Chapter 1

"Empty the bag, or I call the police."

Sloane Ashford said it the way people say things they want overheard. Her fingers closed around Ned Corrigan's wrist above the cashmere counter, and the sentence carried the length of the private holiday floor - past the champagne table, past the garlands, into the warm gold hush where the cardholders turned to look.

Ned didn't pull away. He looked at her hand first, then her face. Thirty-eight, tall, immaculate: ivory silk blouse, black pencil skirt, blonde chignon, green eyes that had never once been questioned in a room. She had the kind of beauty that made people assume she was right.

She was wrong, and he had eleven minutes to prove it.

"I'll wait," he said.

"For what? The police?"

"For you to look at the receipt."

It lay on top of his canvas tote where the cashier had folded it, timestamped 8:47 p.m. Three items - a cream cashmere scarf, a pair of lined gloves, a boxed candle for his daughter's table. Store brand, every one of them, paid with a card that carried his own name.

Sloane didn't look. She took in the worn navy cardigan, the faded corduroys, the brown leather shoes scuffed at the toes, and made her decision the way she made all of them: fast, loud, in front of an audience.

Twenty feet away, Nadia Berenger - store president, midnight-blue sheath, pearls - stood with two visitors from the regional office and watched without moving.

"You're shaking," Sloane said.

He wasn't. "I'm waiting," he said.

She released his wrist and took the tote instead, tipped it over the polished counter. The scarf slid out, then the gloves, then the candle box, and the receipt fluttered down after them like a leaf.

"Look at that," Sloane said, lifting the scarf by one corner so the whole floor could see it. "Cashmere. Two hundred and eighty dollars. On him."

"Check the receipt," Ned said, very quietly.

"Receipts can be printed," she said. "You people always have an answer."

He didn't ask who she meant by you people. Under his shirt, against his chest, the laminated badge hung on its lanyard, warm from six hours of his own body heat. He had not let it show once. He had eaten a dry sandwich at four o'clock, sat in the atrium for twenty minutes, and let a seasonal associate ignore him at the fragrance counter - and he had written all of it down in a small notebook in his coat pocket.

He could end this in four seconds. He could say four words and watch her face change.

And it would be worthless, because an auditor who breaks cover invalidates his own findings, and the findings were the entire point.

Sloane turned to the security lead standing ten feet back by a marble pillar. Reggie Tann: fifty-eight, broad, tired, a scar over one eyebrow, one hand resting on his radio.

"Reggie. Call the police."

Ned watched Reggie's face. Reggie didn't move.