Shielding Kinley

by Susan Stoker

  “I didn’t know you were going to kill her!” Walter insisted.

  “What did you think I was gonna do? Pat her on the head and send her on her way?” Drake asked sarcastically. “Once she found out our names, her fate was sealed. We both assumed we could have our fun and get away with it, but that wasn’t the case. Being all paranoid now isn’t helping, so quit your whining and figure out what to do to shut up your little narc assistant. If I go down, you are too.”

  Walter took a deep breath. He didn’t like the situation he was in now…but he couldn’t deny last night had been exciting.

  When he’d first realized he was attracted to underage girls, he’d been shocked, appalled even. But it had been so easy to find pictures and videos online… The internet was flooded with them. What harm could there be in looking?

  But before long, that wasn’t enough. He’d seduced and paid the few girls he’d slept with stateside.

  The tryst in Paris was supposed to be risk-free. He’d broached the subject with Drake because they’d shared child porn videos in a few online chat rooms.

  It seemed like a great idea at the time, discussing the idea of a ménage with an underaged prostitute with Drake. And the actual encounter had been one of the most exciting nights of his life; he’d never gotten so hard as he had, taking the girl with his friend and colleague.

  Drake had reassured him that he’d get the girl back to where he’d picked her up without anyone being the wiser. No one would know they’d spent the night with a girl young enough to be their daughter. Or granddaughter.

  Walter was relieved they’d both used condoms, so there would be no DNA inside the girl’s body, but he had no idea if there was any other DNA evidence, like hair or fingerprints, that the forensic techs might find.

  And neither of them had expected anyone to see Drake leaving the hotel with the girl.

  He had to do damage control, otherwise he and the ambassador were potentially fucked. He might not have murdered anyone, but that wouldn’t matter. If his sexual preferences were discovered, both his career and marriage were as good as dead.

  “Kinley has no friends or family,” Walter told his colleague. “I know someone who owes me a favor. I can have him threaten her to make sure she keeps her mouth shut.”

  “You can’t just threaten her,” Drake warned. “She’s different from us. She’s gonna blab about what she saw to someone. She needs to be taken out before that happens.”

  “I don’t know anyone who’s into that,” he balked.

  “Fuck!” Drake swore. “Fine. I’ll take care of it. The last thing I need is the president thinking I had anything to do with a murder. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am, and no fucking secretary is gonna ruin it. I’ve got more power now than I’ve ever had in my life. She’s not taking that away from me.”

  “But don’t make it obvious,” Walter warned. “It needs to look like an accident. Or like she killed herself or something.”

  “I know that. I’m not an idiot,” Stryker said.

  An idea formed in Walter’s head. “I can plant something on her computer and make it look like she’s committed treason. I’ll have no choice but to fire her. No one will dare re-hire her after that. And no one will have a hard time believing the girl with no family, who dared betray her country, stepped in front of a moving bus or train out of guilt.”

  “Don’t get too complicated,” Drake warned. “Keep it simple. But I think firing her can help us. At the very least, it’ll put some distance between the two of you.”

  They talked a little longer about the best way to make sure Kinley Taylor didn’t tell anyone else what she’d seen. Stryker assured him once more that he’d hire someone to take care of her, which was a relief to Walter.

  “Your job is to get her out of your office. Don’t call me again until it’s done,” Drake ordered. He hung up without another word.

  Walter sat back in his chair and steepled trembling hands under his chin. He didn’t have a lot of time to set things in motion. It would be better if her alleged treachery was found as soon as possible. As if she hadn’t covered her tracks before they’d left for Paris.

  Nodding to himself, Walter felt confident about his plan. What would be discovered in his assistant’s email would give him ample reason to fire her.

  He felt a small pang of remorse. Kinley was a hard worker, and he’d never had a more competent assistant. But she’d had the bad luck to be looking in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she hadn’t seen Drake putting the girl in his limo, they wouldn’t be in the predicament they were in now.

  The thought of killing her made him extremely uneasy. But Walter knew he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t want to go to prison, he was all too aware of what happened to pedophiles when they got locked up. It was his life or hers—and he wanted to live.

  Walter actually hated that he was attracted to girls…wished he wasn’t…but he couldn’t help it. He was the way he was. But he never should’ve gotten Drake involved in his fantasies.

  He had no idea if the girl was Drake’s first kill or not, and he didn’t want to know. As it was, he knew too much. But if his friend was actually The Alleyway Strangler…?

  Swallowing hard, Walter closed his eyes. Everything had spiraled out of control, and it was in danger of spiraling further.

  “Walter,” his wife called from down the hall, “it’s late. Come to bed!”

  Sighing, Walter forced himself to respond. “Coming, dear.”

