Black Hills by Franklin Schneider & Jennifer Schneider

Author:Franklin Schneider & Jennifer Schneider [Schneider, Franklin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503939318
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2016-10-10T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

Kim still wasn’t home when Alice’s alarm went off the next day. It was that hour between night and morning when the sky was the color of gunmetal. Alice didn’t know whether to be worried or jealous. A little of both. She dressed herself in the most formal clothes she’d brought—a powder-blue oxford, black cigarette pants, and asexual brown flats with contrast stitching and bootlaces—and sat at the vanity, slicking back her bedraggled hair. She started to put makeup on but stopped. Her small, hard eyes, with their bags of exhaustion, looked like the eyes of a serious woman, a woman who’d been up late doing her work, ferreting out facts and names and dates, a woman to be respected and maybe even feared.

When her cab dropped her at the Whitehurst parking lot, there were only a few vehicles there: a half-dozen white security vehicles and a Prius. She’d put money on who owned the Prius. She paid and walked up the sloping concrete steps to the entrance. The building was more pyramidal than rectangular, utilitarian but subtly designed, with rounded corners and offset spaces and vaulted atriums. The central peak of the roof, which loomed over the rest of the sloping building, was made of glass and had at its center hundreds of small mirrors that reflected natural light throughout the rest of the structure. The lower roofs were covered in lush green gardens. As Alice looked on, a set of concealed sprinklers began to mist water over them.

The front door was still locked. She pressed the buzzer until a security guard came to the door and pushed it open for her.

“Can I help you?” the guard said, subtly blocking her from entering with his body.

“I’m here to see Steve Whitehurst,” she said.

“You have an appointment?”

Alice thought about lying, but decided to go with the honest approach. “No. But can you tell him I’m here? My name is Alice Riley from the Washington Post.”

The guard stepped back so the door closed and spoke into a radio strapped to his shoulder. Alice tried to look composed and expectant as she waited. After a moment, she heard the chirp of his radio and saw him incline his head toward the earpiece and then nod. He came to the door and opened it for her and then stepped aside.

“Go on up,” he said. “Last elevator on the right.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. Her footsteps reverberated in the open space of the lobby like the clatter of rocks falling down a distant rock face. Sometimes it paid, she thought, to have a scandalous backstory. If you couldn’t be powerful, you could at least be googleable.

She stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed soundlessly. There were no buttons on the wall, and she stood puzzled until a soft gender-neutral voice whispered, “Destination?” from seemingly just over her shoulder.

“Steve Whitehurst’s office,” she said. She caught sight of a tiny surveillance camera in the upper corner and fought an impulse to wave.

The doors opened shortly, and she found herself looking out into a bright, minimally furnished office.

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