Earlier that evening, after working again through the logic of the codex she and Sylvia were developing with a few more pages of the ledgers, and failing, again, to come up with consistent results, she’d decided she needed to go through her files, which were locked in her safe in the duplex. There was something there that had been nagging on her subconscious for days now. Maybe if she just reviewed her notes, and re-explored the files in Spencer’s cloud, which she’d downloaded into computers that she’d disconnected from the web, she’d find it? Okay, maybe she was grabbing at straws. But, hey, this couldn’t hurt, right? Only problem was, her files, and the computers, were sitting in her home office. Safe, yes. But out of her immediate reach at the moment since she now she lived in Chelsea, while her files and computers sat in their duplex in the upper east side.

How did that happen? A few days after returning from London, she and Tina had pretended to have a very public blow-up in a favorite neighborhood restaurant that Bette and Tina had selected for the fight. Then Jenna had shown up at just the right time. Bette and Tina were each well-known in the restaurant, and their fight had become a cause célèbre there and around their neighborhood. Jenna showing up, now back to her natural red-colored mane, in a tight-fitting outfit had been enough to set tongues wagging.

Bette Had moved out of the duplex that same night, and into the Chelsea flat Jenna was renting … which was also next to one of Brom’s offices. There was a connecting room that could be secured from both Brom’s office and from the flat Jenna was renting, in which Bette could work undisturbed. The building had multiple entrances and exits, and backed into warehouses that had formerly been used by meatpackers, and which had many blind alleys that led out to most of the main cross streets. It was perfect for Bette’s purposes, and the building’s set-up had allowed her to slip in and out of the flat in a manner that would made it difficult for any would-be tracker. Even Dave had often found it difficult to reestablish a visual fix on her once she got into or exited the building.