Chapter 4 #2
Her breathing slows against my shoulder. The city continues below us.
My own breathing isn't steady, which is the part of this that concerns me. The part that's still trying to stand outside what just happened and run numbers on it.
That part has nothing useful to report.
Then she says it. "The camera."
I look at the steady red light in the corner.
"Feeds directly to my personal server," I tell her. "No security-team access. No one else sees it."
I watch her process this. That I knew it was there. That I made a decision. That the decision was deliberate, not accidental.
She pulls away slowly and straightens her skirt. Her hands aren't entirely steady. Mine aren't either.
"This was a mistake," she says.
The words should land as relief. They don't.
"Was it?" I don't touch her. I just stand close. "Or was it the most honest thing either of us has done in a long time?"
She doesn't answer. She watches me put my pants back in order.
The knock at my door answers before she does.
I hand her my jacket without thinking, to cover the blouse that opened easily because buttons popped. That's the second time in an hour I've acted without running the calculation first.
I watch her slide her arms into the sleeves. Watch her gather what remains of her composure with the focused efficiency of someone who is very good at this and hates that she needs to be.
I don't want her to leave.
That's been the problem since she walked into the gala and lifted her chin at me. Since she sat in my waiting room and thought instead of performing.
She says, "This doesn't change anything. The article. The investigation."
"I know," I tell her. "That's why I chose you. You're not for sale."
The door opens before I've called anyone in.
Marcus Vale.
He takes one step into the office and stops.
Vale is mid-fifties, silver-haired, with the bearing of someone who has spent a career being the second-most-powerful person in every room and has made his peace with it. Or appears to have.
His eyes are pale gray, and they move across the scene with a precision that is not shock. It is documenting. And judging, with smugness.
The buttons on the carpet. My tie loosened.
Summer in my jacket, her blouse visible beneath it at an angle that tells a story requiring no interpretation. The coffee I never drank. The distance between us that is not the distance of a professional meeting.
He's not surprised. That's the first thing I register.
He's confirming. As if he tried to catch us in the act.
Are we that obvious?
"Miss Knoll." His voice is pleasant in the way blades are smooth. "I didn't realize you were still here."
The way he says still means: I knew you were coming, and I predicted this would happen.
He steps forward as if to shake her hand, and then it closes around her arm, just above the elbow. The grip of a man who has decided he has the right to move people I don't want moved.
The reaction moves through me faster than thought. Cold and absolute, without the careful management I apply to most decisions.
"Remove your hand." The words come out quiet. My words are always quiet when I mean them completely. "Now."
Vale releases her. But his smirk is small and private and entirely for me.
It tells me he'll make something of this later. It tells me he's already making something of it that he can use against me. Whatever he came into this office for, he has won.
I'll deal with that later.
Right now I watch Summer walk past Diana's desk, past the waiting area, into the elevator. She doesn't look back, and she does it with more dignity than I expect.
The doors close.
The office is exactly as it was before she arrived. The Basquiat and the Giacometti above forty-seven floors of Manhattan.
The accumulated evidence of fifteen years of relentless work and planning. Nothing out of place except the buttons scattered across the carpet like a trail of evidence.
Diana appears in the doorway. She looks at the buttons, then at me, then watches Vale's posture as he leaves without acknowledgment.
She says nothing.
"Cancel my four o'clock," I tell her.
She nods and leaves.
I stand at the window for a long time.
I turn over the picture of Vale's hand on Summer's arm. The smirk that didn't quite leave his face before he turned.
The quality of a man who walks into a room to catch his boss in a private moment that is none of his business. Unless his business is manipulation.
Because Vale wasn't surprised. Vale was confirming.
I turn that over for a long time.
Summer Knoll walked into my office to find a story. I'm not entirely sure she didn't find one. And I'm not entirely sure Vale didn't either.
The rest of the day is a blur.
I keep it together. I keep all my meetings. But my mind is somewhere else entirely.
I'm torn over what to say. What does one say after a spontaneous hookup.
I don't want her to think I'm using her. I want to see where this goes, professionally and maybe personally too.
So I spend some time working out a text that appreciates without insinuating expectation.
That was a very pleasant surprise. I'm sorry we were interrupted. I owe you a real date at some point, if you're interested. In the meantime, I hope we can continue our work, so you can write a piece that's both accurate and meaningful.