her expression. Dale had obviously done a good job vetting Jo Figaroa, but her birth certificate would’ve been a dead end. Angie had given them an alias at the hospital.

The van finally came to a stop. The brakes squealed. She could smell pot. The radio was blaring Josh Groban.

Dale banged his fist on the side of the van. ‘Open up, dipshit.’

There was a loud pop as Sam Vera threw back the bolt on the van door. His large round eyeglasses caught the sun. He was twenty years old, tops, with a goatee that looked like mange from a squirrel. His eyes squinted behind his glasses. ‘Hurry. I hate the sun.’

Angie climbed into the back of the van. The air conditioning was working overtime, but the van was still a giant metal box baking in the sun. Sam’s acrid sweat mixed with the sweet odor of pot. She felt like she was in a frat house.

Angie sat on an overturned plastic crate. She kept her purse in her lap because there was greasy-looking shit all over the floor. Dale settled into the front passenger seat, turned sideways so he could see them both. He handed Sam an envelope of cash. Sam started counting the bills.

Angie looked around the cramped space. The van was a mobile RadioShack. Wires and metal boxes and various crap she didn’t understand spilled out of the Dewey decimal system he had going on in the back. He specialized in remote surveillance, but not the legal kind. There was a Sam Vera in every major American city. He was paranoid as hell. He had no qualms about breaking the law. He talked a tough game, but he would narc out his own mother if the cops ever leaned on him. Angie used to have her own Sam Vera, but he got picked up by the NSA for breaking into something you weren’t supposed to break into.

‘M’lady.’ Sam offered Angie a bright green phone with black electrical tape holding it together. ‘This is a clone of Jo Figaroa’s iPhone.’

‘That was fast.’

‘That’s what you pay me for.’ He asked Dale, ‘Did you get the bugs in place?’

‘Planted ’em while the wife was dropping off the kid at school.’ Dale’s breathing was labored. He looked worse than usual. ‘I also plugged in that whatever thingy you told me to put on her laptop. It was in the kitchen. I didn’t find any other computers. No iPads. Nothing. Weird, right?’

‘Really weird.’ Sam told Angie, ‘The program Dale put on the laptop is called a shadow tracker, like spyware, but better. I already downloaded every file from the hard drive onto this tablet.’ He reached toward a bin and pulled out a scratched-up iPad. Two old-school antennae stuck out of the back that reminded Angie of the rabbit ears on a television. ‘I loaded an app to ping the GPS tracker on her car. It’s this button here with the car on it. Works exactly like the police model. You’re familiar with it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can follow her anywhere she goes as long as it’s not underground.’ He started swiping and tapping the glass. ‘The spyware on her laptop acts in real time. Whatever she types on the computer from now on will show up on this iPad, but since I already downloaded all the data, you can also go back and do searches through her hard drive. It’s basically her laptop. Not just a copy as of a certain date.’

Dale said, ‘You mean not like the thing you gave Polaski before.’

Sam’s eyes bulged in his head. ‘I didn’t—’

‘I told him,’ Angie interrupted. Dale wouldn’t give her Sam’s contact information unless Angie told him why. Angie had been a little creative on whose laptop she was breaking into. She told Sam, ‘We’re cool. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’

‘All right.’ Sam tapped a few more times on the screen. He handed the iPad to Angie. ‘Just so you know, the hacker’s code is you don’t rat out your customers. I’m solid for you, yo.’

‘Sure, kid.’ Dale pulled a melted Snickers out of his pocket.

Angie looked away so she didn’t have to watch him chew. She still wasn’t sure what had driven her to copy Sara’s laptop. Her patient files were on there, so Grady Hospital had installed some kind of encryption software that took a higher level of espionage than Angie was capable of. Sam had given her something called a dongle that broke Sara’s passwords and downloaded all the files. Angie knew this was crossing a line—not with Sara, but with herself. That was the moment at which she had gone from being annoyed to being obsessed to being a full-on stalker.

Was she dangerous?

She hadn’t figured out that part yet.

‘Get out of the van.’ Dale was talking to Sam. ‘I need a minute with Polaski.’

Sam balked. ‘In the sunlight?’

‘You’re not going to melt, Elphaba.’

Angie laughed. ‘How the hell do you know the Wicked Witch’s real name?’

‘Look.’ Sam tried to talk reason. ‘I’ve got sensitive stuff in here. For other clients. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s top-secret stuff.’