“So, are you ready to go take a look now?” I’m reclining as much as I can in the office chair, barely hearing my own voice ask the question.

“What?” Maddie’s busy throwing the markers and everything else into the two plastic shopping bags that Kallie left on the floor.

“To go see if anyone’s here.”

I put my feet back on the floor, ready to take a for-real walk. Maddie just looks at me like I’m the craziest bastard she’s seen all day, which would probably be saying something.

“Do we really need to go through all that again?”

I put the brakes on and try to remember what happened before our boardroom meeting.

“Fuck, that’s embarrassing. It’s not new to you anymore, and you certainly know there’s no one around at this point.”

“I certainly hope not, Mr. Barrett.”

Maddie’s got both bags, packed full of markers and packaging, with one of them holding the entire whiteboard, clenched in one hand. I see her eyes travel to the bags before traveling mischievously somewhere off toward the distance.

“Maddie, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” The corners of Maddie’s lips turn up ever so slightly.

“You know I don’t like to leave a mess for the janitorial staff, right?”

Maddie shrugs, her smile now large and unstoppable.

“Just tell Kallie to clean it up.”

Maddie pitches both packed bags across the room, their contents tumbling out onto the conference table surface.

“Damn, Mad.”

The markers are fairly quiet, but when the whiteboard falls out, it clangs with a wicked racket. I actually fucking cringe when I hear it.

“You know how I feel about people calling me that, Eth.”

“I think the table just broke.”

“How could that table break?” Maddie puts her hands on her hips, trying to convey a sour, pissed-off expression, but I can see the smile already starting to play around her lips again.

“The tabletop, I mean. It may be cracked now.”

Maddie gestures in the direction of the table with the top of her head.

“Go check.”

She says it so casually. I want her so bad again.

But it’s not just like I want to fuck her. I want to be with her, to be beside her.

I want her there to be sassy, throw shit, and make me fucking laugh. All the fucking time.

But I know she’s just going to leave again soon. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it will continue to be.

I go to check. I walk to the middle of the table, reach over, and move the whiteboard.

“It’s still pristine—the whiteboard didn’t do shit.”

“Well, yippee for that hedge fund tabletop. May it live to see many more years of pointless meetings.”

I start sweeping the markers and the whiteboard into a big pile at the edge of the table.

“Pointless, you say?”

“Yeah,” Maddie answers quickly, her hands still on her hips. “Every single one.”

“Even today? Even your meetings?”

I can’t help myself. I’m already sweeping the mess back into the bags. There’s no way Kallie is cleaning this up; it’s going to end up being some poor janitor working a sixteen-hour day.

I hear a heavy sigh coming from Maddie’s side of the room.

It’s definitely from Madeline, but there’s a world-weariness I wouldn’t expect to hear from her.

“I’ve been trying, Ethan.” Madeline’s tone is so hefty that I’m afraid to even look up from what I’m doing. “I wanted...I still want to do this the easy way.”

“The easy way?” It’s like I’m following a script at this point. I need her to fess up, even if she needs me to lead her on a bit.

“Interviews, Ethan. That’s what I told my higher-ups. Not formal interviews—I thought I could keep it casual. A new approach.”

Now I’m holding both plastic bags, one in each hand. They’re both bursting with Kallie’s garbage.

“Do you have an old approach?” I’m staring at my hands holding the bags like a shy child. I know where this is going.

“No. I mean new for this branch office.”

I walk in Madeline’s direction, looking at her. She’s not trying to hide a frown of disappointment with a mounting, resigned anxiety in her eyes.

“Investigations never start this way in New York?”

“They start this way, but they don’t continue this way for this long. I’m not going by the book, and I was hoping to avoid that.”

I deposit the bags on a chair a few spots from the end of the table in case Maddie starts to feel like Maddie again.

“Why?”

“Because now, it’s only going to get worse.”

“Why?”

I arrive at my spot just in front of Madeline, getting close enough that she has to look up at me.

I lightly rub her back with one hand, and her frown and troubled eyes start to take on a maudlin, playful tone.

