Chapter 22: Pane Fourteen

At five past seven Bryce Hartigan walked onto the stage with a glass trophy in his hands, and four hundred people stood up to clap.

I stood at the back of the room in the red dress, with Leighton at my elbow and Dot at my shoulder.

Nobody had stopped me at the door.

Nobody had known what to do.

"Builder of the Decade," the host said. "For Hartigan Tower."

Bryce took the microphone and smiled at the room.

"This tower is the work of a great many hands," he began. "And one extraordinary mind, in particular. Sabine, stand up."

Sabine stood at a front table in a cream sheath, and she did not smile.

Her hands were folded very tight at her waist.

"Pane fourteen," I said in Leighton's ear.

His fingers tightened on mine.

"I know," he said.

I let go of his hand and walked down the aisle.

It was a long walk, through the round tables, past the senator and the banker and the woman in the feathered hat.

My heels rang on the glass floor.

I heard a murmur start and run ahead of me, table to table.

Bryce saw me at ten yards.

His smile did not move, but his eyes did.

"Margo," he said into the microphone, kindly. "You're not well. I think someone should..."

"Hello, Bryce."

I did not hurry.

I walked past the foot of the stage and across the front of the room to the corner of the west wall.

I stopped in front of pane fourteen.

The room turned with me.

It was ten past seven.

The sun came in sideways, low and orange, across the whole face of the tower.

It hit the glass at nineteen degrees.

In the lower corner of the pane, thin as a hair, two letters rose out of the glass in gold.