The chauffeur got into the driver's seat, and the snap of his car door closing brought me back to myself. With a sudden pinch of guilt at holding him up, I buckled hurriedly.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Mr. Thorne is here in Baltimore today," he said, shifting into drive. "The office is not far."
The leather molded itself to every muscle, and I surrendered to its embrace, letting exhaustion settle over me like a thick blanket. It was easiest to sink into the warmth and let my fears go to sleep as the buildings passed by the tinted windows in a blur.
I roused myself from my daze as we passed the Inner Harbor. The car swung up one of the side streets, and in a moment, the driver pulled up to the curb and sprang out, swinging open my door before I had time to do more than unbuckle and gather my jacket.
"Top floor, Ms. Shaw," he said, giving me a fractional bow.
A bow? Really?
"Thank you," I managed awkwardly.
The old building towered from the sidewalk in front of me, half columns of white marble flanking the high arched windows before defaulting to red brick above. The great stone letters on the frieze were darkened with the grime of a century: FIRST BANK OF BALTIMORE. But there had been no such bank in my lifetime, and there was no indication of what the building was used for now.
It didn't look much like a clinic or a biotech company, but it had to be one of them. What else could help me now?
I climbed the six steps up to the brass double doors, taking note of the address in gold letters on the glass of the transom above. Linen shades shrouded the glass. The right door yielded reluctantly to my pull, and I stepped inside.
I found myself in a marble lobby, accented with brass pots and burnished mahogany. Each of the great windows had a shade drawn over it, shutting out the street, cutting the building off from the world. Elegant people dressed in sharp suits strode across the room and spoke in low, urgent tones in corners among the groves of potted ficus. None of them spared me a glance. Among pencil skirts and neat ties, my sweater and jeans were definitely out of place.
I'd had an internship with the corporate arm of an insurance company the summer before, and it had been nothing like this. This was the kind of scene that you saw in a movie-not a real office but the Hollywood image of one, where everyone was just a little too attractive, just a little too put together, and everything was just a little too polished.