Her father said the lab had never looked cleaner when he walked in the next day. It was true he’d spent nearly all night scrubbing the damn place. There was this funky yeasty smell when he’d started and by the time he finished, the place smelled more like the dentist’s office.
Paul wanted the job. He needed the money but most of all, he’d do anything for her. And when she came to school that day, too many years ago now to count, they’d sat outside on a sunny day eating their homemade sandwiches and bypassing the endless school lunch line, and she said her dad needed an assistant since she’d started soccer. He didn’t waste time telling her…he was available. He’d been to her house and met her father as a tag-along kid. The boy no father worried about. Just a friend since the second grade.
“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she’d said with a lisp, still getting used to her new braces, and it jabbed his heart. “I just meant, he wanted someone to help him in the evenings and keep the place clean. His new experiments are going well, I guess. He’s figured something out reconstituting vodka that actually works this time. He seems really excited about it. I’ll let him know if you’re serious about working for him. Are you sure? It’s pretty boring work.”
“I love hanging out with your dad. Yes, I’m totally sure.”
He could still see the innocent expression on her face. Her chocolate brown eyes wide. Her red lips rounded in the question. She was his greatest pastime when he should have been studying, but he knew every expression she made by heart, every mood she was in, every tiny detail about her. How she used her hands to explain something she had no words for. He’d say, “How’d that go, again?” with a little smile on his face just to make her repeat the motion. She fascinated him. But that was a long time ago and so much had happened in the expanse since.
Paul leaned back in his chair, sitting in the dark living room of his powerless apartment not far enough away from his office downtown as he remembered that fateful day more than a decade ago. They were just kids then, barely teenagers.
He’d appeased Kim earlier by saying they’d meet tomorrow and discuss things and then left her standing in the hot, dark office alone, like he was in his apartment now. Kim had him, and she knew it. She was like that. Dammit. There was only one thing that would get him to listen to what she had to say and Dane’s location was it.
“It’s probably a lie.” He raised his whisky glass to whomever cared. “That bitch. I’ll never be rid of her.” He took another sip of the whisky he’d poured over a handful of ice that was left in his freezer and let the cool liquid slide down his throat. Still…if he knew where Dane was, he could end one nightmare, but he’d always have to contend with the other.