Patience and hard work. I can get there. Besides, no turning back now. Ed would kill her if he tracked her down. This path, as difficult as it might be, was the only way.
By nine a.m. the next morning, she’d gone for a three-mile run, showered, and dressed in one of the three outfits she’d purchased from the thrift store. Solid-color blouses and black skirts. Modest, unnoticeable. She’d even dyed her red hair to a chestnut brown. Emily Rockford was someone you’d look at and not really see. Utterly forgettable.
The old, pathetic her had worn flowery dresses and strappy leather sandals. The old her was expected to look cute to please Ed, especially when his friends came over to play poker. Total assholes. They would wait until Ed was too drunk to notice anything but the cards in his hands, and corner her in the kitchen. They’d grab her ass and breasts. The one time she’d tried to tell Ed about how they treated her, she got blamed and ended up with a black eye.
“Stop acting like a slut, and they’ll stop treating you like one,” he’d said.
Never again. Never again would she dress up if she didn’t want to. Never again would she allow a person’s hands on her like that.
Now wearing a navy blue blouse and a black skirt, with her unremarkable brown hair in a ponytail, Emily caught the bus for work and ended up arriving a few minutes early, so she ran across the street to the gas station. There was no bathroom in the office that she saw, and if there was one somewhere in the vacant strip mall, she doubted she’d want to use it.
She purchased a bottle of water and a small bag of pretzels, the cheapest things she could find, and hugged them to her chest as she jogged back, weaving through the logjam of cars stopped at the light.
Panting, she stepped up on the sidewalk and noticed a man—tall, lanky, dark hair—standing just outside the suite. He wore brown pants, a white shirt, and black dress shoes. The outfit of a person who doesn’t want to draw attention. Just like her.
Could that be Mr. Sampson? But he looked too young, maybe thirtyish. Mr. Sampson had the gruff voice of a much older man.
Emily cautiously approached, noting the guy’s sweaty face and shifty dark eyes. “Hi. Are you waiting for…” No questions. No questions. “I’m Jane, the receptionist.” She held out her free hand.
He nodded but didn’t take it. “I was told to come here and leave my message.” He gave her his back, waiting for her to unlock the door.
Okay… Who showed up at an office to “leave a message”? Why not call? Why not text or email Mr. Sampson?
“Mind hurrying? I got things to do,” the man urged.
Now it was her turn to have shifty eyes. Was anyone else around to hear her scream if this guy pulled something?
There wasn’t.
All she had was the passing cars behind her, made up of people on their way south of the border to work at one of the factories, most of them distracted by their phones and traffic. Besides, who could hear anything over the constant roar of semis going north, carrying goods out of Mexico?
“One sec. Let me get the key.” She slid her hand into her oversized black purse, making sure she’d brought her pepper spray. It was right where she wanted it, in that little pocket meant for her cell. “Here it is.” She produced the key and opened the front door. The man followed her in.
“Why’s it so cold?” he asked.
She headed straight to her desk, avoiding eye contact. Whoever this man was, whatever business he had with Mr. Sampson, it felt safer not to remember his face.
“Um, yeah. I think the AC’s busted. Won’t shut off.” She set down her items from the gas station but kept her purse slung on her shoulder for easy reaching.
“Guess it’s better than the alternative: no AC at all. Looks like it’s going to be a scorcher today.”
They were getting perilously close to having a conversation—against Mr. Sampson’s rules.
She nodded and grabbed her pencil, making sure to put the desk between her and the man. “Ready.”
He slid an envelope from his back pocket and set it on the desk.
This was his message?
Now she had to look at him. He seemed to expect her to say or do something with it. But what? “Um. Thank you. I’ll put this here.” I don’t see you. I will not remember the scar on your upper lip or the color of your dark eyes. She opened the top drawer and deposited the envelope. “I’ll be sure your message is given to Mr. Sampson.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That’s it? I hand you fifty thousand to take care of my pest problem, and we’re done?”
Fifty thousand? That was a lot of money just to kill a rat or take care of some roaches. Now she had zero doubt that Mr. Sampson was in the extermination business—the humankind.
Hell, maybe she’d known it the moment she walked in here, but before this, there was a plausible deniability angle. And she’d been hungry. After today, she couldn’t look the other way, and she wasn’t about to get caught up with someone even shadier than Ed. I need to get the hell out of here.
“I’m sorry. I’m just the receptionist. I take messages. Nothing more.” Emily forced a polite smile to her lips, wanting the man to leave so she could quickly do the same.
“So when’s Sampson coming, then?”
A very good question. “I just take messages,” she repeated. No conversations. No questions. Please go.
“Fine. Tell him to call Rick ASAP.” He pressed the tip of his index finger to the top of the desk. “And this job had better be done by Saturday like he promised.”
It was Thursday. She had no clue if the job would get done or if she could deliver the message. Basically, she couldn’t promise him anything.
Her stomach knotted into a nauseating lump. There was a part of her—a big, sick, damaged part—that didn’t want to displease this guy. Ed had beaten the fear of men into her. It ran cold through her veins like a nightmare spiked with broken glass. It smelled of stale urine, from when she’d pissed herself after being tied up in a closet for two days.
She blinked up at Rick, willing the pleasant smile to stay put. “Of course. I’ll give him the message.”
Rick stared for a long moment, his right eye twitching, before he finally turned and left.
“Jesus.” She tilted her head back toward the water-stained ceiling. Yesterday, this place felt like rock bottom, but little had she known there was a trapdoor beneath her feet, waiting to take her lower. It was time to go.
She eyed the drawer. Fifty thousand. Fifty thousand dollars. If she worked five days a week for the next year, the most she could pull in was twenty-six thousand. She knew because she’d been obsessing over money. How much could she make? Was it enough to pay rent and tuition? Screw grocery shopping. She could go to the food bank or hit the dollar store once a day. A person could live off of peanut butter crackers, baked beans, Vienna sausages, ramen, and that fake orange drink crap with vitamin C. Sure, she’d die of a heart attack at forty years old, but forty was better than twenty-five—her current age.
“Forty.” She chuckled bitterly and shoved her water and pretzels into her oversized purse. “At this rate, I’ll be lucky to make it to thirty.” Ed would never stop looking. He wouldn’t rest until she was dismembered, the pieces placed in ten different suitcases and sprinkled across one hundred and thirty miles of New Jersey coastline. Add to that threat her uncanny ability to pick the most dangerous people to connect herself with and an early death was a sure thing.