“Hey,” she said, keeping her voice soft as she walked. “Sorry about ghosting you this morning, but—”
“You need to get out of there,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“You went to Arthur’s office, right? Not hard to guess. You brought it up at Ramis’s place last night.”
“And you said it was too dangerous,” she replied. “Hence the ghosting.”
“This guy, your ‘missionary’—he’s about six foot two, black suit, string tie, carries a vintage doctor’s bag?”
“That’s him.”
“I’m down in the lobby,” Tyler said. “And he’s standing ten feet away from me, about to get on an elevator. He’s headed your way.”
23.
Tyler knew he had to handle Seelie with care and earn her trust. That didn’t mean he was going to leave her twisting in the wind. Once he figured out her game plan, he hopped the next train to Manhattan.
What was he going to do when he got there? The details were hazy. He supposed he could provide a little silent support, standing sentry from a safe distance. If he saw any uniformed cops on the move—or visitors with bulging jackets and gold shields on their belts—he’d call and give Seelie a heads-up.
He didn’t see any police, but he saw the missionary.
One glance and he understood why Seelie had instinctively dubbed him with the name. The tall, cadaverous man had a presence that radiated out like the spiderweb trails of frost on a winter window. His eyes promised a barrage of fire and brimstone, but his bloodless lips stayed pursed, motionless, and the world went silent around him. Tyler watched as he stood at the elevator door, the numbers counting down. The people around the man unconsciously shuffled aside, repelled by the missionary’s state of grace.
Not hard to guess what he was doing here: the same thing Seelie was, angling to get a look at Arthur’s office and see if he had any books that weren’t on his shelves at home. She had a natural way in if she was willing to bank on her father’s name. What was his approach going to be?
Tyler eyed the doctor’s bag. Big enough for a brace of guns and enough bullets for everyone on the seventeenth floor.
The elevator chimed. The door rumbled aside. The missionary got on board, followed by a small mob of suits coming back from lunch. Tyler tried to move, but his feet were rooted in place, crucified against the Italian marble. The sound of footsteps in the lobby, echoing off the polished walls, became a roaring stampede in Tyler’s ears. A siren went off, a fire truck, out on the avenue, blaring while it waded its way through the congested traffic, and his memories amplified the electric scream, multiplied it as clammy sweat broke out across the steel-cable muscles of his back.
“I want french fries.”
“You can have apple slices.”
“French fries!”
“Tyler, talk to your daughter.”
“Oh,” he laughed, “Now she’s MY daughter.”
He jerked a knee. His foot wouldn’t move. It was filled with lead weights and dead wasps.
The last suit got onto the elevator. Men were checking phones, staring into space, marking time. The door was about to close.
Seelie needs you, he told himself.
The elevator door became a sliding wall, a bulletproof barrier between him and the missionary, a guarantee of safety. All he had to do was stay right where he was, and he’d be fine. All he had to do was nothing.
At the last second, his hand shot through the gap. The door smacked his palm, hesitated, then rolled back open. Tyler’s face glistened under the overhead lights as he got on board, the cage like a sauna.
“Sorry,” he said.
He stood next to the missionary, all the way up, and listened to the jackhammer beat of his heart.
* * *
“Is there another way out of here?”
The bleary-eyed accountant looked from Seelie to the glass lobby doors. She swiveled halfway in her ergonomic chair, torn from the lime-green rows of her spreadsheet.
“Besides the elevators?” she asked.
Seelie nodded. The accountant shrugged.
“Stairs, if you really want to.”
“I need the exercise,” Seelie said. “Where are they, please?”
“Out through the lobby, past the elevators, take a left.”
Past the elevators. And past the missionary.
* * *
The missionary got off on the seventeenth floor. Tyler followed in his wake, hanging back a few steps. The man didn’t give him a second glance. He made a beeline for the reception desk. Tyler’s shaky gaze darted between empty chairs, a mahogany table with the latest copy of Fortune for waiting guests, the big platinum monograms on the walls. The chairs looked