Chapter 14
Nika
My inner voice was jittery this morning.
I put it down to nerves. A CEO meeting would do that to anyone, even someone who had recently demonstrated a fairly impressive threshold for stress. But when the secretary led me into the conference room it all escalated dramatically and nerves stopped being an adequate explanation.
This time it wasn’t laxatives on my mind.
It was murder.
I walked past the water cooler and found myself wondering, with genuine clinical focus, what clear liquid poisons existed and whether any of them were water soluble.
Finish him off.
Who?
Gallagher.
What?
I set my bag down and began unpacking my laptop. The conference table was long and polished, the kind of table designed to make everyone sitting at it feel the weight of whoever sat at the head. Beneath it, a tangle of cables and wires ran along the skirting.
Use a thick one. Cut his air supply off. No mess.
I doubted that was practical. I didn’t have the upper body strength and his neck was far too thick—I’d noticed that in the photo. Even if I swung off it, I probably couldn’t inflict much damage.
Open wires then. Electrocute him.
I don’t even know the man. Why would I want to kill him?
Beware. The voice dropped low and urgent. He is evil. EVIL.
I pressed my fingers to my temple as it escalated.
Fuck. I did not need an episode right now. Not here. Not in a conference room that probably had cameras.
Kill him, she whispered. Do it before it’s too late.
My fifty-two pound return flights weren’t looking like much of a bargain anymore. A white padded room was starting to feel like a genuine trajectory.
I cannot kill my boss.
You can, she purred, warm and encouraging in the way that made it worse. What about a knife through his heart? Pretty red blood seeping out of the hole in his chest. Efficient.
I paused. Not because my brain’s words were alarming, but because there was something lingering in the air.
I sniffed.
Cologne. Recent. Clean and fresh and—actually that was distractingly good. Nothing like the cloud of competing aftershaves that usually haunted the office. This was something else entirely. Something that made the back of my throat feel strange in a way I didn’t have words for yet.
That was odd.
“Oh my god.”
My head snapped up.
Francis stood in the doorway in a black wrap dress with a deep V-neckline, red curls loose around her shoulders instead of scraped back the way she usually wore them at her desk. The dress clung. She looked, objectively, extremely good.
She was staring at me the same way.
“Damn,” she said, eyes running up and down. “You look amazing. Give us a twirl.”
“It’s only a dress suit,” I mumbled, turning my laptop on.
“Give us a twirl, Nika.”
I did a small, reluctant twirl.
“You look great too,” I said, sitting back down. “I never knew you had tits like that.”
It was true, she usually wore loose tops or sweaters. It was the first time I’d seen her waist.
She snort-laughed so hard she had to grab the doorframe.
“This is my only chance,” she said, composing herself and taking the seat beside me. “Less is more, apparently.”
I grinned. She thought this was about impressing him. She wasn’t entirely wrong, just not for the same reasons. I was here for a pay rise, a better title, or at minimum an acknowledgement that I existed above testing grade. I’d dressed accordingly.
She pushed her curls back and reached for the presentation copy I’d sent her.
“Thanks for this by the way. I didn’t understand all of it,” she said cheerfully, “but it was very interesting.”
Just kill them both, the voice said pleasantly.
My hands trembled slightly against the keyboard.
Knock it off, I said firmly. This is important.
Francis kept talking. I kept nodding. And somewhere in the building, getting closer I could hear voices.
The voice went very, very still.
My stomach felt as if it were full of lead.
It was just nerves, I told myself.
The glass door opened.