*
I closed my eyes.
The highway came back behind my retinas with the concussive violence of an incoming artillery shell:
Route 6, winding through the foothills between Golden and Lakewood.
The early morning traffic had been thin—a gray river of commuters rushing down toward the Denver central business district.
I had been in the fast lane, practicing my opening hook for the ten-million-dollar **Apex Health Logistics** pitch deck: *”Scalability isn’t a spreadsheet metric, gentlemen; it’s an operational artery.”
*
Then, the sudden brake lights ahead.
Not an accident.
A silver Mercedes-Maybach S680—a half-million-dollar flagship sedan with diplomatic livery plates—had pulled onto the narrow gravel shoulder fifty yards past the Lookout Mountain exit.
Its hazard lights were blinking with a frantic, irregular frequency.
The driver’s door was thrown wide open.
A woman had stumbled out into the gravel.
She wasn’t an elderly, frail grandmother in an unbuttoned cardigan.
