Chapter 3 - The Smartphone in the Wool
The lobby went dead silent. The receptionist at the main desk looked away, too terrified of Sarah to intervene. Bill the security guard stood like a statue, waiting to haul Ethan out the door.
Ethan stood frozen. Fired. Two weeks into a job he needed to pay for his community college textbooks and help his mother with their grocery bills. All because he tried to stop a massive security guard from manhandling an elderly woman.
He slowly reached up, unclipped his laminated employee badge, and tossed it onto the quartz counter. He unzipped his navy blue runner vest, letting it slide off his shoulders and drop onto the terrazzo floor.
"You're a monster, Ms. Jenkins," Ethan said quietly, his voice shaking with a cold, unyielding dignity that made Sarah flinch despite herself. "You care more about marble floors than you do about human beings."
"Save your teenage angst for the unemployment office," Sarah sneered, tossing her head back. "Now, get out."
Before Ethan could turn toward the revolving doors, Martha Sterling moved.
She didn't look frail anymore. With a swift, deliberate motion, her gloved hand reached deep into the hidden, inner lining of her thread frayed wool coat.
She pulled out a device.
It wasn't a cheap flip phone or an old-model handheld. It was a custom-built, titanium-cased Apex Ultra-X smartphone—a prototype device encased in gold leaf that had not yet been released to the public, valued at over fifteen thousand dollars, carrying an encrypted direct-frequency chip linking only to the executive suite on the sixtieth floor.
Sarah’s eyes widened. Her smirk vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, creeping expression of absolute horror.
Martha pressed a single side button on the sleek titanium device, held it to her ear, and spoke with a quiet, devastatingly calm authority that commanded the entire room.
"Daughter," Martha said into the phone. "Tell my son to get down to the lobby immediately. Or I am walking back out into the sleet, and he can spend the rest of his life explaining to the board of directors why his mother was thrown out of her own building by a middle-management tyrant."
May you like
A sharp, panicked gasp escaped Sarah’s throat. "Wait... who... who are you talking to?!"
Martha didn't answer her. She simply lowered the phone, slipping it back into the pocket of her coat, and turned her pale blue eyes toward Sarah with the terrifying, unblinking stillness of a predator waiting for its prey.
