"There isn't. " She pushed off the door frame and came into the room. Sat down in the chair across from the desk where he was working, the same position she'd taken in her own office on Monday. The chair on the near side, the chair that put her at the same level. "Are you okay? " he said. She looked at him, seemed slightly startled by the question.
The way a person is startled when they've been spending all day being the one who asks about everyone else and someone's turns it around. I don't know yet, she said. I keep thinking I've found the full extent of it. And then there's more. She looked at her hands.
Caldwell Webb Ben three people 13 years 14 months 7 years respectively. She paused. I keep asking myself what I missed. What I didn't see. You saw the money, he said.
Eventually, you saw it before they were ready for you to see it, he said. That's not a small thing. He paused. Caldwell planned the storm specifically because you saw it. That means you were ahead of him.
She was quiet. I keep thinking about the elevator, she said. About sitting on that floor in the dark, about telling a stranger things I hadn't told anyone. She looked up. I think I told you the truth because I was scared and the fear stripped everything else away.
And the truth was I had built something I was proud of, but I had built it so tightly around myself that there was no room for anyone else in it. She paused. The people closest to me were either working for me or stealing from me. There wasn't a third category. There is now, he said.
She held his eyes. Is there? She said, I'm here, he said. Day 31. Not working for you in the way Ethan did.
Not managing upward. Not protecting a position. Working on something I believe in for a person I respect. He paused. That's a third category.