Page 26 of A Love So Deadly
I stand, trying to breathe, trying to settle and get myself under control with one hand at my heart the other at my mouth. Lips, clit, and finger all throb with the pounding of my blood.
“Did I just imagine that?” My whisper’s barely above breath, but it seems too loud. I take wobbling steps and sit at my desk, pretending to work.
There is work, a few emails, the usual things I have to do, but I can’t concentrate, so I pretend until the focus returns and my heart stops hammering. The tingling fades.
What I really should do is search his office. But I’m still that little bit too scared to. I still need to know if there’s a camera. After what happened… maybe not. But he’s also not going to leave a file on Kayla there, is he?
And while he’s CEO, VMR is a giant, a giant conglomerate. And the top floors are corporate. The others below hold the news rooms, the ones where the exines are ran and managed, then right below, sprawling the block are all the studios for their shows.
If there’s anything to be found, it’ll be on one of the corporate floors. Or down in that basement.
I take the note and the other files I need to put away as I walk to the elevator. The other files are easy, they belong in the basement, not the sub-basement.
This place is never empty, but it has a different feeling being here without Lucian in the building. It feels…empty. Like a vital element’s missing.
Inside the elevator, I study the buttons. It says this is the top floor. But it isn’t. There are more. I’ve counted from the street. And there is a button above this one. I push it, but then I notice the slot for a key. So, with a sigh, I press three floors below.
When the doors open again, the floor appears completely empty. Good. I hurry down the hall and try every door I come across. Some are locked, some open to big offices with glass petitions and meeting tables. There are closets with cleaning supplies and bathrooms. All normal seeming. All what you’d expect from a corporate building. But again, there’s something with this floor that pricks at my senses. It strokes the back of my neck, and panic floods me out of nowhere. I clutch the files, rush back into the elevator, and press the button for the door to close over and over, as if it’ll make the doors slide shut faster. Right before hall is cut off from sight, I swear something moves fast in a blur toward me.
I yelp, heart thumping, but once the doors fully close and I’m alone, I make myself laugh. I’m seeing things, that’s all. I’m scaring myself because office buildings are weird places after dark, especially mostly empty ones.
I cling to that and press the button above the basement where the elevator stops. I see a couple of people on this floor. These are the dogsbodies, people like me. Accounting is on this floor. Advertising, too.
I only know because there’s a skeleton map of the floors posted on the wall. Some of the things have names but some are just letters. Like VLVHBB… Whatever that is. But that’s on a different floor. In fact, if memory serves me, the tenth floor which has a key slot next to it.
But at least the one I’m on I can walk through without fear snakes up my spine. The air isn’t as heavy here.
I find the door I’m looking for easily. It’s for the fire escape that leads up through the building, and ends on Lucian’s floor—yes, I checked—and also all the way to the basement. The stairs seem to go on forever.
The sooner I find what happened to Kayla and get out of here, the better.
When I reach the basement, down in the lowest levels of the fortress, I stop. I really should try to get to the forbidden sub-basement, but first, I put some of the files away, like I was instructed to. Then I stare at the huge room with rows and rows of cabinets.
Might as well look for any record of Kayla. Kayla Evans. I find her file under employees, alphabetically, as expected, and the information is so boring I can’t help thinking it’s a front. There must be more. In his office? Somewhere else?
The sub-basement?
A shiver runs through me, and I go out the door I came in and stop. The stairs end halfway down to the next level. There’s no door.
Does that mean something? I go in again, clutching the work I need to do with the other few files that I didn’t put away… I can do another search when I finish this…. I look around.
I almost miss it. A wooden door, some kind of ancient elevator.
Creeping closer, I find that there are only two floors noted on it. Up and down. Up has a lock. Down doesn’t. So I press it.
The ride is bumpy and gears whine. When I step out, I’m faced with several aisles of old cabinets covered in dust. I pick the closest one and start sifting through the papers inside. Quick glances at them reveal that most of them are labeled V and L. The closer I get to the back, I find a W.
Ripping open more cabinets, I search for any signs of Kayla’s name, and there’s absolutely nothing. I sigh.
“Kayla, where the fuck are you, girl?”
Even in a whispered tone, my voice carries through the room, echoing slightly. Suddenly, at the back of the space, a light flicks on, casting an ominous glow on three more cabinets made of wood.
What…?
I stride over and put my hand on a handle. Pulling the draw, I eagerly race through the files before grabbing one and scanning it.
It’s just a list of bank statements from years ago.
