Semua Bab UNDISCLOSED : Bab 41 - Bab 47

Jamie came back in four minutes and fifty eight seconds.Nia knew because she had been staring at her laptop clock with the focused attention of someone who needed something concrete to look at. That was not the door Darian had just walked through or the pen she had straightened three times since he left."Henriksen is ready," Jamie said from the doorway."Thank you," she said. Professionally. Completely.Jamie nodded and left and she exhaled once quietly and pulled up the Henriksen file and was entirely focused for the full forty minutes of the call.The problem was everything after the call.She could not settle.Not in the dramatic way, nothing visible, nothing that Gregory or Patricia or anyone on the floor would have registered. Just the specific internal restlessness of a woman who had almost been kissed in her own office at nine forty in the morning and was now supposed to care about phase three timelines.At the coffee station at twelve thirty she arrived to find him already t

The coffee went cold between them.Nia had not touched hers since she put her phone face down on the table. Darian had not touched his since she asked him who he was with before he came to pick her up last night.He looked at her steadily. "Her name is Renée Laurent. I had dinner with her three weeks ago in New York. One dinner. She called and I agreed to meet her because we have known each other for a long time and I was being""Courteous," Nia said."Yes.""And she is in Chicago now."He went still. "How do you know that?""The photograph was taken last night. The restaurant behind them is three blocks from this building." She looked at him. "She is in Chicago Darian. While you and I were at the lake she was three blocks away." She held his gaze. "How long has she been here?"He looked at her and she watched him make the decision to be completely honest even though honesty was not going to feel like a gift right now."Ten days," he said.The kitchen was absolutely silent."Ten days,

Renée Laurent had excellent taste in hotels.The Waldorf Astoria Chicago was exactly the kind of place she stayed not because she needed to announce wealth but because she had learned long ago that comfort was not a luxury but a baseline requirement for thinking clearly. And right now she needed to think clearly.She had been in Chicago for ten days.She was still not entirely sure what she had expected to find here. Darian had been clear on the phone three weeks ago. I am involved with someone and she had heard it and understood it and had still somehow found herself on a flight to Chicago four days later because understanding something and accepting it were apparently not the same thing.She had seen him once. Briefly. He had been kind and firm and entirely certain in the way he was certain about things he had fully decided and she had left that coffee feeling the specific dignified disappointment of a woman who had arrived hoping for a different answer and had received the correc