The Assistant: A gripping psychological thriller with a nerve-shredding ending Page 2

  “Hi.” Laura slid her phone into the pocket of her pants. “I’m late to the pricing review.”

  Vanessa waited.

  “But we never start on time.”

  “Is that right,” Vanessa said.

  Laura laughed. “Hey, I meant to ask you. When is Hank setting up interviews for the Ops Director position?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Laura smiled. She leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “When you get around to it, Thursdays are best for me.”

  “Thanks for the update.”

  Laura touched Vanessa’s shoulder. “Any chance you’ll tell me who the other candidates are?”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “I’m sure you will, but not from me.”

  “It’s no big deal if you tell me. It’s not like it changes the playing field.” Laura stepped out of the alcove. “Now I’m really late. Let me know when I’m scheduled. And I know you already have the schedule. He tells you everything.” When Laura smiled, the curve of her pale lips looked strangely warm, contradicting her harsh words.

  Vanessa glanced down the hall. It was empty. The conference room door was closed. She could ask Laura about the rumor, watch her struggle to find an answer. She could force Laura to explain why she thought Vanessa was the kind of woman who would seduce her boss. But anything she said would get turned inside out. Laura thought more quickly on her feet.

  It was better to talk to Hank. Or not. She had to think about that for a while. Part of her wanted to rush to his office, shut the door, and pull a chair close to his desk. They would laugh about it together. He’d wink and then he wouldn’t speak for a few minutes, and she’d wonder what was circling through his mind. The risk of telling him was that it might put something between them, cause him to pull away from her, worried about his reputation.

  She watched Laura walk down the hallway. Her glossy brown hair swung across her neck, her narrow hips hardly moved. She opened the door to the conference room, stepped inside, and closed it with a decisive click.

  2

  Laura

  THE PREDAWN LIGHT had turned the sky a charcoal color, promising the sun would force its way through the waterlogged clouds later that morning. Laura’s weather app said the temperature was fifty-one.

  She pulled a thin white tank top over her sports bra, and a white sweatshirt with a gold Avalon logo over that. She wrapped her hair in an elastic band, pulling it back hard so the shorter pieces in front wouldn’t work loose and fall across her face. The stubby ponytail bounced gleefully as she moved across the room to her dresser. She pulled on socks, picked up her running shoes, and walked down the stairs to the living area, stepping carefully so the soft cotton on her feet didn’t send her skidding across the hardwood floor.

  Built into the freestanding wall dividing the living and dining areas was a 75-gallon saltwater aquarium, the home of two eight-inch lionfish. She stepped up close to the glass and turned on the light. “Good morning, beautiful creatures.” The Volitan lingered among the plants, watching. Its white spines moved gently. The Radiata swam up toward the surface. Laura hadn’t named them. She preferred calling them by their scientific names. Still, that didn’t mean her affection was any less. After three days without food, they were hungry.

  “I’ll feed you as soon as I’m back from my run,” she said.

  The fish glided through their silent world. The grace of their effortless movements soothed her and their utter dependence terrified her. The precision of their designs filled her with awe. Despite their venom, their captivity made them weak. She’d thought about buying more fish tanks, overcome with an irrational desire to protect as many creatures as she could. What would they do, all these privileged fish, without humans to sustain and protect them? The irony was, in the wild they were at the top of the food chain, but once they were in her home, they became helpless.

  Every so often she wondered how she’d ended up with such fragile pets, a distant cry from her childhood dream of owning a horse, riding for miles on the flat beach in perfect control of the powerful animal while the ocean roared at her side. During her years in high school, Saturdays had been the best part of the week. After her riding lessons, she’d hung around the stables for hours, drinking in the animals’ energy, feeling their heavy grace in her bones. It wasn’t too late. She could certainly afford to own and care for a horse. It wasn’t as if riding was something you forgot how to do. She just needed to make it a priority.

  When her shoes were tied, her playlist set, and her phone snapped into the case strapped to her arm, she poked her earbuds into place. She went out, locked the door, and dropped the key into the tiny pocket inside the waist of her shorts. The soles of her shoes thudded on the Spanish tiles as she jogged down the stairs. Goosebumps flared up along her thighs, but she ignored the chill. By the time she was half a mile into her run, her arms would also be bare, the sweatshirt tied around her waist.

  The three other suburban lofts joined to hers were silent, their occupants either busy with coffee and early morning email, or still asleep, she was never sure which. One unit housed a couple who were both attorneys. She rarely saw them; they might as well have lived at their respective firms. A single mom and her four-year-old son occupied the other downstairs loft-style condo, and a retired couple lived next door to Laura. They were always anxious to chat, although there wasn’t enough common ground on which to develop a meaningful conversation. Mostly they marveled over the cleverness of their four-year-old neighbor and told Laura stories of their grandsons in Chicago, whom they visited once a year while Laura fed and cared for their three cats.

  She wove her way through the queen palms, past large bougainvillea, stubbornly blooming in the cold weather. She turned right, moving quickly, pumping her arms, covering the three blocks to the high school in less than five minutes. Often, as she walked along the silent sidewalks, she considered how much nicer it would be to run the bay trail near the Avalon campus.

