Chapter 10

Two things happened to Alex in the summer before her senior year at Boston College. Rose Porter sold her second and third books to the same publisher for twice the money for each book as Alex got for the first one. Alex was thrilled with the deal. The reviews on her first book had been excellent, sales better than projected, and the publisher was rushing to publish Darkness, her second book, in time for Christmas that year. And the third one, Hear No Evil, would be published the following summer. Rose hadn’t offered them her recently finished fourth book, since Alex and Bert wanted to polish it a little more. And Rose wanted to see how the next one did. If it was as successful as she hoped, she was going to ask for a lot more money on the next contract.

And the second thing that happened that summer was that totally by accident, through the creative writing professor who had raised her grade, she got a summer job in New York working for a major publisher for two months.

The professor called her and asked if she’d be interested, and Alex wanted the job. It was a different publisher than her own, and she wanted to learn more about the business. She discussed it with Mother MaryMeg that night, who encouraged her to do it, and she accepted the next day. It was an internship so the pay was minimal, but she had the money from her book deal, and still more than enough of what her father had left her, and she found a summer sublet in the East Village, a walk-up, to share with four other girls, and it was dirt cheap. It was going to be an exciting summer for her. She was between books at the moment, so she didn’t feel guilty taking the time away from her writing. Bert growled about it, and thought she should work on the outline for the next book, but finally agreed that it was a good idea, and it would be fun for her.

She left for New York on June 28 to settle into the apartment, and on July 1, she appeared at Weldon and Small in a navy blue suit she had bought for work, and high heels, with her straight dark hair pulled back, and she felt very grown up. She was assigned to work for Penelope Robertson, who was the senior editor of their very lucrative romance department. She had wild curly red hair, swore like a sailor, drank coffee all day, which Alex had to bring her at a dead run, and smoked in her office although it was forbidden. The tension around her was palpable, everything was an emergency and a crisis, and Alex felt like she was working in a war zone, but she loved it. Her boss had a good sense of humor and treated Alex like she knew what she was doing, which she didn’t. She didn’t have a clue, but it made her feel competent and important that her boss trusted her to figure things out and threw her into the deep end of the pool, instead of making her just pour her coffee. And there was a flock of other interns there that summer, from a variety of schools all over the country. Alex liked her roommates, three of whom were students at NYU, and one, Pascale, was an exchange student from Paris. They all had summer jobs, and were in and out with their various friends during the evening.

Alex loved being in New York and learning more about publishing, and a completely different kind of book than she wrote. She had lunch with Rose Porter to talk about her recent book sale and the fan base she was building with her first book and its terrific reviews.

“You know, sooner or later, your publisher is going to want to meet you, Alex. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to keep them in the dark about you forever. I want to take you to the next level with your next contract, and for bigger money, they’re going to want to see who they’re buying. They tried to insist this time, and I wouldn’t let them. But I doubt we can refuse again,” Rose warned her. And Alex liked her editor, Amanda Smith, a lot, via email. Rose had taken her to lunch at Le Bernardin, which made Alex feel very important. It was one of the best restaurants in New York.

“Why do they have to see me? They have the books, they don’t need to see me too.” She was living in a bubble, and she liked it.

“There’s more to it than that. They’re starting to invest real money in you,” decidedly so with the last contract, “and I want them to invest more. They realize now that there’s a future here. It’s natural that they want to meet you.”

“I don’t know.” It was working for her and she didn’t want it to change. More and more, she realized how important it was for her readers, the public, and even her publishers to believe she was a man. And if she told the truth now about being a woman, her readers would feel betrayed. She was gathering momentum and an ever stronger readership, and she didn’t want to jeopardize that now, or ever. And she wanted the next two books to be even bigger successes than Blue Steel.

“Your publishers could get seriously pissed about it one day if you refuse to meet them. And there’s no way you can do publicity for the books if we’re hiding the fact that you’re a woman. And one day, you may need that to boost sales.”

“We’ll have to find another way to do it. Alexander Green writes the books, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but we may not be able to hold your publishers at bay forever. You’re on to a great thing here, with your own style and a powerful voice. It would come as a huge shock to everyone to discover that you’re a woman.” Not only that, she didn’t say, but a very young girl. “So how is New York treating you?” she asked with a smile. Alex looked adorable in her little navy suit, crisp white shirt, and long straight hair.

“I love it here.” She beamed at her. “It’s so exciting.”

