Locke waited in the line outside Bolton’s, wondering if Elle was watching from across the street. He hoped she wasn’t, that she’d found someone else to man the store so she could go to the beach, feel the sun on her face, the wind in her hair. Anything but be witness to what would probably be the beginning of the end for Matheson and Matheson.

Maybe the flowers he’d sent would help. He'd chosen them first thing in the morning, marveling at the peonies, still damp with dew. The pale pink petals had been like the silk of her skin, the voluptuousness of them reminding him of the way she’d opened her body to his all those years ago.

She’d been a virgin when they’d met, but there had been nothing virginal about her passion. She’d devoured him, had been a curious participant in anything and everything they experienced together. Making love to her had been spiritual, had changed something inside him. He still couldn’t quite quantify it, and he’d never found it again.

He wondered how many men she’d been with since him, then pushed the thought away when jealousy rose in him like a rogue wave. It was none of his business. He had no claim on her. It’s not like he’d been chaste for the past eight years. He'd had his share of women, although none of them had moved him like her.

And wasn’t that the truth? The reason he’d remained alone? Not his business, the excuse he always gave himself when he started to wonder if something was wrong with him, if his desire to be alone meant there was something deeply defective about him.

That had been a lie, and he felt a surge of anger at himself. He was not a perfect man. He made mistakes. Did stupid things.

But he didn’t lie.

Not to anyone else and not to himself after what he’d done to Elle.

And yet he had been lying. Had been telling himself he hadn’t found the right person — that his business made it too dangerous for him to be truly intimate with someone — when all along it was her.

The ghost of Elle Matheson.

Fuck.

The line started moving, and he shuffled forward with the crowd streaming into the store. Some of them branched off toward other sections, but a majority headed toward the bookstore at the back of the giant space. Red and blue balloons crowded the ceiling overhead, and he followed signs with arrows pointing toward BOLTON’S BOOK STORE GRAND OPENING!!!

The smell of coffee was heavy in the air as they came closer to the warm brown walls at the back, the area standing in stark contrast to the antiseptic white that decorated the rest of the store. A clerk handed out balloons to the children entering the area, and everyone crowded around a small dais in front of a ribbon strung across the store’s entrance. Movement caught his eye behind the ribbon, and he watched as the bookstore employees hurriedly adjusted books, made coffee, organized cash inside the registers.

He took up a position at the back of the crowd, watching as a few store clerks hovered around the area roped off at the front. A couple minutes later a line of people in business attire streamed toward the store area. He recognized Glover at the front, head held high, pace brisk like this was just one of many stops he would make today.

He stepped into the roped-off area like he owned the place — not a stretch given his position — and the people behind him lined up on either side of the dais. There was a woman in a red suit, hands clasped in front of her, that Locke recognized as the company’s VP of Marketing. She was joined by two men Locke remembered as the COO and the VP of Strategic Development from his background on Bolton’s. On the other side of the dais was another woman he didn’t recognize, plus two more men, one of whom was the VP of Merchandising for the West Coast.

He watched as they stood in front of the crowd, smiles plastered on their faces, and wondered if they hated this place as much as he did. Maybe they were just regular people who needed a job. Not everyone was a monster like Glover, motivated by greed and a total lack of empathy.

It was one of the reasons Locke was careful about doing real damage to companies like Bolton’s. He wasn’t some kind of hipster activist. He understood the intricate web that was the economy. People needed jobs to earn paychecks so they could pump that money back into the economy via mortgage payments and trips to the grocery store, school clothes for their kids and investment in their 401k.

Working for a company didn’t mean you had fealty to it. Didn’t mean you agreed with their business practices. Most people were just trying to take care of their own, eek out a little happiness along the way.

But Glover was a different kind of animal.

He’d been raised with money, his father one of those shadowy figures in finance who had earned billions manipulating the stock and housing markets. None of that was Malcolm Glover’s fault. Locke knew all about the sins of the father, the way they could weigh on a man.

And yet by all accounts Malcolm Glover was unconcerned with the wreckage in his father’s wake, had opted to create his own in the name of more wealth rather than trying to repair some of the damage. Locke didn’t expect every privileged son or daughter to even the scales in as radical a way as he did, but would it fucking kill them to do a little good for the world? Or barring that, would it fucking kill them to not make it worse for the people struggling to make their corner of the universe a happy one?

The VP of Marketing — Candace Russell was her name — stood in front of the crowd and began issuing welcoming remarks. Locke tuned her out, let his eyes skim to Glover, standing with his hands locked in front of him.

The sight of Glover made Locke think of all the things he’d learned in the past few days doing deep background on him. Glover’s house in Mexico, his frequent trips there, the slow liquidation of assets that had begun the year before.

None of it had been easy to find, which was just one of the reasons the discoveries had raised the hackles on Locke’s instinct. It wasn’t unusual for a high profile CEO to have property out of the country, and liquidation of assets could be done for all kinds of reasons, most of which were legal.

But Glover had taken pains to hide the Mexico property behind several shell corps, and the liquidation of his assets had been painfully deliberate, a slow trickle of stock and fund sell-off that would be hardly noticeable to anyone who wasn’t paying attention.

It screamed escape, and Locke had begun to feel a bone-deep urgency on the Glover job, the feeling that they were running out of time to get him before he disappeared like smoke.

The audience clapped as Candace Russell finished her speech, turning with a smile to Glover as he approached the dais. Locke forced himself to clap along, not wanting to stand out by withholding his applause.

Glover shook Russell’s hand, and she resumed her position to the side of the platform while he stepped up to the microphone. The crowd was still clapping like he was their messiah when half of them probably didn’t have a clue who he was or why they should be clapping for him. People were funny that way: hardwired to follow the crowd, not make waves.

Locke liked making waves.

Glover just stood there, soaking it up, taking it in when the last thing he deserved was applause, the smile frozen on his face.

Smile, motherfucker, Locke thought. Smile while you can.