He Will be My Ruin

Isn’t she?

“Are you feeling okay?” Dani leans in, scowling. “You’re a little pale.”

“Yeah.” I clear my throat and stand, shifting the box in my arms. “I’m still fighting this jet lag. I should probably get going.” So I can call Rosa and find out why this complete stranger knows things that I don’t.

“And look, I don’t know if Celine had mentioned me subletting her apartment from her, but I don’t think I can do that now.”

Now that Celine died in there.

She shrugs. “But I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. She’s not coming back to New York.”

Or San Diego. Or anywhere ever again. I swallow the lump in my throat. “It was nice to meet you, Dani.”

“You too. And be careful. That’s a heavy box.”

“I’ll grab a taxi. I’m fine,” I mutter, rushing backward through the courtyard, toward the street, Dani on my heels. I make myself stop. “Thank you for caring enough about Celine to call the police when you did.”

“Of course. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, please call me.” She pauses to blink away a sudden tear. “Celine and I started at Vanderpoel at the same time. She was a really good friend to me. A nice person.”

I force a smile and nod, and in a fog over this latest news, I turn into the throng of people heading in every direction. I prepare myself to be bumped a dozen times before I reach the street.

Somehow I still spot him.

Taking long strides through the milling crowd, in his pinstripe suit, the perfectly tailored pant legs falling just right with each step. Mere feet away from me.

The guy whose naked photo sits tucked in my purse.

At least, I think that’s him.

He slows as he passes, his eyes catching mine as I watch him climb the steps. Blue eyes the color of an early-morning sky capture me. The connection lasts mere seconds, but as I watch him disappear into Celine’s building, time stands still.

“Maggie?”

By the look on Dani’s face, she’s been calling my name for a while. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Do you know who that guy was?”

All it takes is one glance up the steps and she knows who I’m talking about. She smirks. “Every breathing female in our building knows who Jace Everett is.”

Jace Everett.

He’s real. He’s not just an Internet picture, Detective Childs.

And Jace begins with the letter J. Like the “J” who sent flowers to Celine.

“He works with you?”

“Uh-uh. He’s a hedge fund manager at Falcon Capital Management. A really successful one. His ego goes well with it, from what I’ve heard. He basically waltzed into a corner office with his Princeton degree and Tom Ford suit and started raking in the money, while everyone else is cutting their teeth at the bottom of the food chain. Most of his coworkers can’t stand his privileged ass. As beautiful as it may be,” she adds with a wry smile.

I look up at the building towering above us—all sixty-five stories of it, based on the elevator buttons. There must be thousands of people working in there. “You know an awful lot about him.”

She shrugs. “I’m sort of friends with his assistant, so . . . you know how it goes. Office gossip makes the long, boring days more bearable.” She pauses. “Celine always noticed when he was anywhere nearby. I think she had a thing for him.”

No kidding. For the most part, Celine and I diverged in our taste in men. But this guy . . . I’d call him universally attractive. “Did they talk a lot?”

“Who? Celine and Jace?” She frowns. “No, not at all. He’s too good for a lowly admin, the arrogant SOB.”

“But she—” I cut myself off as I stare at the building. This man was once my salvation. Now he will be my ruin. “Are you sure?”

She chuckles. “If they knew each other, I would have heard about it. Trust me. He generally sticks to his rich bitches.” She cringes. “No offense.”

“None taken.” You don’t grow up in my shoes without forming reptilian-thick skin. “See you later, Dani.” I hop into a cab and head home.

My thoughts are vaulting back and forth between Rosa’s failing health and the hedge fund manager who apparently wouldn’t give Celine the time of day.

But clearly must have.

CHAPTER 6

Maggie

I didn’t need to drag the truth out of Rosa.

Celine’s computer just gave it all to me.

Phone in one hand, a glass of Maker’s Mark in the other, a hard soccer ball–sized mass sits in the pit of my stomach as I stare at the email. I hardly ever drink. But tonight, I pilfered the bourbon from Celine’s brass bar cart, having looked for the first thing besides the half bottle of vodka that Celine didn’t finish off the night she killed herself.

That half bottle, I dumped down the drain.

After returning from Vanderpoel, I spent a good hour digging through the box of Celine’s work things. There wasn’t much—a few framed pictures, including another one of her and me at Christmas on Coronado Island Beach when I was eighteen; a toothbrush, comb, lip gloss, moisturizer. Some personal paperwork files—her health insurance enrollment, a memo from HR regarding company holidays. A magazine.

So I decided to try her computer. It’s password-protected, of course, but I know Celine well enough to know that while she’d make an effort to change her passwords frequently for security reasons, she’d also jot them down and hide them nearby. A big no-no in Security 101, but for Celine, who had a memory like a sieve, it would have been a necessity.

Sure enough, I spotted the sheet of paper tucked into a book on Roman Catholic relics sitting next to the keyboard. All of her latest computer passwords were listed there.

It took no time at all to get into her email, to find the message Celine sent to Rosa back in July, listing the questions she needed to ask her oncologist. Questions like:

How did they not catch this in the frequent checkups?

What treatment is most effective for cancer that has spread into the bones, the lymph nodes, the liver?

What does “terminal” and “one to two years to live” really mean?

When do we tell Maggie?

Rosa is dying.

I also found the draft email to me that Celine began back in September, sharing the devastating news and explaining that she was deferring school until “after.” That she planned on working at Vanderpoel until December and then subletting her apartment to a friend until “after.” As of Christmas, Celine would be living in San Diego, to be with her mother.