Chapter 9: Kip's Report

"Odette wants the Q3 numbers," Kip said on the stairs, as if that were why he'd been looking everywhere.

He gave Drake a long, friendly stare, and me a short one, and went back up with his shoes tapping.

We stood very still until the door shut.

"He knows," I said.

"He suspects. Those are different."

"They're different when it's Kip?"

"With Kip they are the same," said Drake.

On Wednesday morning, my day, Kip asked me into his glass office and closed the door.

"Roz. I want to be a friend."

"You've never wanted to be a friend."

"I want to be a friend," he said, and sat on the corner of his desk so his knee almost touched mine.

His teeth were extremely white.

"I'd hate to see you hurt in this process. Drake said something in a one-on-one that stuck with me."

"What did he say?"

"He called Switchback a sophisticated tarp."

I felt it land, low in the stomach.

"When?"

"Last month. I don't want to make trouble." He spread his hands. "I just think you should know who you're working next to."

I thanked him.

I walked back to 4B with my face stiff and sat down at the long table.

Across the glass, I saw Kip step out of his office and cross the floor to Drake's.

Drake took the call at his own desk with a calm face, and put the phone down, and sat for a full minute without moving.

When he lifted his head and looked across the open floor at me, I saw it all in his eyes.

Kip had told him something too.

It's a bad feeling, in a room full of people.

To know that you and the man you've been sleeping with have just been handed the same poison.

I didn't speak to Drake all day.

He didn't speak to me.

At six, I stood at his front door in a cardigan and my coat.

He lives in a brick loft in RiNo with a rooftop view.

An old steel door and a doorbell that plays four notes of "Moon River."

He opened it in shirtsleeves with a dish towel over his shoulder.

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