The elevator pinged and the doors slid open onto the executive suite. Everything on this floor was plush, soft and expensive, unlike the utilitarian, budget-friendly accommodations two floors below in the Legal Department. I paced past the darkened offices of the CEO’s sycophants, more commonly referred to as the Executive Committee, before I reached Michael’s suite. Everything was dark here, too. If he dragged me up here at this ungodly hour and forgot about our meeting, I’d be royally pissed.
The company’s reserve lighting system created a menacing tangle of shapes and shadows in the anteoffice. A small pit-a-pat of fear slid through me as I flipped the light switch. His assistant’s desk was neat and orderly, just the way she always left it.
I tapped lightly on his door. “Michael, it’s me. Ellice.”
No answer.
My skin prickled. I opened the door and flipped on the lights.
The bright crimson spray of blood was everywhere. Shock raced through me like a torpedo before landing in a hard knot at the pit of my stomach. My knees buckled as a tidal wave of nausea washed over me, like I would be sick and fade into black at any moment. But I didn’t panic. I didn’t utter a sound.
The star-shaped hole in Michael’s right temple was ragged and grisly, like someone had tried to open his skull with a sledgehammer instead of a bullet. Blood had oozed in erratic streams along the side of his face, creating diminutive red rivers in the wrinkles along his jawline, before pooling at the end of his chin and trickling onto his starched white oxford shirt. The air hung thick with the acrid, copper scent of blood. And the hum of the fluorescent lights, the only sound in the room, was like a thousand bumblebees.
An instant later, my mind clicked, as if someone else were inside my head, directing me.
Run. Just go.
I turned my eyes away from Michael’s lifeless body and the gun beside him. I hated myself for what I was thinking. Amid all this carnage, my first thoughts were to run, to leave without calling for help.
No one knows I’m here.
I slowly inched away from his body, careful not to touch anything. The few shreds of conscience I had left warned me that to leave would be reprehensible.
I prayed to God for forgiveness, turned off the lights, and quietly closed the office door behind me.
This would be the last secret between Michael and me.
Chapter 2
What the hell had I just done?
I rushed off the elevator onto the eighteenth floor, inside the Legal Department. My body buzzed like someone had slapped me, leaving the sting to rumble underneath my skin. My thoughts were on fire. Blood. Death. This was Chillicothe all over again. And I did what I always did. I ran. My earliest memory is of running. My brother, Sam, hadn’t been born yet. My mother, Martha, had me by my hand and we were running, my little legs beating fast to keep up with her. It was nighttime. Cold outside. And she kept telling me to hurry. I don’t know who or what we were running from. I started to cry but she told me if I cried, she would have to leave me behind. So I ran.
I didn’t hit the override switch for the reserve lighting; the dim spotlights were enough. I needed the cloak of darkness to cover my shame. I darted through a maze of soft-walled cubicles in the center of the floor that housed the support staff. Attorney offices, tight but windowed, formed a perimeter around the maze. Even though we didn’t bill our hours like people did in a law firm, most people in the department still kept law firm hours—start late, work late. With any luck, it would be over an hour before people would start to trickle in.
Seven A.M. on this floor was like a fire station after a three-alarm call—offices and cubicles empty, things left scattered and unsettled. Each of us, working late into the evening until, realizing there were kids to pick up or dry cleaners to hit before closing, left our desks, files, papers disheveled, waiting exactly as we’d left them the night before.
I made it to my office from the executive suite without anyone seeing me. Thank God. No one really sees me around this company anyway. They see what I want them to see. Smart. Tempered. Ellice Littlejohn, the consummate professional. My legal advice spot-on. Impeccably dressed, a funny quip when needed. I’m the one they admire and respect. That’s who they see.
I stood inside the cramped, drafty space that doubled as my office. I’m the only Black person in the Legal Department. I’m not saying one had anything to do with the other, but if an employee’s office space reflects their value to the company, Houghton didn’t think much of me. I used to dream of becoming the chief legal officer or even the CEO of a Fortune 500. I was supposed to have it all by now—a doting husband, two point five bright and gifted kids, and a successful career that others envied—but now, those things were well out of my reach. I was closer to menopause than marriage material.