The Volitan hovered at the front of the tank, watching her. She’d fed them dinner earlier and both of them had consumed more than usual. The Volitan’s spine waved and flicked at her. He was trying to look tough. He didn’t recognize how completely helpless he was. The creatures’ lives would come to an agonizing end without Laura supplying food and a healthy environment. If there was an earthquake and 75 gallons of water gushed across her loft, the lionfish would suffocate on the floor. Or if the tank simply cracked, and water seeped out over days, and she wasn’t there to notice, their end would be just as horrific.
She took another sip of wine. It was sending calories right to her belly, layering on another unwanted inch. As soon as she got this job thing settled, she’d double down on her running. The gym was okay for now, but she needed to find a new track or overcome the paranoia that returning to Carlton High School would somehow expose her guilt.
She put the wineglass on the table and leaned her head back. The detective hadn’t returned. There were no more relevant questions. There was nothing to be found out. No one had seen her. She’d been right to believe that all along.
She finished her wine and went upstairs.
AT THREE A.M., she woke.
She lay on her back and stared at the shadow of the exposed beams above her bed. In her dream, she’d been sitting on a metal folding chair in an empty room. A detective stood under a high, narrow window, asking her questions. It had gone on for hours—the same questions over and over until Laura wanted to scream, and maybe she had. Maybe that’s what had woken her.
In the dream, the detective seemed to think Laura wasn’t smart enough to maintain her carefully constructed lie, that the repetition of rephrased questions would trip her up. The detective was wrong. The lie was simple. The best lies always were. It wasn’t as if she had to remember a complex series of events. She’d never seen the guy. That was it. When she ran, she was in the zone.
After another fifteen minutes, eyes open, the cool air and the darkness settling over her eyeballs, soothing them at first, then drying them so that they itched, she decided sleep was over for the night.
She got up, went downstairs, and spread out her yoga mat facing the aquarium. The light was off. She heard the rumbling of the pump, but the fish were shrouded in darkness. She was often surprised by their invisibility when there was no light. It seemed their colorful, intricately featured bodies, especially the white stripes, should somehow reveal themselves as they glided through the water. She reassured herself that the rumbling of the pump, moving oxygen throughout the tank, indicated they were alive. They were safe.
Starting with a sun salutation, despite the lack of sun, she did an hour of yoga, pushing herself to maintain each pose a few counts longer than usual, staying in the warrior pose until her shoulders ached and the quadricep of her forward leg trembled with the effort of remaining parallel to the floor. When she was finished, her body was warm, the back of her neck damp, and her muscles calmed by the exertion.
It wasn’t like running, but it helped drain the pent-up energy. She rolled up the mat, tucked it under her arm, and walked to the aquarium. She turned on the light. The Radiata emerged from the plants and swam past her, moving slowly along the front of the tank, then turning as if it wanted her quiet admiration. She wondered if they felt her attention, her devotion to them. If it was true what they said, that everything was energy, maybe even simple creatures like fish absorbed the vitality of the life pulsing around them. She certainly absorbed theirs.
She went upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the faucets in the shower. She washed her body, shampooed her hair, and stood for a moment under the pounding water. She dried her hair and put on makeup. She dressed for comfort and stealth in black slacks, flat-heeled ankle boots, and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. She fed the fish, drank coffee, and answered emails while she waited for the sun to come up.
The sun didn’t actually come up, but the sky behind the thin covering of clouds slowly grew lighter. At seven, she went out and locked the door.
QualData was a monolithic building, not a campus-like spread of several structures like Avalon, so she didn’t have to figure out which building Hank worked in. The parking lot was nearly empty at this time of the morning, but there was a large pickup truck positioned in a way that hid her Porsche, if Hank even knew what kind of car she drove.
The angle of the truck allowed her to see the entrance to the building. The added benefit of a medium-sized tree hanging over the hood of her car prevented anyone from noticing it was occupied if they stood more than fifteen feet away. She reclined the seat slightly and settled herself more comfortably.
Watching people arrive for work was more entertaining than she would have thought. She’d never noticed before, always caught up in her own destination and plans for the day, just like the QualData employees were this morning. Some scurried to the building as if a pack of dogs was chasing them. Others strolled, scanning the lot as they walked. If they happened to see a co-worker, they zeroed in like they were conducting person-on-the-street interviews. The women wearing heels took small steps, and one guy wearing hard-soled dress shoes also walked with a mincing gait, staring at the ground to ensure he didn’t slip. A few were bent forward, faces twisted into scowls of pressure, racing to the front doors, only to turn around and jog back to their cars seeking forgotten laptop bags or coffee cups left on the roof.
Hank arrived at 7:40. As he’d done for years, without fail, he parked as far as possible from the building, in a sea of empty spaces. Even with all that space around him, he parked the car in an end slot to ensure there wasn’t the remotest chance of a ding to the black paint of his Mercedes S-class.
There was nothing about his demeanor indicating it had ever crossed his mind that someone might be watching him. At the CEO level, a number of companies offered protection of some kind. In large corporations, senior executives often warranted that as well, but at Hank’s level, there didn’t seem to be any concern for his personal safety. It was kind of funny, because someone of his rank could just as easily piss off an employee, setting up conditions that occasionally led to retaliatory violence. Maybe even more so, because the lower you were in the pyramid, the thinner the cushion insulating you from direct consequences. You’d think they’d be scared.
