The Institute, Daddy Issues(27)

Be­ing a wo­man and the smal­lest wo­man at that, in the PD, wasn’t easy. I had gone out of my way to cul­tiv­ate a tough outer de­meanor—a hard shell that said “don’t fuck with me” in no un­cer­tain terms. I didn’t let any­one crack that shell—didn’t let any­one all the way be­hind my shields. Not even Salt.

So I gave him a smile that only felt a little forced.

“Salt, really—I’m fine. I just thought that I wasn’t be­ing con­vin­cing enough as a Little in the be­gin­ning there so I ad­ded a little drama to the equa­tion. You can bet that Berkley be­lieves our cover now, right?”

“I sup­pose so.” Salt still looked troubled but just then a huge gong rang some­where in the back of the build­ing.

“Din­ner is served,” I heard the but­ler call­ing in a dig­ni­fied voice and then the gonging sound came again.

“Uh-oh—we’d bet­ter get go­ing,” I told Salt. “We’re go­ing to be late!”

“True. I sup­pose we should go.” Tak­ing my arm through his again, he led me through the entry­way and to­wards the din­ing room. As we left, I had one last glimpse in the or­nate mir­ror. A girl with bows in her hair and tear tracks run­ning down her cheeks looked back at me.

I looked away quickly and con­cen­trated on keep­ing up with Salt’s long strides. Everything was go­ing to be fine. It had to be. I would make it be, I prom­ised my­self. I wasn’t go­ing to foul up this case and ruin my repu­ta­tion just be­cause I had got­ten a little freaked out.

I was still giv­ing my­self a pep-talk when we entered a large din­ing area that looked like some­thing you’d see in a movie about Brit­ish roy­alty. There was only one long table run­ning down the length of the room with a crys­tal chan­delier hanging above it. A fine, white linen table­cloth covered the long sur­face and it was laid with real china and sil­ver and crys­tal gob­lets. There were also ex­pens­ive lace nap­kins that looked like they would be com­pletely use­less for do­ing any­thing but dab­bing del­ic­ately at the corners of your mouth.

Or­nately carved wooden chairs were placed along the length of the long table and Dir­ector Berkley was sit­ting in the ex­act middle, presid­ing over the en­tire room like some kind of me­di­eval lord. To the right of him sat the red-haired girl, Patty, and her Daddy who we had seen up­stairs in the med­ical suite. All traces of tears were wiped away now and she looked com­pletely happy and con­tent, lean­ing against her Daddy’s arm and whis­per­ing some­thing into his ear.

To Berkley’s left side was an empty chair and after that, sev­eral more couples on either side of the table. The mon­strous piece of fur­niture looked like it would seat around forty people but I only coun­ted thir­teen at the mo­ment. I wondered who was miss­ing and where we were sup­posed to sit.

Dir­ector Berkley answered my ques­tion by beck­on­ing us over.

“Come, come, Mr. Saltanov,” he said to Salt. “Come sit across from me. Is your Baby­girl feel­ing bet­ter?”

“Much bet­ter, thank you,” Salt said shortly. He pulled out a chair for me but when I sat down in it, I found that I could barely reach the table. In ad­di­tion to be­ing ri­dicu­lously long, it was also ri­dicu­lously tall. It was just right for Salt be­cause he was so tall him­self that nor­mal tables al­ways fell some­where around his lap. But for short little me, it was above my chest. I would have to reach up like a kid at the grow-ups table to get any­thing.

Salt saw the prob­lem at once.

“What is wrong with this table? Is there some­place else for my mishka to sit?” he asked, frown­ing at Berkley.

“Cer­tainly, Mr. Saltanov.” Berkley smiled. “She can sit in your lap. Or, fail­ing that, she can have a booster seat. Which do you prefer? Some of the Dad­dies like to eat in peace while oth­ers find that hav­ing their Baby­girl squirm­ing on their lap all through din­ner builds the ah…an­ti­cip­a­tion of what is to come.”

“Mishka can have booster chair,” Salt said at once.

Berkley made a mo­tion to one of the livered ser­vants who were stand­ing around the peri­meter of the room.

“I see. So you don’t in­tend to play with your Baby­girl after din­ner?”