I was still awake when I heard the low whine of the elevator. My eyes opened, and I counted off the floors as it descended. Four, then three, then two, then the main floor, where it should have stopped. But it didn’t. It continued down to the basement.

I slipped out of bed and went into the hall. The elevator opened two ways on this level, so Mark could have been headed for a late-night workout. But it was the doorknob on my side that moved.

It turned slowly until it met the lock and stopped. I felt certain that Mark’s keycard opened every lock in the building, but I wasn’t worried that he’d use it. I knew he was only checking to see if I’d left the door unlocked. If this might be the night I’d finally give in to my desire.

Soon, Mark, I promise, I thought as the elevator whined its way back up to the top.

Chapter 28

Before this year, Barrett seldom spent any time on his office balcony. He had far too much work to allow any time for rose-sniffing or horizon-gazing or whatever people did outside. To the extent that he enjoyed the balcony at all, it was only for the way it impressed his guests.

Lately, though. Lately he was spending hours each day out on the balcony. Smoking, mostly. He was up to two packs a day and had given up all pretense that this was a temporary setback. But he was also horizon-gazing. On a clear day he liked to imagine he could see the building that housed his old law firm. The building that built him, you could say. Hard work but simpler times. The Code of Professional Responsibility spelled out all the rules that governed the conduct of lawyers in private practice. It was so easy to parse through an ethical dilemma in those days. Simply consult the rules, and if you were still uncertain, anonymously request an opinion from the ethics committee. You got an answer, and you conducted yourself accordingly.

But there were no rules in the corporate world, or perhaps there were too many. Either way, everything was murkier. Maximize shareholder value used to be the guiding principle, but now there were all these other duties. Reduce your carbon footprint and promote diversity and remove the glass ceiling and lean in or lean out or do the hokey-pokey or some such nonsense. It made his head spin.

He hoped that time away might help. He was leaving for Paris tonight. It would be a pseudo-vacation to placate Melanie, who was still in a snit over his failure to deliver on the Met Gala. Marcia had arranged for her to be feted and fitted by the top designers in the city. For Barrett, the trip meant an opportunity to speak to Madame directly about recent events, to confirm her blessing and secure her cover. And the biggest incentive of all: it would place him well away from the scene of the crime when the Lambert problem was finally resolved. An alibi, if you like.