Code PINK_A Novel Of Suspense

by Erica R Stinson

  Blood on the pavement.

  Marianne screaming as people came running at the sound of her cries.

  Bradford trying to maintain some sense of control.

  More blood.

  There was blood all over the car seat, dribbling down as the vehicle finally stopped rolling over and collided with another object.

  Someone was in the seat next to her, but the girl was no longer moving. A shrill scream sounded from somewhere outside of the mangled car, a world once known now forever gone...

  The scream from the nightmare had merged with the piercing blare of the alarm as her deep, brown eyes fluttered open and then squinted shut from the bright sunlight washing over her bedroom. The damned thing always startled her, despite knowing that it would go off at exactly six every morning. Vera rolled over in bed and slammed her palm against it, stopping the noise in its tracks.

  It was Monday.

  Again.

  The weekend had been uneventful.

  Boring even.

  She had binge-watched Game Of Thrones upon learning of its popularity all across social media. It was a bit gory at times, but a show that had sucked her in after the very first episode.

  Sighing, Vera’s eyes rolled over to the alarm clock again and she realized with a start, that ten minutes had gone by.

  Jumping into the shower quickly, the young woman used a generous portion of her beloved Gucci bath gel. Each time she bought it and sometimes even splurging on accompanying lotions occasionally, it certainly put a dent in her wallet. But despite her insecurities about her looks, her wardrobe and just herself in general, Vera repeatedly splurged on this one item at least four times a year.

  It made her feel, or at least smell, pretty.

  She had never been a pretty girl. A slightly chubby little girl, Vera Willis had had it rough growing up in her parents’ household. Her mother constantly nagged her about taking more care with her appearance, while her perfect sister had gotten all the praise.

  Victoria had always been the perfect one.

  The pretty one.

  The slender one.

  The brain.

  Good grades in school, millions of friends, their teachers always remarking on what a success Victoria Willis was going to be when she grew up.

  Even amongst her own family, Vera noticed how they had treated Victoria very differently than how they had treated her and it hurt.

  She hadn’t understood it back then, but she could readily admit that didn’t care about it anymore.

  She had pretty much caused an even further rift between herself and her parents. At least that’s the way they would make it appear when they complained to anyone that would listen about what a problem she was. How Vera always had to make things difficult.

  Vera had left her parents’ house, right in the middle of dinner and hadn’t been back there since.

  That was over three weeks ago, but she could hold a silent treatment just as long as they could.

  Vera was tired of being a doormat for everyone to complain to, yet when she had her own problems no one was anywhere to be found. Maybe listen to her moan and groan for a change.

  Three years ago, her own cousin had accused her of being selfish when she refused to watch her bratty kids while she went out on the prowl for yet another man. She and Allison had never been close and Vera almost hadn’t picked up the phone when she saw the number. But the wimp in her did it anyway, so as not to start a whole ‘thing’. For Allison to suddenly call her, as if she had nothing better to do than babysit three children she barely knew, was a bit out there.

  “Well, I figured you weren’t busy. Anyway, I will be over there in about twenty minutes. Where do you live again?” Allison asked distractedly right before she screamed at one of the kids, the squabbling in the background grating on Vera’s nerves.

  It was all she could do to hold her composure right before she blurted out that she was busy and Allison would have to find someone else. That’s when it got ugly and after Allison hung up on her, angry, her mother called to berate her about being more supportive of family members who were having a rough time.

  Allison was a divorced mother of three kids.

  So what?

  Vera’s whole life had been a ‘rough time’ and no one gave a shit.

  Vera had been the one to hang up the phone that time.

  Toxic.

  They were all just toxic.

  They barely bothered with her anyway, but she discovered that she liked it that way.

  She was down to only three anti-depressants from five since the incident with her parents' dinner and she was actually beginning to feel the weight come off of her shoulders.

  Drying off Vera realized, with a start, that she was seriously running late now.

  Dressing quickly, she threw on a simple black skirt and a creamy, white button-down blouse. She grabbed her favorite red sweater and her purse as she slid her stocking-covered feet into a pair of worn, scuffed black flats. Her dark hair was a bit rough-looking, split-end city truth be told, but she didn’t have time to deal with it right now.

  Vera locked up her apartment and hurried to the elevator at the end of the hall. She grabbed a brush from her purse and began to whip it through her limp hair as the car rode down six floors to the lobby.

  She quickly checked the mailbox, retrieving the contents from Saturday since she hadn’t gotten out of bed all weekend long.

  Junk-mail.

  A Verizon phone bill. She owed Con-Ed for the excessive use of the air-conditioning from the final, nasty heat-wave that had fallen over New York City a few weeks ago.

  No time for the subway today.

  Hailing a cab, she gave the driver the address of the upscale mid-town Manhattan office building she’d worked at for three years.

  It was a good job, and she was very good at it. But her boss was an asshole.

  Some days it took everything in her not to go upside his head because she couldn’t take him. He was a narcissistic, chauvinistic, dickhead who she absolutely could not stand.

