by Hunt, Angela
An unexpected crash rocks the elevator, overpowering Michelle’s last words. The car dips to the left, upsetting Gina’s balance and triggering a frightened squeal from Isabel.
Michelle catches her balance and considers grabbing for the gun, but Gina might fire, accidentally or on purpose. Though the woman brims with understandable outrage, Michelle doesn’t think she’s a killer at heart.
When the car returns to a stable position, Gina braces herself against the wall while her gun hand wavers. “What was that?” she asks, her voice strangled.
Michelle glances toward the ceiling, then looks at the pistol. “I don’t know,” she says, “and as long as you’re pointing that thing at me, I’m in no position to speculate. So if you’re going to kill me, do it now.”
Gina says nothing, but her eyes appear to be at risk of dropping out of her face.
“Why are you waiting?” Michelle spreads her hands and steps toward Gina, moving forward until the gun grazes the knot of sorrow at her middle. “Go ahead and shoot, Mrs. Rossman. I deserve to be punished and your kids deserve justice. If you kill me now, you’ll spare me the trouble of riding out this hurricane.”
Gina’s squint tightens. Michelle is convinced the woman will shoot until a bloodcurdling scream cuts through the howling wind. She and Gina turn to Isabel, who dissolves in a torrent of tears.
“Silencio!” the girl shrieks, her hands against her ears. “I cannot listen—I cannot let you talk like this.”
Gina stares at the housekeeper in dazed exasperation. “What is your problem?”
“How can I expect God to hear my prayers when I have done a terrible thing today? I cannot keep silent. Let me confess—let them put me on trial. They can even send me back to México—”
Gina waves the pistol in a dismissive gesture. “Will you shut up about Mexico? If you’re married to an American citizen, they can’t send you back.”
“Wait a minute.” Obeying a hunch, Michelle crouches before Isabel and peers into the girl’s face. “What is this terrible thing you’ve done?”
Color drains from Isabel’s complexion as she lowers her hands. “I was in Mr. Rossman’s office.”
A change comes over Gina’s features, a sudden shock of realization. “What happened in Sonny’s office?”
In the pale light of the emergency lamp, Isabel speaks in a barely audible whisper. “They will arrest me because of Mr. Rossman. Because he surprised me and I did not want him to call security. Because I found…this.”
Isabel’s hand drops to her sweater pocket, then withdraws a bracelet that shimmers with the light of a hundred stars. When Gina utters an oath, Isabel breaks into frantic sobs. “I didn’t mean to take it! I was trying to clean up, so I picked up my dusting cloth, a paper on the floor and this. I was not thinking when I put this in my pocket. I have no use for it, I do not want it, I did not mean to take it. I would put it back if I could—I would have put it back when I went again to Mr. Rossman’s office except I do not want to go there, not now. Not since what happened to him.”
The unspoken implication strikes the center of Michelle’s chest with the force of a blow. Gina must have experienced a similar response, because she slowly lowers the gun.
“You saw Parker this morning?” Michelle glances at Gina. “Today?”
Gina stares blandly at the cleaning woman, but a twitch of one eye reveals her anxiety. “What happened to Sonny?”
“Señor Rossman—” Isabel’s voice breaks in a rattling gurgle “—this morning. I didn’t mean to, but he caught me and I pushed him and now he is…muerto.”
Gina’s eyes blaze into Michelle’s with an extraordinary expression of alarm. “Muerto?”
“Dead,” Michelle answers. She sinks back to her corner as the housekeeper presses her hand to her mouth and yields to a deluge of hot and noisy tears.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Speechless, Isabel dropped the bracelet. “¡Señor Rossman!”
After her fumbling fingers released the hook at her neck, the fur jacket slid from her shoulders as if it were relieved to be free of her. A flood of words bubbled from her lips as she tried to fold it properly. “¡Lo siento! I didn’t mean to hurt anything.”
