The conference had run late.

By the time Mr. Harlan Cole finished the last client dinner, the sky was already black and the mountain road back to the city was shining with new rain. I had only joined the company six months earlier as his executive assistant. Most of the staff had left after the afternoon sessions. I stayed because he asked me to coordinate the materials and make sure the slides were backed up. When he appeared at the hotel entrance with the car keys and said, “You’re riding with me,” it didn’t feel like a choice.

Harlan was forty-six, tall, broad-shouldered, and permanently unsmiling in a way that...