Chapter 27: The Sidewalk

At six in the morning my eleven lab staff stood on the Park Avenue sidewalk in a ragged line.

Some of them held coffee, and one held a houseplant she had been trying to carry upstairs.

Behind the glass doors of the Rhodes tower, two guards in black stood shoulder to shoulder.

I walked up with Nathaniel beside me, still in yesterday's wedding shirt under his coat.

"Ms. Winslow," said the guard with the tablet, before I said anything. "Your badge has been deactivated by order of the Chairman."

"Which Chairman?"

"Mr. Harold Rhodes."

Nathaniel stepped forward.

"I'm the chief executive of this company," he said.

The guard looked at his tablet and at his shoes.

"Sir, the release went out at four o'clock yesterday. I'm very sorry. Your access was removed at sundown."

Sundown, Harold had said.

He was a man who kept appointments.

Two women walking dogs had stopped to stare.

A man on the corner lifted his phone and filmed us.

"My lab has fourteen months of stability samples in the cold room on eleven," I said. "They are not Mr. Rhodes's property to warm up."

"You can submit a request to the Chairman's office, ma'am."

"When does the Chairman's office open?"

"Nine."

"And the samples?"

He did not answer that.

My lab lead, a tired man who was the best chemist I had ever hired, touched my sleeve.

"They told us at midnight that we were on paid leave," he said. "Then at four they said it was unpaid. Claire, we all have rent."

I looked down the line of them.

For ten years I had been the one nobody paid, and I had never before had to look at people who depended on me.

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