Office After Hours

The door to the executive suite wasn't locked. That was the first thing I noticed, and it should've been the thing that made me turn around and walk right back to the elevator.

Instead I pushed it open.

"Mr. Hale? You wanted to see me?"

The office smelled like cedar and something sharper underneath, like ozone before a storm. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city sprawled out forty floors below, all those little lights pretending anyone down there mattered. I'd been working at Meridian Consulting for exactly three weeks. In that time, I'd spoken to Marcus Hale twice. Once when he walked past my desk and asked if I'd finished the Q3 projections (I hadn't), and once when he caught me crying in the stairwell because my mother had called to say she was selling the house (he'd handed me a handkerchief and said nothing).

He was forty. I knew that from the company directory, not because he looked it. He looked like someone who'd made a deal with something ancient and come out ahead. Dark hair going silver at the temples. A jaw that could cut glass. Eyes the color of whiskey held up to a fire.

He was standing behind his desk when I walked in. Not sitting. Standing, with his back to me, staring out at the city like he owned it.

Which, technically, he did.

"Close the door, Elena."

I did. My hand trembled on the knob, and I hated that. Eighteen years old and I still couldn't keep my body from betraying me. The door clicked shut with a sound like a lock engaging.

When he turned around, I saw that his tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. It was such a small thing, but it changed the entire architecture of the room. Marcus Hale didn't loosen his tie. Marcus Hale was the kind of man who wore a full three-piece suit to the company picnic and didn't sweat.

"Come here."

I walked toward him. My heels clicked against the marble floor, and each step felt like a decision I couldn't take back. The desk between us was mahogany, polished to a mirror shine. I could see my reflection in it. Small. Pale. My dark hair pulled back in a braid that was already coming loose.

He didn't move. Just watched me with those whiskey eyes, and I felt something shift in my chest. A pressure. A heat.

"You've been avoiding me," he said.

"I haven't."

"You have. You take the stairs instead of the elevator because you know I take the elevator at eight-fifteen. You eat lunch at your desk instead of the cafeteria because you know I eat there on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

My throat went dry. "How do you know that?"

"I know everything that happens in this building, Elena. That's my job."

He stepped around the desk. Close enough that I could smell him now. Not cologne. Something else. Something that made my skin prickle.

"Three weeks," he said. "Three weeks and you've already made yourself indispensable to the accounting team. They say you catch errors no one else sees. They say you work late. They say you don't talk to anyone."

"I'm here to work."

"Are you?"

His hand came up and touched my chin. Just his fingertips. Just enough pressure to tilt my face toward his. The contact sent a shock through me, like static electricity, like touching a doorknob in winter.

"I'm going to ask you something," he said, "and I need you to answer honestly. Do you understand?"

I nodded. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

"When you lie in bed at night, in that little apartment on Delancey Street, what do you think about?"

The question hit me like a slap. How did he know where I lived? How did he know anything about me?

"I don't—"

"You do. Everyone does. I'm asking what."

I should have lied. Should have made something up. But his eyes were on me, and his fingers were still on my chin, and I felt like I was standing on the edge of something enormous.

"You," I whispered.

The word hung in the air between us.

Marcus smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator who'd just watched its prey walk into the trap voluntarily.

"Good girl."

He released my chin and walked to the window. I stood there, frozen, my skin still buzzing where he'd touched me.

"There's a party tonight," he said. "At my house. A gathering of... associates. I want you to come."

"I don't—"

"It's not a request."

He turned back to face me. The city lights behind him turned him into a silhouette, dark and sharp and impossible to read.

"You'll be paid handsomely for your time. More than you make in a month. And you'll do exactly what I tell you to do. Exactly. No questions. No hesitation."

My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"Why me?"

"Because you're new. Because you're untouched. Because when I look at you, I see someone who's been waiting her whole life for something to happen, and nothing ever has."

That wasn't true. Things had happened to me. Bad things. Things I didn't talk about.

But he was right about one thing. I had been waiting.

"Be at this address at nine o'clock."

He slid a card across the desk. Black card. Gold lettering. Just an address, no name.

"If you're not there, don't bother coming back to work on Monday. Understood?"

I picked up the card. My fingers were steady now. That surprised me.

"Understood."

"Good."

He turned back to the window, dismissing me. I walked to the door, my mind spinning, my body humming with something I didn't have a name for.

"Elena."

I stopped. Hand on the doorknob.

"Yes?"

"You'll want to wear something you can take off easily."

I didn't turn around. I couldn't. If I looked at him again, I knew I'd do something stupid. Something irreversible.

I walked out of his office and down the hall to the elevator. The doors opened. I stepped inside. When they closed, I leaned against the mirrored wall and pressed my hand to my chest, feeling my heart hammer against my ribs.

The card was still in my hand. I looked at it.

Nine o'clock.

I had three hours to decide whether I was the kind of person who showed up.

The elevator descended. My reflection stared back at me from every wall, multiplied into infinity, and each version of me looked terrified.

Each version of me looked hungry.

The doors opened on the lobby. I stepped out into the ordinary world, where people carried coffee cups and complained about traffic and didn't get invitations to things they couldn't explain.

I walked past the security desk. Past the fountain. Out into the street where the air was cold and the sky was dark and somewhere across the city, Marcus Hale was waiting.

I had three hours.

I lit a cigarette with shaking hands and started walking.