“Yes, it is.” Rose smiled at her, feeling like her grandmother or a wise old aunt as much as her agent. She really liked Alex. She was a profoundly decent young girl, with good values, and her success wasn’t turning her head. She was very modest about her abilities, and Rose had suspected for a while that she would be enormously successful one day. She was willing to work hard, was amenable to editing, and had tremendous skill and dedication. The potential was all there.

“Would you ever want to live here?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said thoughtfully. “I don’t know if it’s too much for me. I love Boston, and living at the convent.” She had never expected it to be a long-term solution, but she had been there for almost seven years by then, it had become home to her, and the nuns like a houseful of mothers. “I haven’t figured out what I want to do when I graduate, except write, of course.”

“Eventually you’ll want more freedom and independence than you have at the convent.”

Alex nodded, but also knew she wasn’t ready for it yet. She felt safe at St. Dominic’s, although staying in the apartment in New York was an exciting adventure. “You should consider moving to New York after graduation.” It was still a year away and she had time to think about it.

“Maybe I’d be lonely here,” she said honestly.

“Not once you make friends, and you can always go home to Boston for the weekend.”

Alex had met several young men at the publishing house who had asked her out. There were boys in the internship program too, and her roommates had introduced her to their friends. She went out mostly in groups, with no official dates. The others were all looking for a summer romance, but Alex wasn’t. All she could think about were ideas for her next book. She talked to Rose about some of them, over dessert, and her agent liked them all, and thought she was heading in an interesting direction. She wanted to continue the character of the detective from her last book into the next one. She wasn’t ready to start on it yet, but she had made copious notes to show Bert when she got back to Boston. He was taking the summer off, and had called her once to say he missed her, and she told him she missed him too.

Alex was invited to New England for a weekend by some of her new friends, the Berkshires by one of her roommates, and to Greenwich, Connecticut, by a girl she met at work who went to Princeton. And she was invited by several people to go to the Hamptons, where young people she met had rented houses to share with a dozen friends, and took turns going out for weekends. She went away every week. She did no writing, just made notes for the next book.

And at the end of August, her boss was sorry to see her leave.

“You’ve been great, Alex,” she said as she hugged her. “Stay in touch. If you’re interested, I’m sure we can find you a spot for next year, after graduation,” and she would strongly recommend it. Alex had been an ideal intern. Her employer had no idea that she was a writer. “You’ll make a great assistant,” she said, and Alex thanked her. She had written to the professor who had suggested her for the internship program, and told her how much fun it had been, and how much she’d enjoyed it, and how grateful she was for the opportunity.

She was sad to see her time in New York end. She hitched a ride with Jack, a boy who was going back to BU and dated one of her roommates. They chatted all the way back. He’d been in the art department for two months, and was a fine-arts student. He wanted to paint portraits one day, but figured he’d have to get a job in advertising first to support himself. He said he had already sent his CV and portfolio to several large ad agencies in New York and Boston. He was hoping to graduate early, in January.

“What about you?” Jack asked her. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said vaguely. “I want to write.”

“Maybe you should look into advertising too. There are some great agencies in Boston. You could be a copywriter.” It was the last thing she wanted to do, and she was planning to start her next book as soon as she got back.

“I really liked my boss,” she told him, as they drove north to Boston and had plenty of time to talk. “She was pretty crazy, but nice to work for. She’s an editor of romance novels.”

“My mom and my grandmother love them.” He smiled at her. “They eat them up.”

“My dad and I used to read detective stories,” Alex said wistfully, thinking of him. She still missed him, particularly at special times.

“Have you read that new guy, Andrew Green or something? I forget what he wrote, but I hear he’s pretty good. My dad gave me a copy.”

“Alexander Green,” she corrected him. “Did you read it?” she asked, suddenly paying closer attention to him. It was a chance to ask someone her age what he liked about it or didn’t. Her very own market research, one to one.

“No, I didn’t have time all summer. They kept me pretty busy,” and he had met a girl he really liked, and spent all his nights with her. He had been dating Pascale, the French girl Alex roomed with, which was how Alex had met him, and he wanted to go to Paris to visit her over Christmas, if he could afford it. Maybe with his graduation money from his parents. Alex was disappointed he hadn’t had time to read her book so he couldn’t give her any feedback.

