“Olivia, you have to get out of there. Right now.” Elissa’s voice was eerily calm.
“What floor has the fire?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be worse if the fire was above or below me, but I thought I ought to at least know, one way or the other.
Elissa was silent for another couple of seconds.
“There is no fire, Olivia,” she said softly. “Please, just get out of there right now.”
Her tone of voice nearly scared the piss out of me in a very literal sense. I left the oh-so-important-a-minute-ago copies and started running for the elevator.
“Should I take the stairs?” I stopped in my tracks—looking from the elevator buttons to the door to the stairwell.
“No, Olivia! Take the elevator,” Elissa commanded. “It’s faster and they might be in the stairwells.”
“Who might be in the stairwells?” I asked as my heart suddenly dropped into my stomach.
“They don’t know yet.” Elissa was whispering into the phone now. “Or at least if they do, they aren’t telling us. About a half hour ago, someone took over the building. That’s why everyone was evacuated. Olivia, you have to get out of there now!”
“I’m trying!” Sudden, hot tears were trying to force their way out of my eyes as I jammed the down button with my thumb over and over again, as if that was going to help. Images of movies like Die Hard started stampeding around in my head.
The bell rang out and the doors slid open, which startled me and made me gasp.
“Are you all right?” Elissa was yelling into the phone again.
“Yes,” I replied. “The elevator is here. I’m probably going to lose the signal.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Elissa said. “Just call me back as soon as you get down here!”
“I will,” I promised as I walked into the elevator. True to cell-phone nature, the call dropped as the doors closed.
My hands were starting to sweat, so I dropped the phone back into its clip and started slamming my fist into the little round button marked with an “L.” Once I was convinced the little light wasn’t going to get any brighter, I leaned back against the railing and tried to slow down my breathing, which was just about to the panting stage. I watched the numbers descend one by one in the most agonizingly slow way they possibly could.
At floor twenty-three, the elevator stopped with a jerk, and I screamed as I fell forward against the door and then dropped to the floor.
I pushed myself back up onto my feet and immediately started trying to pry open the doors, which was completely useless. The most I was going to manage to do was to get my beautifully manicured nails—thank you, Melody, for the suggestion—chipped less than twenty-four hours after Elissa hauled me out to lunch to have them done.
Deep breaths, I told myself. You have to stay relaxed. That’s what dad always said—never panic in a crisis.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing but breathing in and out. About the time I had my breathing under control, the elevator jerked again, nearly sending me back to the floor. I let out the final long breath I had been holding and relaxed. As long as it was moving again, everything would be okay.
That was before I noticed I was no longer moving down but back up.
The elevator stopped on the thirtieth floor, the same floor where I had originally started this little frolic through the tulips.
When the doors opened, a gigantic mountain of a man was standing in front of me with his hand on a key inserted into the little lock below the up and down buttons for the elevators. His pale brown eyes looked over to me, and a smirk crossed his face. He gave the key a little turn before releasing it and uttering one word.
“Bingo.”
My backside hit the rail, which was the first indication I had been moving backwards. I felt my throat tighten and stomach drop as his eyebrows rose up, and he smiled in an incredibly unfriendly way. I glanced around at my surroundings, which didn’t take long—I was in an elevator. It’s not like I was going to suddenly notice an alternative exit. I gripped the cold metal to stop my hands from shaking while I looked around him and wondered what my chances were of running past him.
He chuckled and raised a gun up to my face.
“Don?
??t even think it,” he said. His voice was as pale and cold as his eyes. He motioned for me to come out, and for the first time in my life, being in an elevator wasn’t such a bad thing.
Considering the gun pointed toward me, the single exit, and the six-foot-who-knows-how-many-inches giant in front of me, I didn’t have much choice, so I did what he said. He reached out with the hand not holding the gun and grabbed my upper arm painfully. I mentally cursed Melody for dressing me in short sleeves instead of a thick blazer today, as if she were to blame. I managed to hold back a whimper until he shoved the gun into my side.
He hauled me past my desk, past Melody’s desk, and into Mr. Kender’s office.