The elevator was taking too long.
Gareth stood in the center of it with his jaw locked and his thumb hovering over Yuna's name on his contact screen and the readout above the doors counting floors with the specific, indifferent patience of a machine that had no investment in how badly he needed to be elsewhere.
B3. B2. B1. 1.
"Pick up."
Voicemail.
"Pick UP."
Voicemail again.
He pulled the phone from his ear and stared at her contact photo — the one she'd set herself, the one where she was laughing at something off-camera with her nose slightly crinkled — and the looking at it produced nothing useful, just the hot, grinding frustration of a young man who had crossed a border at 4 AM and had been calling every twenty minutes since and was getting nothing but her voice on a recorded message telling him she wasn't available.
Not available.
She was 'here.'
In this hotel.
