Page 47

Neither of us reaches for the door. The kiss lingers between us, quietly complicating what should have been a straightforward walk to the elevator.

I pick up my laptop and tuck it beneath my arm. “Come on.”

She falls into step beside me without another word.

The overhead lights have returned by the time we cross the office, leaving the emergency lighting behind, but the floor has emptied since we started working.

Dark monitors stretch across abandoned desks, broken only by cleaners wheeling carts through distant corridors. Rain still drums against the windows.

When we reach reception, the television above the security desk flashes a relentless stream of breaking news.

SUBWAY SERVICES SUSPENDED.

FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS.

SEVERE TRAFFIC CONGESTION.

Emma slips her phone from her handbag and opens a rideshare app. “I’ll grab an Uber.”

I unlock mine at the same time. I stare at the screen for a beat before turning it toward her. “They’re charging three hundred dollars.”

She leans closer, squints at the number, then looks back at me. “For one trip? I’ll wait it out.”

I glance through the glass doors at rain sweeping sideways across the entrance, tree branches bending beneath another gust. “You’ll still be here when the breakfast shift arrives.”

“I’ve handled worse than bad weather.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I tell her, and she smiles, clearly expecting the conversation to end there. “I’m taking you home.”

She folds her arms. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“You’re still going to.”

“Yes.”

I meet her gaze.

She studies my face for a few seconds before one corner of her mouth lifts. Then she shakes her head with the sort of smile people reserve for particularly stubborn children.

“Does anyone ever win an argument with you?”

“The board keeps trying.”

She slips her phone back into her bag and gives me the resigned smile of someone accepting defeat on her own terms. “Fine. Thank you.”

I nod toward the revolving doors. “Good.”

Five minutes later, we’re crawling through Midtown.

Rain pounds against the windscreen hard enough that the wipers struggle to keep up, and every set of headlights dissolves into streaks of white before disappearing behind another curtain of water.

Traffic barely moves, leaving us to edge through Midtown one reluctant car length at a time until I glance at the dashboard clock and realize we’ve spent almost fifteen minutes covering four blocks.

Emma watches a cyclist weave between rows of stationary cars before disappearing through the next junction. “I think we’ve just been overtaken by a bicycle.” She tips her head back against the seat. “I don’t know why that feels personal.”

“I’ve been driving for twenty years and I still take it badly.”