Chapter 15

Carol, she told herself. Carol.

You don't have the right.

Ava and Jessica, meanwhile, had arrived at Aegis Dynamics and been received at a notably high level — met at the door and escorted personally into the elevators.

Kevin's meeting was still running, so his secretary put them in a lounge with very good coffee and a tray of pastries.

And two slices of blueberry cheesecake.

Ava couldn't eat much and took a few bites. Jessica handled the rest.

Jessica ate and muttered simultaneously. "This Mr. Martinez is impossible to read. Very deep waters. In one of those corporate thrillers he'd absolutely be the one who feeds you something sweet while arranging your downfall. He's buying us cake now. He'll probably change his mind before I've swallowed it."

Ava tapped her. "Stop. You're making me uncomfortable."

Shortly after, the door of the conference room next door opened and a line of men in business suits came out.

Kevin, in the middle of them, was conspicuous. Among a set of unremarkable-looking executives he seemed to be operating with different lighting, like something that had walked off a magazine page.

Jessica dropped her voice. "Wow. He's ridiculous. He looks like my future husband."

Ava gave her a look. "If you don't mind being outmaneuvered, I have no objection."

Beyond the glass, Kevin had been half-listening to someone. His secretary came up and said a few words, and he raised his eyes toward the lounge.

His gaze crossed both their faces, paused for the smallest fraction of a second, and moved on without registering anything.

Five minutes later they were sitting across from him.

Kevin had the window behind him, legs crossed, a band of black dress sock showing below the pants cuff.

The signing went extraordinarily smoothly. He barely said anything and put his name to it.

Holding the freshly signed contract, Ava made the appropriate remarks about being grateful for the confidence and looking forward to the work.

Kevin capped his pen and asked, casually, "Miss Perry didn't come today?"

Jessica's entire outlook brightened like a plant in spring, and she answered before anything could stop her.

"Our boss went to bring her brother hot cocoa."

Listening to Jessica report over the phone, at volume, that the signing had gone beautifully, the thing in Carol's chest — waterlogged, cloud-heavy — lifted a little.

Ava reached over and touched her cheek. "Why are you so pale? Are you sick too?"

"No." Carol shook her head. "I'm just naturally fair, probably."

"Oh, please." Ava, who ran to wheat-gold, put her hands on her hips. "So being born pale is an achievement now?"

"It is."

They went back and forth over it until Carol laughed, and some color came back into her face.

Once Ava was settled back in the ward, Carol started on hiring.

The technical staff had been recruited by Ava in the first place, and when the two partners split, most of them stayed on her side.

Kenneth had taken essentially the entire middle of the company. The executives and the administrative team walking out together had stripped the flesh off it, and the startup was suddenly pale and weak. But Carol knew that the hard structure — the technical team Ava had built with her own hands — was still standing, and while it stood, nothing was over. What she had to do now was stand in the wreckage and refill the empty positions one at a time until the thing had enough buoyancy to stop going down.

She worked straight through the day. At the end of it Jessica was arranging a ride home with a colleague and put her head around the door. "Boss. Aren't you going?"

"In a bit."

"It's going to rain. Don't stay too late."

Carol looked out the window and found that the sky had in fact gone heavy.

But the thought of the Williams house, and of Jennifer, took her straight back down, like seawater coming in over her with no way up through it.

She didn't want to go back, so she found a bar instead.

Blue Night was loud enough to feel in the sternum, the floor full of people in very little clothing. She ordered something off the cocktail list and sat alone at the bar.

The bartender was not good. It was genuinely unpleasant. She ordered a second one.

She was partway through it when two men came over and sat down on either side of her, looking her over without any pretense at all. "Beautiful. Drinking alone?"

Cheap cologne arrived ahead of them, in quantity. Carol didn't respond, finished what was in the glass, and put a bill under it.

"Hey, don't rush off." One of them put an arm across her path, turning his wrist so the gold Rolex on it caught the light. "We meet like this, let me buy you a drink. Let's be friends."

Carol's mood had been underground all day and she was now boxed in on both sides. "I don't see fate. I see something nauseating."

His face stalled, and then he and his friend performed a laugh. "She's got a temper."

"I like a bit of thorn on them. Come play with us."

His hand went for her shoulder.

She turned her head, and the warm color of her face had gone cold underneath. "You'd better not touch me."

"And if I do? What are you going to do about it?" He had not taken the warning as information.

The bartender had watched enough. "Come on, man. Leaning on a woman isn't a good look."

"Mind your own business."

Being challenged decided him. He reached for her — and his arm was intercepted halfway by a hand that came in from the side.

Someone put an arm across his shoulders, friendly, like an old acquaintance. "You want to play, play with me. Why are you bothering my sister?"

Both of them, so expansive thirty seconds earlier, went down like dogs at the sound of a key in the door. "Mr. Brown. What a coincidence. This is your sister?"

If Michael's here, is Paul here?

Carol looked past him without meaning to. Harold and several others were there. Paul was not.

At the back of the group, Kevin was leaning against the rail with his hands in his pockets, watching from a distance with nothing on his face.

The lights swept and stuttered and turned the dancers into a mass of writhing outlines, and the line of his nose cut a division through the light. His expression was what it always was: apart, and uninterested.

Looking at it, Carol understood something clearly. If Michael and the others hadn't been here, Kevin would not have moved.

Michael was still smiling. "Of course she isn't my sister. My sister is seven."

The two of them let their breath out.

The Brown family, in Atlanta, was not something you wanted to have genuinely offended.

They hadn't finished exhaling when Michael's smile came off. The benevolent, wide-open face of a minute ago went cold as struck iron. He patted the man's cheek twice.

"This is the young lady of the Williams family. Try opening your eyes next time. You put one finger on her and your ten won't cover it."

They apologized over each other, ducking their heads at Carol. "Miss Perry, we didn't know! We only saw you drinking by yourself and thought you might be lonely—"