I didn’t wait for them to lay a hand on my wool jacket.

I turned on my heel and walked out of the boardroom into the upstairs corridor.

The glass windows of the accounting department ran along the right side of the hall for fifty yards.

Every keyboard went quiet as I passed the first window.

Four payroll clerks stood up behind their gray partitions to watch me walk to the stairwell.

Dale was waiting at the bottom of the concrete stairs outside the fleet manager’s office, holding a red shop rag in his right hand.

He cleared his throat twice as my boots hit the linoleum of the lower bay.