“See you soon,” I reply, and watch them leave.

I get up and stretch my legs, walking over to take in the breathtaking sunset painting the backdrop to the Golden Gate Bridge. Splashes of red and orange and splatters of pink contrast against the advancing blue-gray of night, decorating the landscape that has been an inspiration to me throughout my career.

I hear the stairwell door open and close in reception, the sound echoing around the now empty office. I take one more look over my beautiful city and spin around expecting to see Grant panting from running up all the stairs but my smile fades just as fast as it appeared when I find myself face to face with Gregory Graves, pointing a black handgun at the middle of my chest.

How did he get into the building? Where was security?

“Gregory—”

“You’re a hard man to get alone, Mr. Alexander,” he states, his voice defiant and matter-of-fact.

Although my body has gone into fight or flight mode, at the back of my mind I’m aware of the need to placate him until I can call for help. “Gregory, let’s sit down and talk.”

He tilts his head and watches me, his eyes overactive and darting from me to the window and back again.

“Sit at your desk, Mr. Alexander. I have a story to tell.” Then the corner of his lip curls up in a sneer and I lose the battle against the chill threatening to overtake my body.

I’m fully aware that if it came down to a physical altercation between the two of us, I would come out the victor. The game changer in this situation is the gun in his hand.

Deciding to do what he says, I walk slowly over to my desk chair and sit down to face him.

He looks tired; his blue eyes are bloodshot, his skin pale against the scattering of tan-colored freckles over his cheeks and his hair is oily and unkempt, haphazard and mussed. His white button-down is opened at the top, pulled messily out of his black office slacks I presume are the same ones he wore yesterday.

If ever there were a man on the ledge—something I have some recent experience with—Graves would be a shining example.

His finger twitches around the trigger of the gun, his hand jerking as he shakes his arm. “I thought you were everything I wanted to be,” he starts to say

“Gregory, I—”

His cold, callous voice interrupts me. “Your time to talk was months ago. When you missed the intern interview, when you cancelled our first appointment, then the second . . . you had your chance Callum . . .” he says my name with a snarl, the gun in his hand catching my eye with every tug and pull he makes. One wrong move and everything I’ve worked hard for—professionally and personally—could be gone in an instant.

“I want to see your plans. You’re a very talented architect. Grant and I were talking the other day about offering you a position once you graduate.”

“Oh, I bet you were talking about me. You’re threatened by me.”

The words I want to say get stuck in my throat.

Easy does it, Alexander.

“The night I met you, you were so enigmatic. You walked around that function room like you owned it and everyone inside was there at your bidding. Your suit was tailored to perfection, your smile had all of the women eating out of the palm of your hand, and the university was heralding you as the next pioneer of modern architecture. What more was there to like, right?”

I’m unsure what to say to that—even if I want to tell him how wrong he really is about me. He continues. “I watched you all night, waited for the opportunity to introduce myself. Do you know, I’d followed your work for a long time? I worked hard to get myself in a position where I could apply for the internship and get close enough to work with you.” He glares at me, his eyes darting from the gun to my face. “That night, that night I talked to Grant first. He told me you weren’t who they thought you were. You work together, collaborate, but you’re the face of the firm. The golden boy. In the space of a few minutes, he shattered everything I’d built you up to be.”

My head jerks back, wondering in what circumstance Grant would ever say something like that, but before I can say something, Graves begins to pace back and forth, and starts ranting. Seeing an opportunity and taking it, I move my hand sideways on my desk to my cell phone, discreetly swiping open the screen and dialing nine one one and quickly flipping the screen over. When his head turns to me, the call is connected but my hand is back resting on the wooden desk in front of me.

“I wanted to bring you down. I wanted to step in and become the new you. But nothing I did would knock you off that self-appointed pedestal—”

“I’ve never put myself out there Gregory,” I unwisely interrupt. He whirls around and stalks toward me, standing next to me, the metal of the gun digging into my temple as he leans down to talk into my ear.

My heart pounds in my chest, the threat to my mortality now a very distinct possibility. Any advantage I thought I might have over him vanishes in that instant.

“Do you feel it, Callum? That fear icing through your veins? One squeeze and your life would be over. No awards, no buildings, nothing but darkness. Never-ending darkness.”

I open my mouth to say something but slam it shut when I see Grant’s face at the stairwell door to the side of the elevator. He nods at me but then disappears from sight.

“What are you looking for, Callum? There’s no one to come save you. I’ve been here for hours, hiding, waiting, biding my time until you were alone and ready for me.”

“Gregory, can you put the gun down? We can talk. I have time now. Let’s talk.”

“Talk? You want to talk now?” he yells, his chest heaving.

“Why me?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“Because you are a mirage of what the world around you believes you to be.

“I was, but I’m not now.”

“You are to me. You’re not the great Callum Alexander anymore. I took care of that.”

“What did you do?” I ask, hoping the emergency operator is still on the line. It may be an amateur move, but if I can get Gregory talking, it may distract him enough to lower his weapon and give me the opportunity to regain some of the advantage I’ve lost.

“The complaint to the board was the easiest. So, so easy,” he says, standing to his full height and walking backwards around the desk. “But then they dismissed it like it was nothing. So I moved on and met the captivating Jodi. So hospitable, that one. She’d hooked herself deep to the great Callum Alexander bandwagon, and she couldn’t get herself free.” He lifts the gun to his head and taps the muzzle against his temple carelessly, oblivious the any danger there may be from doing so.

“You killed her,” I tell him, and his answering smile chills me to the core. My blood runs cold as he lowers the gun to his side, and leans over the desk.

“She was getting in the way. She was a liability I could no longer afford. She served her purpose. Ply her with champagne and she sings like a canary. She went into graphic detail about your encounters, but when she wouldn’t talk to my sister, Carmen, direct, I had to pass everything on myself. Carmen was over the moon. She’s been wanting to expose you for a while.”

My mouth drops open at the bomb he has inadvertently just dropped. Carmen Dallas is his sister. Suddenly all the news reports, the information she sourced but shouldn’t have had any way of doing so, all makes sense. All of it was because of Graves.

I look up at him, look for any sign that he’s wavering, but my heart sinks when I see none. “What about the building collapse? Two men died, Gregory.”

“And their blood is on your hands, Callum. Your actions forced me to do that.”

“My actions?” I ask unwittingly.

Again he stalks toward me, jabbing the gun in the air to punctuate every word. “You weren’t at the internship interview. You kept fobbing me off to Grant, or one of the other architects. You think you’re too important to look over my designs. You know what I think? I think you know . . . you know . . . that I’m better than you. More talented. More cutting edge. But soon it’ll be all over, Callum.”