Page 13 of A One Woman Job
Carrying cleaning supplies.
My girl is a cleaner.
I’d been attempting to write a happy song with my violin, because for some disturbing reason, I am desperate to fulfil this silly request, but ever since she walked past my SUV with a caddy of chemicals and rags, humming to whatever music is playing in her headphones, the instrument has sat paralyzed in my lap. I should not have allowed her to leave my house, because now she is cleaning up after inferior people who should be kissing the ground on which she walks.
Now, I want to smash the windows of my vehicle.
It’s hard to compose a song while filled with rage.
Focus. I’m renowned for my cold, calculating calm, yet it is deserting me now. I’m personally involved here. That’s the difference. Normally, my jobs are filled with anonymous faces and locations I’ll never return to twice. No part of my job has ever felt real to me. Not until my most recent job.
That’s why I’m done.
I’ll never go back.
An image of an elderly woman’s lined face twisted with grief, her body draped and sobbing over a freshly deceased body, threatens to choke me.
How did I let that happen?
How did I not know?
I’m drawn sharply from my thoughts when a white Porsche pulls into the parking lot. It’s the only other car besides mine, because Meg took the bus. She took thebus. With cleaning supplies. As soon as I find out her full identity, she’s never working another day in her life. I suppose I could have simply asked for her last name and run the background check, but old habits die hard. I’m accustomed to only believing what I can see on a screen or written in black and white. Humans are faulty. Humans lie.
Now that I know the name of the office building she cleans, I’ll be in contact with their cleaning service to get Meg’sinformation. The right amount of money—or threats—will have me her social security number by morning.
A man alights from the white Porsche and I sink back into the shadows, staying very still, but my sixth sense is beginning to throb. He’s looking around the parking lot, as if to verify no one else is around. I don’t like the way he slides his hands into his pockets and whistles his way toward the side door. It’s nine thirty at night. Presumably, there’s no good reason for anyone to be here, except for Meg. If he’d merely forgotten something at the office, he’d be moving with more urgency.
As soon as he unlocks the side door and slips inside, I’m cutting through the darkness. Keeping to the shadows of the parking lot, I approach the building without a sound, all while removing my black leather gloves from my back pocket and putting them on. I silence my phone and enter through the same door, staying on the balls of my feet, my back to the wall.
What I see turns my blood into fire straight out of hell.
Meg is bent forward on her hands and knees, her shorts showing off her bare thighs and a significant part of her ass cheeks. The man is standing right behind her and she has no idea, because she’s singing along with her music, scrubbing a scuffed baseboard that runs along the base of the hallway wall. When I hear the metallic slide of his zipper coming down, I don’t wait another second.
I appear behind the dead man like a phantom, take his head in my hands and snap his neck like a fucking twig, catching his body as it drops, dragging it out of sight before he ever hits the floor. Looking down at his everlasting expression of shock, I lift shaking fists and bellow without sounds, the scathing need to batter him bloody so fierce, I nearly give in. That would leave a mess, unfortunately. And it would lead to me explaining to Meg that I’m a monster.
“Hello?”
My muscles seize at the sound of Meg’s nervous voice.
“Is someone there?”
I quietly lock the door of the break room where I’ve apparently ended up with the pervert who chose the wrong fucking girl, and I hold my breath when the knob rattles.
“Oh shoot,” she mutters. “No granola bar tonight, I guess.”
My narrowed gaze zips to the basket of snacks sitting by a coffee maker. She wanted one of those granola bars? She’s hungry?
My own stomach draws in on itself as if experiencing hunger pains.
Setting aside the agony caused by that realization, I jolt into action once Meg is no longer outside of the break room, hiding the body in a place that won’t be immediately obvious until I return and either dispose of him and his vehicle. Or make his death look like an accident. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I should have time.
Satisfied that I’ve left no trace of myself behind, I exit quietly through the break room window and return to my SUV. As soon as my hands stop shaking from anger, I pick up the violin again, staring at the instrument like it’s a foreign object.
“Happy song,” I mutter. “Write a happy song.”
It’s another twenty minutes before Meg emerges from the office building. She stops short upon seeing the white car in the parking lot, turning back to peer into the premises before tightening her hold on the caddy holding her cleaning products and hustling away.
Good girl.