The foundation’s headquarters was constructed on a pier that projected a short distance from the southern shore of Lake Union. This was the only remarkable thing about it; other than that, the building was as generic as it could be. During the early days, she had entertained proposals from world-famous architects who saw the job as an opportunity to make a statement. They’d expressed it in more high-flown language, but what it boiled down to was that they wanted to build something really cool. Zula’s sympathies had been with them, but she’d gone with boring instead. For, as a new and inexperienced director who could justly be accused of having got the job through nepotism, she needed to send the message that she wasn’t just screwing around with her uncle’s money. The other billionaires, the self-made men whom no one would question, they could put their money into building outlandish structures. But Zula had built something that was just another Class A office building that would appreciate in value along with all the other buildings like it and that could be liquidated on the market as easily as a pork belly. The upper two floors had been reserved for the Forthrast Family Foundation and the lower four had been leased to other organizations.

She relaxed her pace as she drew near. The building’s network recognized her from a block away and caused a little status indicator to appear in the corner of her vision. The doors opened for her automatically and she walked into the lobby. This building too had a roving security guard; he’d seen her coming and wandered over to the entrance so that he could greet her with a nod and a smile. The building knew that she had arrived and that she’d be wanting an elevator to the sixth floor, but let her know that regrettably there would be a wait of between thirty and sixty seconds; this was the busiest time of day for the lifts. She considered taking the stairs but decided against it since her knee was talking to her. She waited before the elevator banks along with some of the regulars she saw every day, and a few visitors, there for meetings or job interviews. Those were discernible because they had to engage in old-school navigation schemes like reading the building directory and physically pressing elevator buttons.