19. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Creed
W e got back late, and it hit me. I hadn’t been checking on Julianna’s place, which was an oversight.
She went to shower, and I went to the surveillance room.
The screens hum. Scrolling back a week, I watch the footage in silence, taking in the repetition, the hour-by-hour crawl of nothing punctuated by the pulse of motion alerts.
Every angle, every second, every blind spot accounted for.
Julianna’s old condo, now practically forgotten. I haven’t checked these files since I pulled her from the city. I don’t expect anything, but the need to check is overwhelming.
And there it is.
A flash, a frame where the door cracks open, the timestamp four days ago at 2:03 a.m. I rewind, slow the feed to quarter speed. I watch the grainy black-and-white as a silhouette ghosts the threshold. Shorter than Julianna. Broad in the hips, careful in her steps. A woman.
The figure pauses just inside, sets something on the entry table. The walk is purposeful, not furtive. She heads straight for the kitchen, flips on the light. I freeze the feed, scan the face.
Claire.
I recall her file instantly. Julianna’s assistant, two years and change. A closet alcoholic, father in federal prison, a permanent sense of being owed something by the universe. Julianna kept her out of pity, or inertia. Never my problem, until now.
I run the feed forward. Claire opens the fridge, stares into it, then shuts the door. She moves through the apartment like she’s done it a thousand times, which, statistically, she has. Julianna’s code, probably. She’d have given it to her in case of emergencies.
The routine continues. Claire opens cabinets, then drawers.
She circles the living room, pauses at the coffee table, rifles through a stack of mail.
She spends a long time in the bedroom, out of the camera’s line, then returns holding something, a framed photo, maybe.
She stares at it, then shoves it in her purse.
She comes back three more times that week.
She’s obsessed… no one does that shit unless they’re obsessed.
This is an issue. A major issue.
I watch each visit, catalog the new tells. Her hands are more frantic on day two. She’s sweating, glancing over her shoulder, jaw tight with paranoia. She stops on the stairs and calls someone, gesturing wildly with her free hand, mouthing words I can’t catch.
By day four, she’s crying as she enters. She’s also carrying a bottle of mid-shelf bourbon, which she sets on the counter before pacing the length of the kitchen. She sits down and writes something, a note or a letter. She leaves it on the counter.
I scan all the digital records, cross-reference her phone’s GPS with the times she enters.
Each trip is made at a slightly later hour.
Each departure is more urgent, less composed.
On the final visit, she leaves a full five minutes before the first police cruiser rolls past the block. I file that away.
There is a point in these observations where most people would feel a pang, sympathy, maybe. The heartbreak of a friend left behind, the loneliness of a woman who worshipped at the altar of another and was left to pray in the ruins.
But I am not most people.
I feel only one thing: liability.
Claire is a loose thread. A risk. A woman who could become too curious for her own good. One who already is.
She has already talked to someone. The phone call, the note, the panic. I can see it all unfolding in her posture, in the way her voice moves her hands.
I let my eyes close, let the probabilities bloom behind my eyelids like the spread of a stain. I see the possibilities, the ways this spirals out and becomes more than a colleague check-in. I see the simple solution, floating on the surface like oil.
No margin for error. Not anymore.
I stand.
There is a ritual to these things, a choreography that keeps the body sharp while the mind does its work. Heading to my room of treasures, I pick out my toys for the nights activities. I select gloves from the drawer, a snug, black nitrile pair, smooth as silk. No residue. No powder.
Knife next. My hunting knife is too clunky, but my butterfly will do just fine.
I dress in dark clothing, layered but not bulky. No identifying marks, no colors that reflect. I slide the knife into a sheath at my ankle. Gloves into a pocket. I pull my hair back, tight against my skull, and tape it at the nape.
I check the cameras one last time. Claire is in her own apartment tonight, a two-room box on the edge of downtown. She’s alone, as always. She’ll stay that way.
I lock the door behind me. The cold outside is clean, fresh from the rain passing over the mountains. Heading down to the resort, I get in the truck and head to my target. It’s not far.
There are easier ways to do this, messy ways, loud ways. But I have always preferred the clean solution. The kind that leaves the world less complicated than it was when I found it.
My pulse is steady. There is no tremor in my hands.
