A One Woman Job

Chapter 5

5

Meg

M y hand hesitates over the office phone while I psych myself up for this planned call to Etta. 10:20 PM. I told her I would call and update her on my progress with Koen, but what progress do I even have to report? None. I spent most of my time with him sleeping. Not convincing him to return to a life of crime.

This little check-in isn’t going to go well.

I guess I should just be grateful my father appears to have a handle on the kids and hasn’t had anything to drink. Who knows how long that good fortune is going to last, though. When I called them a moment ago, they were all laughing and walking home from town with ice cream, but the next time I call, he could be snoring in an alleyway somewhere and the kids could be running amok.

To distract myself from the frustration of the unknown, I pick up the phone and dial the memorized number. Etta answers after two rings.

“Well?”

I hate this bitch. “I’m at work—the legal kind—so I’ll make this quick. I’ve made contact with…him.” Even saying his name out loud to her feels disloyal. Although, when did I become loyal to him? “We have plans to see each other again—”

“Excuse me?” she laughs. “Try again. Tell me the real story.”

My nose wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“Do you really expect me to believe you simply ‘made contact’ with one of the deadliest…” she trails off, clearing her throat. “That you met him so easily? He doesn’t people very well. One does not simply strike up a conversation with him.”

“Well, I did.”

And we took a bath.

And he licked me. Everywhere.

“What color are his eyes, then?”

“Ice blue. Like a glacier.”

There’s a pause. “Lucky guess. Name some other defining traits.”

I take a deep breath and hit launch. “There are tattoos all over his body. Chest, neck, back, both arms. Throat, even, with a red heart over his Adam’s apple. Shaved head, but his hair is beginning to grow in black. He’s extremely surly. He called me an idiot. Then he called me Michael Phelps.” Why am I smiling against the phone’s receiver? “He’s intense. Private. But he’s also…curious. And kind of confused about why he wants me around. I’m confused about it, too.”

The silence on the other end of the line is thick. “Holy shit, you really did make contact with him. How did you do it?”

Easy, I nearly drowned . “I have my ways.”

“This man rarely has face-to-face contact with anyone. If you see him, odds are you’re…about to have a terrible day. Even I have been communicating with him via messages in a social security box for years.”

If I didn’t already have a strong feeling Koen does something very bad for a living…I do now. “I might have made his acquaintance, but I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade him to go back to work for you.”

“Your family being burned alive isn’t enough incentive?”

My blood freezes. “Please don’t do that,” I beg, my voice wobbling.

“Six days,” she purrs, hanging up.

My fingers are so numb, I can barely manage to put the phone back in the cradle. The office is still as death around me, but I’ve been in bad situations before. Perhaps not this bad. Still, I put in my headphones and get the hell on with my responsibilities.

That’s what women do.

And that’s what I do.

Koen

I only allowed her to leave my home so I could follow her.

There is nothing among her possessions to identify her. No phone or wallet. No clues about who she is or where she came from. And so, I let her go to work, hoping to learn what I need to know.

Which is fucking everything. I need to know everything.

I’m sitting in the front seat of my nondescript SUV, my eyes fastened on the entrance to the building Meg disappeared into moments earlier.

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 the bus . 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’s information. 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.

You never saw a thing.

From my position across the street, I have a vantage point of the bus stop and I wait, watching with a heavy chest as she yawns and nearly falls asleep, seemingly undisturbed by the danger than can befall a young woman out this late alone. Thank God she ended up on my beach. Thank God I was chosen to save her from drowning.

Thank God, Thank God, Thank God.

I’ll keep you safe, Meg. I’ll guard you with my life.

When the bus appears to pick her up, I follow at an undetectable distance, my eagerness to see where she lives multiplying by the second. I never asked if she had a boyfriend, but if she does, she won’t for much longer. And anyway, based on her innocent reactions when I touch—or lick—her, she’s never known a man.

By morning, that will no longer be the case.

Ahead of me, Meg jumps off the bus after only one stop and starts sprinting.

