Not Dying for Her Lie Again novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Footage

Kenneth plays the stairwell footage for HR and the floor lead; Delaney cries that she slipped, then turns to Kenneth and says the baby is his.

I turned around.

Kenneth Ashworth stood in the open doorway with two security guards behind him.

He was the CEO of the whole company, and I had only ever seen him from the back of a town hall.

His jacket was open, his tie was loose, and he was looking at the camera, not at me.

"Nobody touch her," he said. "Nobody move her. The paramedics are two minutes out."

"She's bleeding," a man in the doorway said.

"I can see that."

His voice was calm and flat.

He stepped past me and crouched a few feet from Delaney without touching her.

Delaney's sobs got louder.

"Mr. Ashworth," she gasped. "Thank God. She pushed me. Molly pushed me. I'm pregnant, I'm so scared."

Kenneth looked at her for a long moment.

"The baby is the first thing I'm worried about," he said. "Stay still."

The paramedics came in a rush and took her away on a board, and she cried the whole way down.

Nobody on the floor said a word to me.

Forty minutes later I was sitting in a glass room on the 51st floor with my hands under my thighs so they would stop shaking.

The HR director sat across from me.

The floor lead sat beside her.

A man from the security desk stood by a wall screen.

Kenneth leaned against the far wall with his arms folded.

On the table in front of me lay my phone, with my video already copied to a laptop.

"Ms. Lundberg," said the HR director. "A serious accusation has been made against you."

"I know."

"We'll look at everything before we decide anything. Mr. Ashworth asked to see both recordings together."

"Both?" I said.

"The stairwell has a camera," said the security man.

"It went in this morning."

I looked at Kenneth.

He looked back, and his face gave away nothing at all.

"It was on a work order from last week," he said. "I signed it."

That sounded like a lie, and I could not have said why.

The screen lit up.

It showed the top of the stairwell from above, in clean color.

Delaney came through the door, alone.

She looked up the stairs and down them.

She looked right at the lens for half a second and did not see it.

She stepped to the edge and was gone from the frame.

I watched her fall again.

It was easier to watch the second time, because now it was proof.

Then my own door opened on the screen, and I appeared at the top of the stairs, holding my phone low and frozen with shock.

I had been standing ten feet from her the whole time.

My hands had never touched her.

The room was quiet.

"That's a pouch," the HR director said slowly.

The security man zoomed in.

The red pouch had burst against the concrete and lay split open under Delaney's skirt.

It was a thin plastic bag the size of my palm.

"The paramedics left it on the landing," the security man said. "My guard bagged it."

The floor lead covered her mouth.

"I can't believe this," she whispered.

Kenneth pushed off the wall.

"Get her on the phone," he said. "I want her to hear this herself."

Delaney came onto the speaker five minutes later, sniffling.

"Hello?" she said.

"Delaney, it's Kenneth Ashworth."

"Mr. Ashworth." Her voice wobbled. "Oh, thank you for checking on me."

"I'm looking at the stairwell footage."

There was a silence.

"I slipped," she said.

Nobody in the room breathed.

"I slipped on the top step, and I panicked, and I said something I didn't mean. I was in so much pain. I didn't know what I was saying."

"You walked down the stairs by yourself," Kenneth said. "You checked they were empty first."

"I don't remember that."

"You put a bag of fake blood under your skirt."

"That isn't blood. I don't know what that is. I'm bleeding for real, they're doing an ultrasound, I could lose my baby, and you're accusing me?"

She started crying hard.

It was good crying.

It was so good that the floor lead looked at me for one second and wavered.

I knew every note of it.

I had heard it on the witness stand.

Kenneth's jaw moved once.

"Delaney," he said. "Whose baby is it?"

I frowned.

That was a strange thing to ask.

The line went silent.

Then her breathing slowed down, and her voice came back soft, smooth and certain.

"It's yours, Kenneth," she said.

The glass room went dead.

"I'm eleven weeks," she said. "It's your baby."

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