Chapter One

One

I have a secret. A big, fat, hairy secret.

And I’m not talking minor-league stuff, like I once let Joseph Applebaum feel me up behind the seventh-grade stairwell or I got a Brazilian wax after work last Friday or I’m hiding a neon blue vibrator called the Electric Slide in my night table. Which I’m not, by the way. In case you were wondering.

No, this is completely different. And as far as I knew, only two—well, technically one, but we’ll call it two—people in the entire world knew about it.

Until this morning.

Usually, I waltz into my office at Withers and Young with my skinny latte, extra foam, and find nothing but a neat stack of manila folders waiting for me. Today, however, next to the manila folders—labeled with the new apple green and pink stickers I’d bought last week—was a box.

Now, I should have been suspicious right off. I mean, it was too early for the mail, and the only thing on the front of the package was my name, in swirly letters. Not your normal business correspondence, for sure. And besides, I was an auditor. Who in the world would be sending me care packages?

But none of that percolated through my sluggish brain that morning. I had just picked up the box when my nosy assistant Sally walked in, wearing snug hip-huggers and a jarring floral blouse that barely contained her bosom. “Adele wants to talk to you about the Southeast Airlines account.” She gave me a tight smile, accentuating the cupid’s bow she’d drawn just outside the perimeter of her lips. Then her beady little eyes fastened on the box. “What’s that? Something from