The other guests had begun to filter out of the apartment during the bidding war with the Greek, and Eva’s panic deepened as the realtor’s attention came back to her again. The caterers and bartender began to pack up.

“I’m so glad you love this apartment as much as I do,” the woman said, smiling broadly. “That was an exciting bit of play between you and Mr. Christodoulou.”

“It was exciting, all right,” Eva agreed, running the possibilities in her mind. “It’s truly been an eventful night for me.”

“I’m sure you’ll want to get back to wherever you’re staying, so if you’ll just bear with me through a few formalities, you’ll be the proud future owner of this beautiful home,” the realtor told her.

“You know—you’re right, I do want to get back to the hotel I’m staying in,” Eva said, swallowing down the fear that rose up in her throat. “If you’d like to give me your details, I can pass them on to my accountant and financial manager, and we can arrange everything within the next few days.”

“No time like the present,” the realtor insisted. “A good-faith deposit won’t take long to take care of, and then you can rest easy tonight, knowing that no one will try to snatch this place out from under you.”

“Do you really think that someone would want to offer more than a hundred million? The initial asking price was only ten. I’m pretty confident of my chances.”

The realtor’s face hardened slightly.

“A ten percent deposit on your bid amount is, of course, only standard,” the realtor said, smiling tightly. “And that ten percent would cover the original listing value of the unit; you’d be in the clear, no matter who came along after.”

“I’d really rather get home,” Eva said, trying to look tired and confident all at once. “Besides—if I make large withdrawals without notifying my accountant, he gets angry with me.”

“If you can afford one hundred million, then I’m sure your accountant would expect a ten-million-dollar check,” the realtor insisted.

Eva looked around; they were utterly alone in the apartment.

“Look,” Eva said, sighing. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a hundred million dollars to spend on this place, and I don’t have ten million to give you on a deposit. I was—I was just trying to…” she shook her head. “It’s not important. Will you let me leave now?”

“Absolutely not!” The realtor glared at her, reaching into her pocket and quickly taking out her phone. “You’ve cost my firm tens of millions of dollars with your little prank.”

“I’m sure someone will be happy to buy the unit,” Eva said, her heart beating faster in her chest. “I mean, obviously it was good enough that someone was willing to wager tens of millions.”

“Come in,” the realtor said into her phone. In an instant, one of the guards from the corridor came through the door to the apartment.

The realtor ended the call and dialed another number. “Yes? I need the police to come and arrest a thief.”

“A thief?” Eva’s sense of pride stirred up. “I am not a thief.”

The realtor provided the address and ended the call. She continued to glare at Eva, all of her pleasant, chirpy demeanor gone.

“You’re going to stay right here and we’re going to wait for the police to arrive. Alex?” The guard poked his head out through the door and made some comment to the other guards. He came deeper into the room and herded Eva towards the couch, looking broader and more muscular than he had in the hallway.

The minutes passed in an agony of expectation as the realtor made another call, reporting to some superior about the open house and saying that there had been a situation, but she had it under control. After what felt like an eternity, Eva heard the knock at the door. A few seconds later, a pair of police officers came into the living room, looking stern.

“We got a report of a theft?”

“Yes!” The realtor advanced on the officers; if Eva had thought for a moment that the woman had lost some of her righteous fury in the wait, she had been mistaken. “This woman is a thief—she’s stolen millions of dollars from my company.”

“I haven’t stolen anything!” Eva stood, ignoring the portentous look from the guard at her side. “She was holding an open house; I got into a bidding war with another guest here, but…” Eva swallowed. “I don’t actually…have the money that I bid on this property.”

The cops looked at each other, and Eva considered the possibility of flirting with one or both of them. Too risky. The one on the left has a wedding band; if he’s happy with his wife he won’t even respond—might even get offended.

“Identification, please.” The non-married officer stepped forward. Eva reached into her purse and took her wallet out, finding the pocket with her ID in it. She slid the plastic card out and handed it over to the man.

“Eva Johansen,” the man read. “Write that down on the incident report, Jason.”

