Chapter 3

3

“ H ello?” Sasha McCandless-Connelly paused in her typing, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, and tilted her head to turn an ear toward her office door. She could have sworn a door just clicked shut. But now all she heard was the soft whoosh of the building’s HVAC system.

She checked the day of the week on her monitor to confirm the cleaning service wasn’t scheduled. They weren’t. Then she flicked a glance past the door, which had been ajar since her friend and legal partner Naya Andrews had popped her head in to say good night hours ago. The sliver of the hallway visible from her desk was empty. And dark.

She exhaled through her nose. There’s nobody here, she reminded herself.

The office had been deserted on her last circuit through the empty floor in a fruitless search for a snack. She’d had to settle for a peppermint from the receptionist desk and had then spent twenty minutes creating a reusable shopping list for her newish office intern, who wasn’t really all that new and who definitely should have known better than to let the kitchen cabinets go bare. There was an inexplicable can of beets tucked behind the coffee filters, but she doubted she’d ever be desperate enough to eat those.

Since that interruption, she’d been typing double-speed, eager to finish her notes on the bewildering legal pleading Gray Simmons had filed on behalf of his client. She was committed to getting home in time to tuck her twins into bed before digging into the dinner the world’s greatest husband was keeping warm for her.

She shrugged off the noise and resumed writing. Her fingers flew over the keys, and the mechanical clacking would have drowned out any sounds that might or might not have been coming from the corridor. The sudden brightness as the motion-activated hall light outside her door blazed to life was unmissable, though.

She froze, silent and still, and stared at the door. The only way that light would come on was if someone was within fifteen feet of her office door. She knew this for a fact because the sensor was mounted to the wall inside her door. This was the compromise she, Naya, and their third partner, Will Volmer, had reached when Will had undertaken an audit of McCandless, Volmer & Andrews’ utility usage. Because Sasha was, more often than not, the last to leave, she wanted the ability to adjust and override the lights as needed.

And right now, it was needed.

She saved her document with a quiet keystroke and powered down the laptop. Then she rolled open the bottom left drawer of her desk to retrieve her bag, leaving the drawer open a quarter inch to avoid making any noise of her own by closing it. She eased her feet out of her high heels then nestled the shoes in the bottom of her bag before pushing back her chair, standing up, and creeping to the doorway with the bag slung horizontally across her chest to rest on her hip.

She took a deep breath, mentally counted the steps between her office door and the fire exit, and hit the switch on the wall, plunging the hallway into darkness. Then Sasha ran.

She made no effort at stealth as she dashed down the stairs and burst through the steel emergency exit door into the parking lot. She’d walked to work this morning, so she kept moving. She sprinted through the dark alley and around to the front of the building. Despite the late hour, a steady stream of cars and pedestrians flowed by, coming and going from restaurants and clubs. Several glimpses over her shoulder confirmed that nobody had followed her out of the building. Still, she ran down the block until she reached a bus shelter. Only then did she dig her shoes out of her bag and return to them to her now-dirty and sore feet.

Her heart rate returned to normal, and the surge of adrenaline dissipated. Suddenly, she felt ridiculous. Why had she fled? There was almost certainly an innocuous explanation for what had happened in the office. Probably a junior associate, who’d come in to pick up a file and didn’t want to get waylaid by a chatty partner—or worse, one looking to pawn off an assignment. Even more likely, the motion sensor needed to be adjusted to a lower sensitivity. But if someone had been in the office, running was a complete overreaction. She was a business owner, for crying aloud. She should have investigated. She pulled out her phone and set the office alarm using the security company’s app. Then, still feeling sheepish, she rose from the disconcertingly sticky bench.

She strode confidently along the sidewalk, her shoulders erect and her eyes alert as she searched the shadows. By the time she reached the leafy, residential street where her home sat, lights aglow, she’d convinced herself her outsized reaction was another symptom of her overworked state. She brushed off the remnants of uneasiness that clung to her like a cobweb and climbed the steep steps to the front porch.

As she approached, she heard Mocha barking with excitement, followed by the gleeful shouts of “Mommy’s home!” When she stepped inside her bright, warm house, Connelly greeted her with a long, firm kiss and a glass of good red wine. She closed the door on the chilly night air and, with it, the events of the day.