Page 6 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just heard a friend mention her name as an unsolved murder the other day, and while you’re here, I thought I’d ask.”

“Georgette Riley disappeared from Arlington, Virginia…two, maybe three years ago. My cousin’s a cop there. But there’s no evidence she was murdered. Between you and me, most of the investigating officers thought she ran away.” Leopold’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Boyfriend trouble.”

“It’s still an open case?”

“Can’t see it ever being closed unless she reappears. Or a body turns up, I guess.” He checked his watch. “I need to go, ma’am. Shift change.”

Who was I to keep him from his coffee and donuts?

“Will you call Annie?”

“Right away. And you’d better write your contact details down too.”

With the formalities taken care of, I flopped back against the pillow as Leopold’s rubber-soled shoes squeaked their way along the hallway. I knew what the police didn’t—that Georgette had died. The question was, how did I convince them of that fact without either implicating myself or coming across as a crazy woman, and more importantly, how could I prevent her murderer from killing again?

CHAPTER 3 - KIMBERLY

“WHAT THE HECK happened?”

Annie pulled back the curtain, looking perfect from her artfully twisted chignon to the manicured nails in her peep-toe pumps. As always. How she didn’t freeze to death in her pastel-pink suit was beyond me. We’d met seven years ago, just after I got married and started my company. Annie had been a year older than me at twenty-two, but she’d already spent four years living with an abusive asshole before she escaped on a Greyhound bus in the middle of the night.

I’d helped her through that trauma, and since then, she’d repaid me tenfold—firstly, by being the best assistant a girl could ever hope for, then by helping to pick up the pieces when my own relationship failed, and now, once again, she was here to fix my mess. Annie wasn’t just an employee, she was my best friend. Being honest, I didn’t have many friends at all. I found it difficult to get close to people, and although I had hundreds of acquaintances, I never spent time with them outside work and organised social events.

But Annie? Annie was different. Once or twice, I’d even considered telling her about my strange gift, but I was too afraid of her reaction to risk it. Why upset the status quo?

“I had a small problem last night.”

“Really? You think? I almost died of shock when a cop called me. When you didn’t come to work, I thought something terrible had happened.”

“Something terribledidhappen.”

“I meant that you’d been kidnapped, or gotten hit by a car, or drunk too much and accidentally slept with someone’s fiancé at the wedding show.”

“Why would you think that? You know I rarely drink.”

“Well, you did go to the bar with Maria Fitzgerald.”

“I did?”

Maria was one of our best customers, seeing as she was about to embark on her third marriage and to a movie mogul this time. She’d once confessed that each wedding felt more like a business transaction, although that didn’t stop her from ordering expensive dresses and six-tier artisanal cakes and thousands of pure-white roses. Soon, she’d be Maria Rosenberg, and Annie and I had a secret bet Maria would be shopping for a new husband within two years. Don Rosenberg had an eye for the ladies, and Maria’s prenup gave her a great settlement if he got caught cheating.

But why had I gone to the bar with her?

“She wanted to buy both of us a drink to celebrate finding the perfect table centrepieces, but I stayed behind to finish packing up the booth. Remember how last time the movers broke a vase and scratched one of the leather stools?”

I did. I also remembered that Annie didn’t like Maria much. Said she was mercenary. But Annie still believed in the concept of true love, while I believed in putting food on my table, so I didn’t have so much of a problem with Maria’s approach to marriage. But now it seemed that Maria’s approach to drinking may have put my life in danger. She always had liked cocktails.

“I don’t even remember seeing her after the show. And I’d never sleep with somebody’s fiancé.”

“Not knowingly, but I always said that too and look what happened after Better Brides last year. If that swine’s engagement ring hadn’t fallen out of his wallet when he paid for our drinks, I’d have gone on another date with him.”

Instead, she’d caught a cab over to my place and spent the rest of the night downing margaritas and cursing men while Margaret, the spirit of a sixty-year-old former housewife who resided in one corner of my living room, shook her head and tutted and muttered that ladies in her day would never have acted that way.

But even when she got drunk, Annie’s hair had stayed perfect, and although she might have wobbled a bit on her way up the stairs, she didn’t have the slightest hangover the next morning. While I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d been hit by a semi.

How many bosses got jealous of their assistants? Was it just me?

“But you did the smart thing and walked away, while I…I… Honestly? I have no idea what happened, just that I ended up in this guy’s car, and he scared me, so I jumped out.”

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