“What?”
You do not blink.
“Come downstairs,” you say. “Now.”
There is a beat of silence on the other end, and because you know him, because you have known him for thirteen years in all the ways a person can know another person too well, you can hear the shift instantly. Alertness. Then dread. Then the quick mental scrape of a man searching memory and realizing there is only one woman in the building who would say those words to him in that tone.
He lowers his voice.
“Claire?”
Madison flinches.
There it is.
That tiny involuntary reaction that tells you the name means something. Maybe Ethan never mentioned it enough to explain. Maybe he mentioned it too often. Either way, she knows now that this isn’t a random administrator with bad luck and a ruined blouse.
This is somebody connected to the floor she thought she could rule by marriage.
