I give him a brief explanation of the cleaning company on the first floor and the recruitment business above us.
“They employ any technical people?”
I purse my lips. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Okay,” he mutters, fiddling with the end of the belt that’s holding up his pants.
“Why don’t you try across the street?” I say, and he grunts but then nods and moves toward the door. I step forward and press the button for the elevator, watching him as he heads out onto the sidewalk.
By the time I get upstairs, I’m feeling twitchy. Why is Sadie’s father looking for her at work? And how did he get into the building? Probably followed someone in. Des gives me a little wave as I dump my bag by my desk, and I spot Sadie’s tawny-colored hair as she bends over something on the other side of the room. Sunlight is streaming in from the row of windows above her head, catching her hair like a flame and making the mismatched wooden desks Jo bought at a saleroom gleam. Several people lift their heads and ask me if I’m okay, so I tell them that I had a stupid accident and tripped over a step. Everyone laughs, and the coming back to the office thing I lay awake thinking about last night—the questions and what I could say in response—all fade away as I weave my way toward Sadie’s desk.
She’s studying something on her phone, teeth sunk into her bottom lip.
“Sadie,” I say.
Her head jerks up, face suffusing with color, and her phone slips out of her hand and lands on the floor with a small thump.
“Oh! James! I’m so sorry.” She scrambles on the floor before straightening up in her chair, phone clutched to her chest. “I didn’t see you coming.”
Her eyes are focused somewhere over my left shoulder. She does that a lot. Some hair has escaped from whatever she’s holding it back with and has curled down the side of her face.
“I just had an odd conversation with someone in the lobby downstairs who claimed to be the father of a Sadie who works in this building. I wondered if that might be you.”
Her eyes are like saucers as she jerks to her feet, the pinkness in her face fading almost as fast as it came, and for the first time I can remember, her eyes meet mine. They’re extraordinary. They’re not gray or blue, but this strange ethereal color that sits between the two. So pale they’re only a couple of shades away from the whites of her eyes.
“What did he look like?” she whispers.
“He was wearing a Giants T-shirt and old pants held up with a belt. A pair of brown loafers.”
Her head turns toward the window, and she bites her lip. Would this description be enough to identify her father? Does he always wear this? Everyone has a uniform. Mine’s a button-down shirt and dark-blue chinos. In the cool of the office, Sadie always wears a cardigan that swamps her.
“Where is he?” Her voice is a hoarse rasp as she pulls her cardigan around her body.
“I told him that we didn’t have a Sadie working here and there were no technology businesses in this building.”
Her hand jerks out and grasps my forearm, and I almost reel back in shock as something sharp shoots up into my chest, making me ache.
“Oh God, thank you.” Her fingers tighten for a heartbeat. “Thank you so much.” Her voice drops to a whisper, and for a brief second her eyes go glassy.
I’m aware of every inch of her small hand wrapped around my arm. It’swarm and comforting. That guy downstairs really was her father. Curiouser and curiouser.
“Are you … um … avoiding your dad?”She must be.
She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again.
“It’s complicated,” she says.
“He seemed …” I trail off. What can I say here? I want to say “threatening,” but he didn’t say anything threatening, exactly. “God knows, I don’t want to pry, Sadie, but you’re not in any trouble, are you?”
She hesitates for a fraction too long before she says, “No. Not at all.”
Chapter 5
Sadie
The elevators in our building haven’t worked for forever, so I toil up the blue-and-yellow stairwell. Cady’s voice echoes down from the fourth floor, and when I reach it, he’s outside his mom’s place on his phone, and points his finger at me with a leer as I go past.Asshole.I suck in a deep breath as I tackle the next flight of stairs. My mom got this apartment in a housing project fifteen years ago, and it’s been my home for as long as I can remember. I slot my key into the lock and step inside to the smell of fried food and cigarettes. As I toe off my shoes, my stepdad, Jake, appears in the doorway of the living room, wearing his daily uniform of tatty old pants with an old T-shirt covering his large stomach. My real dad took off when my mom got pregnant. Why did Jake turn up at Williams Security today? I can’t fathom it, but I also can’t mention it, or he’ll realize he got the right place and that James passed on the message. The horror of James meeting Jake, and the relief that he didn’t let him into the office for everyone to see, grips my heart all over again.
His eyes narrow and he smirks. “Your mom’s out. Gone to some music thing, she said. She’s stayin’ over at CeCe’s.”
