Rent-A-Killer

“I could kiss you right now.”

Laughing, I handed her the warm cup of coffee I’d brought from the break room. “Wear some chapstick, and I’ll think about it,” I said, sipping my own coffee—four sugars and half a cup of cream. And, as a plus, to really grow hair on my ample chest, three shots of espresso.

Somewhere, the coffee gods were weeping.

“You’re so mean,” Natalie whined dramatically. She spun her swivel chair back to her computer. Spreadsheets filled her screen—reds, greens, and blues.

“Ready for overtime?” she mumbled as I took my seat beside hers. Her immaculate desk compared to mine was laughable. Seriously, it could star in a TLC special: Canada’s Most Disgusting Offices.

To be fair, the office itself was actually quite nice—air-conditioned, freshened, decently modern. Mine, though? Gross. Beautiful oak covered in takeaway containers and week-old coffee cups with questionable growth that I’d pushed into the back corner of the grey privacy partition.

“No way. I’m out of here when that clock strikes four.”

The company had made some bad investments, and now we were tallying how much of our holiday pay was about to get cut this year—it was a total headache I didn’t want to deal with today. Sleep deprivation, the utter bitch, had me in her claws and was refusing to let me go. I hadn’t slept a full night in weeks.

Natalie looked up, her blue eyes finding the clock on the wall above our cubicle. “That clock? It’s broken, hun.”

Had I really been so tired that I didn’t notice the clock had frozen? I hit the spacebar. The screen lit up: 4:30.

“Oh, shit. I’ve got to go—like, right now.” I shot out of my chair and grabbed my purse off my messy desk.

“Whoa!” Natalie’s eyes went wide. Her curly black hair bobbed as she swivelled her head to watch me rush out of our cubicle. “Have you got a date or something?”

“Something like that!” I yelled.

The office was efficiently quiet. Fingers tapped keyboards. Cubicles made up the walkways. High windows gave us a taste of freedom—almost cruel, as warm filtered sunlight spilled over the grey carpeting, reminding us what we were missing while cooped up in this ancient building, doing paperwork for days on end.

I heard Natalie shouting at me, but I couldn’t tell her why I was hurrying. It would be too humiliating. “Sydney, get your butt back here!”

Aware I was pulling attention from the rest of my coworkers, bitter that I was leaving, I forced a smile. Then I bit back a curse as a short, stocky man stepped into my path, blocking me from leaving. The burgundy suit he wore looked cheap—cheaper than the obvious toupee on his head sliding to the left, askew, and giving me the insatiable urge to fix it. But if I did, I’d probably get fired.

He was my manager, after all.

And you never touched your manager’s toupee.

“Sydney? Are you signing out?”

“Yes, I’m so sorry, Greg. I know you need people—but I’ve, uh, got an… appointment tonight.”

Greg frowned. He looked me over—right down to my bare knees where the hem of my black pencil skirt brushed. “Are you alright?”

If I hadn’t worked here for three long years, I’d naively think Greg was genuinely caring for his employees. Wrong. He was a penny-pinching bastard. If he caught a whiff that one of us was going to be laid out, miss work, or, God forbid, become pregnant, he’d find any reason to terminate.

“I’m fine. I have a date.” Better to tell the truth than have him find out if Natalie was pissed enough to gossip about me.

“Oh… a date.” Greg’s mouth moved, as if tasting the word “date.” Or maybe he was chewing cud. It would explain why he constantly had bad breath.

I nearly slapped him. Seriously, what was with that reaction? I’d been in a relationship for years and was newly single; it wouldn’t be a crazy stretch that I’d be dating. Why was everyone acting like I’d decided to start a lucrative career selling foot pictures to perverts?

Lecture time. “We expect all employees to contribute in a time of crisis,” he said in a dull voice. “If you’d like to be considered for a raise this coming year, you’ll need to show initiative.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I forced a smile.

A raise? More like an increase of two damn cents.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his frown returning. He gestured to my eye, and I covered it with a palm. “Do you always have a twitch—”

No, Greg, my eye doesn’t always twitch. It only does when I’m about to die of sleep deprivation. But thanks for the fake concern.

“It’s… dusty in here.” I hurried past him. He moved out of the way quickly, probably worried I’d sue the company for harassment if he touched me.

I reached the elevator and pressed the button. I glanced at the office as I waited. Greg was running his fingers along a partition’s edge, checking for nonexistent dust. Past him, Natalie was peeking out of our cubicle, giving me a death glare.

I blew her a kiss. “I’ll do overtime tomorrow! Promise!”

That placated her, softening her anger. A night off for us was a rare thing. She was a single mom to an eight-year-old girl and often griped about how she felt like she was missing out on her daughter’s childhood. If I were capable, I usually took a shift or two to let her.

“You better!” She waved goodbye.

I’d probably regret my promise once I was elbow-deep in paperwork—but whatever. That was a tomorrow problem.

My phone vibrated.

I rifled through my purse. A message had come in.

That Guy: Waiting.

I texted back, Got caught up at work. Be there in ten.

The typing dots blinked.

Then stopped.

Then… nothing.

The elevator slid open behind me, all ominous and overly dramatic.

I shoved my phone into my bag and tried not to let my imagination run wild.

Before I stepped inside, it pinged again.

I dove into my purse like a raccoon in a trash can.

That Guy: Five.

Shady Craigslist deal or not, this already felt like a mistake I wouldn’t come back from.

The elevator opened. The parking garage had never unsettled me before—dark and gloomy, yeah, but I’d walked it hundreds of times, at all hours of the day and night. Now, though, as my bargain-bin heels clicked on the concrete, the cold seeped through my thin blouse, and every noise, echoing deeper within, made me flinch like a skittish mouse.

Oh God, seriously, what the hell was I doing?

This was the bad idea of bad ideas.

Stopping at my white car, rusting in places I chose to pretend didn’t exist because I didn’t make enough to acknowledge them, I took out my phone.

I texted, Where are we meeting?

I received a reply a few moments later,

The black car with tinted windows, at the far end of row C.

I still didn’t even know his name. Just “That Guy.” That’s how he signed his first message. Creepy? Yeah. But exhaustion makes you stupid.

I nodded once, twice, three times—just to myself. Then forced a step. Then another, until I found dozens of cars taking up the spaces in row C. And look at that—a black car at the end, waiting for me. He was inside, I was nearly an hour late, and if he wasn’t a goddamn saint, he’d be pissed. Turning tail and giving up on this stupid idea would be the smart thing to do. But how long could I survive without sleep?

This guy probably had bodies in his trunk—maybe he had a thing for girls in pencil skirts and liked cutting them up. What if he were a cannibal? He’d eat parts of me slowly, for days, and I’d be a victim on one of those makeup-and-crime YouTube videos, talking about my life and making corny jokes about my death.

“You can do this,” I whispered to myself. My heart pounded against my chest as I approached the black car. “Just don’t think about your definite murder.”

The passenger window opened.

I jumped a little, but nobody came out to grab me. Light, dimmed by the tint on the windows, filled the cabin of the vehicle as I peeked in.

Dark eyes, darker hair. A black leather jacket that looked like he’d snatched it off a model mid-runway. He was beautiful in the kind of way that was probably fatal—like a knife with a diamond handle.

He held my gaze for all but two seconds, then looked away, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Get in,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly.

Everything in me screamed: run.

This was the part in the movie where the audience screamed at the screen, “Don’t get in. Don’t be stupid.”

But I opened the door anyway.

The air in the car smelled faintly of cologne and gunmetal.

It should have tipped me off.