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“You can’t just go around taking dogs.”
“Actually, I can.”
I crouched to steady the poor thing as it stumbled sideways. “Easy, little one, I’ve got you.” I checked the tag attached to the shiny blue collar. Bertie. His name was Bertie. “Fine, you shouldn’t go around taking dogs. His owner must be worried sick.”
“Not his owner, his walker. And maybe she should spend more time watching the dog and less time chatting.”
Dealing with this woman was impossible.
“Why would you even want to take Bertie?”
“So I could get into the building.” Dasha spoke slowly, enunciating each word as if I were a small child. “It’s difficult to pose as a dog walker without a dog.”
“You were the dog walker?”
“If you’re going to keep asking dumb questions, this will be a very long day. Think, Hallie. Use that detective brain.”
I wanted to throttle her, but I shut up and thought. I’d watched the dog walker leave Belgravia Place a few minutes after eleven, and she’d returned ten minutes later. Yesterday, she’d been gone for longer, and today, the dog had been slow getting up the steps. That had been Dasha, hadn’t it? Dasha and a sleepy Bertie.
“Where’s the real dog walker?”
Tell me she wasn’t lying in a dumpster somewhere.
“Probably on her way back from Battery Park by now.”
“You spoke with her yesterday. She told you she walks the dog every day, didn’t she?”
Dasha gave me a slow clap. “Well done.”
“What did you do, tell the concierge the dog was sick, so you’d come back early?”
“See? You’re not a lost cause, after all.” Dasha gave a self-satisfied smile. “The concierge doesn’t like dogs. He gave Cricket Cavallaro a wide berth yesterday, so he wasn’t going to notice if I showed up with a different mutt today.”
“Cricket Cavallaro? The other dog belongs to Kaylin?”
“She never walks it herself. The dog walker assumes that’s because she’s busy with the child, but if my prints were on file and I was wanted for murder, I’d keep a low profile too.”
“How are you not wanted for murder?”
She gave me another of those “Are you dumb?” looks. “Because I’m careful.”
“I can’t believe you found out Kaylin had a son, and you didn’t tell me.”
“What would have changed if you’d known?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “But we’re meant to be a team. Holding back information feels, well, sleazy.”
“Where I come from, the less information a civilian has, the less the enemy can extract from them under duress.”
“Firstly, I work for the same people you do, and secondly, who’s going to be torturing me?”
“You’ve never been in the military, and concern was expressed that you might be abducted again.”
Expressed by who? By Dan? By Emmy? Okay, so I didn’t have a great track record, but their lack of faith in me still stung. And Emmy had never been in the military either, or Sky, or Dan, so what did that have to do with anything?
“You were sent to babysit me?”
“Those are your words, not mine.”
