"Yes, sir," he said. "I think so. I saw his face from the side when he was pouring the drops, and I saw it from the front for about two seconds when he turned around. He didn't see me because I was standing behind one of the catering carts. But I saw him. He had a small mark on the side of his jaw near his ear, like a scar, but not deep—more like a line. And his eyebrows were dark, but his hair had some gray in it, mostly near the temples. And he was wearing a watch that wasn't like the ones the catering staff wear. It was thicker. It had a black face."
Edward nodded slowly. He picked up a pen and wrote three lines on a small notepad. He did not show the notepad to the boy. He simply wrote:
Gray suit. Right wristwatch, black face. Scar near jaw. Hair graying at temples. Catering hallway, 38th floor.
He looked at the boy again. "Marcus, do you know what I do for a living?"
"My mom says you own buildings."
"That is part of it. I also own a company that owns other companies—about seventeen of them. They make different things. Some make medicine. Some make machines. Some build houses. And inside all of those companies, there are people who like me and people who do not like me. There are people who would be glad if I lived a long time, and there are people who would be glad if I did not." He paused. "I am telling you this because I want you to understand that what you saw this morning is probably not random. The man in the hallway did not choose me by accident. Someone sent him."
The boy's eyes did not widen the way Edward had expected. They simply became very quiet.
"I thought so," Marcus said softly.
There was a soft sound at the door: two knocks, a pause, one more knock. Edward stood and crossed the carpet quickly, unlocked the door, and stepped back. Howard Brennan came into the room without speaking, closed the door behind him, and locked it himself.
He was a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties with close-cropped silver hair and the kind of calm in his face that did not change whether he was ordering breakfast or pulling a man out of a burning car. He had done both in the past year.
His eyes went first to Edward, then to the cup on the marble table, then to the boy on the sofa. He did not ask. He simply nodded once at the boy the way a soldier might nod at another soldier across a field, and then he looked at Edward and waited.
Edward told him. He told him in three minutes what had happened in the past twenty. Howard listened without writing anything down.
When Edward finished, Howard walked to the marble table, knelt beside it, and looked at the cup from three different angles without touching it. Then he stood and took a small evidence bag from the inside pocket of his jacket. He always carried two. Edward had teased him about it once, and Howard had said, "A man who carries evidence bags is a man who is ready to remember things correctly."
"I need the cup intact," Howard said quietly. "I need it sealed and on its way to a lab within the hour. I have a lab. It is not in this building. The results will come back by tonight, possibly sooner. Until then, no one on this floor learns that anything happened. No one in this building. Do you understand me, Edward?"
"Yes."
"The boy stays with me." Howard looked at Marcus. He spoke gently, the way he spoke to his own granddaughters. "Son, your mother is downstairs on the 38th floor?"
"Yes, sir."
"What is her name?"
"Doreen. Doreen Hill."
"Thank you. I'm going to send someone quietly to let her know that you are safe and that you are with Mr. Whitmore. She is not going to be told why. She's going to be told only that you are helping him with something and that you will be back with her this afternoon. Is that all right?"
The boy nodded.
Howard turned back to Edward. "I'm going to walk the catering hallway myself in about twelve minutes. I want it to look ordinary. I want the cameras pulled before I get there so that whoever is watching the feed does not see me looking too carefully at the wrong cart. Give me thirty minutes for the first pass, then we will talk about what to do next."
"Howard."
"Yes."
"Find the man with the scar."