I close my eyes, and see her face, Julianna’s, not Claire’s. I see the way her mouth opens when she laughs, the blue of her eyes in sunlight, the way she touches my shoulder in the first second after waking. I see the life I have built, the order I have achieved. I see the threat.
I will not let it be undone.
Tonight, I am not a businessman, or a boyfriend, or a builder of new things.
Tonight, I am an instrument.
And I am very, very good at what I do.
The city is still, and I navigate the empty streets with headlights off, engine barely above idle, using the memory of old commutes to glide from one block to the next.
There’s a pattern to urban sleep: every third light is out, every parked car a different decade, every window a story in hibernation.
I park in a lot four blocks from Claire’s apartment, lock the doors with a code I memorized, and walk the last stretch under the half-dead lamps.
Her building is a pre-war walk-up, converted to condos but with the same loose brick and rust-stain as the day it was born. The entrance is a glass double door, locked by a pad with six digits.
I listen for the hum of a security alarm, the buzz of a live feed. Nothing. The building hasn’t updated its systems.
The stairs are carpeted, but the carpet is so thin every board underneath groans. I step along the edges, using the frame to support my weight. Up one flight. Left. The door is dark green, warped at the bottom.
I count to five before picking the lock. It’s a simple model, cheap, loud. But I have done this before. The tension wrench slides in, and with a flick of the pick I hear the pins drop. I wait. No motion from within. No whisper of TV or radio. Just the steady tick of the wall clock in the hall.
Closing the door with a microsecond delay, I stand and let my eyes adjust. The apartment smells like cleaning fluid and old wine, a tang that settles in the back of the throat and never leaves.
There’s a purse on the table, a pair of shoes by the couch, a cell phone plugged in at the kitchen counter.
It’s messy in here, nothing compared to how Julianna operates.
Slobby.
I take a second to look around. The picture she took is on her hallway stand and I fight the urge to shatter is. Julianna is mine. No man or woman is going to have perverse thoughts about her. Fuck this psychotic bitch.
The bedroom is at the far end, door ajar. I move slow, measuring each step, waiting for the catch of breath or the creak of mattress. But there is nothing. She is dead to the world, the phrase almost funny.
Claire sleeps on her back, one arm flung across her eyes, the other curled at her side.
Her face is clean, no makeup, lips parted just enough to show the edge of a tongue.
Her breathing is regular, but shallow. She hasn’t slept well in weeks judging by the bags under her eyes.
In her hand, a thong I recognize is clutched tightly.
What the fuck?
I watch her for a full minute. The rise and fall of her chest. The flutter of her fingers when she dreams.
She is smaller than I thought. More fragile.
I stand over the bed and listen to the silence.
Then I go to work.
Gloved hand over her mouth. No hesitation. I press down, not enough to cut air, just to keep her still. She wakes on reflex, eyes wide and wild, a choked sound caught in her throat. I clamp down with my other hand, index and middle fingers on either side of the carotid, thumb braced behind the jaw.
She fights at first, but the technique is perfect, pressure and angle, enough to close the artery without breaking skin or bone. The brain is greedy, a hog for oxygen. Within eight seconds she is limp, within twenty, nothing.
No need for the knife, she’s easy enough to break. Nothing at all like my kitten who would have clawed and kicked and fought for her life.
Weak.
I keep holding for another thirty, just to be sure. The body does strange things in extremity. I wait for the last flex of the hands, the last breath. Then I let go.
Her eyes are open, staring up, glazed. I close them with a thumb.
“You should’ve stayed out of it,” I say.
I check the room. No mess. No violence. No cameras. I take a tissue from her nightstand and wipe the sweat from her upper lip, then use another to dab the tears from her cheek.
Heading back into the main hall of her place, I check over anything that could lead them to me, but none exist because I made sure of that.
Back to the bedroom. I take her phone, scroll through the call log. The last three numbers are the same, her mother, her ex-boyfriend, a colleague from the hospital. One is the police department who clearly didn’t take her seriously enough. I wipe the screen, set it back exactly as I found it.
I scan the room one last time. Nothing to fix. She’s dead to the world and Julianna is safe.
Then I slip out the way I came, careful to lock the door behind me.