There were all kinds of precautions inside the building to avert workplace violence—trained security guards at the reception desk who specialized in defusing tense or potentially dangerous situations and doors accessible only with personalized key cards. But in the parking lot, there was only the periodic passing of white security trucks, mostly watching for car break-ins.
Even people delivering flowers weren’t allowed past the front desk. The recipients had to come to the lobby, pursuing their own gifts, which deflated the surprise and took some of the luster off being doted on.
That’s how it had been when Tim sent her flowers that time. Except worse. So much worse. Tim managed to take the smallest humiliation and ratchet it up unmercifully.
It was the day after her humiliating striptease. As if that hadn’t been soul-shattering enough, the next day Tim had an enormous vase containing eighteen red roses delivered to Avalon. The bouquet sat in the lobby for over three hours because she’d been in a meeting and hadn’t received the voicemail notification until late afternoon.
The flowers were breathtaking, and the scent was like something edible—sweet and rich. They came with a rather large card bearing the shadowy sketch of a woman’s profile. The card was not in an envelope. It stood in the center of the bouquet for everyone to read—the receptionist, people stopping to wait for visitor’s badges, her co-workers.
When she arrived in the lobby, there was that card, bearing Tim’s large, child-like script.
I’m so sorry I laughed at you. Watching you strip was amazing. Please don’t worry you aren’t sexy, because you are!!!
She wanted to rip out his fingernails, even now.
At the time, sh
e’d thought his twisted behavior was all about sex. She’d thought he wanted to force her to recognize how much she desired him. It wasn’t until the incident with her DKNY shirt that she’d understood it differently. She’d tried to fight him that day, demanding he let go of her, screaming at him for ruining her shirt.
His hands had grown tighter around her breasts, squeezing until they ached. She whimpered in pain. To get him to stop, she’d lowered her voice, made it soft and meek, but he’d interpreted it as desire. He released his grip and she’d slipped out from between him and the counter. She knelt on the floor and picked up two of the buttons. Another button lay just under the table. She crept toward it and suddenly he was on top of her, pressing her against the floor. His body was as unyielding as the tile beneath her.
“You’re my wife,” he said. “Marriage is a contract, fifty-fifty, and you’re not contributing your fifty percent. You give everything to your job and there’s nothing left for me.”
He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back, close to his chin. “We haven’t had sex in four days, but you have time to run ten miles every fucking morning, time to stay at work until seven o’clock at night, time to spend Sunday evenings in front of your computer.”
He pinned her shoulders and upper arms to the floor with his forearm and shoved his knees into her legs. He reached beneath her to unbuckle her belt, and pulled her pants down to her ankles. With his free hand, he’d ripped her underwear. Then he’d stopped moving, breathing hard. She had no idea what he was waiting for. They remained like that—neither one speaking—for a very long time.
Finally, he’d released his hold on her and stood. He’d gone to the dining room, poured a shot of whiskey, and a moment later she heard the commentary of a baseball game come on.
Sex was only a small part of what he’d wanted. He simply needed to humiliate her, to prove, maybe only to himself, that he had all the power.
In some ways, he wasn’t terribly different from Hank—making sure everyone noticed he was the VP, smiling as he watched her squirm in her effort to deliver perfect work all these years, hoping to demonstrate her worthiness. It had nothing at all to do with worthiness or her qualities as an employee. If it did, Janelle and Brent would not have beaten her to the next level.
She spent three days watching the main doors of QualData.
Each morning, she took her place near the pickup truck. Every day, Hank arrived at 7:40. In the evenings, she returned, observing him leave any time between 6:30 and eight. If he ever stayed later, she might find an opportunity to confront him, but as it was, the parking lot was too busy at both ends of the time spectrum.
She wasn’t sure what she planned to do with the information about his habits. Watching him made her feel she was formulating a plan. But she had no plan. No idea how to get to him, or what she would say when she managed to pull it off. All she had was a hot, steady rage.
ON THURSDAY MORNING, she stopped in the Avalon coffee shop for a latte. In the end, the vigil had been pointless. The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was no way she could confront Hank in the parking lot. Even when it was nearly empty, there were curious eyes. The security trucks roamed 24/7 without a measurable pattern. Engineers, eyes glowing with the thoughts racing through their minds scuttled out like roaches, long after dark.
She waited in line for her coffee, rubbing her thumb, stroking the nail like a worry stone, trying to figure out what she should do.
Watching Hank come and go every day, knowing he was unaware of her presence, calmed her. It made her feel she had the upper hand with him.
It made her realize there was only one sure way to punish him for the way he’d destroyed her career. She wanted to kill him. The idea was intoxicating. Her life and her career and everything she wanted would no longer rest in the hands of other people and their whims and biases. There would no longer be a man dominating her life, draped in power, unilaterally in charge of hiring and firing, a man with no one to answer to for his capricious decisions.
Killing a man, and not getting caught, was easy.
