The man was waiting with a sign. It had her name on it. The strange thing was, she wasn't expecting anyone. Even stranger was that she'd never seen anyone standing with a sign at a railway station before. Susan McCallister checked over her shoulder. Nobody else seemed to be looking for someone with a sign. And, besides, the chances of someone else on the same train at the same time also being called Susan McCallister had to be slim to none. For a brief moment, Susan considered dodging the man. If he had a sign then it would stand to reason that he wouldn't recognise her, right? In which case, she could walk right on past, whistling nonchalantly as she went, and he'd be none the wiser. Susan briefly fantasised about this being the start of some kind of fantasy/sci-fi story, and if she avoided this man then she'd find more strangers carrying signs with her name on them. Perhaps billboards. Newspaper hoardings. Television messages. All of these things played out in her mind in a split second. And, though her decision had no connection to the elaborate plot she had just created, she did not avoid the sign. "Hi. I'm Susan" she told the man "You will come with me" he replied. He wasn't impolite, just to the point. Susan couldn't tell from the few short words he spoke whether his voice carried an accent, or whether she had just expected a response in a Russian accent like "the swans in Moscow have come home for the winter." Just the same, she had already decided to see how far this would go. A kidnapping was unlikely. While her knowledge of kidnappings and techniques favoured by kidnappers was slim, Susan was fairly sure that nobody was ever kidnapped by a man in broad daylight, standing in one of the country's busiest railway stations, in full view of any number of cameras and witnesses. Following the man outside, Susan wondered if he would ask her for money for the parking meter. It seemed absurd, but was it that unlikely? The man didn't speak, and didn't ask for any spare change. While Susan had expected to be led to a black, unmarked and unremarkable car, she was mildly surprised to find herself approaching a red, sporty looking model, with a black stripe running from front to back. Susan wished that she could pause for a moment and see if the stripe was made of electrical tape, a cheap hack that an ex of hers had once used to modify their own car -- or whether this feature was an original part of the paintwork. The man opened a back door for her, and while he didn't speak or even smile, he also didn't seem intimidating. His lack of eye contact felt more like he was trying to put her slightly at ease and the efforts of someone to approach politeness. As Susan slid onto the leather seats, dropping her leather messenger bag onto the floor behind the front seats, she was silently grateful for not having any meetings or calls scheduled for the rest of the day. While this meant that, in a worst case scenario, there would be nobody to miss her she was more grateful to not be missing anything -- and giving her the opportunity to see where this unexpected encounter was going to take her. Her escort -- Susan couldn't think what else to refer to the man as in her own mind -- started the car, and -- looking briefly over his shoulder -- told Susan that they wouldn't be going far. He didn't smile, but Susan realised that what she'd noticed in his voice and wondered if it was an accent was instead a lisp. It was hardly noticeable, but Susan understood that it probably made this man self conscious. To him, it was as big as the moon -- while to anyone else, if they even noticed it, forgot almost immediately. Susan also guessed that this was the reason he didn't speak more, and certainly why he didn't smile. The journey was almost disappointingly brief. The man drove quickly, but not recklessly, and certainly not like he was in a hurry: he just drove like a man in control of his environment, like he anticipated anything that would come up, but was also aware of what was safe -- keeping things right at their limit, but never past it. As they drew to a stop, Susan looked up at the tall glass building they had parked beside. She always wondered who worked in a building like this: and then, her heart sank. A rival business. Of course. As one of the top CEOs in the country, she was being head hunted. This was all a recruitment technique to impress her, and she would be led to a corporate office, where they would flatter her and try and get her to join their company. It made the most sense, and Susan felt almost sick with disappointment. What else had she expected? Her car door opened, and Susan resolved to hide her disappointment. She knew she had enough experience with it: she'd been doing it all her life, all the times she'd been let down by people. Picking up her bag, Susan smiled pleasantly at her escort -- who, instead of locking the car, opened the driver's side door again, lent across the seats, and picked up a manila folder. "This is yours," he said. Susan muttered her thanks, already being so sure of its contents. What she saw stopped her in her tracks. This was not a head hunting technique after all. This could hardly be further from it. Susan looked at the letterhead. The seal on the top of the page. The pictures. She read the briefing notes. Then read them again just to be sure. She took a deep breath, looked up at the building, and walked purposefully towards it. Susan had always known this day would come, she just hadn't realised it before this moment.