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“May I have your Alabaster ID, please, ma’am?” He pressed a button on the top of the desk as Piper retrieved the badge she’d been hunting for at the bottom of her purse and handed it out, lanyard in a knot.
The guard glanced to the right as a door swung open and a second guard appeared.
Piper gave him a finger wave. “Hi Owen.”
“Ma’am.”
“Owen, I’ll be escorting Dr. Phillips to her meeting.” Jay turned his attention to Piper. “If you’ll follow me.”
Piper wished it were Owen taking her up. He was a little more mellow than this guy who stood ramrod stiff.
Her nerves were already tweaked. “Wish me luck,” she called over her shoulder.
“Rooting for you,” Owen said, though he’d have no idea why she was there.
She shouldn’t need luck. Everyone knew this was where they were heading. It was the culmination of decades of research money that Alabaster had sunk into the cure.
It had to be out of love and care for her dad that Lionel had spent the money with no chance of any kind of return.
Rare diseases meant there simply wasn’t—thank goodness—a thriving marketplace.
A cure would be a sentimental, humanitarian effort.
So if anything, everyone should be relieved that they were nearing a conclusion, even if it required a bigger infusion of money to get the medication to the finish line.
“What’s your name?” Piper asked as the guard swiped her badge for them to enter the elevator.
“Jay, ma’am.”
“Are you new here?”
He pressed the third-floor button. “I’ve been here about a year, ma’am.”
“Oh. Yes, I guess we could have missed each other. I’m down in my lab.”
“In the lab, yes, ma’am.”
And that was it for conversation.
The rest of the way they were silent.
Piper’s chest tightened as she trailed behind Jay up the wide hallway lined with Harcourt family portraits showing both the familial resemblance, generation to generation, and the changes in fashion.
One day, when she was given the opportunity, Piper would like to spend time with the paintings.
Just before Jay reached the conference room door, he turned and focused on a portrait for a second, then stepped up to the door where he knocked instead of using Piper’s badge.
As Piper passed the portrait that had caused Jay to pause, she saw a younger Lionel Harcourt sitting with a woman who could have been Piper’s mom, or her.
Piper hadn’t seen Mrs. Harcourt since she was tiny. It was startling how similar they were.
Piper’s eyes swept to the brass plaque that read Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Harcourt.
Then she pulled her attention back around as the door swung open to Lionel’s personal assistant.
The PA stepped out and held up both hands with crossed fingers for Piper’s eyes only, then spread her arms to indicate that Piper should go in. “Mrs. Ria Harcourt-Swain and gentlemen, Dr. Piper Phillips.”
Piper stepped through the door to a room steeped in old money. Money so old and so thick that it was like the skin on their bodies, the thing that held them together, allowing them to move through the corporeal world.