All she needed was a plan. She already possessed a gun. What a gift that had been. Everything she’d suffered at the track had been worth it for that lovely, shiny, perfectly engineered weapon covered right now by layers of lingerie. It stood out among the black and ivory, the white and coffee-colored silks and laces. The ultimate power.
She would no longer have to think about interviews or trying to work her way around a stubborn, seductive administrative assistant. It had been a cathartic, life-changing week. One in which she’d gone from a victim to a woman ready to take back her power. She hadn’t deserved the experience with that monster, harassing and terrifying her, but she’d taken care of herself, and her reward had been the gun.
The next piece of her plan would be gifted to her just as smoothly. She simply needed to let go and observe the flow of events that crossed her path.
She reached the front of the line. Instead of her usual non-fat latte, she ordered a whole milk latte, steamed into creamy foam. She walked to the stand with its supply of heat-protective sleeves and caps. She slipped on the cardboard sleeve and pressed the lid into place. As she walked back to her building, she popped the top off to let the latte cool in the morning air. Just outside the lobby, she paused for a sip, satisfied by the rich taste.
“Hi, Laura.” She recognized Brent’s voice before she looked up.
He sounded friendly, warm, almost. She took another sip and turned. He had a new laptop bag—small and compact, indicating he was carrying a new, slicker laptop. He wore an overcoat. Everything about him screamed executive.
She was no longer bound by that world, the attempt to dress the part, to promote your skills every fucking time you opened your mouth, the need to constantly demonstrate your value. She felt she was soaring above the earth, looking down on him in his simplistic, pointless, small-minded pursuit.
“Where have you been? I haven’t seen you all week,” he said.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Interviewing outside the company?”
“Maybe.”
He smiled. “Aren’t you mysterious.”
“Not really.” She sipped her latte and studied his face. He seemed to want to talk, no longer judging her for whatever imagined inadequacies she had. It seemed as if her confidence, her determination to succeed in this new arena was creating an aura around her that altered his perception. His look of pity and condemnation was gone.
It was possible he wasn’t so sure-fire confident now that Hank was gone. Who knew what changes Margaret would implement, was already implementing? The good old boys’ club had fractured. Maybe he was worried about his own career now.
He took a step toward her. “We should catch up.”
She moved out of the path of the cold breeze sweeping through the space between the two buildings. “We should.” And it came to her. A door opening right in front of her, welcoming her inside. “How about meeting for a drink tonight?”
“Sure. That sounds good.”
“The Palms Hotel? At seven?”
He nodded.
She shifted the cup to her other hand, seeking the gentle warmth that had made its way through the cardboard sleeve. “Why don’t you ask Hank to join us? It would be great to hear how things are at QualData.”
He nodded, longer than necessary, his head bobbing up and down as if he couldn’t agree fast enough. “That’s an excellent suggestion. He’s building a team there; it’s always smart to keep our options open.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll give him a call.”
“Don’t mention I’m joining you.”
“Why not?”
“It might look like I’m hoping to get another opportunity for a promotion. And I’m not. Truly. I have other plans.”
He nodded. “Okay. Sure.”
She took a long drink of her coffee.
“I’ll text you to confirm the time,” he said.
<
br /> She stepped around him and opened the door, pulling it wide so he could enter first.
“Thanks.” He walked into the building and she followed.
They went up the stairs without talking and parted ways on the landing. She glanced toward Margaret’s end of the hallway. Vanessa’s cubicle wasn’t visible from where she stood. It might be interesting to drop by and wield her newfound power, but what was the point? It seemed like another lifetime, a different person, when she’d lingered in front of Vanessa’s counter, eating chocolates, a peasant at the gate, waiting for Hank to grace her with his presence.
LAURA SAW BRENT’S BMW at the front of the smaller lot reserved for restaurant and bar guests of the Palms Hotel. She circled the small lot at the side of the hotel, then drove all the way around the towering hotel to the back parking lot before she saw Hank’s Mercedes. It was predictably parked far from any other cars, nestled up to a concrete barrier beside an end spot. The space he’d chosen was perfect. Now she could proceed with plan A rather than the less-certain plan B.
She parked a few spots away from him and walked around the building so she could enter through the front doors, in case they happened to notice which way she came in. As she approached the lobby entrance, she turned to look again at Brent’s car.
She stopped suddenly, her attention locked into the car beside Brent’s. Vanessa Hillman’s Miata. She’d know that car anywhere. She was even familiar with the license plate. She’d spent far too many minutes of her life brooding over its presence in the Avalon parking lot, after hours.
This was going to impact her plan. Not in any specific way, but it would disrupt the dynamic with the two men and made the situation more unpredictable. Still, her plan was simple enough, so her confidence remained solid. She could handle it. Vanessa’s presence was a minor disruption.
The admin’s seductive smile flashed across her mind. Had she been invited by Hank or Brent? Laura had the impression Brent wanted to test the water for making a move to QualData. It made no sense that he would ask Vanessa to tag along. So did that mean Hank had contacted her, wanting more people to buffer him against any questions Laura might ask about joining his new team?
The Assistant: A gripping psychological thriller with a nerve-shredding ending Page 25