remaining between the painted lines, Gina pulls into the space next to the BMW and crinkles her nose as the front of her Mercedes just misses her husband’s back bumper.
She would have liked to hit his precious car, but she can’t afford to indulge a childish whim. She needs to get in and out of the building with as little fuss as possible.
Gina kills the engine, then pulls her keys from the ignition. Pistol in the right pocket, keys in the left. She steps out of the car, gives Sonny’s unblemished bumper a regretful smile and strides toward the elevators on legs that tremble despite the dead calm in her heart.
The designers of the Lark Tower have done their part to ease Tampa’s traffic congestion by reserving the six lowest floors for parking. On an ordinary day all six levels would be filled by tenants and visitors, but most of the spaces are vacant now.
The garage is heavy with after-hours quiet, broken only by the echo of Gina’s footsteps and the tick of her cooling engine. She glances over her shoulder to be sure she’s alone, but no one has driven in or out since her arrival. Most everyone, apparently, has gone home.
Sonny should have gone home, too. If he hadn’t been playing around with his girlfriend last night, he wouldn’t need to come to the office this morning.
Twelve elevators at the center of the building provide access to the Lark Tower’s thirty-six floors. Six of the elevators are express, stopping only at levels one through seven and office levels twenty-five through thirty-six. A second bank of six elevators serves the first through twenty-fifth floors. A special plaque announces the eighth-floor location of the renowned Pierpoint Restaurant, home to one of Tampa’s finest chefs.
Since Sonny’s office is on the uppermost level, Gina steps into the air-conditioned space at the express landing and presses the call button. While she waits, she checks her reflection in the polished bronze doors. In order to surprise her cheating husband, she needs one more thing.
With Florida’s attorney general occupying five and a half floors of office space at the top of the building, the Lark Tower’s uppermost levels aren’t accessible to the public. Every visitor has to obtain an access card before the elevator will rise to the thirty-sixth floor, and Sonny believes the extra layer of security lends the offices of Rossman Life and Liability a certain cachet.
A bell dings to signal an elevator’s arrival. Gina steps into the car, then turns and presses the button for the lowest level. The polished doors slide together, then the car lowers her to the marble-tiled lobby.
Gina moves into the open area and strides toward the security station, where a tubby older man in a blue uniform blinks at her approach. She doesn’t recognize him, nor, apparently, does he know her. Not surprising, since she hasn’t visited Sonny’s office in months.
Behind a granite-topped counter, the guard slides off his stool. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he calls, his voice ringing against the marble walls, “but the building is closed. We’re under an evacuation order.”
Something in his appearance—perhaps the stun gun attached to his belt—sends a wave of reality crashing over her, as hard as the terrazzo beneath her loafers. She is about to do something that cannot be undone. She has planned a heinous act, a deed that would cause her children to gasp in revulsion if they knew what she had in mind.
Can she really go through with this?
How easy it would be to smile at the security guard, profess ignorance of the evacuation and take the elevator back to the parking garage. She could drive home to her sleeping children. They would never know what she’d planned or how far she’d gone—
But they need not know anything. She won’t tell them about this, or the bankbook, or the forty-three-thousand-dollar bracelet Sonny gave to his Don CeSar date. She’ll keep everything from them, just as Sonny has kept secrets
Patrick Lewis, Christopher Denise