The Key by Jennifer Sturman Page B

deal with Gallagher’s pass and all of the hostility that came after it, not to mention his ugly death. And he’d done it all with understanding and discretion. I’d trusted him with a lot, and he hadn’t disappointed that trust.
    Maybe I did have a small crush—but it was harmless, the sort of thing that was bound to happen when you worked closely with someone who was interesting and attractive. It didn’t mean anything, really, and it didn’t change the fact that Jake had been nothing but kind from the moment we met. He was my friend, and I hoped he considered me his friend, too. He must, I thought, remembering his self-deprecating comments about his failed marriage—that wasn’t the sort of thing you shared with just anybody.
    And just because I’d gone looking for trouble in my relationship with Peter didn’t mean I should go looking for trouble in every other relationship I had.
    I picked up the phone again and dialed his extension but his assistant answered. “He’s on the other line,” she told me. “I’ll have him get back to you.” I probably was being paranoid, but I thought I could detect an iciness in her tone that had never been there before.
    Frustrated, I tried to come up with someone else to call, but I was fresh out of names. Desperate for distraction, I began scrolling through my e-mails and even flipped through the new analyses Mark Anders had dropped off for the Thunderbolt deal, but I couldn’t absorb a single word or number.
    Ten minutes later, Jake hadn’t returned my call and New York 1 had moved on to other topics. Meanwhile, my office walls felt as if they were closing in on me, and while the members of the department hadn’t yet grouped outside my door with pitchforks and torches, I suspected that plans to do so were afoot somewhere on the floor.
    I could use some fresh air, I decided. I pulled my hat and scarf out of my bag and shoved them under the desk. “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told Jessica.
     
    For a variety of reasons that seemed, in retrospect, not terribly well-reasoned, I had determined by my senior year of college that I wanted to pursue a career in investment banking. Most of the major investment banks recruited on campus, and I submitted my résumé to them all. Probably nobody was more surprised than I when several of them extended job offers.
    My decision came down to Winslow, Brown and two other firms. All three were considered top-tier Wall Street institutions, but the other two took the entire “Wall Street” thing a bit too seriously. Their offices were actually located downtown, in Manhattan’s financial district. Winslow, Brown’s midtown headquarters, on the other hand, were around the corner from Saks Fifth Avenue and only minutes from the time-honored trifecta of Bendel’s, Bergdorf’s, and Barney’s.
    The decision was an easy one, and the choice I’d made to return to Winslow, Brown after business school had been based on similar criteria.
    I was back to operating on autopilot as I left the office, my thoughts consumed with questions about who my unknown twin was, why she would want Dahlia dead, and what the connection could be, if any, with Gallagher’s murder. My feet, either out of habit or because they had a better understanding of what was happening than my brain did, delivered me to the side entrance of Saks on East 50th Street.
    I didn’t actually try anything on, but browsing through the designer collections occupied the better part of an hour, and the contemporary collections on the fifth floor took up the remaining part. My thoughts still weren’t very clear when I rode the escalators down to the ground floor and the accessories counters, but on some level I was already aware that it wouldn’t do to use a credit card and leave a digital trail of my whereabouts and purchases. Fortunately, I’d gone to the ATM a few days before and my wallet was stuffed with bills. I parted with some of them to pay for a pair of oversize black