Page 6 of Nightfire

She turned her head toward the entrance door so that he couldn’t even pretend to think that she was staring at him, and watched as the sliding door swooshed open.

A man walked into the waiting room and all male eyes swiveled to him, watching his progress across the lobby. The three rich-looking men might think that they were alpha males in their own environments but they weren’t. Chloe knew many rich men who thought their money gave them top dog status anywhere, any time. Often it did, but not always.

This man, striding across the room, was the alpha male. He’d be the alpha male in any grouping, rich man, poor man, didn’t make any difference.

He wasn’t tall but he was immensely broad—wide shoulders, thick arms, strong neck. A bodybuilder but without that bodybuilder waddle because he clearly built onto muscles that were already there. His movements were fast, precise, powerful. The strongest man in the room, hands down. And he’d be the strongest man in the room in most rooms.

Michael Keillor. The K in the RBK. He wouldn’t be billionaire rich but he didn’t have to be. He was wealthy, successful, dominant. Enough by any person’s measure.

He scanned the lobby as he walked by, eyes dwelling for a moment on her. He didn’t break his stride, but Chloe knew he was studying her. She met his eyes, fiercely blue, very intelligent, impersonal and cold. Suddenly he blinked, the coldness vanished and something happened, but she didn’t know what.

When he walked in, he’d launched himself across the room as if it were just a way station as he arrowed toward the offices visible behind a glass-plated sliding door, but now he detoured and stopped for a moment at the desk, elbows on the counter, leaning forward to talk to the receptionist.

The woman looked startled, then shot a glance at Chloe.

Her heart gave a painful beat in her chest. He was discussing her? Why? Did he have some inkling of why she was here? How could he? No one on earth knew why she was here. Not even old Mr. Pelton, the family lawyer, knew, because she hadn’t approached him yet.

Time enough for that if she were successful. Not that Mr. Pelton would ever approve.

No. Her mission here was completely secret.

So why was Michael Keillor discussing her with the receptionist?

It was…it was unnatural. Chloe wasn’t used to being the focus of anyone’s attention. She didn’t remember learning the art of passing under everyone’s radar. It had always been there and she’d perfected it over the years.

She never dressed outrageously. Her clothes were expensive, but low-key, never too trendy. She was always clean and groomed, but never flashy.

All her life, people had taken one look and simply forgotten her in an instant, walking on by. Chloe didn’t want attention. Not out of shyness, but because she was afraid of it. Since she could remember, attention had meant danger. If someone looked at her too closely, her heart began pounding, an instinctive and totally uncontrollable reaction.

Michael Keillor nodded at the receptionist, took another look at her that had her hands sweating, and disappeared through the sliding glass door into the offices at the back of the lobby.

Nine fifteen. The appointment with Harry Bolt was in a quarter of an hour if he were a punctual man.

Chloe sat back to do what she did best—wait. It seemed almost her entire childhood—what she could remember of it anyway—and adolescence had been spent waiting. Waiting for the scars to heal, waiting for the casts to come off, waiting to recover from the last surgery, waiting for the next one. She was the goddess of waiting. If there were a PhD in waiting, she’d have been awarded one years ago.

She knew exactly how to prepare for a bout of waiting, how to breathe shallowly, slowly, how to distance herself from her body, how to will herself to stillness.

In college, she’d read up on a number of behavioral and mind-control techniques and found that she’d taught them all to herself without knowing they existed.

Chloe could outwait anyone. Just sink right down into herself until she needed to come back up.

But right now, it shocked her to realize that none of her techniques worked. Her breath was rapid, almost panting. Her heart trip-hammered in an anxious, uneven rhythm. Her palms were sweaty. There was no way she could will herself back into her well of calm. She kept clutching the manila envelope on her lap over and over again, until the edges were sweat-stained and crumpled. Another sign of huge stress, together with the feeling that there was no oxygen in the room.

She had waited her entire life for this moment, without knowing it. And now that it was here, she wasn’t prepared. She would never be prepared. She’d thought and thought about what she would say but nothing occurred to her. Her mind was empty, hollow and shiny with panic. She didn’t even know if she could talk, her mouth was so dry.

Think, Chloe! She told herself sternly. She’d done so many hard things in her life, surely she could do this?

What to say? How to tell if she even should say it? Maybe she’d talk to the man and realize that she’d been insane to rush across the country for this. Maybe⁠—

“Ms. Mason?”

Chloe turned, heart pounding. “Y-yes?” she stammered, sliding forward to the edge of her seat.

The receptionist gave her a kind smile. Considering how upscale this office was, the smile was purely gratuitous. Most receptionists and secretaries in successful big-bucks enterprises were haughty. Certainly Mr. Pelton’s was. In all the visits to her lawyer’s offices, Chloe had mainly seen Mr. Pelton’s secretary’s nostrils as she tilted her head up to look down her nose.

“Mr. Bolt is free to see you now. Third door to your right down the corridor.” She pointed to the big glass doors next to the reception desk.

Oh God, this is it!