It was barely dawn when I felt someone shaking the bed.
“Huh. What … Lee …?”
I blinked awake and saw Bettina Noor standing bedside, looking at me with open-eyed surprise. “Lee … left hours ago,” she said.
“Oh. Must’ve been dreaming,” I croaked. Judging by her expression, she was stunned by the probability that her supervisor and I had engaged in a relationship more intimate than professional.
She was studying the bed. With a groan, I sat up. At the sight of my naked chest, she looked away. “We have to go,” she said. She seemed disillusioned.
“Go where?” I asked. “What time is it?”
“Seven-forty-two.” She was heading for the door. “We have to drive to the WBC building. Hurry.”
“Why?” I asked, throwing back the covers and easing onto the carpet. My headache had returned, in high-def. “It’s Sunday, the day of rest. I don’t work today.”
“This is not about work,” Bettina said, her back to me. “Ms. Franchette just notified me that ransom instructions regarding your friends have been received. Your presence is requested, immediately, in the network conference room.”
Within fourteen minutes, I was sliding onto the passenger seat of her gray Camry hybrid, a considerably more comfortable vehicle than I’d imagined. And certainly more spick-and-span than Joe’s rolling dustball.
Not that I was in any condition to be thinking about cleanliness. I’d performed only the most basic hygienic necessities. I felt unclean, uncomfortable, emotionally perplexed, coffee-starved, and ill-prepared for whatever awaited us at the Glass Tower.
Bettina, on the other hand, looked fresh as a daisy, a disdainful, determined daisy, as she drove at upward of seventy mph through the slowly filling Manhattan streets. What usually took Joe twenty minutes on the best of mornings, she accomplished in twelve, roaring up to the underground parking gate, clicking it open with a wireless device, zooming in, and braking in an empty slot within ten yards of the elevator bank.
“Before we go up, I should convey a message from … Ms. Franchette,” Bettina told me. “She advises you to say nothing about your involvement in the events leading to the kidnap. If it should come out, do not deny it. But don’t mention it otherwise.”
“Did she happen to say why?”
“I believe it is because you are still under the shadow of Mr. Gallagher’s murder and she would prefer to minimize your participation in an incident involving his apartment,” she replied. “I am surprised you and she did not already discuss this last night. Presumably you were otherwise occupied.”
I was thinking of how to politely phrase the suggestion that whatever had or had not transpired the previous night was none of her goddamned business when she said, “I apologize. I have not the right to subject you and Ms. Franchette to my standards. Please forgive me.”
I wasn’t sure I forgave her for that backhanded apology, but I took the easy way out and nodded my forgiveness. “I guess we’d better get upstairs,” I said.
“My instructions are to wait here for you,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”