"Gentlemen," Jake Gorham said solemnly, "may I present Dr. Samantha Coley."
Sam was escorted into the conference room by the plain clothed security guard who had been standing at attention outside in the corridor where she had been impatiently waiting for the past hour.
Why am I not surprised to be the only woman in this room? Sam silently asked herself.
As she placed her attache case on the spacious mahogany table, she quickly looked around the room at the nine faces turned expectantly towards her. Not counting Jake, there were two SETI representatives that she recognized. The remainder of the group were made up of suits and military.
Rapidly realizing her ex-boss was not about to waste valuable time with social introductions, Sam set about giving a brief overview of her findings.
She talked and answered intense questions for the next four hours. Time seemed to pass by in a blur. When finished, she was politely asked to remove herself from the room. Jake walked with her down the hall to the row of elevators.
"Good job." Was his only comment to her.
"Where do we go from here?" Sam asked tiredly.
Jake came to an abrupt standstill in the middle of the hall. "WE don’t go anywhere. It’s entirely out of our hands now. The government has the ball." He moved to hold the elevator door open for her.
Sam stepped into the waiting elevator. As the automatic doors started to slide shut, Jake distincly heard her ask, "Doesn’t that make you nervous?"
Once on the ground floor, Sam joined the flow of office workers emerging from the building outside onto the late afternoon Boston street. She stood there for a moment, as if perplexed, wondering what to do next. Crowds of harried people jostled by her.
All Sam wanted to do was to go home. Funny how quickly the Island had become that once again. But she knew that even if she made the long drive back to Maine now, she still would have missed the last ferry over. She resigned herself to having to spend the night in town. Probably all for the best, she realized. She was worn out from her presentation and the intense question and answer period that had followed.
Sam quickly decided against looking up any old friends and instead took a room for the night at the downtown Sheraton on Boylston Street. From there she took a cab to the Northend where she treated herself to a good bottle of wine and a quiet dinner at one of her favorite restaurants. After all, she didn’t know when she would get back to Boston again.