“Are you going to release a statement?”

“Not until I talk to the lawyer, so let’s get with him immediately.”

“We’d better be prepared to be assaulted by press. The first vans are probably on the way here.”

I closed my eyes, rubbed them with my thumb and forefinger. “Get all the off-shift security in here for overtime and warn the whole department that there will probably be a fleet of vans out there soon. I’ll need to meet with department heads. No one is allowed out of the building until we instruct them on how to handle press questions.”

“Yeah, I’ll set that up. Be prepared for a long-ass day today.”

I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach. “Tell me everything you can about this kid—and about the incident.”

And he did. And after he left, I sat back and stared out that window for what seemed an endless quarter of an hour before all hell broke loose.

Chapter Three

For the next seventy-two hours I slept very little, spent most of the time at the office and was on the phone, it seemed, for about three hours out of every four. Emilia was wonderful, brought me stuff from home, meals which we ate together in the lunchroom, and she never admonished me once about staying overnight at the office.

I was on a conference call with our insurance guys days later when Emilia brought me dinner, specially prepared and packed by my chef. I paid little attention as I paced the floor of the office. The insurance reps in New York dictated to me what I needed to do in order to comply with the terms of their coverage for the liability insurance. They had me by the short hairs and they knew it and I was going to have to jump through hoops. I fought the urge to lose my temper.

“Assholes,” I breathed when I set the phone down.

I turned to her. She had completely cleared the round table in the sitting area of my office, set it with chairs and covered it with a tablecloth and now was laying out two covered plates that had been kept in insulated containers. The smell of food immediately made me salivate and I realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast despite her repeated texts—most of which I hadn’t even been able to answer—nagging me to grab lunch.

“Hmm. Your best buddies are staying up late in New York City just to torment you. It’s like what, 9 p.m. there?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and watched her pour ice water into drinking glasses. “Thanks for bringing this. Not sure how much time I’m going to have to actually eat it. I have to write up a statement tonight and send it off to legal and the publicity people for approval. And after that—”

She walked up to me, grasped my upper arm with both of her hands and tugged me toward the table. “Then eat, instead of wasting time telling me everything you have to do instead of eating. I even brought a little wine if you want. And I baked chocolate chip cookies myself. Chef tried not to laugh at me when I burned the first batch. But the rest turned out pretty awesome.”

I sat down and immediately dug in, cutting off a piece of steak gorgonzola and gnawing on it. I forced myself to chew so I wouldn’t swallow too large a chunk. It had been very thoughtful of Chef to prepare one of my favorite comfort meals. I suspected that Emilia had suggested it.

I shook my head. “No wine. Still got hours of work left.”

She fixed me with a long, concerned look. “You okay?”

I swallowed my next bite and nodded. “Before you say anything about the hours—”

“I wasn’t going to say a thing about the hours. I know this situation is going to suck up your time whether you want it to or not.”

I blew out a breath. “Thanks for understanding.”

“Of course, you know what this means, don’t you? You’ll need to unplug this weekend.”

“Oh, will I?”

She nodded. “No cell phone. No laptop. Okay?”

I grimaced. “I can’t make any promises.” Who knew what these asshole insurance people would want next from me?

“There’s that new movie about the astronauts at the space station. We could go see—”

My desk phone beeped and Maggie’s voice came over the intercom. “Adam, you have a call from Mr. Macy.”

I shot up out of my seat, wiping my mouth and throwing down my napkin. Emilia sat back, clearly disappointed. I turned back to her as I picked up the phone. “It’s my lawyer. I can’t blow him off.”

“Hey, Joe,” I said into the phone. And spent the next half hour talking to him while Emilia sat on the desk in front of me, having cut my steak into the tiniest bites imaginable. She fed it to me in pieces every time I stopped talking. And while I did talk, she held the fork, poised, inches from my mouth as if getting ready to launch an assault.