The steering wheel of my seven-year-old Honda Accord bore the rhythmic indentations of my knuckles.
The vinyl was cold, cracked along the top seam where the high-altitude sun of suburban Denver had baked it for half a decade. When the scream finally tore itself out of my chest, it didn’t feel like sound; it felt like jagged, unrefined gravel being dragged up through my esophagus. It bounced off the windshield, vibrating through the dashboard, dying against the headliner that was already beginning to sag above the passenger seat.
Outside, the glass-and-steel facade of Vanguard Creative Group rose four stories into the bright Colorado morning like an unpolished guillotine blade.
I looked at my dashboard clock.
09:14 AM.
Forty-four minutes earlier, I had been the Senior Strategy Director of that building. I had held forty percent of the firm’s active billings in my head. I knew the quarterly tax write-offs, the font sizes preferred by our pharmaceutical clients, the private extension of the regional media director, and the exact balance of the petty-cash drawer Nick used to pay for his Friday afternoon dry martinis.
