Chapter 4

Three weeks in and I had developed a routine.

Monday through Friday I was his secretary. I managed his schedule, pulled his files, rerouted his calls, and sat twelve feet from his office door without thinking about anything other than the work in front of me. I was good at the job. I had always been good at the job. That part was not complicated.

Friday or Saturday nights I was something else entirely. No titles, no desk between us, no sir at the end of my sentences. Just the hotel and the agreement and the version of Alexander Voss that existed only in rooms no one else had access to.

The system worked. I had decided it worked and so it did.

Then came the Wednesday meeting that broke it.

It was a full boardroom — twelve people around the table, two joining remotely, a presentation on the Calloway acquisition that had been in preparation for six weeks. I was in the corner with my laptop, managing documents and taking notes, which was standard for meetings at this level. Alex was at the head of the table presenting.

He was mid-sentence, walking the board through the third quarter projections, when my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

I pulled it out under the table. Quiet. No one was looking at me.

It was the anonymous contact account.

My stomach went immediately still. That account had been silent since the hotel. Since before the hotel, actually — since the night I had shown up and found out who was behind it. There had been no reason for it to message me again. The arrangement had moved to direct texts after that.

So why was it active now.

I looked up. Alex was still presenting. He was at the projector screen with a laser pointer, talking about projected margins, completely focused on the room. He had not touched his phone. His phone was sitting on the table in front of his chair, screen down, not moving.

I looked back at my screen.

The message said: “Thinking about you.”

My chest tightened before my brain caught up. I hated that reaction most.

I put my phone away. I looked at Alex. He finished his sentence, advanced the slide, and moved on to the next point without a pause. He did not glance at me. He did not reach for his phone. He was entirely present in that boardroom.

I opened my phone again and checked the timestamp. The message had come in at 10:23am. I looked at the clock on my laptop. It was 10:23am right now. The message had come in while he was standing at the front of the room with twelve people watching him.

I stared at it.

There was a reasonable explanation. Scheduled message. Delayed delivery. Some technical lag in the app that had held the message and only now pushed it through. These were all possible. These were all things that could explain it without the alternative, which was that someone else had access to that account.

I closed the app. I put my phone face down on my knee and spent the rest of the meeting taking notes with the focus of someone who was absolutely not unsettled.

The meeting ended at 11:40am. People filed out. I packed up my laptop and headed for the door.

“Luke.” Alex's voice caught me just before the hallway. The last two board members were still gathering their things. “Stay a moment.”

I waited by the door while the room cleared. When it was just the two of us he came to where I was standing and stopped at normal conversation distance. Office distance. Nothing that would read as anything to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

“You were distracted in the second half,” he said, quietly.

“I had everything covered.”

“I know you did. I'm asking why you were distracted.”

I looked at him directly. “The anonymous account messaged me. During your presentation.”

Not a single thing moved in his expression. “Yes. I  did.”

“You were at the front of the room. Your phone was on the table.”

“Scheduled message,” he said. “I set it before the meeting.”

He said it easily. No hesitation, no over-explanation. Just the answer, clean and immediate.

I held his gaze for a moment. “You scheduled a message to send to me during a board presentation.”

“I scheduled it earlier in the week. I forgot it was timed for this morning.” A pause. “Does that bother you?”

The honest answer was that it did not bother me the way it should have. What bothered me was the way my chest had done something inconvenient when I read the message before I knew when it had arrived. That was the part I was not going to say out loud.

“No,” I said. “It doesn't bother me.”

He nodded once. “Good. I need the Calloway summary drafted and on my desk before four.”

“Yes, sir.” I walked out.

I spent the afternoon at my desk drafting the Calloway summary and not thinking about scheduled messages or what it meant that he had set one up during a week day for no functional reason.

I was mostly successful.

At 3:15pm my colleague Dara dropped a folder on the edge of my desk and leaned against the partition. Dara was in client relations, two years my senior, and had the specific quality of noticing things she was not supposed to notice.

“You've been quiet today,” she said.

“I'm always quiet.”

“Differently quiet.” She picked up the stress ball I kept on my desk and tossed it once. "Anything going on?"

“Calloway summary. Due at four.”

“Luke.”

“Dara.”

She looked at me for a moment with the expression she used when she was deciding whether to push. Then she set the stress ball back down. “You’ve been different for the past few weeks.“If it’s Voss,” she said casually, “be careful.” Just an observation.”

“I appreciate the observation.”

“Mm.” She picked up her folder. “Is it a person?”

“It's the Calloway summary.”

She walked away. She did not look convinced.

I turned back to my screen. I had four paragraphs left on the summary and forty minutes to finish them. I was fine. Everything was contained and working and the system I had built was holding.

At 3:58pm I delivered the Calloway summary to Alex's desk. He was on a call. He glanced at the folder, then at me, and gave a single nod. I walked back out.

At 6:30pm, after the floor had emptied and I was shutting down my computer to leave, my phone buzzed.

Direct text this time. It was his number.

“Saturday. I'll send the details.”

I looked at it. I thought about the boardroom and the timestamp and the clean immediate answer he had given me. I thought about Dara's face when she said differently quiet. I thought about the fact that I had not questioned his explanation for even a full minute before accepting it.

I typed back: “Okay.” and picked up my bag.

On the way to the elevator I checked the anonymous contact account one more time. No new messages. Nothing since 10:23am.

I put my phone in my pocket.

The explanation was fine. It was reasonable. It covered everything.

I almost believed it.