Shadowlight (2 page)

Min checked her watch; she had forty-five minutes before her new boss came in to get the office in some semblance of order. Fortunately Rebecca Morton, OCI’s personnel director, who had hired Min, had warned her in advance that she would have a lot of cleanup work to do.

“The young lady who worked for Mr. Whitemarsh before you had some personal problems,” Rebecca said, disapproval crimping her lips. “I gave her several warnings and three written reprimands, but she ignored them, and after an ugly scene we had to let her go.” She looked at Min over the rim of her trifocals. “No doubt you’ll hear every gruesome detail from the girls of the grapevine, Minerva. All I ask is that you don’t encourage it; I think Boyd Whitemarsh has been through enough.”

Min had sorted through most of the paperwork and had begun fielding calls by the time her new boss arrived in the office. Tall, silver-haired, and casually genial, Boyd Whitemarsh had the boyish smile and easy manner of a much younger man.

“Let me know if you need anything.” he said after greeting her. “It’ll be confusing at first, but you’ll get into the swing of things by the end of the week.”

“Thank you, Mr. Whitemarsh.” Min turned to her computer screen and pulled up the virtual calendar. “I checked with the receptionist who has been filling in, and today you have a meeting scheduled at ten with the New York rep, lunch at noon with Mr. Kijorski at the Black Oak, and a two-o’clock sit-down with the Legacy Group in conference room four.” She handed him a stack of envelopes. “These are all the letters from last week’s mail that need a response. I can take dictation at your convenience.”

Whitemarsh chuckled with appreciation. “Perhaps I spoke too soon.”

As soon as her boss disappeared into his office, Min tackled the backlog of filing and in the process taught herself the filing system. Which, judging by the amount of misfiled items she discovered, her predecessor had ignored or had never bothered to learn. Whitemarsh’s ten-o’clock appointment came and went while Min kept working. She ran out of tabs, but a thorough inspection of her desk drawers turned up only an enormous collection of empty, crumpled chip bags and candy wrappers, which she gingerly began transferring to the small trash can beside the printer station.

Ugh.
Min excavated from the back of the hanging folder drawer a half-eaten, mold-encrusted cupcake that made her stomach turn.
Why was she eating all this junk?

As she dropped the disgusting remnant in the trash, Min recalled that one of the girls at college had been addicted to the same type of snacks; she’d often gone from room to room asking if anyone had anything sweet or salty. The same girl had suffered a breakdown just before midterms, one so severe that her parents had had no choice but to take her out of school.

Once Min had cleared the last of the junk-food detritus out of the desk, she pressed the intercom. “Mr. Whitemarsh, I need to step away from my desk for a few minutes. Should I forward the phones to reception?”

“No, that’s all right,” her boss replied. “I’ll cover them for you until you get back.”

After taking the trash to the Dumpster behind the building, Min returned to the back entrance, where a young woman stood searching for something in a straw tote bag. The purple dress sagging over her thin frame had a badly wrinkled skirt, and the too-long brown bangs hanging over her eyes looked greasy. As she drew closer, Min smelled French fries and body odor.

“Must have left them in my desk,” the woman muttered, her voice sounding unexpectedly high and childlike. She gave Min a vague look before she stepped out of the way. “Sorry.”

Min eyed the OCI personnel badge clipped to the other girl’s jacket lapel. Her name was Jennifer something. Min didn’t know her, but it was her first day; she hardly knew anyone.

“Here, I’ve got mine.” Min used her new key to unlock the door.

Without another word the girl reached past her for the handle and ducked inside.

“Hey.” Min caught the door before it slammed shut in her face. “You’re welcome,” she called after her.

The girl didn’t so much as glance back.

After Min returned to her office, the first thing she saw was a vase of delicate white roses sitting on her desk. She set down the trash can and picked up the vase. “Oh, how pretty.”

“Cheap, too.” Smiling dark eyes under an unruly mop of brown hair gleamed down at her as a tall, lanky man stepped out from behind the door and closed it. “Can I offer them as a bribe, goddess of mine?”

“It depends on what crimes you’ve committed.” Min tucked the vase in one arm and used the other to give her boyfriend a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m hungry, I’m poor, and I hate to eat alone.” He kissed the end of her nose. “Buy me lunch, please.”

Tag had been one of her strongest hunches. She’d known he would be coming around a corner on Bull Street a few moments before he’d bumped into her, but something had told her not to step out of the way. The moment his ink-stained hands had steadied her, she’d known that she would be the love of his life, the only woman he would ever love. That had enchanted her as much as his brilliant smile.

“Pretty good bribe.” Min hefted the vase to inspect the roses, which had the faintest tinge of pink at the edges of the snowy petals. She’d seen roses like these before in only one place. “Tag. Please tell me you didn’t steal these out of Mrs. Pardalia’s garden.”

“I swore I’d never lie to you, Minnie.” Unrepentant, Tag dazzled her with his grin. “She’ll never miss them.”

“You don’t know her. She probably counts every bud when she weeds in the afternoon.” A series of odd, distant popping sounds distracted her briefly. “I really shouldn’t take lunch, not on my first day. There’s a ton of work to catch up on.”

“Thirty minutes, then.” He slid an arm around her waist. “Don’t worry; it’ll still be here when you get back.”

“All right. Let me tell Mr. Whitemarsh, and then we’ll—” Another burst of staccato sounds, closer now, interrupted her. “What is that?”

“Sounds like popcorn popping …” As the door behind Tag burst open, he frowned and turned.

A young, pale-faced man braced himself against the frame, one hand spread over a large red stain blooming on the front of his light blue shirt.

“Hide.” He gurgled the word before he toppled over.

Not popping,
Min thought as the vase fell from her hands.
Gunshots.

