Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

'Why don't you go over and stand by that window?' she suggested quickly. 'That'd make a nice shot, with all those buildings in the background.'

He went over and stood, the Chicago skyline spearing into the dusk sky behind him. This was Jill's favorite time, twilightmagical, when all of night's promise lay ahead.

'How's this?'

'Great,' she said. 'Now try the other window.'

He took several steps across to the west window. 'Whatever happened to that cop you were seeing?'

Mention of Mitch Ayers caused Jill to shut down completely for a moment, as it usually did. She froze. Then, 'It didn't work out.'

'I heard you were really in love.'

'Turn to your right.'

'Don't want to talk about it, huh?'

'Now turn to your left.'

'He dump you or what?'

'Now walk out on the balcony and jump.'

He laughed. 'Guy must've really gotten to you, the way you're acting.'

She walked over. He had to be angled just right for a shot like this to work. She liked to walk through her shots, rehearse them, so that the actual shoot went faster.

She touched Eric's elbow and turned him toward her and that's when he grabbed her and pulled her to him. Before she could gather herself to protest, his mouth found hers and she felt his hot tongue passing between her lips.

She pulled back and slapped him with a ferocity that startled even her.

'You bitch! What the hell do you think you're doing?'

After a long moment, Jill walked to the door and said, 'I guess I don't need to tell you that I won't be doing that shoot of yours.'

'God, Jill, I'm sorry. I really am.'

'No, you're not, Eric. You're not sorry at all.'

A genuine sorrow filled her. Sometimes people baffled her completely. Eric would always remain unfathomable to her. All the high-school macho games he played. Becoming a real adult seemed to hold no appeal to him whatsoever. He would always be one of those aging boy-men you saw so often in sports and politicsand advertising.

'Jill.'

But she didn't stop.

Walked out through the reception area.

Found the hall and walked to the elevator.

A young woman emerged from the restroom at the far end of the hall. She looked upset, and Jill could tell she had been crying.

Eric came up. He looked miserable, but she felt no sympathy for him at all. 'Jill, please, you have to believe me. I really am sorry. Really I am.'

She turned to him. 'Don't make this worse than it has to be, Eric. Go back to your office and let me wait here alone.'

He started to argue but saw that it was no use.

He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, and then walked sullenly back to his office. He obviously hadn't noticed the young woman standing by the restroom at the opposite end of the hall. She was watching both Jill and Eric.

Jill and the woman looked at each other down the long corridor. Then the woman opened a door marked STAIRS and disappeared.

A few minutes later, Jill's elevator car came. She boarded it and was gone.

Corday knew he should have been concentrating on the job ahead but he couldn't. He kept thinking of how Adam had been unfaithful. Again. After all those promises.

Then he saw Jill.

Time for work.

Couldn't afford to worry about Adam anymore. Or the jerk Adam had spent time with in Miami.

He waited until Jill had disappeared beyond the door leading to the ramp, and then he moved.

Across the lobby.

To the elevator.

Up to pay a visit to Mr Brooks.

Cini had just reached the lobbyhurrying because the deep shadow and the hollow echoing sound of her footsteps unnerved herwhen she went to reach in her purse for a Kleenex… and realized that she didn't have her purse with her. She always carried her toothbrush in her coat pocket so she hadn't missed her purse. But now

Her purse.

Upstairs.

Eric's office.

Of course.

Dammit, anyway.

She turned, saying a dirty word she'd been trying to break herself of, and walked back up the stairs.

'You seem a little preoccupied.'

'I guess I am.'

'Want to talk about it?'

'No big deal, I suppose. Just having a few problems with my business partner.'

'Business partners can be a real pain.'

'Maybe I'll have another drink,' Adam Morrow said. 'I mean, if you don't mind.'

He'd met his new friend just an hour ago in a Village bar. Now he was having drinks in his new friend's apartment. His friend kept casting an anxious eye to the darkened bedroom beyond, but Adam was too worried right now to think about sex.

He just had this awful feeling that finding the note had undone Rick, and that Rick might do something stupid.

Something that could end their perfect record.

'Why don't you let me freshen that up for you?' Adam's new friend said, taking the glass from his hand.

Adam scarcely noticed.

If only he hadn't had to fly to New York at the last minute to take care of a loose end on the last job.

Rick, for all his skills, got so emotional at times that he didn't think clearly.

Early tomorrow Adam would be on a plane headed to Chicago. Just so long as Rick didn't do anything crazy tonight…

'Here,' said Adam's new friend. 'Maybe this'll mellow you out a little.' He smiled. A very white smile. An actor's smile. 'Then maybe we can get to know each other a little better.'

'Will there be anything else, ma'am?'

'Not for right now, Emma. Not for right now.'

Emma thought how you didn't often hear Mrs Tappley's voice this soft and sentimental.

But tonight she sat in the darkened den watching all the old films of her son Peter when he was growing up.

How she loved those old films, Emma thought.

Some nights Mrs Tappley would stay in the den until midnight, and sob with such great pain and loss that Emma herself would begin to cry.

Losing a son that way, in the electric chair.

No wonder the woman watched the old films so often, and cried so hard.

There was always risk, and Corday loved it.

In Los Angeles, he had once been trapped in the hold of a ship with two drug dealers he'd been hired to kill. They each had automatic weapons: Corday had only a knife. They had some fun with him, chasing him across the hold, laughing when he tripped and fellbut they had not counted on his intelligence. When he fell, he pretended to bang his head, and become unconscious.

At first the dealers accused him of faking. 'Hey, man, get up, we ain't gonna fall for that old trick.' But after a few minutes, the mood in the hold suddenly turning tense, one of the dealers walked over to the fallen man and leaned down to see if he could hear breathing. Corday put the knife deep into the dealer's right eye, then pulled the dealer down on top of him, snatching the man's weapon. Even before the other dealer could figure out how to fire without hitting his buddy, Corday had killed them both, firing until the automatic pistol was empty and the hold an echo chamber of fired rounds.

There was risk tonight, and Corday loved it.

He rode up to the floor where Eric Brooks had his office and stepped off the elevator.

Plum and gray walls; plush plum carpeting. Nice. Not so nice was the lavish painting of Eric Brooks that made him resemble Clint Eastwood. That kind of bone-clean manliness. You'd think a guy would be embarrassed to parade his fantasies publicly like this. 'Hey, outside I'm this kind of nerdy jerkbut inside, I'm Clint Eastwood.'

Corday looked around.

Nobody in the hall.

Listened for cleaning people. Vacuum or toilets flushing as they were being cleaned. Heard nothing.

Tugged on his latex gloves.