CHAPTER 4 -- AFTER HOURS
1060 Words
The office was almost empty by six thirty.
Mara was still at her desk.
She had her own work to finish -- the work she had pushed aside for Vivian's summary -- and she was not leaving until it was done. She rolled her neck, heard it c***k, and kept typing.
The cleaners came through at seven. A man with a cart and earphones in, moving between empty desks without looking at anyone. She shifted her bag off the floor so he could pass. He nodded. She nodded back. That was the most human contact she had experienced in the last two hours.
She saved her document at seven twenty and finally pushed back from her desk.
The floor was empty. Just the hum of the air conditioning and the glow of the exit signs at either end of the corridor. Mara shut down her computer, packed her bag, and stood up.
She was reaching for her coat when she heard footsteps.
Coming from the executive corridor.
She told herself it was security and pulled her coat on.
It was not security.
Damien came around the corner with his jacket off and his shirt sleeves folded to the elbow and a phone pressed to his ear. He was talking in a low clipped voice that meant the person on the other end was not making his evening easy. He was looking at the floor the way people did when they were thinking hard about what they were saying.
He looked up.
Saw her.
He stopped walking.
They looked at each other across the empty floor. The exit signs hummed. Somewhere in the building an elevator moved between floors.
He lowered the phone from his ear.
"Hold on," he said into it. Then he looked at her. "Why are you still here?"
"I was finishing my work."
He looked at her desk. Dark screen. Then back at her.
"It's past seven."
"I know."
A pause. Short. He looked at her in that way he had -- like he was adding something up and not sharing the result.
"The east elevator is faster at this hour," he said. "Security locks the west side at seven."
He put the phone back to his ear and walked toward his office like she had simply been a brief interruption in his evening.
Mara stood there for a second.
Then she picked up her bag and walked to the east elevator.
It was raining outside.
Not the gentle kind. The kind that soaked through a coat in thirty seconds and made the whole city look blurred and unhappy. Mara stood under the building awning and looked at the street and accepted that this was her life.
She pulled out her phone to find a taxi.
The building doors opened behind her.
She moved to the side automatically.
Nobody passed.
She looked back.
Damien Cross stood just inside the doors looking out at the rain. He had his jacket back on. An umbrella in one hand. His car was pulling up to the curb -- dark, quiet, the kind of car that did not need to show off.
He looked at the rain.
Then at her.
"Where are you going?"
Mara blinked. "Sorry?"
"Where do you live."
She told him the area. It came out before she thought about it.
He was quiet for a second. Then he pushed the door open and walked out into the rain, umbrella up. The car door opened as he approached. He stopped beside it and looked back at her with that flat expression that gave nothing away.
"It's on the way," he said. "Are you coming?"
Every sensible part of her said no.
It was raining very hard.
She walked to the car.
The inside was warm and quiet. Leather seats. A faint smell she could not name. Mara sat with her bag on her lap and her hands folded over it and looked straight ahead.
Damien sat on the other side with his phone in his hand. Working. Always working.
Nobody spoke.
It was not uncomfortable exactly. Just very still. The kind of still that made small sounds feel large -- rain on the roof, the indicator clicking when the driver changed lanes, the soft sound of Damien scrolling.
The city moved past the windows.
After a few minutes Damien spoke without looking up.
"You did the Hendricks projection today."
Not a question.
"Yes," she said.
"And the Albrecht client summary."
She went still for a half second. "Yes."
Silence again.
She turned back to the window and watched the wet streets go by and tried not to think about what he knowing that meant. Whether it meant anything. Whether she was reading into everything now because of a candlelit table and three text messages that probably meant nothing to him at all.
The car slowed at her street.
"Here is fine," she told the driver.
The car stopped.
She reached for the door.
"Ellison."
She looked back.
He was still looking at his phone.
"The Albrecht summary," he said. "Was it yours or hers?"
The question landed quietly. No accusation in it. Just the same flat tone he used for everything. But it was not a nothing question and they both knew it.
Mara held the door handle.
The rain drummed on the roof of the car.
She thought about what to say. She thought about Vivian's face when she put the folder in the drawer. About three oh four on the timestamp. About eight months of keeping her head down and her mouth shut and calling it survival.
"Goodnight sir," she said.
She got out and closed the door.
She stood on the wet pavement and the car pulled away and disappeared around the corner and she stood in the rain for a moment without moving.
He had known.
He had sat across from her in that car and he had known exactly whose work that summary was and he had asked her anyway. Not to catch her out. Not to report it. Just to see what she would say.
And she had said nothing.
Same as always.
She walked to her building door and let herself in and stood in the dry hallway and looked at her wet shoes.
One day she was going to have to stop doing that.
She just did not know when.
- Writer