When they got to Boston, she directed him to St. Dominic’s, where he had promised to drop her off. He started to be impressed by the size of her house, and then realized it was a convent from the name over the door, and he looked shocked.

“Are you studying to be a nun?” She shook her head and smiled in answer.

“No, my dad died when I was fourteen, my mother died five years before that, so they let me live here. And now they’re my family.” He was intrigued by what she said and how at ease she seemed about it.

“Is it like an orphanage?” He felt sorry for her.

“No, just a convent where the nuns live. They’ve been really good to me for all this time.” It sounded weird to him, but she was a terrific girl, and he helped her carry her bags up the stairs and set them down in the main hall. Three of the nuns rushed over to welcome her home as soon as they saw her. Alex introduced Jack to them, and he disappeared a minute later. He liked her, and would have wanted to see her again if he hadn’t met Pascale in New York and fallen head over heels in love with her. But he wanted to be faithful to her now, and was hoping to get to Paris in the next few months.

The nuns were thrilled to have Alex home, and everyone stopped to talk with her during dinner that night. They wanted to know all about the job, the people she had met, her roommates, and if she liked New York and wanted to move there. She told them she didn’t want to go anywhere and was happy to be home, but it was easy to see she’d had a great summer, and had matured a lot. Mother MaryMeg thought it had done her good to get away from them for a while. Alex always returned from the dorm at Boston College like a homing pigeon, and they loved having her there with them, but one day she would need her own life, away from the nuns, and MaryMeg knew that day was coming. Alex didn’t want to think about it, nor did the sisters who loved her. Sister Tommy said over and over she had become her seventh child.

Alex met with Bert the first Saturday she was back in Boston. She showed him all the notes for her next book, and told him the direction she wanted to go in. He suggested a few changes, but not many, and she explained that she wanted it to be deeper, more psychological, and even more complicated than her previous books. The plot she had outlined so far was ambitious, but Bert thought she could handle it. He was happy to see her, the summer had seemed endless without her. He missed their conversations and Saturday lunches where he drank too much wine after they worked, and she scolded him about it. She knew him well enough now to do so and worried about him.

She started school two days later and was busy going to all her classes, meeting the professors, and organizing her work and assignments. She didn’t get a chance to work on the book until two weeks later, but she had set up a schedule that would allow her to do her schoolwork and write by staying up late and getting up early. It involved very little sleep, but she thought it was worth it. And it left no time whatsoever for a social life. She explained her schedule to Bert the next time they met, and he was concerned.

“Do you think that’s sensible? You’re only young once, you know. You need to leave some time for fun in there. This is your last year of college and your last chance to be a kid and kick up your heels and get away with it. You don’t have to be in such a hurry to get the book done.” It was her fifth book, a major accomplishment.

“But I want to,” she said seriously. The writing was what she loved most, and the work for school was her duty. Writing her book was all the fun she needed. She was singularly devoted with a burning desire to put words on the page and create a world of her own making.

“What if you meet a cute boy this year? Your whole schedule will go to hell in a handbasket,” he teased her.

“No, it won’t,” she said firmly, with a will of iron in her eyes. He had seen it before and been impressed by it. She knew what she wanted, and was willing to pay the price. Most people weren’t. Only real writers were willing to sacrifice everything for it, and he had met only a few of those in his lifetime. Alex was the most determined writer he had ever met. “The writing comes first, then school, and boys after. And too bad if they don’t understand that. And I haven’t met any cute boys anyway.” She still felt cheated by her experience with Scott, the teaching assistant who had been so jealous of her the year before. She didn’t want to run into another guy like him, although she’d be wiser now, and more alert to passive-aggressive behavior and manipulations. He had been her baptism by fire into the world of jealous male writers. And if he’d known about the book she’d published, he would have been infinitely worse. Bert was sure of that, and had warned her of it. But Alex had no intention of telling anyone about the books she wrote under the name of Alexander Green. She was determined that no one except her agent, Bert, and the nuns would ever know about them. They were her deep secret, the hidden life that fulfilled her.

Despite Bert’s misgivings, Alex managed her Herculean schedule for all of the first semester, and was getting great grades and making good headway on the book, even faster than the last one. Bert kept telling her not to rush it and to take her time, but she had a writing style that wanted to lunge forward with the story and was hard to put the reins on. She pulled the reader along with her at breakneck pace, as she whipped them through the story and surprised and confused them again and again. Her fans and the critics loved it.

