Cold cash

Chapter Two

The lights went out four seconds after the elevator stopped.

Four seconds of grinding metal, a lurch that threw me against the wall, and then nothing. No hum. No glow from the buttons. Just dark and quiet and the slow realization that I was trapped.

With him.

"The backup generator is supposed to kick in within sixty seconds," Adrian Wolfe said. His voice came from somewhere to my left. Calm. Annoyingly calm. Like being stuck in a dark box forty-seven floors up was a minor inconvenience, not a reason to hyperventilate.

"You sound sure about that."

"I pay for it."

"Maybe you should pay for better maintenance."

A pause. Then, quietly: "Noted."

I pressed my back against the wall and tried to remember where the emergency call button was. Somewhere near the panel. Somewhere in the dark. My hand swept across the brass and buttons until—

"Stop."

His voice was closer now. Right next to my ear.

"You're about to press the alarm."

"That's the point."

"It won't help. The building is on a lockdown protocol until the fire department clears the floor below us."

"The floor below us?"

"Small electrical fire. Contained. But everything shuts down automatically for the next—" I heard him check his watch, which was absurd, because we couldn't see anything. "—forty-two minutes."

Forty-two minutes. In a box. With a man who probably fired people for making eye contact.

"This is fine," I said out loud. To myself. To the universe. To whoever was listening. "This is completely fine."

"You're lying."

"I'm breathing."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

---

A light appeared.

Not the elevator lights. Something smaller. Cooler. He'd pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight, and now I could see him leaning against the opposite wall, legs crossed at the ankle, looking like he'd planned this.

"Are you always this prepared?" I asked.

"I'm always this prepared."

"You're always this annoying, too, I bet."

He tilted his head. The phone light caught the sharp line of his jaw, the shadow under his cheekbone. He looked like a painting. An expensive, irritating painting.

"You talk to all your clients like this?"

"You're not my client. I just delivered a piece of paper."

"Ah." He nodded slowly. "So you have no idea what was in that envelope."

The way he said it—no idea—made my stomach drop.

"Should I?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. Cross-legged. Suit and all. Like he'd done this before.

"Sit down, Ivy."

"I'm fine standing."

"You're shaking."

I looked at my hands. He was right. The flashlight caught the tremble, the white knuckles, the way my rings clinked together.

I sat.

Not because he told me to. Because my legs gave up.

---

We sat in silence for thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. The phone light cast weird shadows on the ceiling. I counted the seconds by my own breathing, which was too fast and too loud and too everything.

"Why did the courier quit?" he asked.

"I told you. It doesn't matter."

"Humor me."

I stared at the floor. The carpet was gray. Expensive gray. The kind of gray that had a name, like dove whisper or urban fog.

"Her ex-boyfriend found out where she worked and started waiting for her in the lobby."

Adrian said nothing.

"It's fine," I added quickly. "She moved. Different city. Different job. She's okay now."

"You took her route."

"Someone had to."

The phone light shifted. He was looking at me again. Not like a math problem this time. Like something he couldn't quite solve.

"You're not a courier," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Couriers don't wear boots with broken zippers. They don't flinch when someone says forty-two minutes. And they definitely don't carry pepper spray in their bag for a delivery job."

My hand moved to my messenger bag. Too late. He'd already seen the pink keychain hanging from the zipper.

"Observant," I said.

"Paranoid."

"Same thing, different bank account."

He laughed.

It was quick. Barely a sound. But it changed his whole face—softened the sharp edges, made him look five years younger. Ten, even.

Then it was gone.

"I'm going to make you an offer," he said.

"I'm not interested."

"You don't know what it is yet."

"I'm still not interested."

He leaned forward. The phone light caught his eyes now. Cold coffee. Dark. Deep.

"Forty-two minutes is a long time, Ivy. We could sit here in silence. Or we could help each other."

"Help each other how?"

The elevator creaked. Somewhere far below, a siren wailed and faded.

And Adrian Wolfe smiled—slow, dangerous, rich—and said:

"Tell me what you're running from. And I'll tell you why I really needed that envelope."