The man strode toward the desk, his jaw set and his eyes narrow. “I’m calling security.”
“Please, no, I am only the housekeeper, not a thief. I wasn’t hurting anything.”
The man would not listen; he was dialing the phone. He would call security and they would file a report with Mr. Jones, the custodial supervisor. Jones had no patience for mistakes; he would fire her. He might even report her to the police, the authorities. Isabel did not think she could be deported, but immigration laws were changing and her neighbors were terrified of the possibility….
Her fingers fluttered to her chest when she remembered the attorney general. That powerful man had an office in this building. He would find out that she had been snooping in the offices. If he or one of his people clicked on their computers and discovered that she’d disappeared after coming from México with a belly full of cocaine, they would make her stand trial. She’d have to leave Rafael and Carlos. She would go to jail and news of her trial would reach Ernesto, who would come to America and find a way to kill her as he had killed Rodrigo.
Isabel trembled as terror blew down the back of her neck. Parker Rossman could not report her.
“No, señor, por favor,” she said, panic firing her veins. “Please, un momento.” She moved toward him, intending to kneel and beg for his pardon, but he turned with the phone still in his hand. Startled by his forward movement, she stumbled and fell against him, then saw him lift his arms as if he could not bear to touch someone so ill-mannered and vile.
Rossman took a hasty half step back, planting one foot on a sheet of paper that had fallen to the floor, then slipped and tumbled toward the window in a clumsy spraddle of arms and legs. Isabel retreated, watching in horror as his head hit the edge of the desk before he dropped the phone and collapsed on the floor.
She pressed her hand to her mouth, resisting the scream that clawed at her throat. In a moment Rossman would open his eyes and then he would be truly furious. If she ran, he would call the security officers to track her down. But she could not stand and do nothing while she waited for him to wake up.
She took three running steps toward the door, then hesitated at the threshold. What if he needed help? She could not leave an injured man alone. Perhaps his temper would cool if he found a cold compress on his head when he woke. He might not even remember what had happened.
After another quick glance at the man’s motionless form, she hurried to the bathroom and pulled a hand towel from the rack. She ran it through a stream of cold water, then squeezed out the excess liquid and crept to Parker Rossman’s side.
The blood had faded from the man’s face, leaving him pale against the brown carpet. She stood above him, transferring the wet towel from one hand to the other while she studied the businessman’s waxy complexion, then bent low to listen for the quiet inhalation of breathing.
She heard nothing.
Biting her lip, she placed trembling fingers on the side of Rossman’s neck. The flesh felt cold beneath her fingertips, and though she probed in several different places, she found no pulse.
She crossed herself and gulped back a sob. She was looking at a dead man.
4:00 p.m.
CHAPTER 22
Michelle sits perfectly still, her mind and body benumbed by Isabel’s revelation. How could the man who kissed her last night be dead today?
“Are you sure?” She hears her voice ask the question, though the words seem to come from far away.
Isabel balls her hand into a fist. “¡Sí! He was muerto. I pushed him, he hit his head, he fell. He was not breathing and I will be arrested.” She looks at her other hand, which is still holding the bracelet, then flings it across the car. “I wish I had never seen Mr. Rossman’s office!”
Michelle turns to Gina, whose face has gone pale and slack. Her hands hang at her side, her fingers limp.
When the gun clatters to the floor, Gina doesn’t seem to notice.
More concerned about the gun than about Isabel’s hysteria, Michelle slowly extends her arm and hooks a finger around the trigger guard, then slides the weapon toward the wall. When she feels the impact of metal against metal, she removes her hand and leans back, covering the pistol with her body.
The redhead makes no attempt to retrieve the weapon, but looks down at Isabel with glassy eyes. “Sonny is dead,” she says, a quaver in her voice. “How ironic is that?”
Michelle glances at Isabel, who cowers at the back of the car with her arms wrapped around her knees. For a hysterical woman, she’s awfully quiet and grim.
