Page 9 of Return Billionaire to Sender

We ride in silence.

The secretaries and assistants will probably try to sign for it, but I’m planning on saying it has to go to Mr. Blackberg personally. I’ll just insist and I won’t stop insisting. The uniform carries a lot of weight, and I’m counting on that.

The elevator seems to be slowing, buttons lighting sluggishly from floor one to floor two to three. Just before it reaches the fourth floor, there’s a loud crack above us. I clutch the rail as the car shakes violently.

It tilts and grinds to a halt. The whole car goes dark, then another light blinks on—some kind of emergency light from the corner.

“Oh, my god,” the woman says, clinging to the rail on her side.

My heart whooshes in my ears. It’s all I hear in the total silence. “Okay,” I say, “it’s not crashing.”

“Yet,” she says.

“They have a lot of safeties on these things,” I say.

There’s another creak.

“There should be an emergency call, right?” she says.

She’s looking at me like I should know. I’m a New York City letter carrier. She thinks I should know things about elevators. She’d be surprised to learn that I rode an elevator for the first time in my life just two years ago.

I go over to the panel and squint in the dim light. The top button—a red one—has a raised image of a phone and some Braille next to it. I push it once. “Hello?”

Nothing.

The woman pulls out her phone and makes a call. She’s saying she’s going to be late to whoever is on the other end just about when a crackly voice comes through the panel. “Hey, this is engineering. Everyone okay in there?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s two of us, and we’re fine. What’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about,” the voice says. “Just electrical. You’re in no danger. We’ve got a team on it. It’ll be a few minutes. Are you good in there?”

I look over at the woman. “How long?” sheasks the unseen person on the other end of the intercom.

“A bit.”

She heaves aworried breath.

The guy asks for our names and we tell him. “Okay, Noelle and Stella, sit tight. We’re working on this issue. Buzz if anything changes in there, okay?” With that he’s off.

“If anything changes,” she says. “What is he thinking might change in here? Like if we run out of air?”

“That won’t happen,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “He probably means in case one of us needs medical attention or something.”

“Not exactly comforting.” Stella slides to the floor and hugs her knees.

Clanking noises ring out above us. Stella winces with each clank, terrified gaze fixed on the elevator ceiling.

“Or in case of werewolf transformation,” I add.

She turns a shocked gaze to me.

I give her a sassy little smile. “Appearance of vampire fangs?”

She laughs, relieved. “Oh my god, I thought you were serious for a sec,” she says. “Sorry. Not my day. And I don’t love elevators.”

I get the feeling that this is an understatement. “We’ll be fine,” I say. I set down my bag and sit. “They really do have safeties.”

The clanking stops. A drill begins to whir.

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