  Jogging past quiet water and wild grass on a carefully constructed five-mile route would be much more satisfying than running around a track surrounded by rows of empty bleachers reaching up into the sky. Avalon offered locker rooms for employees who used the trail or rode their bikes to work, but the thought of walking into the building sweating, her legs and arms exposed, of dressing and doing her makeup in front of her co-workers, was unappealing.

  When she reached the high school, she entered the sports field through an opening in the chain-link fence that allowed nearby residents free access for jogging, Frisbee tosses, or running their dogs. Trees and thick shrubbery that towered over her, always in need of a pruning, ran along that section of the fence. Beneath the trees was hard-packed dirt and clumps of more nondescript shrubbery. The area offered the kind of secretive places children reveled in, or at least Laura had when she was a child.

  She pulled the stiff branches away from her arms. It almost seemed as if they wanted to block people from entering, not really intending to share the facility after all. She crossed the grass to the edge of the track. At this time of year, and at this hour of the morning, she usually had the track to herself. Although she loved the solitude, thin needles of fear pierced her pleasure.

  Girls shouldn’t be out alone in the dark. Girls that were assaulted, murdered even, invited it by going to places they shouldn’t, doing things they shouldn’t do—seeking power in the business world, for example. Girls shouldn’t play sports, shouldn’t put so much effort into being fit.

  Despite years of countering her parents’ archaic view of the world, she couldn’t erase a deep, irrational certainty that when she ran at the deserted high school track, something bad would happen to her.

  She loved the feeling of strength and power in her body when she ran. She refused to believe she was weak, unable to protect herself. Yet, the whispers wouldn’t go away no matter how much her logica
l, educated brain told her they were lies. She hated watching other female runners who appeared happy and relaxed. Could they see on her face that she was frequently terrified?

  From time to time, she worried about the same things at the office—that they saw fear leaking out of her composed expression. She comforted herself that the fear made her work with greater intensity, outperform her peers—drove her to run faster, which was a good thing.

  The thoughts dogged her until her heart began pumping harder, the sweat rose to the surface of her skin, and she was finally lost in the pure physical sensation, the demands of her body consuming every unwanted thought.

  As she completed the third lap, a man emerged from the shrubs near the opening in the fence. He was six-two or more, his body lean in what should be the perfect physique for a runner, yet when he moved his limbs jerked as though his joints weren’t properly connected. Lank hair was tied at the nape of his neck in a thin ponytail. An equally thin beard sprouted from the knob of his chin. He wore a tank top with gaping armholes that showed his ribs. His sweatpants were torn off mid-calf. His running shoes looked as if they’d been dunked in a barrel of tar.

  Nothing about him said he lived in this neighborhood, although for all she knew he was a high-tech titan with tens of millions stashed in the bank—a software engineer who preferred to remain down-to-earth in his style of dress. He walked to the edge of the track. Without pausing to stretch his muscles, he stepped over the concrete border and began to run about fifty feet in front of her. His movements were more erratic than they’d been when he was walking. He jerked forward like a caricature of a robot, holding his neck back, his shoulders stiff and straight, yet he moved quickly.

  She slowed to a jog. Almost immediately, he slowed, matching her pace. His head jerked from side-to-side as he moved. Once again, she reduced her speed. Within a few strides, he’d done the same. As the distance between them grew smaller, her heart pounded furiously against her ribs. In a sudden burst of energy, she broke into a sprint and raced past him. Immediately, he increased his speed and closed the gap. Then he dropped off slightly and remained about twenty feet behind her.

  Moments later she heard his breath—nasal, and wet with too much mucous. He passed her and slowed.

  What was his problem? They could take opposite sides of the track, keep a similar pace, and not engage in this silent struggle. She kept her rhythm steady, but he was moving more slowly now. After several minutes, she passed him again.

  She’d lost count of how many laps she’d run. She sped up, sprinting around the curve at the top of the field, then slowed because she was now in danger of overtaking him again. She stumbled to the side of the track and walked across the grass. She ducked under the metal bar that ran along the concrete platform at the base of the bleachers. She pulled herself up onto the platform and sat down in the front row. She put her elbows on her knees, rested her chin in her hands, and leaned forward slightly. She stared hard, willing him to turn and look, better yet, to not look, but feel her watching, lose his focus, trip and fall, or become so upset he left and vowed to never return. The horizon was growing lighter. It was almost time to head home.

  The man continued circling the track with his spastic movements. His beard fluttered to the side of his neck, but his ponytail hardly moved. She could hear the scrape of his feet on the gritty surface. She was certain he was going to lose his balance, sprawl across the gravel. She’d have the pleasure of watching it tear off fine pieces of skin, leave delicate lines through which blood would bubble out.

  But none of that happened. He ran as if he wasn’t aware she was watching, ran as if he was headed to a real destination instead of racing in aimless circles.

