Chapter 14: The Night Guard

Calla's POV

I drove Mabel's truck sixty miles with the window down and my teeth clenched.

I didn't cry until I hit the Knoxville city limits.

Then I pulled into a bank lot, put my forehead on the steering wheel and let it out.

It lasted three minutes.

I had a bandaged arm, a cracked rib, and a dress in a garment bag on the passenger seat.

I wiped my face on my sleeve and drove on.

The Caruthers Foundation building was a gray glass tower on Gay Street, with my father's name in brushed steel over the doors.

I had cut ribbons there.

I had hated every minute of it.

At seven in the morning the lobby was empty except for the guard at the long desk.

He was seventy, with a white mustache and a radio turned low.

He looked up, and his mouth fell open.

"Miss Calla?"

"Hello," I said. "You let me spin in that revolving door when I was nine."

"Until you were sick on my shoes."

He had been the night guard for thirty years.

He came around the desk faster than a man his age had any right to.

"They said you were dead. They said the creek."

"I know."

"Your father would have turned the building over."

"He'd have wanted me to keep quiet for one more day," I said. "Can you call the lawyer without anyone hearing?"

He locked the front doors.

He took me up in the service elevator, and he did not say Dorian's name once.

The lawyer arrived at eight in yesterday's tie.

He stopped in the doorway of the conference room and took off his glasses and looked at me for a long time.

"You're thinner," he said.

"I've had two weeks."

"Calla, a man called me two days ago and told me you would contact me when it was safe."

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