“Hm,” she said. “And what is this regarding?” She made no move to write anything down.
“I’d like to engage the services of this firm.”
“Who referred you?”
The door opened silently behind her, pushed by a man walking out. Peter caught a glimpse of plush carpet, vacant cubicles, and empty chairs. There was no sound of conversation or business being done.
The man appeared to be near Peter’s age, with an aristocrat’s bloodless good looks and white-blond hair spilling carelessly down to his shoulders. He wore an elegant suit in a pale green that was the exact color of money. It fit like it was made for him, and it probably had been. He wore it with an elegant disregard, as if he didn’t particularly care for it, or someone else had paid for it, or he had a dozen more like it in his closet. Or all of the above.
Peter found himself disliking the man intensely. The white static flared higher. Peter pushed it down again. Breathe in, breathe out.
The man in the pale green suit didn’t appear to realize that anyone else was in the room. He walked past the desk without looking at Peter or the lacquered receptionist. He carried no briefcase or other evidence that he’d done any work that day. He pushed open the door to the elevator lobby, then half turned, as if just noticing Peter, a cocky, handsome grin showing brilliant white teeth.
“Gretchen, do we have an unscheduled repair?”
The receptionist opened her lips in a smile, and Peter knew she was sleeping with the man in the money-colored suit.
“Not at all,” she said. “Nothing to concern you. Remember, you have a squash date at seven tomorrow.”
The man nodded and turned, lifting a hand in a wave, and walked toward the elevator, the lobby door easing silently shut behind him.
Peter looked at the receptionist, who still looked at the closed lobby door. There was a slackness on her face as she reviewed a memory of the man or imagined something yet to come. Then Peter knew.
“That was Skinner, wasn’t it?”
The receptionist opened her mouth to deny it, but Peter was already pushing through the door to the elevator lobby. The elevator doors were just closing, too late for Peter to get a hand or a foot between them.
He turned to the stairwell, but the door was locked. An electronic reader on the wall beside it. He thought of the desk man in the lobby. Fire stairs only. Not for the public.
He ducked back into reception and plucked the woman’s access badge from her desk.
“Hey, you jerk,” she said, launching into further sophisticated language that went mercifully silent as the door closed behind him and he put the badge to the reader and the lock opened with a clack.
He dropped the badge in the lobby and took the steps three at a time, his boots slapping hard on the concrete. The sound echoed behind him, the static submerged by the adrenaline of action. Through the door to the main lobby, he turned the corner to the elevators and the lights over the door. He’d arrived right on time. But the elevator didn’t stop. The down arrow simply blinked and the number changed to LL.
Skinner was headed farther down. Probably to get his car.
The desk man looked at him and reached for the phone. Peter ducked back to the stairs, thankfully unlocked on a public level, and down two more short flights to the rear exit. People streamed out of the elevators in all directions, but he couldn’t see the white-blond hair or the money-green suit. There had to be ten parking garages within a few blocks.
A man who ran a billion-dollar hedge fund wouldn’t walk far.
Peter turned to the exit and through the doors. He was in a low covered area, for taxis and deliveries and drive-through banking. A security guard looked at him but made no move. People were walking up a long, shallow foot ramp to the street. He jogged past them into the relief of the high, darkening sky and the cold lake wind, looking left, then right.
A big parking structure with the U.S. Bank logo was at the end of the block across the street. Peter ran.
A long, dark sedan appeared at the mouth of the structure, coasting into the road, turning away. Under a streetlight Peter saw a flash of pale skin and white-blond hair through the driver’s window. Peter didn’t recognize the model of the car. He didn’t even recognize the logo on the trunk.
Then the engine gave a noisy blatt. Look at me, it said. See how special. As the car leaped down the block and out of reach. What the hell kind of car was that? The rich didn’t even buy the same cars as everyone else.
As the taillights disappeared around the corner, Peter wondered if Skinner was always this elusive, or if his secretary just had an attitude. Because the only thing that got Peter here in the first place was a stainless-steel pen with the name of a hedge fund on it.