I had been in the fast lane, practicing my opening hook for the ten-million-dollar Apex Health Logistics pitch deck: ”Scalability isn’t a spreadsheet metric, gentlemen; it’s an operational artery.”
Then, the sudden brake lights ahead.
Not an accident. A silver Mercedes-Maybach S680—a half-million-dollar flagship sedan with diplomatic livery plates—had pulled onto the narrow gravel shoulder fifty yards past the Lookout Mountain exit.
Its hazard lights were blinking with a frantic, irregular frequency.
The driver’s door was thrown wide open.
A woman had stumbled out into the gravel.
She wasn’t an elderly, frail grandmother in an unbuttoned cardigan. She was sixty, perhaps sixty-two, dressed in an immaculate, double-breasted navy cashmere pantsuit tailored with the architectural precision of Savile Row. Her silver hair was drawn into a chiseled, military-grade chignon secured by a five-inch antique horn hairpin.
She took three uncoordinated, spastic strides toward the traffic lane, her right hand clawing at the lapels of her jacket, her left arm hanging limp, her fingers convulsing.