  He would stride around the office as if he were a king, and it showed. Most of the people at the office kissed his ass in order to avoid becoming his target. He would antagonize people in the office to the point that they would either get fired (or at least she felt that he would somehow get them fired) or they would just quit in exasperation.

  The CEO of the company was a nice enough man, but he unfortunately lacked the backbone to deal with this assertive, alpha-male type so he was basically a victim, too. The bad part was that the asshole didn’t even realize that he was the problem.

  But Vera knew.

  She would sit and quietly listen to the office gossip from co-workers huddled in distant corners away from his view, or holding private rants amongst each other in the break-room or the restrooms.

  It was always someone else and him.

  The CEO was definitely aware of this issue, but he wanted them all to work together as a team.

  Try to get along for the benefit of the company.

  It was like that with small offices sometimes.

  In the past, Vera had worked at larger companies, where there were so many people there that no one paid her much attention anyway. She actually preferred it that way, because most workplaces today had too much damned drama. Once, she even provided support to an office manager and it was just the two of them, which suited her also.

  Unfortunately, that had been a temporary situation she’d gotten into before she found her current job. A maternity leave assignment, the temp agency had said. It had been nice there and Vera had gotten very comfortable for the six weeks she worked with family-like staff.

  Small offices with ten, twelve people? She couldn’t stand it because there was always one asshole that threw a monkey-wrench into the works and made it impossible for them all to work cohesively.

  A cancer.

  The yellow cab rolled to a stop in front of the tall building in midtown and Vera paid and
got out of the car. It was starting to get brisk, all traces of summer completely gone now that it was mid-September. She was glad that she had thought to bring her sweater.

  As she walked into the building holding up her identification, the two uniformed guards didn’t even glance her way.

  Yup.

  Invisible.

  Vera stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the nineteenth floor, listening to the annoying Musak that every elevator in the world seemed to have. When the doors slid open, she was greeted by the sight of her coworkers laughing and talking together as they shared the past weekend’s events with one other. She mumbled a ‘good morning’ as she made her way around them and to her lone desk, which was located right outside of Asshole’s office door.

  None of them responded, or even looked up for that matter.

  Typical, but definitely not unexpected.

  None of them really bothered with her.

  She came in, did her work and then went home. She got the feeling that they didn’t trust her because of her ties to Asshole as his personal assistant. She almost felt sorry for Linda, because she handled all of his personal affairs, events, invitations, travel itinerary and was even on call during the weekends. But not too sorry, because that bitch acted just at haughty as Asshole at times, but then other times Vera would witness her near tears after one of Asshole’s many tirades.

  If her co-workers had ever bothered to ask her, they would know that she hated him just as much, if not more, than they did.

  Vera had barely set her purse down on her desk, before Asshole’s door ripped open and he barked at her to get his coffee. The door slammed shut and then he was gone.

  The last time she’d gotten his coffee, just this past Friday afternoon at exactly four-fifty-nine on the nose, she had spit in it.

  Maybe a trip to the ladies room first, with his coffee cup, on her way to the break room might be a good idea.

  When she went to the break room after locking her purse in her desk drawer, she stopped in the doorway.

  A pretty blonde woman was standing at the counter making herself a cup of tea and she turned upon hearing Vera’s arrival.

  “Oh, hi!” she chirped, a flawless smile spreading across her narrow face as she moved towards Vera, her pale blue eyes made up perfectly as the scent of what smelled like Yves Saint. Laurent ‘Mon Paris’ wafted from her.

  Vera had that very fragrance on her wish-list at Sephora. Her bee-stung lips wore a glossy, pink stain “I’m Elizabeth, well Lizzie anyway. Lizzie Juhl.”

  Vera stared at her wordlessly, the petite figure draped in a very fashionable fit-and-flare navy blue dress, high-heeled black patent-leather peep-toe Mary-Jane’s on her feet, her golden hair down and flowing around her slender shoulders and to her surprise a rare smile began to tug at her own lips.

  She was stunning.

  “Vera.” she finally managed.

  “Oh my God! I love that name! It’s one of those names that you don’t really hear anymore, but people still like it. It’s a lot classier than Elizabeth, that’s for sure.” She said, with a little, embarrassed giggle as Vera gave her a matching, fake one.

  “Are you a temp?” Vera asked, as Lizzie shook her head.

  “No, I was just hired last week and today’s my first day.”

  “And what will you be doing?” Vera asked, a feeling of trepidation spreading through her entire body.

  The CEO was looking for a new assistant, and Vera had secretly submitted her own resume. Working for Asshole was getting to be tiresome and she needed a change. Not to mention the huge raise that came along with it. She hadn’t heard back from them yet, and she didn’t know how she’d react if Lizzie was the new assistant. She watched the gorgeous young woman take a leisurely sip of her tea, as if she didn't have a care in the world, a little sigh escaping her as she relished her beverage. Just as Vera was about to lose her shit, Lizzie spoke up after a second sip.

  “I’ll be working with the accounting department.” She admitted as Vera finally let go of the breath that she’d been holding.

