He thought about anything other than the fact that it was now well past eleven and he had been sitting in this chair for nearly two hours and no one had called his name. Then the front doors opened and a man walked in. He was well dressed in the way that didn’t require effort — dark jacket, no tie, the kind of easy put-together that came from not having to think about it.
He walked to Cindy’s desk without hesitating, the way people walked to desks when they’d never once been unsure of their welcome. Cindy looked up and smiled. The full version. The one she hadn’t used on Elias all morning. “Good morning. Could I get your name?” “Whitmore,” the man said. “Daniel Whitmore.”