Once Upon Stilettos
Page 100

“Unfortunately, no,” he said with a sigh. “The cord ran through the ceiling and stopped halfway down the hall, then was severed. Someone must have cut it before I managed to track it back. But I’ve reached the conclusion that this has more to do with chaos than it does with espionage. That would definitely be Phelan’s style. And it may be a sign that he’s as lost as we are. He must not have anything of substance up his sleeve if he’s resorting to this sort of behavior. Otherwise, he’d be more focused on taking us on in the marketplace.”
“So our best strategy might be to ignore it and hope it goes away.”
“He might go away. I’m not sure his spy would.”
“Yeah, anyone motivated enough to be willing to spy probably has personal reasons for doing so. Which brings me back to square one.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help more.”
“And I’m sorry I haven’t been able to do anything to stop this.” I stood and dusted off my knees. “I guess I’d better get back to work. Let me know if you run across anything interesting.”
I felt like an utter loser as I headed out of the department. I was letting everyone down. I passed Ari’s lab, and she called out, “So, what was the sitch down there?”
I turned back and stood in her doorway. “The usual. Chaos and all that.”
“As messy as he is, I don’t know how he’d notice the difference with a few books and papers scattered. He looks like he’d be a neat freak, but he’s such a pack rat.”
I suddenly got a prickling feeling between my shoulder blades. No one had described the chaos in the lab to her, so how had she known? Fragments of conversations, facial expressions, and odd coincidences all crashed together at once in my brain—Ari on the phone just before the last attack, her apparently fruitless pursuit of Owen, her hounding me about him, her grilling me about what I did and didn’t see, the camera cord that was cut halfway down the hall, right about where her lab was.
No, it couldn’t be. Happy-go-lucky Ari couldn’t be the spy. But she had access. She had information. She even had motivation, if her feelings about Owen ran deeper than she let on. I had no real evidence, though, just a hunch. That wasn’t enough to risk our friendship by turning her in. I had to know more.
I tried to keep a straight face and an even voice as I said, “I think it was just enough to tick him off. You might want to stay away from that end of the hall for a while. He doesn’t get angry often, but when he does, you’d better duck.” Her eyes narrowed briefly at me. Did she sense that I knew? That would be bad. To cover my tracks, I added casually, “Oh, and you might want to warn Jake when he gets back before he says the wrong thing.”
She laughed then, and I relaxed. She didn’t sound like someone who knew the game was up. “Yeah, I’ll keep an eye out for Jake. He drives Owen crazy at the best of times. We wouldn’t want him walking into a hornet’s nest.”
My heart raced as I slipped out of the department. I didn’t want to believe that one of my closest friends, one of the people who’d introduced me to the magical world in the first place, could be the spy. I really hated the idea of spying on her, but I told myself that I was looking for evidence to exonerate her, not hang her. I needed to eliminate her as a suspect, once and for all.
Before returning to my own office, I went to see Isabel. If anyone knew the whole story behind whatever ill-fated thing Ari had for Owen, it would be Isabel.
“Are you okay?” she asked me when I got to her office. “You look like you don’t feel so well.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to brainstorm some on those treasure hunt clues.” I sank into her comfortable guest chair, relieved to get off my watery legs.
Her face lit up. “I found something this morning.” She pulled a small figurine out of her desk drawer. “We can cross off clue fourteen.”
“Good work.”
“I saw that one team had T-shirts. Do you think we need that?”
“Probably not.” Then, because I didn’t really have anything to say about the hunt, I dropped a piece of gossip I knew would sidetrack her completely. “Did you hear? There was another break-in in Owen’s lab. He doesn’t think anything’s gone, but it’s a mess in there.”
“That poor boy. He hates it when people rearrange his clutter.”
I licked my lips, trying to think of a delicate way to phrase what I needed to ask. “You know what Ari was saying the other night about having tried her luck with Owen? What do you know about that?”