His dark hair was pomaded into an immaculate slick-back; his face was flushed with that ugly, post-adrenaline arrogance of an insecure middle-manager who has just executed an underling to mask his own structural incompetence.
Beside Nick stood **Carter Holbrook**.
The Senior Vice President of Commercial Acquisitions for **The Holbrook-Vance Syndicate**—the ten-million-dollar prospective client we had supposed to pitch at eight-thirty.
Carter was sixty-two years old, tall, lean, with silver hair cropped into a severe military high-and-tight cut, wearing a double-breasted navy blazer with gold anchor buttons.Calculators & Reference Tools
Across his wrist gleamed a platinum Patek Philippe.
He didn’t look angry about the missed pitch.
He looked like a man who had just inspected a slaughterhouse and found the carcass properly hung.
I rolled the window down two inches.
The hot morning air poured into the car, carrying Nick’s expensive cologne—Creed *Aventus* mixed with stale mint gum and twenty years of family vanity:
“Sebastian,” Nick said, his voice dropping into that smooth, condescending, executive drawl he used when canceling an employee’s health insurance:
“You’ve been sitting in this parking stall for twenty minutes.
The property management company has a strict policy regarding terminated personnel loitering on commercial premises.”
Nick pointed his manicured index finger toward the public street:
“I need your parking transponder.
And I need you to surrender your corporate laptop before twelve o’clock, or I will have the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department file an emergency grand larceny report against your name.”
I didn’t answer him.
I reached out, unclipped the plastic RFID parking transponder from my rearview mirror, and held it out through the two-inch gap in the glass.
Nick snatched it with a triumphant flick of his wrist:
“Thank you,” Nick sneered.Language Resources
“Now get off the property.
Carter and I have an emergency briefing with the board of directors at ten.”
Carter Holbrook did not look at the transponder.
The sixty-two-year-old billionaire stepped closer to my door, his cold blue eyes locking onto my right sleeve—where the smear of dried arterial blood remained caked into the white cotton:
“You had a busy morning, young man,” Carter said softly.
His voice was a deep, velvet baritone that resonated through the glass like an iron bell tolling over an open grave:
“Route Six.
The Lookout Mountain curve.”
My breath caught in my windpipe like an iron wedge.
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