Chapter 19: The Winter Gala

The card said white, so I wore green.

It was the same loose green dress, with a velvet wrap over my shoulders.

My bump was finally one you could see from across a room.

Samson wore a black tuxedo he'd rented that afternoon.

His reading glasses were in the breast pocket, because he said a man should keep a weapon.

"You look terrifying," I told him.

"You look like the reason for the whole evening."

"I am the reason for the whole evening."

"Then let's go be it."

The Sorley Winter Gala filled the ballroom of the Drake Hotel.

There were three hundred guests, a string quartet, and a silver tree two stories tall.

Every woman in the room wore white, and every one of them turned when we came through the doors.

I felt it move across them.

I saw the ladies from the tearoom, Ethan's aunts and the cousins from the long table.

The woman with the cane was in the third row of tables, in ivory.

She lifted her glass an inch toward me, and her eyes were bright.

"Friend of yours?" Samson murmured.

"She told me to run."

"Good advice."

"I'm not good at taking it."

At the far end of the ballroom, a small stage had been built under the tree.

It held a podium, a microphone and a white banner.

SORLEY FOUNDATION WINTER GALA.

Beneath it, in smaller gold letters, it said, WELCOMING THE NEXT GENERATION.

I looked up at the sound booth at the back of the room.

A red-haired woman in a headset leaned out of it, and gave me a tiny two-finger salute.

Then she vanished.

"She's in," I said.

"She's been in since noon," Samson said. "She took a shot of bourbon in the elevator and told the bellhop she was a spy."