Chapter 12: Walked Past

The red dress fit.

It was the long column of deep red silk from the boutique, cut low across the chest and slit to the hip.

I wore my hair down in loose honey-blonde waves over one shoulder, and no jewelry at all.

When I stepped out of the elevator on the sixtieth floor at half past seven, Leighton stopped talking in the middle of a word.

"Say something," he said, after a moment.

"You look like you've been hit with a brick."

"Thank you."

He took my hand, and his thumb drew one slow line across my knuckles that I felt in my knees.

We went in.

The sixtieth floor of Hartigan Tower was one enormous room of glass with a ceiling of gold lights and a stage at the far end.

Four hundred donors for the Skyline Awards stood in it with drinks in their hands.

In the far corner, half hidden behind a banner, stood pane fourteen.

I looked at it a second too long.

Emmett hovered at Leighton's elbow and whispered names whenever somebody came up.

A senator.

A banker.

A woman in a feathered hat.

Leighton said each name in the right order and shook each hand, and nobody noticed.

I stood with my hand in the crook of his arm and drank champagne.

I noticed that he never once looked a person in the eyes.

I was twenty feet from the stage when the black-jacketed waiters closed around Emmett with a question, and then another.

The little group swallowed him whole.

Leighton stood alone at the champagne table with his head slightly turned.

He looked like a man waiting to be told who was coming.

I had taken one step toward him when she stepped up at his side.

She wore a column of deep red silk cut exactly like mine.

Her hair fell in loose honey-blonde waves over one shoulder.