Virginia Kelly is looking at the future and doesn`t want to go there, at least not alone. That Monday morning in October she mistakenly thought that a long procession of lonely nights, middle age and a growing list of embittered ex-girlfriends was what she had to fear.She was wrong.The tensions at the investment firm where Virginia toils are as mercurial as the stock market. A lucrative buy-out offer from a competing company has partners and associates at odds. That Monday morning, Virginia spots police detective Cassandra Hope in the firm`s lobby. Bells ring -- alarm bells. Cassandra is one of those embittered ex-girlfriends. But then Virginia learns of the CEO`s demise from a suspicious case of the flu. Suspects multiply as the buy-out feeding frenzy intensifies. Plenty of people were angry with the CEO, including an unctuous golden boy with excellent golf scores, a tediously jealous wife, and a cohort of fringe employees who are too old, too gay, too brown or too female to be taken seriously at the firm. Avarice and tragedy transform enemies to friends and back again. Cassandra Hope wants the inside dirt. Angered by Cassie`s presumptuous demands, Virginia still can`t say no . . . to anything Cassie wants. With a multi-million dollar payoff at stake, Virginia agrees to be Cassie`s eyes and ears in the overlapping worlds of high finance and murderous greed.