His eyes meet mine.
I freeze. A deer in headlights. A mouse under a hawk’s shadow.
“I’ll call you back.” He hangs up.
I run.
My heels are too loud on the carpet, my breath too ragged in my throat. The elevator—I just need to reach the elevator. My finger jabs the button once, twice, three times.
Come on, come on, come on?—
The doors slide open. I stumble inside, hit the button for the sixth floor, press myself against the back wall like the metal might somehow protect me.
The doors start to close.
A hand catches them.
He strolls into the elevator like he has all the time in the world. The doors close behind him, sealing us in together.
Six floors. Just the two of us.
“Miss...?”
The tone is polite. Like we’re meeting at a cocktail party.
“Mendez.” My name is a squeak. I clear my throat, try again. “Bea Mendez. I didn’t hear anything. I was just delivering a file—the subpoena, for Mr. Castellano—Marcy’s sick, so I had to?—”
“You heard everything.”
Four words. Delivered without inflection.
“I won’t tell anyone.” I’m babbling now. “I don’t even know what I heard. Something about a boat? Lots of people have boats. It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll just go back to my desk and forget this ever?—”
“Stop talking.”
I stop.
He studies me the way a scientist might study a specimen. Clinical. Detached. Deciding whether I’m worth keeping or discarding.
“You have two choices.” He hasn’t raised his voice. He doesn’t need to. His presence fills the entire elevator, pressingagainst me like a physical weight. “Unemployment and a tragic accident. Or a promotion.”
My brain stalls.
“P-promotion?”
I just stand there, frozen, while my brain screams every warning it has. This is crazy. He’s crazy. I should be clawing for the emergency stop, yelling, anything.
But my mind is already running the numbers.
Rent hits Friday—four hundred bucks I don’t have.
Abuela’s facility wants another two grand this month, and their patience is wearing thin after too many late-payment sob stories.
Student loans. Maxed-out credit cards. That sad little savings balance staring back at me: $343.17 and a whole lot of silence.
Dead girls don’t pay bills.
Dead girls don’t keep their grandmothers out of the street.
