“Flatterer,” I murmured. The receptionist shot me a wary look, hand still cupped around the receiver. I smiled at her. Brightly. She looked away again.
“Yes, sir; of course, sir,” she said, and set the receiver back into its cradle, not looking in our direction as she said, “Director Swenson is on his way down and apologizes for any inconvenience that you may have experienced in being forced to wait so long.”
“It’s cool,” I said.
The receptionist didn’t say anything. She leaned slightly forward, shoulders hunched as she focused her attention on her computer. It was obvious that she couldn’t entirely dismiss our presence as a bad dream—we were a little too solid for that—and it was equally obvious that she was giving it the old college try. I rocked back on my heels, content to let her ignore us. There’s pushing the envelope of polite behavior to get what you want, and then there’s just plain being mean. I try not to cro the line when it can be avoided.
We’d been waiting less than five minutes when the sound of crisp footsteps echoed through the lobby and an immaculately groomed man in a white lab coat stepped around a corner and into view. He was dressed like a generic midlevel bureaucrat at any corporation in the country, assuming you could overlook the lab coat: gray slacks that were probably some sort of insanely expensive natural fiber, white button-up shirt, sedate blue-and-green tie, and immaculately polished black shoes. Even his lab coat looked like it was tailored for him, rather than being the standard off-the-rack lab wear. If the CDC was running in the red this season, his wardrobe definitely wasn’t feeling the pinch.
Neither was his plastic surgeon. His hair was thick and well-styled, but still uniformly silver, and his unwrinkled skin had the characteristic tightness of a man in his late fifties paying through the nose to maintain the illusion that he was a well-preserved thirty-seven or so. He walked to the receptionist’s desk with the calm assurance of a man who knows himself to be in absolute control of his environment, extending a hand in my direction. “Shaun Mason, I presume?”
“The same.” I took his hand and shook it. Even with all the training I’ve had to desensitize me to the necessity of occasional contact with strangers, the gesture felt wrong. You aren’t supposed to touch people you don’t know. Not unless they’ve just demonstrated their infection status with a successful blood test, and maybe not even then. “This is my colleague, Rebecca Atherton. She works with our action news division.”
“Ah, an Irwin,” said the man, reclaiming his hand and turning to study Rebecca. His gaze started at her face, swept down her body, and returned to her face again, all without a trace of hesitation or shame. “You know, I’ve always liked that term. Irwin, for the late, great Steve Irwin. He died in the field, you know. Just the way he would have wanted to go.”
“No shit, asshole,” muttered Becks.
“Actually, sir, I’m pretty sure the way he would have wanted to go was in his sleep, sometime in his late nineties, but that’s beside the point.” Something about him was putting my hackles up. Maybe it was the way he looked at Becks. Maybe it was his tone, which was slick enough to grease a rusty chainsaw. “I’m guessing you’re Director Swenson.”
“Precisely so. I apologize for making you wait. Next time, please be sure to call ahead. That will allow us to avoid these little delays.”
Yeah, because we’ll never get past security again.
I forced my expression to remain composed as I said, “I’ll keep that in mind. If you don’t mind, though, my colleague and I were in the area and had some questions we wanted to ask you—in person, hence the dropping by. Is there a place where we could talk?”
A flash of discomfort crossed his face, there and gone before I could blink. “Of course,” he said, smoothly. “If you’d both come with me, I believe one of the conference rooms is available. Miss Lassen, as you were.”
The receptionist—Miss Lassen—nodded, looking deeply relieved as Director Swenson turned I’m gan retracing his steps, leaving the front lobby behind. She might not have been able to keep us out, but at least we weren’t going to be her problem anymore. Becks and I exchanged a look, shrugged, and followed the director to the back of the lobby, around a corner, and into a nondescript hall that seemed to stretch on for the better part of a mile.
Director Swenson walked past three identical doors before stopping at a fourth and pressing his thumb against a small sensor pad. The light above the door changed from red to green, and the door swung open. “Past this point, you’ll need blood tests as well as someone with the proper clearances to open any doors, including the restrooms,” he said, sounding self-indulgently amused. “I recommend not wandering off unescorted.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I need to pee,” muttered Becks. I gave her a speculative look, which she met with a glare.