Thomas picked up an empty water glass from the table, walked to the credenza along the wall, poured a fresh glass from the pitcher there, and brought it back. He set it next to the folder and stepped back. By the time he reached the door, Evelyn was speaking again. Her voice, when it came through the gap in the door as he stepped out, was level and precise.
Thomas went back to his cart and stood in the hallway letting his heart rate come down at its own pace. That night after the meeting ended and the executives had dispersed toward the elevators, Evelyn came out of the conference room last. The hallway was empty. She walked past Thomas’s cart and for a moment he thought she was going to keep moving, but she stopped a few feet away and stood with her back to the window. "How long have you been carrying that?" she asked. "Since the third week," Thomas said. "Dr. Reeves walked me through the protocol."
Evelyn looked at him with the same expression he'd seen on her the night they first spoke, that quality of assessment, of calculating distance. But there was something slightly different in it now. "You didn’t ask me first," she said. "No," Thomas said. "There wasn’t a good time to ask." She was quiet for a moment, looking out the window at the city below them. Then she said without quite looking at him, "How long were you in the military?"
"Eight years," Thomas said. "Marines?" Evelyn turned back from the window. "I assumed you would be gone by now," she said. "Most people when they’re given an arrangement that could become inconvenient, find a way to make it inconvenient on their own timeline." Thomas looked at her steadily. "I’ve been in worse situations than this one," he said. "This one has a clear set of rules and a specific objective. That’s not something I walk away from."
Something in Evelyn’s expression shifted, not softening exactly, but reorganizing around something she hadn't expected. She didn’t respond to that directly. Instead, she said, "Marcus Hale has been asking questions about staffing on the executive floors. He'll have noticed you by now."
She said it without alarm, which Thomas understood to mean she had already considered it and had a plan. "Be more deliberate about your positioning when he’s in the building. I’ll let you know his schedule." Thomas nodded. "Ron Bridges has also noticed," he said. "Nothing critical, but he is watching the pattern." "I will have something added to the audit documentation," Evelyn said. "It will hold."