“Is someone in there?” I yelled, pounding on the door. There was no answer, just the faint sound of another door opening and then closing.

I stepped back and tried kicking the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. I pulled my shoes off and was about to try a harder kick when Gwen called out.

“Wait!” she said, still pounding in vain on Wendell’s chest. “A pencil…the hole in the doorknob…”

I pulled a pen from my pocket and poked it into a small hole in the center of the doorknob. I heard a click and twisted the knob.

“Got it.”

The door swung open to reveal a very large and elaborate executive bathroom. It was empty. Across from me was another door, and I stepped through it to find a long, narrow hallway. I ran down the hallway to a metal door marked Exit—a door that was only now slowly falling to a close. Swinging it open revealed a stairwell, and from below I could hear the brisk patter of feet going down the cement steps. I looked down through the center of the stairwell but couldn’t see the person running.

“Stop!” I called out, my voice echoing in the cement chamber. There was no reply except the hastening of the footsteps on the stairs. Glad I had already kicked off my high heels, I started my descent in stocking feet, hiking my narrow skirt high enough to allow my legs full range of motion.

I had gone down about three floors when I heard a door somewhere below me open and then close. Then all was silent except for my gasping breath and the pounding of my heart. I continued down three more flights, then burst through the door into the busy first-floor lobby.

There were plenty of people there, heading in all directions, though no one that looked suspicious or out of place. Glancing around, I could find no doorman or security guard. It was just a typical downtown office building, anonymous and vaguely chaotic.

Still in my stocking feet, I ran out of the front door and looked up and down the street, hoping to catch sight of someone running away, but again there was no one running, nothing unusual. There was a cab parked in front of the building, the driver leaning lazily against the hood.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Did you see someone come out of this building just a moment ago?”

He looked down at my bare feet, then back at my face.

“Why ya wanna know?”

“It’s an emergency,” I rasped. “Did someone come running out of here ahead of me?”

He shrugged.

“Lotsa people been in and out. Nobody running.”

“Out of breath, maybe? Sweating?”

“Not that I noticed. Say, what happened? Somebody steal your shoes or something?”

I didn’t bother to reply. I returned to the lobby and walked around it, trying to decide which way I would’ve gone if someone had been pursuing me. There weren’t that many choices, really, just the elevators, the front doors, or the stairwell on the opposite side of the lobby. I opened the door to that other stairwell and listened, but I couldn’t hear any movement overhead.