“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Luisa, equally indignant.

“It means I spent years going after Hilary in college, and she acted like I was invisible unless she was having problems with her computer or needed help with her science requirements. But now I’m a success, and suddenly she can’t get enough of me.”

“So you ditched her?” Peter asked, incredulous. “That was your way of getting even?”

“I thought she could use a taste of her own medicine. Let her see how it feels to be on the receiving end of rejection for once.”

“How mature,” said Abigail in her mild tone.

“Hey, it felt good. We got to the hotel, and I told Hilary I’d wait for her to get her notebook and stuff. She went inside, and I was about to take off when I saw the second Lamborghini. I stopped to talk to the other driver for a minute, but then I hit the road. Put the pedal to the metal. Left her high and dry. Slipped out the back, Jack. Made a new plan, Stan. Hopped on the bus, Gu-”

“All right,” Luisa interrupted. She’d never been much of a Paul Simon fan. “We understand. You left her there to avenge her ignoring you in college.”

“Which was more than ten years ago,” I couldn’t help but point out. I was a big believer in holding long-term grudges, but this was excessive even by my statute of limitations.

“I just wish I could have seen her face when she came back downstairs and realized I was gone.” He couldn’t contain the smug smile that had spread over his own face as he told us what he’d done.

“You must be very proud of yourself,” said Abigail.

The sarcasm sailed over his head yet again. “Dr. Grout thought it was a critical breakthrough. An important step on the journey to self-actualization. He’s even thinking about writing a paper on it.”

“Is Dr. Grout a real doctor?” I asked. “With a degree and a license and everything?”

“Of course he is,” said Iggie. “Why do you ask?”

20

We spent a few more minutes pressing Iggie about the driver of the other Lamborghini, but he steadfastly maintained that all they’d spoken about was their shared passion for cars that cost more than the gross national product of certain developing countries.

Then Phyllis’s voice cackled out from a hidden intercom. “Igor? Igor, baby, your ten-thirty appointment is waiting in the lobby. And there’s a call holding for you, too. Don’t you think it’s time your little friends were leaving?” For Iggie’s sake, I hoped the intercom was audible only in the conference room, as this wasn’t the sort of communication to inspire trust and confidence in one’s employee base.

After the tag-team browbeating we’d delivered, Iggie was so thrilled to be rid of us he barely protested when Abigail told him she wouldn’t be able to stay for lunch, after all, and I was fairly certain he didn’t see her crossing her fingers behind her back when she assured him she’d be in touch to reschedule. He escorted us through the sea of cubicles to the exit, following the same return path he’d used with Camilla Gergen and her team and steering a wide berth around his mother’s station.

As the front doors slid apart, I turned to glance back, curious as to whether my hunch about Iggie’s next appointment was right.

Sure enough, over by the reception desk, Clay Finch and several of his colleagues balanced awkwardly on a circle of beanbag chairs, struggling to make small talk with Phyllis as they waited for Iggie. Clay somehow managed to look stiff even when sunk into the purple vinyl of his beanbag, and his legs were so long that, with his size-sixteen feet planted on the floor and his rear planted only a few inches higher, his knees were bent up around his ears. I gave him a big smile and wave on the way out.

Peter and I had more than an hour between our Igobe visit and our meeting with Caro and Alex, and Abigail and Luisa hadn’t participated in the Forrest family breakfast of champions, so we decided to retreat to the University Café in Palo Alto. Late on a Monday morning the café was only moderately busy, its customers a mix of student and faculty types from the Stanford campus nearby and a handful of men dressed in the local venture capitalists’ uniform of khakis, button-down shirts and computer bags bearing the logos of Internet start-ups and tech conferences. “ Sand Hill Road is nearby,” Abigail explained as we sat down. “That’s where a lot of the venture-capital firms have their offices.”

Luisa and Abigail ordered pancakes and an egg-white omelet, respectively, while Peter drank orange juice. I could have chewed off the one arm I didn’t devour earlier for a nice, cold, caffeinated soda, but with less than twenty-four hours to go on my dare I managed to restrain myself and demurely sip a mineral water instead. I secretly hoped I wouldn’t actually end up playing tennis at noon, but if I did I wanted to be able to demonstrate to Peter that my relative level of hydration had no impact whatsoever on my athletic ability-I was useless either way.

Regardless, I’d never thought I’d look forward with such anticipation to a tennis game, especially one in which I personally was expected to play. This anticipation had little to do with my hope that the game might not take place and even less to do with the chance that this would be the day when Peter would see Caro and realize he’d preferred life with her. Instead, it was almost entirely due to how much I was looking forward to ensnaring Alex Cutler.

While Iggie’s story about purposely ditching Hilary hadn’t done much to improve anyone’s opinion of him, it had passed Abigail’s mental polygraph test. But she’d told us in the car she was equally confident he was lying about not knowing the driver of the other Lamborghini. Which, along with the ACVLLC phone number and vanity plate, further validated our working hypothesis that the driver and thus Hilary’s abductor had been Alex Cutler. At least, this was the working hypothesis of everyone but Peter, who remained unenthusiastic about casting blame in Alex’s direction.

“Why else would Hilary have gotten into the second Lamborghini, then?” I asked, reaching my fork over to sneak a bite of Luisa’s pancakes. A couple of hours ago this would have been a perilous maneuver, but now that the nicotine gum had worked its magic, she was tamer than Spot and even pushed her plate closer so I could better help myself. “Hil might not have noticed it wasn’t Iggie at the wheel until she was in the car, but once inside she never would have stayed unless she already knew the driver. She’s too street-smart for that. And you introduced her to Alex yourself.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But it seems premature to jump to conclusions based on some similar initials, a couple of descriptions of a ‘preppie’ guy, and the fact that Alex invested in Igobe. We still don’t even know for sure what kind of car he drives.”

“I know what kind of car he drives,” I said confidently. “I’ll bet you anything he pulls up to the tennis club in a Lamborghini.”

“I don’t want to bet,” he replied.

“Are you sure? Betting is fun. Especially when I win.”

“Rachel, it would be bad enough to find out Alex has done something to Hilary. It would be even worse to find that out and then owe you whatever random thing you’d insisted on betting me for.”

“Why do you think I’d bet something random?”

“Maybe because the last time I lost a bet to you I ended up having to personally prepare every available recipe for pigs in a blanket so you could conduct a scientific taste test?”

“First of all, it was a small price to pay for the advancement of haute cuisine, and second of all, there’s a strong argument to be made that losing that particular bet was a lot like winning.”

“What argument is that?” he asked.

“Now we know for a fact how to make the best possible pigs in a blanket. We never again have to lie awake nights worrying that we’re making inferior pigs in a blanket.”