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laminated surface. Apart from a few other spots of what seems to be a variety of bodily fluids only partially cleaned, the room is devoid of anything else but the door and the obligatory one-way mirror.
    I’ve read enough books to know that they’re trying to make me more pliable for their interrogation, but I did ask for my lawyer a few hours ago. So much of this seems off to me. For one, I don’t know why I was immediately to blame for my boss’s death. People in the office know me well enough to know that I would never hurt anyone. At least that’s what I thought. Melissa said something to the detective, and that’s the reason I’m here, but what could she have possibly said?
    The other thing that doesn’t make much sense to me isn’t so much that the police violated what used to be Constitutional law before the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act made the aforementioned document null and void. What doesn’t make sense is that they had a warrant. Well, I guess it’s more complicated with that. What I mean is that it doesn’t make sense that they were able to get a warrant so quickly. Warrants require judges, and judges are busy people. For them to have had the warrant in hand when they broke down James’s— our door, they would have had to get the warrant signed before I even got home. I get that CEOs are important to the structure of our society, but someone had to be psychic to get a warrant pushed through so quickly. That does not make sense to me.
    There’s the sound of someone on the other side of the door, talking in a hushed but hurried tone. I can’t quite hear what’s being said, but it’s obviously about me. I don’t have much time to speculate though. The door opens, and I finally see a friendly face. “Jillian!” I call out as my lawyer stands in the open doorway.
    Jillian Barnes-Pearson is, in my opinion, the finest legal defense that nepotism can buy. Along with having a stellar record, she also happens to be my sister-in-law. You may think it’s lucky that one of my brothers married a lawyer, but I have so many siblings that it’s really not that impressive from a statistical point of view. “Rose,” Jillian says, her lips moving up and to the left in her trademark haughty smile.
    She shuts the door behind her and says, “I haven’t seen you since the last time we all went to the lake. How have you been?”
    “Present moment excluded?” I chuckle, shaking my hands against the shackles.
    “That was the general idea, yes,” she responds, finally showing off her real smile: an almost insecure curl at the edges of her mouth which makes her seem so approachable. “So, it seems that you’ve gotten yourself into quite the predicament,” she says.
    “I don’t know that I got myself anywhere, but this is a hell of a situation, I’ll give you that.”
    “Okay,” she says, leaning in. “So far, what I know is that the only thing they’ve got you on is the testimony of one witness who says that she saw you enter the office of the deceased just before you walked out to the elevator.”
    “That’s it?” I ask. “First off, that’s not even true. Second, how is that enough for them to arrest a person for murder?”
    “It’s pretty high-profile,” Jillian says. “Whether you had anything to do with it or not, it needs to look like the police are moving quickly on this, or they could lose all sorts of donations.”
    “This is about donations?” I ask incredulously.
    “No, it’s about the death of a CEO,” Jillian says, reaching down the front of her shirt and pulling a pack of cigarettes from between her jealousy-inspiring breasts. “Therefore, it’s about bluebloods everywhere. Therefore, I guess, it is about donations.”
    “I thought you quit,” I say.
    “It’s a process,” she says, pulling a lighter from inside of the pack. “What do you know about Melissa Stokes?”
    “I don’t think you can smoke that in here,” I say, trying to wave the slowly spreading cloud of