LITMIR.BIZ

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let people bring their pets to work here?” Bree asked as Eric used his security card and a PIN number to gain entrance to the building. She was glad they were coming through the back rather than having to face the grim Celeste.

      “You can pretty much do anything you want here so long as you get your work done and you don’t impede anybody else’s ability to work. I actually never met that woman with the dog, so I’m not sure she works here. She might be a client or someone’s personal trainer. You just never know.”

      “Wow. I can’t imagine working under such...friendly conditions. I’m used to being abused at my job—long hours, dinner breaks too short to do anything but grab a candy bar from the vending machine, not even a comfortable chair to be found.”

      “Yeah, but you get compensated well, I’m sure.”

      “At County? Not as well as you might think. And I have student loans to pay off.”

      “What would you do if you were out of debt?” he asked.

      She thought about it for a moment. “Probably keep doing what I’m doing,” she confessed. “I hate the bureaucracy of the place, hate my boss, but I love my work. I can’t think of any other job where you can have such an immediate and dramatic impact on someone’s life. They come in dying or thinking they’re dying or wishing they would die, and by the time I’m done with them, they’re better. I ease the pain, I sew up the cuts, set the bones, reassure them. It’s...gratifying.”

      “What about when they die?”

      “Well, there is that. I try not to dwell on those losses. They’re inevitable in most branches of medicine. Except maybe dermatology.”

      He smiled again, though he tried not to let her see it.

      The first place they went was a large room at the end of a hallway that housed a number of desks and file cabinets arranged in a rather haphazard fashion. The place was buzzing with activity. Men and women, mostly in their twenties and thirties, talked on the phone, tapped away on computers or spoke with each other in voices that were subdued but full of energy. Their clothing ranged from formal business attire to jeans and T-shirts.

      “This is the bull pen,” Eric explained.

      “Like at a police department?”

      “A lot of the people who work here are former police officers. This arrangement seems to make them feel comfortable. Though the dress code here is pretty lax.”

      “Apparently so.”

      Eric led her to a far corner, where a man with longish curly blond hair and big black-framed glasses sat at an impressive array of computers. Three monitors, two laptops, a tower and a couple of cell phones sat on his desk. Around it were various peripheral gadgets she couldn’t come close to recognizing.

      “Mitch,” Eric said. “Do you have a minute?”

      The man named Mitch quickly blanked his screen and swiveled his chair, simultaneously whipping off his glasses, revealing a pair of hazel eyes. He was quite good-looking in a wild and lawless way. She wasn’t too surprised to see a crash helmet tucked under his desk.

      “Sure,” he said. “What’s up?” He eyed Bree up and down, not in a sexual way but with idle curiosity, before inviting them to pull up chairs.

      “This is Bree,” Eric said.

      “I’m not his girlfriend,” Bree blurted out. “I told Jillian I was, but it’s not true. We barely know each other.”

      As Eric stared at her as if willing her to shut her mouth, Mitch quirked one eyebrow at her. “Ooookay.”

      “I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Bree went on, wanting Mitch to understand, “but he only took off his shirt to show me a...”

      Eric was shaking his head, looking alarmed.

      “Well, never mind,” Bree finished lamely.

      “Hey, makes me no never mind whatchall been up to,” Mitch said in a lazy drawl that could only have come from Cajun country. “What can I do you for?”

      “A friend of Bree’s is missing,” Eric said. “The police won’t look into it because... Well, you know how the police are about missing persons.”

      “I take it you think something bad happened to your friend?”

      Bree explained as briefly as she could, without mentioning specifics, that Philomene was connected to a crime, and that she was in a position to identify a possible serial murderer, and that they’d come across some kind of intruder in her apartment. She gave Mitch everything she knew about Philomene, which admittedly wasn’t much.

      “Her name can’t be that common,” Mitch said. “I’ll find her. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

      “Yeah, sure.” Eric looked at Bree. “You want lunch?”

      “I’m not hungry,” she said automatically. She ought to pay more attention to her diet and stop living on coffee and jelly beans, but she couldn’t imagine putting food into her knotted stomach right now. “I’ll just sit here and wait.”

      “Oh, Bree, I see you found him!” Jillian entered the bull pen with a flourish. Bree suspected it was hard for the woman to appear inconspicuous.

      “Yeah, about that...” Bree began guiltily, but Eric jumped in.

      “Jillian, do you have a few minutes? We just want to pick your brain. It’s not official foundation business,” he added.

      “Of course.” She perched on the edge of an empty desk and crossed her legs, revealing an impressive length of thigh and mile-high shiny black platform boots.

      “I’m not really his girlfriend,” Bree blurted out. “I lied. But I was in a hurry and I just wanted to find him. So I let you believe what you wanted.”

      “Oh.” Jillian seemed disappointed.

      “I’m sorry. I’m usually a very honest person. I shouldn’t have lied. I put Eric in an awkward position, and I didn’t mean to.”

      “So if you’re not his girlfriend, why was he stripping off his clothes?”

      “It wasn’t sexual,” Eric said. “I don’t want people thinking I had a liaison at the office my second day of work.”

      Jillian shrugged. “Okay. But honestly, no one cares. If you had any idea the amount of sex that’s gone on in this office between people who should know better, you’d understand. So what do you guys want with me?”

      Eric held a chair out for Bree, then rolled another over for himself. “Bree needs some help finding someone.”

      “I just want to know that she’s okay,” Bree added. “But I’m worried something happened to her.”

      “Oh, that’s easy. Talk to Mitch.”

      “We did that,” Eric said.

      “Then he’ll find out soon enough whether she’s used her phone, bought gas, bought an airline ticket, left the country...”

      “Really?” Bree was astonished. “He can do all that? Is that legal?”

      Jillian and Eric shared deer-in-headlights looks.

      “Ah,” Jillian said. “Since you’re not a client, you haven’t signed a nondisclosure agreement. So we can’t say any more about how we do things.”

      “She’s right,” Eric said.

      “I’m not going to tattle,” Bree said. “If you want me to sign something, I will. But you don’t have to tell me any more. All I want to do is find Philomene.”

      “Okay.” Jillian got down to business. “In all likelihood, Mitch will tell you where and when she’s used her phone and credit cards and provide a list of people she knows—family,

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