  “Well,” Vera said, as she set Asshole’s cup down and started filling it with coffee from one of the large urns at the counter. “Welcome.”

  “Thanks.” Lizzie said, with another pretty smile as she started to leave and then turned back towards Vera. “Hey, what are you doing for lunch today? Maybe you can give me the low-down on the office. You know, dish the dirt?”

  Vera just blinked.

  In the four years that she’d been in the office, she had always eaten alone. Usually a solitary sandwich or salad of some sort and a bottle of water, or iced tea down in the building’s lobby. There was a café-style restaurant there that most of the employees used.

  No one had ever invited her for lunch before.

  “Uh......we can go to the café in the lobby. Twelve-thirty okay?”

  “That’s fine!” Lizzie gushed, as she turned and walked out as she called over her shoulder, “See you then!”

  Vera was still stunned after she’d brought Asshole’s coffee back to his office, which she had spit in again, and then got started on his calendar.

  She couldn’t believe that Lizzie had been so nice to her, but then again, she had only invited her to lunch because she needed help fitting in with the others.

  Vera could already see where this was going.

  She’d go to lunch with Lizzie today, and tomorrow the woman would forget all about her as she got to know the others. Learned how none of them liked her and thought she was a company spy for Asshole, and Lizzie would join them, leaving her completely alone.

  Again.

  Vera was tempted to cancel the lunch and just eat by herself as she always did, but when twelve-thirty started to roll around she was a bit nervous.

  Excited, too.

  And just as she promised, Lizzie came and found her, a pretty navy-blue purse hooked over her slender arm as she smiled at Vera.

  “Ready to go?” Lizzie asked as Vera managed to make her fingers move to unlock her drawer and get her own purse.

  This was going to be interesting.

  ***

  Lizzie had her arm hooked through Vera’s as they came back from lunch, laughing together over some story the woman had told Vera. It had been the most fun she’d had in a long time. She was very sorry to see it end, but duty called.

  As if on cue, Asshole came out of his office and stood watching them with his hands on his hips as he tapped his foot impatiently.

  “Bye.” Vera practically whispered, surprised that Lizzie had treated her, “Thanks again for lunch.”

  “We’ll do it again tomorrow.” Lizzie whispered back, which thrilled Vera to the core.

  “Sure.” She said, as she scurried to her desk, where Asshole immediately started in on her even though she still had a few minutes left of her lunch break.

  “Where were you?” he demanded as Vera took the papers from his hand and tossed them on her desk. “I’ve got a big meeting in twenty minutes and of course you forgot to email me my notes....”

  “I did email them to you. Right before I went to lunch.” She said, sick of his crap, which was occurring on her time.

  That part really pissed her off.

  “No, you didn’t because I never got it. Get it on my desk, now.” Asshole said meanly, shaking his head in exasperation before slamming back into his office.

  Vera sat at her computer and opened her email program. She looked in the folder that housed email items ‘sent’, ‘delivered’ and ‘read’ and sure enough the email was there.

  Just as she had told him.

  When he had pulled this shit before, she set up her emails to him with an automatic receipt of it being read just to cover her ass. She could tell if and when he opened any emails from her, so there was definitely no denying he got them.

  He hadn’t pulled this on her in a while, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  Vera printed out the mysteriously �
�missing’ email, complete with the status of ‘opened and read’ right at the top in bold letters and took it into Asshole’s office.

  Without even a thank you, he waved her away from his door and she pulled it shut behind her.

  One day almost done, only four more to go.

  ***

  Vera rolled her eyes as her cell phone rang for the second time in five minutes while she was eating her dinner at home that night, sucking her teeth.

  She had let the first call that came through go to voicemail because she knew that it was her mother.

  It had to be.

  No one else ever called her.

  But Vera wasn’t in the mood for Marianne right now.

  She increased the volume on the television as she nibbled on the crackers she’d pulled out of the cabinet to go with her canned chicken-noodle soup.

  A loud knock sounded suddenly on the front door and her eyes widened. No one ever knocked on her door, unless you counted the little pain-in-the ass bastards that lived down the hall that thought it would be cute to keep knocking on her door and running away until she complained to management.

  The large immigrant family had long since moved away after that, after a small war that waged for months between she, them and the buildings management, so this was going to be interesting.

  They had actually gotten thrown out, due to having too many people living in the apartment at one time.

  Typical New York City setup in these buildings.

  Good.

  Folding her arms across her chest, she walked to her front door and looked out the peephole and continued to stare as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  Shit

  There stood her mother, bold as brass, on the other side of the door.

  “Vera!” she called, knocking again, “I know you’re in there!”

  In a panic, Vera gave the place a quick once-over to be sure that there wasn’t a thing out of order for her mother to criticize. Marianne started banging on the door again as Vera ripped it open.

  “Finally!” her mother snapped, hurriedly pushing past her as Vera sarcastically waved her hand to invite her mother inside. “Didn’t you hear me knocking? I could have been mugged!”