She looked up, surprised. “Stella, what a surprise. Is everything all right?”

I arranged my face into the polite anxiety of a worried wife out of her depth. “Susan, Everett left in such a rush for the London deployment yesterday that he forgot his medication.

Could you give me the address of the new London branch so I can ship it to him?”

Susan’s pen slipped and clattered onto the desk. “Stella — what London deployment? Apex has no London branch. We have no presence in Europe at all. And Everett filed last week for indefinite unpaid leave, claiming you’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness and needed treatment in Boston.”

The room tilted.

“Last week,” I said.