She had just turned in her last paper before Christmas break when her second book, Darkness, came out, just in time for holiday sales, which Alex and her publisher hoped would help the book. She was packing some things to take to the convent with her when someone came to tell her that she had a call on the phone in the lobby of the dorm, and she rushed down a flight of stairs to get it. It was Rose calling from New York and she sounded breathless.

“I have a Christmas gift for you, Alex. Darkness is on the Times list a week from Sunday.” She knew because the list was released to the trade ten days early. “Number ten, but you’re on it. Merry Christmas!”

Alex’s face was wreathed in smiles as she tried to contain herself and could barely keep from screaming. At times of great excitement or elation, she turned into a kid again, and she could hardly wait to tell the nuns.

“Something important seems to be happening with this one,” Rose reported to her, “and I don’t think it’s just due to Christmas sales. The critics are all crazy about it. Publishers Weekly called it the best new read of the decade, and your publisher says sales are going through the roof.”

Alex was beaming.

“Let’s see where it goes after this, although you’ve got some stiff competition on the list. Everyone wants their new book out this time of year for holiday sales.” Every big bestselling fiction writer was on it.

She told the nuns when she went home the next day, and word of her book being on the New York Times bestseller list spread through the convent like a tidal wave. Several of them had already read it when she gave them advance copies, and the nuns who liked crime thrillers had loved it. The others just read it because she wrote it, and they were so proud of her and wanted to support her.

The following week when Rose called her at the convent, the book had climbed from number ten to number four on the list. And her final Christmas gift after that was one more notch to number three, where it sat for two weeks, into January. The book had been the surprise hit of the season, despite its gory subject, and the fact that mostly men would read it. She didn’t have a heavy female readership, and no man would buy it for a woman for Christmas, with rare exceptions. They bought it for themselves, or the women in their lives bought it for them.

Bert had called her immediately to congratulate her, and Amanda, her editor at the publisher, had sent her emails every week, announcing her ranking on the list, and telling her how thrilled they were.

“Your publisher is very excited about this, Alex,” Rose told her on the phone. “This is a very important step in your career.” At twenty-one. It was hard to believe, and her publisher had no idea how young she was, since all their dealings with her, even contractually, went through her agent. She was a mystery to them, except for the bio that she and Rose had created for the mythical Alexander Green.

It was difficult for Alex to absorb or even remotely understand what this could mean for her in the future. More money than the last deal probably, hopefully more readers, and the bestseller list again. But she couldn’t see beyond that, and didn’t need to. It meant she could support herself by writing, for now anyway, if people didn’t get tired of her books. She didn’t want to count on this yet, and was afraid the bubble would burst one day, and it might. It took years to develop a John le Carré, Stephen King, Georges Simenon, Frederick Forsyth, or an Agatha Christie. She wasn’t there yet and didn’t expect to be, maybe ever. But it felt fabulous knowing that her book had done so well, and there had been a steady build from the last one. She walked into local bookstores just for the pleasure of seeing her books stacked high on the bestseller table. She grinned from ear to ear each time she saw it, and the nuns took pictures at every bookstore where they went.

Despite the astonishing success of her book, she went back to school after Christmas vacation, for her last semester at Boston College. She had only a few easy classes left to take for graduation. She’d done all the hard ones much earlier and had gotten the required courses out of the way.

She finished her fifth novel during spring break, got Bert’s blessing on it, and sent it to Rose, expecting a warm reception for it. A week later, her agent called her and sounded worried.

“The moment of truth has come, Alex. We want a new contract for your last two books. And we want a much bigger one this time, after the success of Darkness.” She still had another book, her third one, due out in the summer. But they had two more complete now to sell. “They just told me they won’t give you a contract now until they meet you. I’ve been arguing with them about it for three days.”

“Tell them I’m in Europe and I broke both my legs.” She was only half teasing, but Rose wasn’t.

“They say they don’t care how long they have to wait. They want to meet the phenomenon who is creating these books. Maybe they want to be sure it’s just one person, and not a committee of some kind, which is happening more and more these days, where a writer does the outline but has half a dozen minions to write it for him. Whatever the reason, they say no new contract until they meet you. They won’t even let me deliver the last two books to them until they do.”

“That’s ridiculous. After the success of the last one, they should be willing to buy the new ones even if I were a gnome with three heads.”