“Why don’t you sit down, Gina?” Michelle extends her hand. “You have to be worn out.”
Gina stiffens at the suggestion, then takes an unsteady breath and collapses like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Looking at the woman, Michelle can’t decide whether to pity or despise her.
Her mind skates away from that unsolvable dilemma. She looks again at the housekeeper and forces herself to smile. “Isabel, I’m sure you thought Parker was dead—”
“He is dead.” The maid speaks in a flat, inflectionless tone and does not meet Michelle’s eyes. “I know death when I see it.”
Michelle looks at Gina, silently urging her to contradict the girl, but Gina has gone deathly pale.
As pale as a widow.
As pale as the lilies that covered Michelle’s father’s casket.
The image surprises her, steals her breath for a moment. She blinks the vision of the past away, then breathes in the truth: Isabel has no reason to lie. Parker is gone.
Though the elevator does not move, Michelle feels the floor shift beneath her body. She reaches out, bracing herself against the wall and the door, and closes her eyes until her equilibrium returns.
Her unborn child is already fatherless. Michelle only knew her daddy ten short years, but her child will not know Parker a single day.
How can she raise a child alone?
How can she live…without Parker?
She tunnels her hand through her hair and tries to grip this unexpected revelation. She needs time for herself, time to fit this awful news into the other truths she has learned today. Parker will never ask her to marry him. The man she has loved and misled has lied to her…and now he is gone.
How is she supposed to confront and confess to a dead man?
She turns to face the wall and drops her head to the top of her bent knees. What has happened to her life? When the world can upend in a fraction of a minute, why should she care about anything?
Maybe a strong wind will blow in from the Gulf and rip the top off the Lark Tower. The destruction has obviously begun; whatever rocked the elevator a moment ago must have come from the roof or one of the upper floors. One quick snap, a sudden fall, and her troubles would be over. One brief life, lived on a false foundation.
Maybe she and the others are already as good as dead. Maybe these hours of entrapment have been a gift, a chance to review their lives and prepare for the inevitable. Parker didn’t have that benefit—if the housekeeper’s story is true, he didn’t have an inkling of warning.
Surely death, like everything else, is easier to manage if you’ve prepared for it. Michelle hasn’t thought much about the end of her life, hasn’t made a will or funeral plans. How could she think about such things when her calendar was so filled with living?
Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me…. Gina closes her eyes, trying to set the Dickinson poem aside, but it insists on replaying inside her head.
Sonny is dead. The man she has loved and lived with for more than twenty years is gone. She will never again hear his key in the lock, his footstep in the foyer or his voice on the phone. The clothes in the laundry room will never be worn again; the muddy sneakers on the back porch will have to be thrown out. The sweaters she picked up at Dillard’s will never be a Christmas gift; the anger burning a hole in her heart will never be vented in his presence.
Her fury and hurt have been doused by a cold dash of reality, and she has been numbed by an unexpected and chilly paralysis.
Sonny is dead and she didn’t kill him. The arms that once held her lie motionless upstairs; the lips that caressed her neck are silent, stilled by a quirk of fate and cruel happenstance.
She presses her hand to her mouth as her blood soars with unbidden memories: her hand on his shoulder as they drove for hours on their family vacation to Arizona, Sonny’s pale face and trembling voice during their wedding ceremony, his tender care for her after Matthew’s birth. The man had his flaws, but in the early years he had been a good father and a good husband. What came between him and his family?
Perhaps the business was to blame. The company demanded more of his time as time went by, and Gina’s focus naturally shifted from the office to the children. Sonny worked longer hours with every passing year while Gina concentrated on the kids. Wasn’t that what every wife did? Wasn’t that her duty?
From a place far beyond logic and reason, she dredges up a reluctant admission: Her all-consuming love for her children might have made Sonny feel unappreciated. Sonny might have gone looking for love because he was starving for it.
