The Wrong Man: A Novel of Suspense Read Online Free Page B

water himself and took a quick swig as soon as it arrived.
    Healy had seemed unruffled when she’d first shown up on his doorstep, but she could sense his tension now—in the stiffnessof his body, the way he jiggled the plastic straw that had been in his drink.
    “I appreciate this,” Healy said. “When I lost my wallet I thought cancelling six credit cards and ordering a new license was the worst of it, but the situation is clearly more complicated. What did this guy tell you he did for a living?”
    “That he’d run a tech business but had recently sold it. Is that what you do?”
    “No, I’m a portfolio manager at a hedge fund. You said you were in Florida when you met this guy. Where exactly?”
    “Islamorada. He was staying at the same hotel I was.”
    “And he told you he was headed back here? Did he say when?”
    “Today—and he promised to make me dinner.” Of course, the missing meal was hardly the issue. She’d slept with a man, formed a connection with him, and had been hoping for more. And it had all been a sham.
    Healy’s body seemed to tense even more.
    “Sounds like he might actually still be there, in Islamorada.”
    “He said he was going to Miami,” Kit said. “But I guess that might have been a lie, too.”
    Yes, maybe it all had been a lie. Certainly if he was busy pickpocketing people, he hadn’t recently cashed in on a tech company. But what about the drive south, being a sculptor, the Boho sister in Miami, the girlfriend who’d moved back to Melbourne? It stood to reason that every detail had been make-believe, part of a devious scheme to sound enchanting and lure her into bed.
    Healy ran his finger around the rim of the glass, saying nothing for a moment. She was sure he was wondering if she had slept with the guy in Florida and was smarting now from being stood up and made a fool of. Well, she was smarting. She felt humiliated.
    “When was your wallet stolen?” she asked.
    “Uh, about ten days ago, at a party in Dumbo. I had it in the pocket of my sports jacket and I made the mistake of laying the jacket over a chair when the place got hot. An hour later when I went to pay for my cab home, I realized the wallet was missing. The hosts checked around but couldn’t find it. I figured that some unsavory guest had seen me shed the jacket and gone through the pockets.”
    “And you cancelled the cards right away?” she asked.
    “That night.”
    In her mind Kit conjured up the image of X summoning the bill at the hotel restaurant. She was pretty sure he had simply signed so that the dinner was charged to his room. But, of course, he would have needed a card to check into the hotel.
    “So, if your cards were cancelled right way, he couldn’t have used one of them to check in,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she was bothering to play Veronica Mars with Healy because all she wanted was to give him the info he needed and beat it out of there.
    “Right, but if it’s the same guy and he’s using my name, he’s got some game going on,” Healy said. “Tell me exactly what this dude looked like. There were a lot people I didn’t know that night, but maybe I can place him.”
    “Dark reddish hair with a close-cropped beard. Blue eyes. About six one or two.” Describing him only heightened her annoyance. How stupid she’d been.
    Healy took another drink. There was a privileged, preppy aura about him, though she couldn’t tell if he came by it naturally or had cultivated it over time. In her work, particularly during the years she’d done stints at two big interior design firms prior to starting her own company, she’d met more than a few people who, after hitting it rich, acquired the trappings of old wealth—not just clothes and Bottega Veneta handbags but signetrings and clipped, patrician accents—that allowed observers to make grand assumptions about their background.
    “I’ve got a favor to ask you,” Healy said suddenly. “Would you be willing to drop by my