“That’s beside the point,” Rose insisted. “They want to meet you, and they’re not going to relent until they do. They’re just as stubborn as you are,” she said, sounding tense. Alex’s future was on the line here, even if she didn’t understand that. She could be a willful child at times.

“They could blow everything if they let the cat out of the bag that I’m a woman,” Alex said, genuinely afraid of that. “It could really make people mad now. They might not even believe I wrote them,” more because of her age than her sex.

“We could have some ironclad confidentiality agreement drawn up by an attorney, giving you a huge amount of damages if they talk. That’s not unheard-of. They have to have a stake in it too, and we could put some real teeth in it. But you’re not going to get out of meeting them. You’re a big investment for them now, and in the future.”

Alex worried that Rose may have asked for too much money for them to buy the books and they were angry, but Rose assured her that wasn’t the problem.

“How much did you ask for?” Alex frowned as she asked her.

“I asked for the appropriate amount,” Rose said firmly, “based on sales of the last book, and the first one. This would have happened anyway. They were already antsy the last time. You can’t hide in the shadows forever.”

“I have to. I’m not a man, and they and everyone else think I am,” Alex told her with determination. “And I know you don’t believe me, but a lot of men won’t buy crime thrillers by women. My father said so.” Alex had believed him all her life. And this was no time to test the theory.

Rose didn’t want to risk the publisher’s ire by Alex refusing to meet them. And she and Rose wanted a new contract, which wasn’t going to happen unless they met. There was a real danger that if readers knew the Green books were written by a twenty-one-year-old college girl, and that she’d started writing them at nineteen, readers would feel duped. In a way, she was a genius, but Rose didn’t want to have to explain that to the public, nor to her publisher. “Let me talk to a lawyer and see what kind of agreement we can draw up, where they have real money at stake if they expose you. But they might not be willing to sign it,” Rose warned her.

It took a week for Rose’s attorney to come up with language they both liked. They were asking for a $10 million penalty for losses into the future if the publisher exposed her. Although she could start all over again under another pseudonym, her style was too distinct and recognizable now.

With Alex’s permission, Rose sent the confidentiality agreement over to the publisher, and waited to see what they would say. Alex was reassured and liked the fact that they would have $10 million at stake. She didn’t think that she was worth it, and couldn’t imagine making that kind of money, but it would certainly force them to be discreet, and be a strong incentive to keep her identity secret.

Much to Rose’s surprise, she got a call from the president of the publishing house two days later.

“Who the hell is this guy? The president of the United States? And why is his identity worth ten million dollars?”

“No, it’s not the president,” Rose said calmly. “But you could injure his career severely if you expose him.” She wasn’t going to let on that the author of the Green books, as they called them, was a woman until they signed the agreement.

“Is he a criminal of some kind? Will his identity embarrass us?” The president was obviously worried, and with good reason for that kind of money. Any kind of slip could cost them a fortune, but it would damage Alex’s career irreparably. You couldn’t unring a bell once word was out, nor gauge reader reaction beforehand.

“Not at all,” Rose reassured him. “It’s the author who is at risk here, not you.”

“Like hell, with ten million on the line if someone talks.” He sounded frustrated. “I’ll get back to you in a day or two. We need to think about it.”

“That’s fine,” she said smoothly. She reported back to Alex that night. All they could do now was wait and see if the publisher came around. She thought they would. There was too much money to be made in the future for them not to.

It took longer than she thought, and he called her back in a week. He didn’t sound happy about it, but an entire committee had agreed they had no choice. But they were very worried now about who the author was, if he was a gangster of some kind, or someone whose work they wouldn’t want to publish if they knew the truth, although Rose had assured him that was not the case. And she was still concerned about the meeting, even with the agreement. She wasn’t as afraid they’d talk afterward—in fact, she was certain they wouldn’t—but she had no idea how they’d feel to learn that their star writer, big moneymaker, and latest discovery was a girl barely out of her teens. They knew that Bert Kingsley was editing Green, which they liked, since they had worked with him many times before, and they knew how superb his editing was. But they had no idea who the author was, which was why they wanted to meet him before they bought another book, let alone two, at a stiff price. It wasn’t unreasonable, just very delicate and dicey.

The meeting was set for a Friday, in Rose’s office, at three o’clock. The president, CEO, and CFO were coming, the editor in chief, and Amanda Smith, Alex’s contact at her publishers, whom she corresponded with by email regularly and liked. Rose knew all the men coming to the meeting, but not Amanda. Each of them had signed a separate confidentiality agreement with the company, internally, accepting liability if they talked.

