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.
Now, my keycard was a piece of dead polyvinyl chloride resting on the center console.
