Seven Minutes

Ethan stepped onto the elevator with a plastic takeout box in hand. It had been a long evening spent hunched over his desk. He leaned back on the railing, watching his office disappear as the doors slid closed. The doors stopped before they closed completely, apparently caused by the shiny black stiletto poking out from the bottom.

The doors scraped back open to reveal the loveliest face Ethan had ever been close enough to reach out and touch. Her eyes were wide, but severe, like she wasn’t quite sure of whoever was looking back at her. A manicured hand held a manila folder tightly against her chest.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I’d introduce myself, but I’m 80% sure I’ve got soy sauce on my shirt somewhere.” The woman smiled politely but quickly shifted her focus to the elevator panel. She pressed her button and stepped back, pressing her spine against the wall. The elevator crawled down, the numbers blinking down with it. It lurched to a stop, turning the numbers into a sputtering mess of lights on the screen. The emergency light flashed on, casting a soft red glow on every surface. “Looks like my food’s going to get cold,” Ethan chuckled.

“You’ll live,” the stranger replied dryly.

Ethan nodded and fixed his eyes downward. The gentle hum of the machinery echoed off the metal surfaces. “So, which company are you with? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.” He took a step toward her and caught a faint whiff of vanilla.

“Private consultant. I’m just here for the day.” As an afterthought, she threw in a half-hearted smile to soften the edge in her voice. Then the woman turned back to Ethan, her eyes dark. “I shouldn’t say this, but keeping it in is worse.”

Ethan slowly turned his head toward the mysterious stranger. The emergency light had turned her white blouse a bright pink. “I can keep a secret. Might as well get to know each other a little bit while we’re trapped in here.”

“Yes, might as well,” she murmured. She let the silence fill the room again for a moment. “Isn’t it interesting how the longer you let silence grow, the heavier it gets?”

Ethan lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

The woman kept her eyes fixed downward, as if she were confessing to the floor instead of Ethan. “I once worked at a community center. I thought I was helping the kids. I couldn’t have known. But when I did know… I did nothing. Worse. I covered it up. Every last cent that should’ve gone to those kids. It all went straight into the program director’s pocket. But what was I supposed to do? I could barely make rent, and he threatened to fire me if I so much as breathed a word to anyone about it.” She shook her head.

“Woah. That is heavy.” Ethan glanced at the woman, then quickly looked away.

The stranger was staring intensely at Ethan now. “Alan Nolan. I would call him a snake, but those creatures don’t deserve the comparison.”

Ethan felt every muscle in his body tighten. “Did you just say Alan Nolan?”

The woman smiled slyly. “Why, do you know him?”

Ethan was brought back to that night two months ago. The night he almost did something he would regret forever. “He remembered how the man begged to keep his finger. “I’ll get you your money tomorrow, I swear, E!” Ethan slapped the man across his face.

“Tomorrow? You’ll be lucky to see a tomorrow, Nolan, you miserable mother—”

“Ethan?” The woman reached out to rest a hand on his arm. “Do you know Alan?”

Ethan shrugged his arm away. He could still feel the blood drying on his knuckles. He said that day that he was going to find a way to get either paid or payback, but he didn’t imagine it looking like this. He sure didn’t expect a pretty lady to serve him blackmail on a silver platter.

The woman leaned in. “I know who you are, Ethan. That’s why I told you. I need your help to make this public, but I can’t be the face of it.”

Ethan rubbed his knuckles. “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t let him get away with it. Tell everyone you know about what he did.” She handed him a piece of torn notebook paper with a phone number scrawled across it. “This is a secure number. Call it once and only once, and I’ll give you everything you need to blow the whistle. There’s a years-long paper trail of this fraud. I trust you understand what to do?”

“Yeah, sure. Time to make this news public.”

“Just one thing, Ethan. If for any chance you have a change of heart, just know that there’s still time for me to implicate you in all this.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. “What? What did I do?”

“Nothing yet.” The woman inspected her polished nails. “That’s the point. How this story plays out depends entirely on what you do next.” She pressed a combination of buttons on the elevator panel, and the elevator roared back to life. The emergency light disappeared, replaced by the stark white fluorescent lights. The elevator rumbled and came to a stop with a loud ding. The elevators opened, revealing the busy lobby. The woman slipped out and into the crowd.

Ethan peeled himself off the elevator wall and absent-mindedly tried to follow. He tried weaving through the crowd, but the woman had disappeared for good. The stranger was gone, but her ultimatum clung to him like blood he could never quite wash off. Like the blood he got on his sleeve that night. Funny how seven minutes in an elevator can trap you for the rest of your life.