Alex took the train down from Boston on the appointed day. She wore a new navy blue dress and matching coat she had bought to wear to her graduation dinner in six weeks. And in case she was late and had to run through the station to make it in time, she had worn little flat black suede shoes, and she looked more than ever like a schoolgirl with her shining dark straight hair down her back, when she arrived at Rose’s office at two-thirty. She was very nervous and her eyes were huge, as she sat anxiously at the edge of a chair across from Rose’s desk.

“It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” Rose tried to calm her down. “They’re going to love you,” she believed it, after they got over the initial shock, which would be enormous. Alex did not look for a minute like someone who could write intricate, brilliant, violent books like the Green books. They were far too complex for anyone her age to write, and yet she did, even though she had spent the last six and a half years in a convent, and was still in college, though not for much longer, with graduation looming.

The group from the publishers arrived on the dot of three. They were quiet and expectant, and were shown to Rose’s corner office by an assistant who led the way. Rose had thought to put bottles of water with a bottle of scotch, one of bourbon, another of gin, and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on the coffee table in her office, surrounded by a leather couch and four chairs for important meetings. She thought they might need the booze after reality hit them, either to celebrate, or revive them. In either case, it would calm their nerves.

Instinctively Alex stood up and went to stand next to Rose before they walked in, as though she felt she needed protection from the publishing contingent. She had taken her coat off, which made her seem younger and slighter than ever. She looked like Snow White, or a dark-haired Alice in Wonderland, with terrified eyes when the four men and one woman walked into Rose’s office with stern faces. Rose was afraid that Alex might faint, as Rose shook hands with all of them and invited them to sit down, and thanked them for coming. They noticed the alcohol on the table and said nothing. All five of them were tense, and they paid no attention to Alex, who was nearly shrinking behind her agent, trying to disappear, and Rose suspected correctly that they had mistaken her for Rose’s assistant, although she didn’t look old enough to be that either, with her long hair and flat shoes, and no makeup.

“Where is he?” John Rawlings, the CEO, asked tersely. “Is he late or in another room, waiting to make an entrance?” He was fiercely unhappy with the confidentiality agreement that they’d signed, but the president had convinced him they had no choice.

“He’s here,” Rose said, drawing out the suspense a moment longer, and enjoying it, as the five representatives of the publishing house stared at her expectantly. “Right here, in fact.” Rose stepped aside quietly, leaving Alex exposed behind her, as Alex looked as though she would burst into tears at any moment. “I would like to introduce you to my client, Alexandra Winslow…otherwise known as Alexander Green.” There was dead silence in the room as the five publishing executives stared at her, some literally with their mouths open. Rose put a gentle hand on her shoulder, and Alex spoke in barely more than a whisper, staring at them too.

“Hello.”

“You’re not serious,” the CEO said, looking livid. “Is this some kind of joke? What kind of game are you playing?” he accused the agent, ignoring Alex again as Hugh Stern, the president, watched her closely. There was something very interesting in her eyes that was very different from her juvenile appearance. She had the razor-sharp, determined focus of a genius, and he could almost see her mind racing as she took them all in, even if she appeared terrified of them.

“This is not a joke,” Rose said quietly. “Alexandra came to me two and a half years ago, at nineteen, through a mutual connection. She came down from Boston where she lives, and left her manuscript Blue Steel with me. I was bowled over by it, just as you were. And the only condition she made was that no one ever know that she’s a woman, or just a girl then, really. She believes that men don’t buy crime thrillers written by women, and even if I disagree, Alex’s father told her that and she believed him. And I’m not at all sure that we would have had the success we did with the last book if the public knew it was written by a twenty-one-year-old girl. Alex has considerable experience with the genre, although she has diversified from it and created her own, which appears to be working. She’s been reading crime books, thrillers, and detective stories with her father since she was seven years old. And I can honestly say I think she’s read them all. I brought Bert Kingsley in to help her edit her work with her first book, and he’s been working with her ever since. You know his work. And Alex’s. What you didn’t know until today is her name, how old she is, and that she’s a young woman, and now you do. You can see why we have done everything possible to keep her identity secret, so as not to hurt the books, and scare off their male audience. And I suspect now you’ll be just as anxious as we are to do the same.”

