He hesitated, then added, Love you more than every light in Manhattan. Three dots appeared almost immediately, followed by her response: Even the blinking ones? Especially those, he wrote, and slipped the phone into his pocket as the elevator chimed.
The promise mattered more than Emma knew. There had been a time, soon after her mother left, when Marcus had tried to keep a repair job with rotating emergency calls and had missed two school events in the same month. Emma had been four then, still young enough to believe that a grown-up could stop an emergency by wanting to. She had not yelled when he arrived late. She had simply asked whether the other children had fathers whose jobs never broke, and Marcus had carried that question through every professional decision he made afterward.
He rode to the twenty-seventh floor with a cloth, a spray bottle, and a key ring bearing permission for the rooms on his route. The elevator doors opened onto walnut paneling, thick carpeting, and a wall of glass that reflected the lights from the East River. Normally this floor was silent after ten, but tonight he heard footsteps moving too quickly, a metallic clatter, and the brittle sound of someone saying they had already checked something three times. Marcus rolled the cart out of the elevator and found four men gathered outside the largest executive conference room.
A maintenance cabinet stood open near the entrance. Two engineers knelt beside it with insulated tools, a third watched an industrial laptop, and a fourth stood by a phone, speaking to someone whose patience was clearly wearing thin. Power leads and protective floor covers spread across the corridor, turning the spotless executive level into something that reminded Marcus of the back room of the repair shop where he had once worked. He eased the cart around the cables and looked for a safe route to the offices beyond them.
Inside the conference room, Natalie Carter stood with her arms crossed beneath a row of recessed lights. Marcus recognized her immediately, as almost everyone in the building would have. She was the chief executive of Meridian Systems Group, a national company whose software and operations services connected hospitals, suppliers, and distribution networks. At thirty-seven, she had already spent six years leading the company, and her public reputation was built on precision, difficult negotiations, and a refusal to accept answers that sounded more confident than they were.
Tonight, her expensive navy suit was creased at the elbow and a lock of dark brown hair had escaped its neat twist. There were untouched takeout containers on the table, and behind her a presentation screen showed a blank blue panel where a client demonstration was supposed to appear. Marcus had seen photographs of Natalie in industry magazines, usually smiling beside people with important titles. He had never seen her with the tired, disbelieving expression of someone who had paid for an answer and could not persuade anyone to give her one.