Chapter 5: The Building on Meridian
Lisa was already moving.
She didn't decide to believe Ryan.
She decided that if he was lying, she would deal with that after.
Right now her brother was the only thing that mattered.
She grabbed her keys from the entry table.
"Evelyn stays here," she said.
"Evelyn comes," Ryan said.
"She's the only one your brother will open a door for."
Lisa looked at Evelyn.
Evelyn was already standing, coat in hand.
The drive to the Meridian building took nine minutes.
Lisa drove.
Ryan sat in the passenger seat with his phone out, speaking in clipped sentences to someone she didn't know.
Evelyn sat in the back and said nothing.
Marcus stayed on Lisa's phone, which she had propped against the dash.
"The two men haven't moved," Marcus said.
"Third level, east stairwell.
One of them made a call four minutes ago.
Thirty-second conversation.
I'm running the number."
"What about the woman?" Lisa asked.
"My — " She stopped.
"The woman behind my desk."
"Still in the building.
Seventh floor.
Your office."
"She's waiting for something," Ryan said.
"She's waiting for Daniel," Evelyn said from the back seat.
Lisa's hands tightened on the wheel.
Daniel.
Her brother's name, spoken aloud by someone who knew him, felt like a door being forced open in a room she had sealed years ago.
"How long has she known where he was?" Lisa asked.
"She found him eight months ago," Evelyn said.
"She's been trying to reach him without triggering the people who monitor your network.
The gala was her idea.
She needed a reason to get him into a building she could access without going through your company's front entrance."
"She used me," Lisa said.
"She used all of us," Evelyn said.
"Including herself."
Marcus cut in.
"The number from the parking structure call — it's registered to a logistics company in Reston, Virginia.
That company appears in the financial records we pulled from the charity accounts.
Lisa, these men are not law enforcement."
Ryan was already unbuckling his seatbelt before the car stopped.
They entered through the loading dock on the south side, Marcus guiding them through a service corridor to the freight elevator.
The building was quiet.
It was not yet six in the morning.
The elevator opened on seven.
Lisa stepped out first.
The corridor was empty.
Her office was at the far end, behind a glass wall.
The interior lights were on.
She could see the silhouette of a woman seated behind her desk, completely still, facing the window.
Lisa walked the length of the corridor.
She pushed open the office door.
The woman turned around.
She was older than Lisa had expected.
Seventy, perhaps.
Silver-haired.
Hands folded on the desk with a deliberateness that suggested she had been practicing that posture for a long time — practicing looking like someone who was not afraid.
She was afraid.
"Lisa," the woman said.
Her voice was not a stranger's voice.
Lisa had heard it in a memory she had spent years deciding was not real — a kitchen, a yellow curtain, a woman singing something low and tuneless while washing dishes.
"You're not d\*ad," Lisa said.
"No," her mother said.
"I'm not."
A sound came from the corridor behind them.
Evelyn said, "Daniel.
May you like
It's all right.
Come in."