Alex was starting to feel more comfortable, and the five publishers in their chairs looked like they were in shock, except for Amanda Smith, who was smiling broadly, and Alex shyly smiled back. Amanda Smith had a daughter the same age, and she thought everything she’d heard was great, and she loved the fact that the hardcore, hard-edged, hard-hitting, brilliant Alexander Green that everyone was in love with had turned out to be a young woman.

The CEO leaned back in his chair with his hand over his eyes and looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “Oh my God,” was all he could say, and the CFO was grim-faced. The editor in chief clearly didn’t know what to say. And then all of a sudden the president started to laugh. He looked at Rose and at Alex, and he patted the CEO on the arm.

“I have to say, ladies, you really had one on us. Never in a million years would I have ever guessed the Green books were written by a woman, and even less that they were the creation of a girl her age. Alex, you have a very, very twisted mind.” He said it as a compliment and she grinned.

“Thank you,” she said, taking it as it was meant. Rose sat down in one of the chairs then, and signaled to Alex to do the same.

“Now you understand why we don’t want anyone to talk. It would only hurt the books.”

“But how long can we keep it quiet?” The CEO took his hand off his eyes and chimed in, as Rose poured champagne and handed the glasses around. No one declined, and the CEO was looking at the bottle of Johnnie Walker longingly, so Rose poured him a stiff one on the rocks, which he grabbed like a life vest for a drowning man.

“Hopefully forever,” Rose said. “Or for many, many years, until the brand is secure. We’ve created a persona for the author of the books. He’s said to be a recluse. And given the nature of the books, it works, or has so far. No one is begging to see him, or complaining that they can’t. They’re devouring the books, and that’s all we care about, all of us. Much more important, Alex is an extremely hard worker, and very dedicated to the books. She hasn’t stopped working since I met her, and given her age, I think you’ll get a long run out of this, gentlemen.”

The president was smiling again. He thought the whole thing was incredible, and they all exploded into animated chatter at once, Amanda with Alex, as the others talked to each other and Rose. Amanda was congratulating Alex on her success. They all sat there for two hours talking about the risks and possibilities, the way to capitalize on the author’s mysterious image, and how great the books were, drinking heavily while they discussed it all. Rose had opened a third bottle of champagne by then, and the CEO had had four scotches on the rocks, and needed them all to get over the shock.

It was six o’clock when they left Rose’s office, and no one was entirely sober. Alex had had a glass of champagne, and Rose had had Johnnie Walker on the rocks herself with a splash of water, but only one. And the president gave Alex a hug on the way out. Before they left, Rose reminded them that you discovered talent where you found it, no matter how unlikely the source, and you never refused it or turned it away.

“Thank God you didn’t in this case,” the president said with feeling, endorsing what the agent said. He was in full agreement with her. And what a lucky find for all of them and the house Alex had been. “I’ll get the contract for the new books over to you on Monday,” he assured Rose as they left, and she nodded. Everything was moving forward again.

Rose collapsed in one of the chairs and looked up at Alex when they were alone again. “Well, Mr. Green, what do you think?” Rose was extremely pleased with how it had gone. It couldn’t have been better.

“I was scared to death,” Alex admitted, as she sipped what was left of her champagne. She hadn’t dared drink too much.

“I thought John Rawlings was going to have a heart attack in my office,” she said of the CEO and they both laughed. “I will never forget the look on their faces, but Hugh Stern is really a good guy.” He had been the first to come around when he started to laugh and broke the ice.

“I’m glad I met Amanda. She’s really nice and always so helpful,” Alex added.

“And a good editor, but not as good as Bert.”

They dissected the meeting for another half hour, and then Alex had to catch her train. She was going to take a cab to the station.

“I was very proud of you, Alex,” Rose said as she hugged her before she left.

“I thought you were wonderful,” Alex said softly. “Do you think they’ll keep the secret?”

“They don’t want to blow ten million dollars, so yes, they will keep the secret. They are now our partners in crime, to keep your identity safe.”

Alex left to go back to Boston then, and Rose helped herself to another drink. It had been tense for a moment at first, but it had all gone better than she hoped.

On Monday, Hugh Stern, the president, was true to his word. He sent back the signed contract for Alex’s next two books, and met Rose’s demand. She smiled when she saw it. They were in the big leagues now. Alex’s publisher had paid her two million dollars for her two new books, a million dollars each. The deal was done. And Alexander Green was safe, hopefully forever.