Glass smashed as Tag grabbed the other man to keep him from hitting the floor and eased him down the rest of the way. He rolled him onto his back and pulled his limp hand from the massive bloodstain. A spattering of black powder encircled a large, dark hole.

Min knelt down beside them, but the hot tears filling her shocked eyes made everything blur. “Tag?”

“He’s been shot.” Her boyfriend put his trembling hand over the man’s chest and applied pressure. Blood welled up between his fingers and streaked across the back of his hand. “Honey, call nine-one-one. Hurry.”

As Min stumbled to her feet and groped blindly for her phone, more rapid popping sounds came from the hall, much louder than before, and she cringed as she heard men shouting and women screaming. At the same time, Whitemarsh came out of his office.

“Did something break?” His expression froze into a ghastly mask as he stared down at Tag and the wounded man. “God in heaven. What happened?”

“Someone shot him,” Tag said. “Someone in the building.”

The smell of French fries and body odor wafted through the doorway.
Jennifer,
Min thought as she stared at the woman in the purple dress as she strode into the office. She could see she was holding a large pistol in her hand, but she couldn’t move or even think about that.
Jennifer something.

“Jennifer.” All the color had disappeared from Whitemarsh’s face as he stumbled back, careening into the filing cabinet before he whipped up his hands. “Don’t. Please. Wait.”

“I waited,” the woman told him in her shrill, little-girl voice. “Six weeks. You never came to get me. You said you would.” She used the gun like a finger, jabbing it at him to punctuate every word. “You promised.”

Whitemarsh’s elegant hands moved as if he were conducting a symphony. “Please, Jenny, calm down. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re sick. You need help.”

“I need
help?”
She let out a laugh like a shriek. “I love you. You love me. But you let them take me away to that place. That
hospital.
It wasn’t for my eating problem. It was for crazy people. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

The young lady who worked for Mr. Whitemarsh before you had some personal problems,
Rebecca Morton had said.

If only Min had known who Jennifer was, or what she meant to do, she would never have let the girl into the building. But her hunches were never about terror or tragedy; she saw only the happy or lucky things that were about to happen.

She didn’t need a hunch to tell her how this was going to turn out.

Tag cleared his throat, and when she looked at him he deliberately looked from her face to the receiver in her hand. Slowly Min reached out her trembling hand and rested it over the buttons on the console. She didn’t dare lift the receiver to her ear, but was able to push nine and then one twice without making it obvious. When the emergency operator answered, she covered the earpiece with her hand to block the sound.

“I didn’t have anything to do with your being committed, Jennifer,” Whitemarsh was saying to the woman. “It was someone else. Mrs. Morton called security that day, remember? I didn’t even know about it.”

“Mrs. Morton’s dead. They’re all dead.” Her gaze grew unfocused. “I told them everything. Six months, you said. Six months and you’d divorce her. When we went on the trip to the sales conference, and you made me do it to you three times a night. You said we’d get married if I did what you wanted. They didn’t believe me. They said I was making it up.”

Min glanced at her new boss. He didn’t respond to the accusations, but ducked his head.
What if she’s telling the truth?

“I gave you everything,” Jennifer ranted.
“Everything,
and you left me there in that place. Like I was nothing to you.” Rage turned her face a dark, ugly red. “Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you tell them about us? Why?” When he still wouldn’t answer, her voice rose to a shriek.
“Tell me why.”

“Jennifer, please,” Whitemarsh said, matching her whine with his own. “This is all a terrible misunderstanding. I would never do anything to hurt you.” His throat moved as he glanced at the gun in her hands. “You won’t shoot me. You can’t. Not if you really love me.”

Jennifer looked down at the gun, too, as if she’d forgotten she was holding it. “I don’t love you anymore.” She raised the barrel.

Whitemarsh spun on his heel, running for his office, and then jerked and fell forward as Jennifer fired. Blood and some of his face spattered the carpet in front of him.

Bile rose up in Min’s throat, gagging her.

“Jennifer?” Tag held his bloodied hands palms out and slowly rose to his feet. “It’s over now. Let me have the gun.”

“Why?” Jennifer frowned. “I don’t know you.”

Min couldn’t move until the shots exploded and she saw Tag fall, and then she dropped the phone and stumbled to him, collapsing beside him. She cradled his head with her arm, and a stream of bright red blood poured from his mouth as he tried to speak.

“Goddess … sorry …”

“Tag, no.” She shook her head as his eyes closed and his body went limp. “No, please don’t leave me.”

A shadow fell over them. “He’s dead.” The hot end of a gun barrel nudged Min’s temple. “Get up.” When she didn’t move, Jennifer grabbed her by the hair and used it to yank her to her feet.

Min’s scalp burned, and she couldn’t take a deep breath, but a grotesque sort of calm settled over her. “How could you kill him?” she heard herself ask the woman. The expanding hollowness in her chest crept up her throat. “He didn’t hurt you. You didn’t even know him.”

“Shut up,” Jennifer screamed in her face.

Behind Jennifer two police officers with guns drawn appeared on either side of the doorway and began shouting at her to drop the weapon.

Min wrapped her hand around the pistol the girl jammed in between their bodies. The steel, hot from being fired, scalded her palm. “Put this down now or they’ll shoot you.”

“I don’t care.” Jennifer looked into Min’s eyes, and her rage ebbed into an odd dullness. “Did he tell you that he loved you?”

Min’s gaze shifted to Tag’s still face. Of course she had been the great love of his life. She had been the
only
love of his life. “Yes.”

“They lie,” Jennifer whispered.

The sound of the next shot seemed muffled, but the white-hot spike that stabbed through Min’s chest made no sound at all. Dimly she felt herself floating backward through the air, her body weightless, her vision clouding over as an enormous rose with a thousand thorns opened inside her heart.