  Each minute that ticked by interfered with her carefully arranged schedule that got her to work before eighty percent of her peers, demonstrating to Hank that she had leadership potential, that she was dedicated and knew how to get a jump on the day, and the competition. Executives respected employees who came in early. It meant you took your work and your contribution seriously, that you were a go-getter—early birds and all that.

  The man showed no sign of being winded. It seemed as though he might keep circling while the sun rose in the sky, reached its zenith, lowered itself slowly, and sank behind the trees. If she left the track now, he would win, although it wasn’t clear what the prize was. Besides, she had no right to expect the track to herself.

  She climbed down from the bleachers. She couldn’t waste any more time trying to outlast him. Tonight, she’d go to a yoga class and make up for her loss. Yoga would realign her brain, and tomorrow she’d tack on an additional mile. She jogged past the point where he was making his way around the curve of the track and stopped. As he drew closer, she pulled her lips down and furrowed her brow into a deep scowl. He stopped and returned the sneering look with far greater ferocity than she’d managed. She shivered and looked away. She turned and ran toward the fence, regretting what she’d done.

  LAURA PULLED INTO the parking lot outside building four. She grabbed her laptop bag and hit the remote to lock her car.

  At the Avalon coffee shop in the adjacent building, she purchased a non-fat latte and an apple. She entered her building and climbed the stairs to the second floor. She turned down the hallway leading to her office.

  Sunlight came through the windows surrounding the lobby and open space up to the second floor, shimmering off the light gold walls. The effect was warming and designed to be soothing, but she felt amped up. The latte was probably a mistake, since she’d already had a large mug of coffee at home, and was still jittery and more than a little angry.

  That freakish guy had disrupted everything. She’d forgotten to feed the fish. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to picture them making their way to the surface of the water, hunting for food. They’d be fine until evening. Still, she was sick with guilt.

  She put the coffee cup and apple on her desk and tilted the blinds to keep the glare off the computer screen. Her first meeting wasn’t until ten. As soon as she finished eating, she’d find her go-to confidante, Brent, and talk to him about a strategy for getting around that permanent roadblock sitting outside Hank’s office. She blew on her coffee and took a tentative sip. Still too hot. She typed in her password—N0$topping.

  For twenty minutes, she nibbled on her apple and made her way through emails from Europe and the East Coast that had arrived since she’d last checked before her run, if you could call it that. By 8:30, she’d heard the espresso machine fire up twice and the sound of voices traveling down the halls. She picked up her cardboard cup, still half full, and went out and around the corner to Brent’s office.

  Airpods clung to Brent’s ears. He nodded and gave clipped answers while he nudged charts around the PowerPoint slide open on his screen. He lifted his chin at her in a silent greeting, then tilted his head toward the chair facing his desk. He held up two fingers to indicate two more minutes and mumbled, “Uh-huh, sure.”

  Laura sat down. Sitting there while he talked to someone who was unaware of her presence made her feel like an eavesdropper. She should have turned and walked away, forced him to come looking for her, but that would make her look prickly. He would have tracked her down eventually for their daily chat, but she really wanted to talk now.

  She couldn’t afford to lose another day helplessly waiting for things to happen around her. This promotion wasn’t something she could leave to chance. She was absolutely qualified and the position was rightfully hers. Hank knew her skills were outstanding. Janelle had given her the highest rating on her last two performance reviews, and Hank had signed off on those. The only hurdle was the upper layer of execs who sometimes entertained a fanatical devotion to hiring from outside the company. They overvalued fresh perspectives and new ideas. Well, she had lots of ideas. All she had to do was make sure Hank had a firm grip on how the organization relied on her, and the job was hers. She didn’t have to prove she had leadership abilities, could make the tough ca
lls, understood all the financial and technical aspects of the business. He already knew that.

  Vanessa’s evasiveness had been disturbing. Laura worried the interviews had already started. The previous Director of Marketing Operations had been gone two weeks. She would have thought Hank would start talking to potential candidates the minute he’d known the guy was leaving the company.

  And that was the other thing. Hank’s organization needed more women in management roles. Diversity requirements had to factor in, even if it would never be spoken about. HR would be tracking it.

  “All right then, thanks.” Brent pulled out his earbuds. “Sorry about that. Thanks for waiting.”

  Laura smiled and sipped her latte. Why did he have to act so self-important? It was disrespectful, behaving as though her time were less important than his. He should have ended the call more quickly. It was bad enough that he’d already acquired a director title of his own; asking him for advice made her feel even more subservient. There had to be a way to make him more eager to help her. The Director of Marketing Operations was critical support for his product line. Surely he recognized that. If she had the job, he wouldn’t have to fight for executive sign-off on every decision he made.

  “You’re quiet.” He pushed his chair away from the desk and stretched out his legs. His size-twelve feet were clad in those ridiculous shoes, no laces, like some weird hybrid athletic shoes and a pair of boots.

  “Not really, just thinking.”

  “Did you see that email from Janelle?” he said. “‘Please make sure to dress properly for the launch event—no jeans, even with suit coats.’ What does she think we are, a bunch of high school kids who need a dress code?”