Chapter 8:The Elevator

Julian's POV

He told himself he wasn't thinking about her.

He repeated that to himself all morning.

He told himself while taking two phone calls. He told himself during lunch, even though he barely touched his food. He told himself again during his meeting with Arthur about the merger he had decided to stop.

Yet, at 4:47 that afternoon, he was still thinking about her.

Julian stepped into the private elevator, his laptop bag hanging over one shoulder. His mind was somewhere else entirely as the elevator doors closed behind him.

The elevator began moving down.

He was between the fortieth and thirty-ninth floors when everything suddenly changed.

The elevator stopped.

It wasn't a normal stop.

There was no gentle slowing down as it reached a floor. Instead, the elevator gave a hard, sudden jerk that threw Julian sideways into the mirrored wall.

He quickly grabbed the railing to steady himself.

The lights flickered once.

Then twice.

After that, they went out.

A dim amber emergency light came on, leaving the elevator in a strange, weak glow.

Julian's heart was beating faster than it should have.

He looked around the small space and pressed the emergency call button.

Nothing happened.

Only static came through the speaker.

He pressed the button again.

"This is Julian Blackwood," he said, forcing himself to remain calm. "I'm stuck in elevator four between floors thirty-nine and forty. I need maintenance here immediately."

For a few seconds, there was only silence.

Then a voice came through the speaker.

It was broken and unclear.

Julian couldn't understand what the person was saying. The voice disappeared, came back for a moment, and disappeared again.

He stood alone in the dim elevator, trapped inside a small metal box nearly forty floors above Manhattan.

And for the first time that day, a thought entered his mind.

A cold, uncomfortable thought.

Building plans.

Elevator override codes.

He pushed the thought away almost immediately.

No.

He wasn't going to start thinking like that.

Elevators stopped working sometimes. It happened.

This was a large, old building, and its machines were not new. Problems could happen without warning.

It didn't have to mean anything.

Julian checked his watch.

One minute passed.

Then another.

He waited.

The elevator remained still.

Eleven minutes later, it suddenly moved again.

Julian's body tensed as the elevator gave another small jerk before continuing downward.

Those eleven minutes had felt much longer.

When the doors finally opened at the lobby, Julian stepped out.

Marcus was already there.

His head of security stood a few feet away, looking concerned but calm. He had the kind of expression that showed he knew how to handle situations like this.

"Sir," Marcus said. "I just heard what happened. Are you alright?"

"Fine," Julian replied.

But he didn't walk away immediately.

Instead, he looked carefully at Marcus.

For some reason, he noticed things he had never paid attention to before.

Marcus's calm face.

The steady way he looked directly at him.

The concern in his voice.

Nothing seemed strange.

Nothing seemed wrong.

"What happened?" Julian asked.

"Looks like a problem with the control relay," Marcus answered. "I'll have maintenance check the entire system tonight. They'll run a full inspection from top to bottom."

He paused.

"I'm sorry, sir. This shouldn't have happened."

"No," Julian said slowly.

"It shouldn't have."

He continued looking at Marcus.

Marcus didn't move.

He didn't look nervous or uncomfortable. He simply stood there, waiting patiently and professionally.

He had worked for Julian for eleven years.

Eleven years.

Julian finally looked away and walked toward the exit.

She's wrong.

He repeated the words in his mind.

She's angry.

She's paranoid.

She found some file that means nothing.

That's all.

He wasn't going to allow a housekeeper's imagination to make him suspicious of his own head of security.

It was ridiculous.

There was no reason to suspect Marcus.

No reason at all.

Yet the thought refused to disappear.

That night, Julian sat alone in his study.

A glass of scotch sat on the desk beside him, but he hadn't touched it.

The room was quiet.

The city lights shone through the large windows, but Julian barely noticed them.

His mind kept returning to the elevator.

Then to Zoe.

Then to the strange things she had told him.

He tried to ignore them.

He couldn't.

Finally, he opened his laptop.

He didn't call anyone.

He didn't tell Marcus.

He didn't tell Arthur.

He didn't tell anyone at all.

Instead, he quietly opened the building's maintenance records.

He searched for elevator four.

His eyes moved across the screen.

Maintenance dates.

Inspection reports.

Repair records.

He stopped.

Julian stared at the last service report.

His eyebrows slowly came together.

The elevator had been inspected only two weeks earlier.

The report was clear.

Everything had been checked.

There were no problems.

No warnings.

No damaged parts.

No issues had been recorded.

It had received a clean bill of health.

Julian leaned back in his chair.

He stared at the screen for several seconds.

If everything had been fine two weeks ago, why had the elevator suddenly stopped today?

Of course, there could still be a simple explanation.

Machines failed.

Even machines that had recently been inspected could develop problems.

He knew that.

It was logical.

It was normal.

So why couldn't he shake the feeling that something wasn't right?

Julian closed the laptop.

The room became quiet again.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead.

For the first time in eight months, he found himself thinking about Zoe's face.

But this time, he wasn't thinking about her with irritation.

He wasn't angry with her.

He wasn't annoyed by her questions.

Something else had replaced those feelings.

Something far more disturbing.

Doubt.

Julian looked at the closed laptop.

His mind returned to the things Zoe had said.

The file she had found.

The things she believed she had discovered.

The warning in her voice.

Maybe she really was wrong.

Maybe she had simply become suspicious because she didn't understand what she had seen.

Maybe there was nothing behind it.

But there was another possibility.

One Julian didn't want to consider.

He slowly looked toward the dark window.

The city stretched out below him, full of lights and movement.

For several moments, he said nothing.

Then one question entered his mind.

A question he could no longer push away.

What if she wasn't lying?