“What the fuck?” I roar, hitting the gas and swerving around the stationary bus, watching in shock as she tears across a field at full speed, ponytail whipping behind her in the wind, her cleaning supplies apparently still on the bus. I don’t even hesitate, I turn into the field, busting through a wooden fence and gunning the SUV to her left around front of her, skidding into her path and slamming on the brakes. I’m diving out of my vehicle in a split second and she’s already starting off in another direction, leaving me no choice but to run after her. “ Meg ,” I shout. “Stop. I would never hurt you.”

She doesn’t slow down. Not at all. “Why are you following me, you psychopath?”

Is she speculating or does she know how close that diagnosis is to the truth? “I couldn’t risk not seeing you again,” I growl, finally catching up with her, throwing an arm around her waist and yanking her backward, leaving her legs dangling as she struggles mightily against me. The fifth time she delivers a painful backward kick to my knee, she leaves me no choice but to pin her down on the ground, her cheek pressed to the ground. “Don’t fight me. There’s no need.”

“You were back at the office, weren’t you?” she whimpers. “Watching me?”

“Yes,” I hiss, no idea why I tell her the truth. No idea why it feels so good to tell her the truth. To trust her with information that could implicate me in a crime—a huge deal-breaker in my world. “The number of ways you could be taken from me at any given moment is unacceptable.”

“In order to be taken from you, I’d have to be yours. And…and I’m not.” Her voice falls to a whisper. “Am I?”

“Yes. I know it’s happening fast, but I’m begging you to accept that. And Meg, I never fucking beg. Not for anyone or anything but you.” Now that I’ve caught Meg, her scent is drugging my senses. I use my teeth to drag the hairband out of her hair, work my open mouth through the fallen strands, raking my stubble up the side of her neck, over the love bites I left behind earlier. “Accept that you’re mine. That I’m yours. That I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m scared,” she whispers, but hell if she doesn’t tilt her head so I can kiss her neck more fully, biting her lip when I suck a spot beneath her ear.

Still, she’s scared. Might as well saw me in half. “Of me?”

“In a way, yes. But more…more like…the feeling I’ve gotten myself into a situation I don’t know how to handle.”

I plant my knees on either side of Meg’s hips in order to turn her over, her tear-stained face breathtaking in the spill of moonlight. “I’ll handle it for you,” I vow.

She squeezes her eyes closed and shakes her head.

“Yes,” I rasp on top of her mouth.

“You don’t understand.”

“Make me.” And then I kiss her and the world explodes with light. “Make me,” I say again, thickly, mentally, physically and emotionally overwhelmed, my lips moving on my behalf, pressing her softer ones open and seeking out her tongue, my cock stiffening brutally when she gasps, tentatively stroking my tongue with her own, her young body shifting beneath mine in obvious heat, her breath releasing in a shudder when she feels what she’s doing to me.

Just by living.

Just by breathing.

“I know I told you earlier that you should be scared of me, Meg, but I can’t think of anything worse.” I angle my body to one side, running a palm up along the valley of her side and molding one of her perfect tits in my hand, teasing her nipples with quick, little strokes of my thumb until she’s glassy-eyed. “My life was ending while you were running from me.”

“Y-you stalked m-me.” Her back arches on a breath. “I-I…that feels so good. Why does it feel so good to be with you when…when I know this kind of behavior is wrong?”

“Maybe wrong is right for us. Wrong might be all I have—I don’t know. Wanting someone the way I want you is new for me. For now, let me show you how sorry I am for scaring you,” I say, drawing her shirt up slowly, giving her a chance to say no—and when thankfully she doesn’t, deftly unsnapping the front clasp of her bra. Groaning when her breasts are left exposed to me, to the moonlight. So sweet and gorgeous, I don’t know how every male in the world isn’t here in this field, trying to fight me for her. “And if I can’t make you any less scared, let me show you why a little fear of me is going to be worth it.”

And then I rip her tiny shorts off, right there in the middle of the field.