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have been able to see Lou. But there he stood staring up, his chin to the air, with a hand across his forehead to block out the light, in almost a kind of salute. He was probably looking at a reflection of something, Lou reasoned; a bird perhaps had swooped by and caught his eye. That’s right, a reflection was all it could be. But so intent was Gabe’s gaze, which reached up the full thirteen floors to Lou’s office window and all the way into Lou’s eyes, that it made Lou wonder. Before he knew it he lifted up his hand, smiled tightly, and gave a small salute to the man below. But before he could wait for a reaction, he wheeled his chair away from the window and spun around, his pulse rate quickening as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
    The phone rang. It was Alison, and she didn’t sound happy.
    “Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I just want to remind you that I qualified from UCD with a business degree.”
    “Congratulations,” Lou said.
    She cleared her throat. “Here you go. Alfred wears size eight brown loafers. Apparently he’s got ten pairs ofthe same shoes and he wears them every day, so I don’t think the idea of another pair as a Christmas gift would go down too well.” She took a breath. “As for the shoes with the red soles, Melissa bought a new pair and wore them last week, but they cut into her ankle so she went to return them, but the shop wouldn’t take them back because it was obvious she’d worn them because the red sole had begun to wear off.”
    “Who’s Melissa?”
    “Mr. Patterson’s secretary.”
    “I’ll need you to find out from her who she left work with every day last week.”
    “No way, that’s not in my job description!”
    “You can leave work early if you find out for me.”
    “Okay.”
    “Thank you for cracking under such pressure.”
    “No problem, it means I can get started on my Christmas shopping.”
    “Don’t forget my list.”
    So Gabe had been right about the shoes and wasn’t a lunatic, as Lou had secretly suspected. He remembered Gabe asking if Lou needed an observant eye around the building, and right then and there he rethought his earlier decision.
    “And can you get me Harry from the mailroom on the phone. I’m going to cure his little short-staffing problem. Then take my spare shirt, tie, and trousers downstairs to the guy sitting at the entrance. Take him to the men’s room first, make sure he’s tidied up, andthen show him down to the mailroom. Harry will be expecting him. His name is Gabe.”
    “What?”
    “Gabe. It’s short for Gabriel. But call him Gabe.”
    “No, I meant—”
    “Just do it. Oh, and Alison?”
    “What?”
    “I really enjoyed our kiss last week, and I look forward to screwing your brains out in the future.”
    He heard a light laugh slip from her throat before the phone went dead.
    He’d done it again. While in the process of telling the truth, he told a total and utter lie. Almost an admirable quality, really. And through helping Gabe, Lou was also helping himself; a good deed was indeed a triumph for the soul. But Lou also knew that somewhere beneath his plotting and soul saving there lay another plot, a saving of a very different kind. That of his own skin. And even deeper down in this onion man’s complexities, he knew that this outreach was prompted by fear. Not just by the very fear that—had all reason and luck failed him—Lou could so easily be in Gabe’s position at this very moment. In a layer so deeply buried from the surface, there lay the fear of a reported crack—a blip in the fine engineering of Lou’s career. As much as he wanted to ignore it, it niggled. The fear was there; it was there all the time, but it was merely disguised as something else for others to see.
    Just like the thirteenth floor.

C HAPTER 6
A Deal Sealed
    W HEN L OU’S MEETING WITH M R . Brennan—about the thankfully not rare but still problematic slugs on the development site in