distant sound of a siren penetrated the wall of panic and heavy breathing, both coming from her.
“They’re coming, Mr. Adair. I can hear them. They’re coming. Just hang on a little longer and they’ll save you. Just a little longer, please,” she begged.
The man on the rug, his body partially outlined in a growing pool of his own blood, remained very, very still. There was no longer any indication that he was alive.
Refusing to accept that the man she had worked for so faithfully for the past five years was beyond hearing her, Elizabeth continued to pound on his chest.
She was still pounding when the paramedics arrived at his office.
“Come on, come on, you can do this. You can cheat death. You’re larger-than-life, Mr. Adair. Work with me here! Please!”
But a few seconds later there was no rhythm of any sort beating beneath her hands.
An hour ago, Elizabeth Shelton had been driving out of AdAir Corp’s underground parking facility and on her way to her weekend.
It was eight o’clock on a Friday night and the rest of the employees who worked at AdAir Corp, one of the country’s leading cell phone providers, had already left for their weekends. Today the mass exodus had taken place at five o’clock, because that was when the building’s surveillance cameras had all been turned off. They’d had to leave, for safety reasons. A memo had gone out, and everyone knew that the existing system was being upgraded.
Elizabeth had stayed behind in order to catch up on some last-minute work. Work she needed to have prepared and at her fingertips for a meeting she was attending on Monday morning in her boss’s place. Reginald Adair was scheduled to be out of town on a business trip. He should have already left at six to catch his flight.
Preoccupied with something she had just learned earlier in the day—something that was going to completely upend her world once it became public knowledge...and it was going to become public knowledge, because that was the nature of the beast—Elizabeth had neglected to take several very important papers with her when she’d left the office. Without those papers her weekend would be completely unproductive despite the reams of papers she did have in her briefcase.
She’d gotten halfway down the block, reviewing everything she needed to have taken with her, when she realized her mistake. The papers that were the key to the entire presentation were still sitting on her side desk, waiting to be packed up in her briefcase.
Muttering a few choice words under her breath about the state of her mind, Elizabeth had executed a narrow U-turn and driven straight back to the underground parking facility.
Habit had her easing her vehicle into her designated parking space—not that she needed to stick to protocol tonight. There were no other cars on her level—or on any other level, she strongly suspected—because everyone else had gone home, or at least away from here, three hours ago.
She had to get herself under control, Elizabeth had silently lectured as she walked across the parking structure to the private executive elevator that only let out on the sixth floor. Her situation was what it was, and she was not about to do anything drastic to change it. That just wasn’t her way.
In the meantime, she couldn’t allow her dilemma to upset her to the point that she wasn’t able to do her job.
God knew she was going to need the money in the coming months. And besides, work was all she really had. She couldn’t take a chance on losing her job.
She’d laughed at herself then, as she got on the private elevator. Months? Was she kidding herself? It was more like years. She was going to need money—extra money—for years to come. Eighteen at the very least.
Most likely longer than that.
Later. She’d think about it later, she’d told herself. For now she just needed to get those missing papers and go home.
One step at a time, Lizzy. One step at a time will get you there. Wherever there is.
The elevator had come to a stop, its stainless steel doors sliding apart soundlessly. Waiting for her to get off.
Stepping out, Elizabeth hurried toward her office, which was just beyond her boss’s.
The light coming from beneath Reginald Adair’s door registered in her peripheral vision and had caught her attention a beat after she passed it.
It made her stop in her tracks.
Reginald Adair was supposed to be on his way to the airport if not actually aboard the plane by now. Had he left without remembering to shut off the lights?
That wasn’t like him, she thought. The man was nothing if not extremely precise. He believed in leading by example and that meant following all the rules, no matter how small the rule might seem. That included powering down his computer and turning off the lights when he left the office for the night.
Approaching the closed office door, Elizabeth had knocked lightly at first. Receiving no response, she’d knocked a little louder, and this time she’d called out to him so he could hear her through the door.
“Mr. Adair, it’s Elizabeth. Do you need me to take care of anything for you before I leave the office for the weekend?”
She’d looked down at her watch. “Is everything okay? Your flight is leaving soon. Would you like me to call a cab for you?”
She’d leaned her ear against the door to see if she could hear anything and that was when she felt the door move slightly beneath her cheek.
The door had been left unlocked and open.
If he was there, why wasn’t he answering her? And if he wasn’t there, why had he left all the lights on as well as the door unlocked? Perhaps in his rush to get to the airport, he had forgotten? But the man had never been late for anything in the entire five years she had worked for him.
A wave of uneasiness slipped over her.
Something wasn’t making sense.
Bracing herself, Elizabeth had gingerly pushed opened the door with her fingertips. That it gave so easily should have warned her that something was drastically wrong.
But with her own personal dilemma fresh and foremost on her mind, she had completely missed that sign. That in turn had left her completely unprepared to find Reginald Adair sprawled out on the floor of his office the way that she had.
Elizabeth had been even less prepared to be catapulted from her role as the executive assistant to the president of AdAir Corp, to a person of interest in the very same corporate president’s lethal attack.
An aura of disbelief encircled her. It felt as if the whole world around her had transformed into a surreal setting that made absolutely no sense to her, no matter how hard she tried to put the puzzle pieces together.
The first detective on the scene, a fifteen-year veteran named Otis Kramer, lost no time in firing questions at her.
At
