PROLOGUE

      LISA REYNOLDS gazed with apprehension at the empty lobby of the Bonus Bank Building. No one standing by the bank of elevators. No telling when someone would come and choose the one marked Floors 21 to 40.

      She walked to that elevator, and courageously lifted her finger.

      She couldn’t push the button.

      This was crazy! Just because it happened once didn’t mean you were going to be stuck every time you stepped into an elevator.

      She wasn’t crazy. Hadn’t she breezed through college, and earned a master’s degree in business by the time she was twenty-three! Now, at twenty-six, she was director of research and development at CTI—Computer Technology Incorporated.

      Not anymore, she reminded herself.

      Well, she hadn’t lost the job because she wasn’t darn good at it.

      Mergers! That was what was crazy. All these takeover, downsizing shenanigans going on in business today.

      Anyway, it was CTI’s loss, not hers. She already had feelers out. With her qualifications, she’d be hired by the competition in a hot minute.

      Maybe with an office on the ground floor, she thought, trying to laugh at herself. Why couldn’t she lose this ridiculous phobia about elevators!

      She had almost overcome it. Out of necessity. She could hardly have climbed the stairs to her thirty-fourth floor office each working day for one whole year. She had compromised. She would board the elevator only if someone got on with her. That way she wouldn’t be alone in death or disaster.

      She should have come earlier. Not everybody had lost their job, and the elevators would have been crowded with workers.

      Bad timing. Stupid to think being a little late didn’t matter because it was her last day.

      She straightened hopefully as a woman breezed into the lobby. But the woman stopped at the one to twenty-block. Lisa stepped back as if waiting for someone. She pretended to be studying the mural on the opposite wall while gazing surreptitiously at the woman. She looked very chic in a smart gabardine business suit, one leather gloved hand clutching a smart leather attaché case.

      Like me, Lisa thought, touching a hand to the cloud of silky black hair that framed her face in a smart shoulder-length cut. I’m coiffured, manicured and groomed as sleek as the sleekest of women executives! And I’m more efficient than most. Sam Fraser said so.

      “I hate doing this to you,” he had said when he handed her the pink slip that terminated her employment. “Research and development was gaining momentum under your management, and it’s not your fault that we’ve dropped in the market.”

      “But that’s only temporary,” she protested, at the moment more concerned with the potential of CTI’s software than with her personal problem. “Of course we show a slump in the market when a large share of funds is going into development. But when the new programs are on the market, our stock will go up.”

      “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “But the merger hangs on the current rating. Tray Kingsley, the man who’s negotiating the deal, is looking at the market and if our stock doesn’t go up, a sell-off will begin. We’ve got to cut overhead to raise profit. Middle management is the first to go. Sorry.”