I rolled the window down two inches.
The hot morning air poured into the car, carrying Nick’s expensive cologne—Creed *Aventus* mixed with stale mint gum and twenty years of family vanity:
“Sebastian,” Nick said, his voice dropping into that smooth, condescending, executive drawl he used when canceling an employee’s health insurance:
“You’ve been sitting in this parking stall for twenty minutes.
The property management company has a strict policy regarding terminated personnel loitering on commercial premises.”
Nick pointed his manicured index finger toward the public street:
“I need your parking transponder.
And I need you to surrender your corporate laptop before twelve o’clock, or I will have the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department file an emergency grand larceny report against your name.”
I didn’t answer him.
I reached out, unclipped the plastic RFID parking transponder from my rearview mirror, and held it out through the two-inch gap in the glass.
Nick snatched it with a triumphant flick of his wrist:
“Thank you,” Nick sneered.
“Now get off the property.
Carter and I have an emergency briefing with the board of directors at ten.”
Carter Holbrook did not look at the transponder.
The sixty-two-year-old billionaire stepped closer to my door, his cold blue eyes locking onto my right sleeve—where the smear of dried arterial blood remained caked into the white cotton:
“You had a busy morning, young man,” Carter said softly.
His voice was a deep, velvet baritone that resonated through the glass like an iron bell tolling over an open grave:
“Route Six.
The Lookout Mountain curve.”
My breath caught in my windpipe like an iron wedge.
I looked straight into Carter Holbrook’s eyes:
“What did you say?”
Carter smiled—a razor-thin, terrifying flash of porcelain veneers that held zero warmth and zero mercy:
“The woman you pulled out of the gravel, Sebastian,” Carter murmured, leaning down until his breath brushed the weather-stripping of my window:
“Did she give you something?”
“She was having a myocardial infarction, Mr.
Holbrook,” I said, my voice dropping into that quiet, fifty-decibel register that cuts through corporate boardrooms like an industrial saw:
“I was performing chest compressions until the state patrol arrived.”
“Did she give you a folder?”
Carter pressed, his knuckles tightening against the top of the door frame until the leather of his gloves groaned:
“A red-wax-sealed vellum portfolio from the glove box of that Maybach?”