“Can we speak in your office?”

I look around the room as if I’m checking for a giant reel-to-reel recording our entire conversation.

“Madeline, we’re safe here. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m sure of it too. I’d just like to see your office. Please?”

Shit, if Maddie didn’t worry about being recorded up until now, with everything we just did in this room, she must mean business.

“Okay, let’s check it out.”

Madeline nods, and she’s halfway out the door by the time I take my first step.

“I appreciate you giving me your time after hours,” Madeline calls out to me as I follow her down the corridor. “I hope we can get some of these questions answered.”

Now that Madeline’s got me in a sort of paranoid state, I try to act natural and pull my business phone out from my pocket to check my messages.

There’s an email notification on the lock screen. I don’t usually get notifications for emails, except for one account—the account that the partners set up for me when I first joined.

The email is from John Barrister’s Gmail account.

Why would he be using his Gmail account?

We need to talk re:Basel. Remind me when you see me next.

“Not this shit again,” I say out loud as Maddie opens my office door.

“What shit?” she asks, walking around my desk to sit in my chair.

After walking into my office, I close the door behind me and pull up a chair to my desk.

“I keep forgetting, even though it’s a big fucking deal. The firm is in talks, internally, to move to Switzerland.”

“Switzerland?” Maddie lets out an odd, vaguely horrified laugh after saying the word.

“Yeah, weird, right? It’s not going to happen, or at least I doubt it.”

“When have you heard about an entire firm making a move like that?”

“Exactly. I think it’s just a negotiating tactic because our lease in the building is almost up. They’re trying to make it look as realistic as possible.”

Maddie spins around in my chair, making a complete rotation to the window behind the desk and back. Her expression’s still dead serious.

“That is one nice view you’ve got here.”

“Tell me about it. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense—this is a historic building, we’re on an upper floor, and I don’t think there’s room to negotiate.”

“You don’t say...” Maddie gingerly brings her hand to the open laptop on my desk then swiftly slams it shut.

“Hey,” I complain weakly.

“Not what this is, I’m afraid.”

“Not what what is?”

Maddie watches my laptop and waits for the light indicating it’s in sleep mode before she continues.

“Are you really thinking about moving to Basel?”

“How did you know the city? Did they tell you, or did you uncover that detail somehow?”

Maddie pushes back with her foot, sending the chair a few feet backwards.

“No, just a lucky guess.” Maddie brings the chair back up to the desk. “Why do you think they chose Basel?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about the town. I’m picturing some whimsical village in the Alps with hot chocolate and cuckoo clocks.”

“Hate to break it to you, Eth, but Basel’s a city, and it’s not close to any mountains.”

I feel disappointed after hearing that description, which means I must be thinking about it more than I realized.

“It’s not whimsical, then?

“I don’t know about whimsical. They did invent LSD there, but that’s because Basel has a ton of pharma company headquarters.”

I look out the window behind Maddie. It feels like she’s going off on a long tangent away from what she’s supposed to be investigating and making assumptions that are way off the mark.

“I do not get your logic, Madeline.”

“There’s none to get yet. I’m just saying it’s a coincidence. In fact, it probably is just a coincidence.”

I audibly sigh with relief.

“There has to be some more obvious reason...”

“Yeah, like the fact that Switzerland’s basically a giant hedge fund.” Maddie pokes the top of my laptop with her finger, looking almost as sad as I’ve ever seen her. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out in good time.”

“Couldn’t you extradite from Switzerland?”

Maddie stands up and brushes the shoulders of her dress with her hands. I laugh loudly yet briefly; Madeline ignores that.

“If they move enough of their assets, we’ll probably let the case go cold.”

“Meaning they’ll get away with it.”

Maddie starts toward the door, about to leave me alone in my office. As usual, I don’t know where, when, or even if I’ll be seeing her again.

“Meaning you’ll get away with it, if you stay on. Probably.”

I listen to Maddie leave and stare out the office window, seeing nothing but the darkening sky from my perspective.