“What?”
He took one shuddering breath.
“I asked, “How?” He whispered, “They looked like
…”…they just fell where they stood.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak.
Ranger sat pressed against my leg, staring at me now instead of the door, as if he understood the shape of the silence on the line.
“What do you mean?” I finally asked.
Richard’s voice was ragged. “There was some kind of leak in Conference Suite B. We had the vendor team, legal, two directors, and facilities in there. One minute they were setting up. Then security saw people through the glass collapse.”
My stomach dropped.
Conference Suite B was on the fourth floor of our downtown office. Sealed windows. Private ventilation. Used for outside contractors, compliance reviews, and any meeting someone important wanted hidden from the rest of the staff.
“How many?”
“Nine confirmed,” he said. “Maybe more. EMTs are still inside.”
I slid into a kitchen chair because my knees had stopped feeling reliable.
“How are you okay?”
“I was in the lobby when the alarm went off. Angela was getting coffee. We never made it up.”
Angela. Our compliance attorney. She had texted me at 7:52 asking if I could bring the revised vendor file because Richard’s assistant forgot it.
I looked at my laptop bag on the floor.
The vendor file was inside.
I was supposed to be in that room.
The police called twenty minutes later.
