I’m pushing as hard as I can, racing through a sleek black lobby I’ve never been in before, my heels clattering over the tile floor as I whip my head from side to side like a mad woman for a sign of where I need to go.
“The studio level I can find Tom Coulter on, please?” I pant to the receptionist I find at a long desk set to one side of the enormous elevator bank.
“Is he expecting you?” She lifts a brow as her eyes drop over my crinkled blouse.
“He’s… No, but Reed Walker is. He’s got an interview with him. Please, it’s important I speak to him.”
I glance at my watch. It’s been thirty minutes since I spoke to Stuart on the phone.
I still have time. Please say I still have time.
If Reed is still with Tom, then I must have made it. Stuart said I had until Reed’s last interview before they were turning the video into the police.
The receptionist makes a call, looking up at me as I stumble to the side.
What the?I curse under my breath as my heel bends to the side, snapping itself off from the base of my shoe.
“That’s just great, it’s just…” I pick it up, wrapping my fingers around it. “Stupid useless—”
“You can go up. Twenty-third floor.” The receptionist places her phone down and looks at my hand.
“Oh, thank you… twenty-three… Um, do you have a trash can?”
I’m not sure why, maybe it’s polite professionalism on her half, and crazed scramble-headedness on mine, but she holds her palm out with a soft smile and I place my broken heel into it, swallowing as she wraps it in her fingers.
“Good luck,” she whispers.
My eyes widen as her smile grows. Is it that obvious I am a woman on the edge, racing to help the man she loves from doing something he can never take back?
“Thank you,” I call as I hobble toward the elevators with one regular and one broken shoe.
This is no use. I’m going to miss my chance if I take this long. I kick off both shoes, bending down to retrieve them.
“Go,” a friendly voice next to me says. “Whatever it is, it must be important. I’ve got them. You go.”
I catch the receptionist’s sparkling eyes as she bends to retrieve my shoes.
“It is. Important, I mean. He is super important, like the most important thing you can imagine, then add some more important on top.”
She laughs, and I stand and rush into a waiting elevator.
“Thank you…?” I shout to her.
“Mary.” She smiles as the doors close.
“Thank you, Mary,” I whisper as I sag back into the wall and watch the numbers rise on the display panel.
The elevator takes so long I’m sure I’ve missed at least one Christmas and my birthday by the time the doors slide open, excruciatingly slowly, on the twenty-third floor.
I race out barefoot through a main reception area. Trust this to be the day I wear pants to work. If I had a dress, then I would have stockings on my feet.
“Reed?” I whisper shout, running down a deserted corridor. There are double doors at the end, a large red light illuminated above them saying, Filming in progress.
Thank God.
I stop, resting one palm against the wall as I fill my lungs. If they’re still filming, it means I made it.
“Harley?” Stuart appears from behind another door. His brows shoot up his forehead as he looks at my crinkled shirt, then down at my bare feet.