She covers her eyes with her hand, shielding her soul from other prying gazes. Why, Sonny, did you have to be so unbelievably needy? I loved you, you fool. I always will.
Sonny is dead…and though she was angry enough to shoot him, until this moment she has never thought about living without him.
Tucked into her corner, Michelle has run out of illusions. Despite the shadows in this dimly lit car, the hard light of reality is blazing into every sector of her life. She is in this elevator, facing death, because she wanted to save her business from an investigation and convince her lover to marry her. Neither situation was worth dying for because neither situation was honest.
Her mind thumbs through the names and images of people she has loved, and she’d like to believe she’d give her life for any of them. But this is not an exchange of life for life; no profound statement will be made if she and Gina and Isabel check out in this elevator. People will say it was an unfortunate accident. Their deaths will have no more significance than a man who runs a red light and expires because he didn’t want to be late for a dentist appointment.
Like Gina and Isabel, a few hours ago she ignored the threat of a hurricane and came to this building. She traded safety for an opportunity to save her career and deliver an ultimatum. She has gambled not only with her life, but with her unborn child’s and for what? She’ll find no payoff here. No reward.
Once she switched a set of price tags so she could walk out of Maxim’s with treasures disguised as bargains. In the intervening years, has she sold her soul for bargains while undervaluing treasures?
Isabel, curled into the darkness at the back of the car, has never known wealth or success, but she has a beautiful son and a husband who adores her. Though she is as shy as a mouse, she has displayed remarkable courage in some dire situations…including this one.
Michelle looks at Gina, whose eyes and mouth are bracketed with deep lines of strain. “Isabel didn’t mean to hurt him.” She touches Gina’s bent knee. “It was an accident.”
“What will I tell the kids?” A frown line eases between Gina’s brows. “How in the world do I tell them their father died because a Mexican maid pushed him? None of this makes sense.”
“Housekeeper,” Michelle corrects her, recognizing a glimmer of hysteria in the way Gina’s green eyes erase her. “Maybe life’s not supposed to make sense…not today, anyway.” She reaches behind her back, making sure the pistol is safely tucked away.
Gina has not completely detached; she notices the gesture. “Don’t worry,” she says, absently smoothing her hair behind her ears. “I’ve had my fill of death, haven�
�t you?”
Michelle peers across the space between them, wondering if the woman’s new passivity is genuine. Gina might be hoping to catch her off guard, but for what reason?
The redhead covers her mouth and sits without moving for a long moment, then lowers her head and fills the car with laughter that shifts to a hollow, broken sobbing. Michelle stirs uncomfortably, not knowing how to comfort the woman, but after a long moment Gina wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“I didn’t know,” she says when she catches her breath, “that I’d miss Sonny. I don’t think I realized how much I’ll miss him until a moment ago.”
Michelle brings her knees to her chest and looks toward the closed doors. The widow is entitled to her hysterics and grief, but what is she supposed to do? If Parker had died yesterday, she would have mourned for him like a wife. She would have expected to sit in the front pew at his funeral, listening with damp eyes as his associates and friends talked about what a great guy he was and how generously he supported various charities. But that man, the honorable widower who fathered her child, was as false as her own facade.
If she dies in this elevator, who will mourn her? A few clients and employees will attend the memorial service and make perfunctory comments about Michelle Tilson, but no one will speak of Shelly Tills. No one, not even Lauren, knows her.
Perhaps it’s time they made her acquaintance.
“I lied,” Michelle says, and at the sound of those two words, Gina’s blood runs cold.
The woman lied? About what? About Sonny?
She stares at the woman across the car until the brunette crosses her arms atop her bent knees. “I lied about my happiest moment,” she says, the back of her head thumping against the elevator wall. “It didn’t have a thing to do with hanging out my shingle. My real happiest moment happened a long time ago, back in my childhood. I think all my happiest moments took place when I was a kid.”