“Got it,” Jason—the married officer—said.

“I swear,” Eva told them, ignoring the realtor for the moment, “I never presented any kind of fraudulent credentials; I got into the open house on my own and looked around, and somehow got into a bidding war. I didn’t expect the guy to back off.”

“Is this what happened?” The officers looked at the realtor.

“Yes, but that doesn’t make it any less of a theft,” the woman said angrily. “I’ve lost out on a contract because I took her bids at face value!”

“Did she sign a contract?” the married officer glanced from the realtor to Eva.

“Well—no,” the realtor admitted. “But she presented herself fraudulently!”

“She played a game with you,” the non-married cop said with a shrug. “Technically, what she did wasn’t a crime; she didn’t actually steal anything.”

“But—but…” The realtor looked as though she might throw herself at the cops, or maybe at Eva, and Eva stood as steadily as possible, almost hoping the woman would assault her; if the woman struck a blow, the cops would cart her off instead. “But she committed fraud!”

“Did you ask her for identification?” the realtor shook her head. “Did she present credentials of any kind? Or write some check with a fake name?”

The realtor shook her head again.

The married cop sighed. “It sucks, but she’s technically not guilty of any crime that we can charge her with,” he said. “You should have vetted her more carefully.”

“This is bullshit!” The realtor turned away from the police and looked at Eva, her eyes glittering with anger. “You can be absolutely sure that my people will track you down and you will be in the hole for as much money as I can make you pay.” She shook her head. “You’ll be hearing from a process server.”

Eva’s heart pounded in her chest, and her blood roared in her ears. The realtor began gathering up her things and speaking with the police officers, demanding the report that they were writing, demanding Eva’s contact information from her ID. Eva took her license back from the officer and shoved it into her wallet and then into her purse, looking around the room. She had to get out of the apartment; she couldn’t risk the possibility of the woman finding something to accuse her of that the police would be able to charge her with.

She spotted a business card on the mantelpiece. Ari Christodoulou. Her eyes widened and she looked to make sure that the realtor was still occupied in her tirade. She reached up and snatched the card off of the mantelpiece, slipping it into her purse next to her wallet.

“If that’s all, officers?”

The two cops nodded curtly, and the married officer held the realtor back as Eva darted past the group, opening the door with fumbling hands. She plunged into the hallway and followed the corridor to the elevator, shaking her head at the bizarre turn the evening had taken. Not only had she been fired, now she had narrowly escaped arrest, and might not escape a lawsuit. God, my stupid, big mouth, she thought as she waited for the elevator to arrive.

The elevator pinged and Eva stepped through the opening doors, pounding the button for the bottom floor. How am I going to get out of this? What am I going to do? she knew that she would figure something out—she always seemed to, when the situation came down to the brass tacks—but for the moment she could only curse herself for having gotten in over her head once more, and for the fact that she’d become so wrapped up in the flirtatious revenge.

She rode the elevator down, reviewing the previous hour in her mind. She sighed, realizing that she’d done the same thing that had always gotten her into trouble in the past. The image of the Greek man’s face flitted through her mind; he had been so handsome, so striking, and so infuriating that she hadn’t been able to help herself. One of her friends—or someone had passed for a friend when she’d been in the game—had told her more than once, “Eva, your temper is going to get you in trouble one of these days. You can’t let it stick to you—you have to let it slide off your back.”

She had gotten better at it over the past year; the call center work had helped her, at least a little bit, in keeping her tongue still when it felt sharpest. But something about the man’s only-too-true assessment of her had rankled. Eva had known full well that he was right; she should have just left, and salvaged the opportunity she’d snatched at by looking into scamming one or two of the prospects the realtor had attracted. Instead, she’d let her temper get the better of her.

Eva stepped off of the elevator on the ground floor. Unlike her first attempt to leave the building, she put one foot in front of the other, and continued straight to the exit, unwilling to dawdle lest she somehow run into the realtor or the police on their way out of the building. She knew she had to do something.