BUILT ON HER BONES.

Chapter 3: The elevator game

The elevator door did not open,Amelia pressed the button a second time and the small illuminated arrow stayed dark and unresponsive. The footsteps coming around the corner were unhurried. Amelia pressed the button the third time, the door finally opened.

“Hold it" wasn't a request, Amelia's hand moved to the door sensor before she had thought of moving it. She held the elevator door open and Chad Henderson walked in.

He was taller than she had expected him to be.

She didn't know why she had expected anything. She hadn't known until this moment that she had been forming a picture of him,assembling him from Patricia phasing and Marcus Webb's clipped warning and the entire fourteenth floor seemed to orient itself slightly whenever his name entered a conversation.

The picture she had assembled was nothing like the man standing two feet away from her in an elevator.

Dark blonde hair, sharp jaw,a suit that has been made for his specific shoulder,his ice blue eyes.

Amelia let the door close,she faced forward and the elevator began to close.

Twelve minutes of silence, Amelia held her bag strap with both hands and looked at the floor number changing above the door.

Beside her Chad Henderson said nothing.

Chad Henderson didn't shift his weight,neither did he pick up his phone,he didn't do any of the performative things people did to signal that they were comfortable with the silence. He simply stood there with the complete stillness of a man.

The elevator stopped at eleven,the doors opened,nobody got on, and it closed.

“You are the new analyst," he said.

Amelia turned her head and looked at him directly.

" Amelia Rossi, junior analyst, fourteenth floor,” she said.

A flicker of something that wasn't surprising.

“Chad Henderson,” he said.

“I know who you are," she said.

The corner of his mouth moved.

" How was your first day?” he asked.

The question was so ordinary coming from a man who seemed Constitutionally opposed to ordinary.

“Productive,” she said. " Webb gave me the Orlando file"

“I know"

Of course he knew,she filed that away without letting it show on her face.

" Thursday was the deadline,” she said. “But I told him Wednesday night"

“Why?" he asked.

" Because I'll be finished by Wednesday night"

“And you haven't opened it yet?" Chad chuckled.

" I've been working on it since eleven-fifteen this morning.” She held his gaze.

" Four years of financial statements, liability cross-referenced against three industry benchmarks and I found two irregularities in their Q3 reporting that I'm fairly certain your senior team missed in the preliminary pass” she paused. " Surely I'll have the full profile by Wednesday night”

The elevator stopped at the lobby. The door opened. Neither of them moved for exactly one second. One second Chad looked at her with something in those ice blue eyes. He looked at her in a way a person looks at something that has genuinely caught them off guard for the first time in a very long while.

Chad stepped out of the elevator and Amelia did the same.

The lobby was nearly empty at this hour. The marble floor reflected the overhead lighting back at itself in pale strips.

The receptionist from this morning was gone,replaced by a security guard who nodded at Chad without making eye contact.

Chad walked towards the main exit,Amelia walked towards it too because it was the only exit and she was not going to take another route because he was in front of her.

They walked side by side across the lobby. Outside the building,Miami was warm,the street was alive, taxi's, people,the bass from the restaurant half a block down.

Amelia stopped at the bottom of the steps and shifted her bag to her other shoulder and pulled out her phone to check the bus schedule.

Chad stopped too,Amelia looked up,but Chad was looking at the street and not to her,his jaws were stiff and his hands were in his pockets.

He turned his head and looked at her.

“Wednesday night it is then" he said

" Wednesday night” she replied.

Two SUVs pulled up to the curb and Chad opened the door and got in, giving one final glance at Amelia.

The SUV drove away into the night and Amelia stood on the pavement outside Henderson capital.

Amelia put her phone in her bag and walked to the bus stop and sat down on the bench staring at the Henderson capital building.

Her phone buzzed.

It was Vivienne,she left a message “Saw you leaving with Henderson,details now"

Amelia stared at the message then she looked back up at the building.

" I wasn't leaving with him” she typed back.

" We took the same elevator"

“Girl,same elevator? That man has taken the elevator alone for three years. He makes his assistant call ahead so nobody is in it” Viv typed.

Amelia read the message twice and read it again for the third time.

When the bus arrived, she got on and found her seat by the window. She sat down staring at the night of Miami, realising that she had been noticed by Chad Henderson.

Her phone buzzed again. It was Vivienne.

“Also, Wednesday morning,break room,you are telling me everything"

Amelia almost smiled.

As the bus moved,Amelia watched the Henderson capital disappear,she faced forward in her seat and told herself firmly that it was nothing.

Amelia told herself that all the way home until she almost believed it.