And the people who were still present had developed a remarkable ability to look directly at Victoria without appearing to see her at all. Ethan was not supposed to be there. He had been called in at 7:00 to fix a malfunctioning sound system in the anteroom off the main ballroom. A 30-minute job that turned into 90 minutes because the wiring behind the panels was 1five years old and had been repeatedly patched in ways that made it actively hostile to anyone trying to understand it.
By the time he finished, the gala was in full swing and his supervisor had texted him to stay until the event ended and help with breakdown and cleanup. He didn’t mind. Lily was at his sister’s place for the night. He had nowhere to be.
He rolled up his cables, stowed his tools, and settled into the rhythm of cleanup work, moving quietly around the perimeter of the room. Collecting glasses, breaking down equipment, existing in the functional background the way he always did. It was after 11:00 when he walked out through the service exit to move some equipment to the loading dock and noticed, in the far corner of the parking lot, under one of the yellow sodium lights that gave everything a slightly jaundiced tint, a figure sitting on the edge of a planter box with her heels in her hand. It took him a moment to register who it was.
Victoria Hale, CEO of the company that employed him, one of the 40 most powerful women in the Pacific Northwest, according to a magazine that had profiled her the previous spring, was sitting alone in a hotel parking lot in a charcoal dress, barefoot, with her shoes dangling from two fingers and her eyes fixed on the middle distance with the unfocused quality of someone who has temporarily misplaced their relationship with the present moment. Ethan stopped walking. He looked at her. He looked at the parking lot around her, which was mostly empty now.
The last few cars belonging to the cleanup crew and a couple of hotel staff. He thought about the various things a reasonable person might do in this situation. He could walk back inside and tell someone. He could call the front desk.
He could continue to the loading dock and pretend he hadn’t seen anything, which would have been the easiest choice and the one that carried the least personal risk. He stood there for a moment longer. Long enough to notice that her car keys were sitting on the planter box beside her. And that she had the glazed, slightly tilted posture of someone who should not be making any major decisions.
Including the decision to drive. He walked over. He said her name, Miss Hale. Quietly, the way you might address someone who was standing very close to the edge of something.
She looked up at him with the slow, slightly delayed focus of the significantly intoxicated. And for a moment, there was nothing in her expression except the blankness of someone trying to locate the relevant context for a situation she hadn’t anticipated. Then something settled in her eyes. Not recognition, exactly.