Dr. Epstein had no spouse to put in an appearance. She was recently divorced, and she seemed surprised but pleased when her son showed up.
The son was nineteen, tall and gangly and shy.
“This is David,” she’d told Bianca when she introduced them. “My only child.” She’d beamed up at the young man. “I’m so proud of him! He’s the man in our lives.”
He was also the opposite of his gregarious mother, Bianca realized after a two-minute conversation. David mumbled when he spoke and looked down at his feet, and the most Bianca had been able to get him to say about himself was that he was a graduate student in mathematics, home on vacation. He left before the party ended, and it had touched her when Epstein took her aside and thanked her for being “so kind” to David.
“He has an IQ of 180,” the doctor had confided. “And, as is the case with many who have such brilliant minds, his social skills aren’t the best. He’s especially tongue-tied with women, who are not often as gentle with him as you were, Bianca.”
Mostly, though, the party had been a mix of pleasant chatter and funny anecdotes, including one about the time a storm had rolled in.
“A summer storm,” someone said. “You know the kind. Lots of Sturm und Drang, and after maybe twenty minutes of the lights flickering on and off, all the power went out.”
“I suppose we could have walked down the nine flights,” someone else said, “but the maintenance guys kept assuring us the power would be coming back any minute. Plus, it turned out a couple of us had little stashes of gin and whiskey.”
“Don’t forget the crackers,” someone else added to a round of laughter. “Anyway, by the time the power came back on, nobody really wanted to leave.”
More laughter. Then Dr. Epstein said that the moral of the story was that it had taken that storm to nudge the building’s management into finally modernizing the system.
Or maybe not, Bianca thought now, as the lights flickered again.
One thing was certain.
She had absolutely no wish to be trapped in the dark, alone. And she probably would be alone, considering that thi
s was a summer Friday, meaning that all over Manhattan, people rushed to leave work as soon as they could to get the weekend started.
No raincoat. No umbrella. So what? This was June. Lightning and thunder couldn’t change the fact that the rain, though heavy, would be warm.
Bianca shut the closet door, went to her desk, tossed her phone into her tote, grabbed it, and went quickly out of her office and into the reception area.
Was she mistaken, or were the overhead lights a bit dimmer than usual?
All the more reason to quicken her pace. Through reception. Out the door. Down the corridor to the elevators. Brrr! It was chilly out here. The lights might be playing games, but the air conditioning was working overtime.
She looked up at the station lights above the elevators. Both were on the lobby level. Bianca pressed the call button. Then she tilted back her head and watched the lights.
Nothing happened.
Neither elevator was moving.
She huffed out an impatient breath and poked the call button again.
Then she checked her watch.
Not good. It was almost a quarter of six.
“Come on,” she muttered, hitting the call button with her fist. Yes! One car began moving. She could hear it groaning as it rose. Still, no matter how fast it got here, she was going to be late for her meeting with—with—
What was the name of tonight’s subject? Something biblical. David. Daniel. Joseph. Noah. That was it. She was meeting with First Name, Noah; Last Name, Charles. Male. Age thirty-four. Heterosexual. Never been married. Was signed onto three dating sites.
The photo he’d emailed along with his filled-out questionnaire showed a pleasant-looking man, skinny, shy smile, curly red hair. Not unattractive, but not someone you’d notice in a crowd the way you’d notice someone like Lieutenant Chay Olivieri—and where was that damn elevator? It paused at the third floor. And at the fourth.
It was ridiculous that she would think about the lieutenant. About that night. Dio. Why would she want to think about it? Sex with a man who was basically a stranger. Sex in a public place. No preliminaries. Not foreplay. It had been embarrassing. Humiliating.
Exciting. Oh, so incredibly exciting…
“Something wrong?” Alessandra had said the next day, and Bianca had said yes, unfortunately she’d have to cancel going on to the Flying Eagle because she’d had an email from New York and one of the other psychologists in her practice had fallen ill and they were desperately shorthanded.