the pages, but my focus is elsewhere. In New York. Approximately… how many miles apart are we?
I open my laptop and click on the web browser. I type in North Carolina to New York City. The first search result is for flights. There are forty-four nonstop flights per day, and it takes less than two hours to get there. I don’t even think. I just click, click, pull out my credit card, click some more, then set the alarm for early the next morning.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Leo
It wasn’t hard to find the address for Kovács Industries—it’s right there on their website. JFK Airport had more people in one place than I’ve probably ever seen in my entire existence. Finding the cab bay was easy, and according to the information online, there’s a flat fee to take you into the city, where their office is. The ride feels never-ending. We’re stopping and starting and stopping and starting. Everything is so different from home, and I don’t know where to look. It’s weird to think that I can be on a plane for two hours and experience a full-blown culture shock, but that’s exactly what’s happening.
My return flight leaves on Sunday afternoon, so I didn’t have a lot to pack. All I had with me was a backpack full of clothes, my phone, and my wallet. It’s the same as I have when I go to the farm. It was supposed to be my weekend home, so I had to lie—again—and tell Dad that I was being dragged to a bachelor party for one of the guys in the academy. I hated lying, but I didn’t know what else to do. I should be there, but I need to be here.
“Here you are,” my driver says, pulling up to the tallest building I’ve ever seen, all glass, too many people walking briskly in and out.
I pay him a ridiculous amount of money and step out, trying not to look too much like a tourist. The first thing I notice is that the air is different. The second is that everyone is fast, too fast, and standing on the sidewalk looking up at a building is frowned upon. Noted. I grip the straps of my backpack and enter through one of the eleventy-three doors. I’m underdressed. I’m in a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and sneakers, and everyone is in suits and sweater-vests. I have to laugh at the thought, and now I’m standing in the middle of a vast foyer laughing to myself, looking like a whack job. Awesome. I check my phone for the floor for Kovács Industries. Floors 17-21. Shit. Where the fuck do I even begin to look for Mia? I walk to the elevator, ignoring the looks of suspicion from everyone around me. When the elevator doors open, there’s a man in there whose job is to press the buttons… I guess. I’ve never been anywhere this fancy. He looks at me, and I look at him, and I almost want to tell him I can press my own button. Instead, I mumble, “Seventeen.” He eyes me the same way everyone in the foyer did and taps the button.
The low hum of annoying music fills the elevator as I watch the numbers above the door glow higher and higher. People get on and off, and when I finally get to seventeen, I turn to the elevator man and say, “Thank you.”
He just stares at me, his eyes wide.
I step out of the cart before wondering if maybe I should have tipped him? Is that how it works here? Dammit. Before I can overthink it, the woman behind the large desk right in front of me asks, “Can I help you?” She’s in her late twenties, I guess, and wearing a blindingly bright green blouse, her blond hair pulled up in a perfect little bun.
The Kovács Industries logo is printed on the wall behind her, and so I step forward, moving out of the way of the people walking back and forth. I ask, “Is… um… Is Mia around?”
“Mia...?”
“Kovács.”
Her eyes widen before she plasters on a smile that wasn’t there only seconds ago. “Her office is on the twentieth floor,” she tells me.
“So, do I just…?” I point behind me.
“No.” She shakes her head, standing to point to my left. “You can take the internal elevator to her floor. There’s another information desk there. Trent will be able to help you.”
“Okay,” I breathe out.
She smiles. “You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”