  He knew he should feel more guilty for doing what he and his friend were planning to do to Kinley, should maybe even put a stop to it, but their political careers were more important than some nobody.

  She’d thought she was doing the right thing in calling him about what she’d seen, but in reality, it had been the worst mistake of her life.

  Chapter Five

  Kinley stood on the sidewalk looking up at the building she’d worked in for the last eight years in stunned bewilderment. When she’d arrived at work that morning, she’d been thinking about nothing other than Walter’s next speaking engagement and the research she needed to finish in order to write his speech.

  Now, two hours later, she was standing outside after being fired.

  It was two days since they’d returned from Paris, and how she’d gone so quickly from having a secure, albeit sometimes annoying job to being unemployed made her head spin.

  She’d been called down to the HR director’s office and interrogated about an email she’d allegedly sent to a few of the other assistants—and a newspaper reporter—before she and Walter had flown to France. It was her boss’s itinerary, including times and locations of every meeting at the conference.

  Even the lowliest intern knew not to breathe one word of where the politicians would be, and when. She absolutely wouldn’t have sent it to a reporter. Making that information public was like inviting an assassination attempt from a terrorist or crazy constituent.

  In political circles, it was akin to committing treason.

  Kinley had tried to tell the HR director that she hadn’t sent any such email, but he hadn’t listened. He had the proof right in front of him. A time-stamped email sent from her government email account.

  She’d been fired on the spot, and a security officer accompanied her back to her office and watched with a frown and his arms crossed as she’d packed all her personal belongings. She hadn’t even been allowed to say goodbye to Walter or any of the other assistants or interns…not that she was that close to them, but still.

  She knew she should be upset, should be crying, but she was having a hard time processing everything that had just happened. One minute she was sitting at her desk doing research, and thirty minutes later she was outside with her things in a cardboard box like a pathetic eighties-movie heroine.

  Her mind spinning, Kinley turned and started walking down the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure what to do next. It was highly unlikely she’d be able to get an assistant job in political circle
s again, especially if everyone thought she’d committed treason. But what else could she do?

  Kinley had no idea.

  She trudged toward the Metro station, deep in thought. Her studio apartment was paid up through the month, but rent wasn’t exactly cheap…even for just one room. Surely she’d be able to find something else that paid relatively close to what she’d been getting working for the assistant secretary.

  Kinley was so lost in thought that she didn’t pay much attention to the people around her. That wasn’t unusual, because she’d found that if you made eye contact with someone, typically they felt the need to talk to you, which she preferred to avoid.

  As she stood on the platform waiting for the next train, it slowly began to sink in that she was well and truly unemployed. It was unfair, as Kinley knew she hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. How Walter’s itinerary ended up in her email outbox, she had no idea. She certainly hadn’t sent it to anyone. But she hadn’t even been given a chance to explain.

  Hating that she’d simply stood in the HR director’s office and stared at him in shock when he was outlining what she’d supposedly done, Kinley made a split-second decision. She was going to go back and demand to speak with the director again. She wanted someone from IT to explain how the hell they’d found that email, when she knew she hadn’t sent anyone anything.

  The train was barreling into the station, but Kinley didn’t care that she was going to miss it. She was focused on how unfairly she’d been treated and wanting to make it right.

  Before she’d even turned to leave the platform, someone shoved her hard from behind.

  Kinley felt herself falling, but because she had the box of belongings in her hands, she couldn’t stop her forward momentum. The box went flying, straight into the path of the oncoming train.

  Kinley fell hard onto the polished concrete, and just barely caught herself from sliding right off the platform onto the rails below.

  Two seconds later, the train rushed by, crushing her favorite pens, a picture of her and the president that had been taken four years ago, and the other odds and ends she’d accumulated over the years at her job.

  Her chin throbbed from where her head had bounced off the ground, but Kinley could only stare in horror at the gleaming metal cars rushing by just inches from her head.

  “Holy shit!” a man said from next to her. “Are you all right? Good God, you almost fell right onto the tracks!”

  “You’re bleeding,” a woman added. “It looks like you hit your chin. Does it hurt?”

  Kinley couldn’t think about anything other than how she’d almost been flattened by the train. In all her years commuting in the city, she’d never, not once, been scared about the possibility of falling onto the tracks.

  But as she lay on the cold floor, she realized exactly how close she’d come to dying.

  “Sorry about your stuff,” the man said as he tried to help her sit up.

  Blinking, Kinley allowed herself to be helped into a sitting position. “It’s okay,” she said, more out of the automatic need to be polite than actually knowing what she was saying.

  Someone handed her a handkerchief, and she didn’t have time to ask if it was clean before the woman was holding it to her chin. Kinley brushed the helping hand away and held the cloth to her bleeding chin herself. “Thank you,” she told the bystanders. “I’m okay now. Go on, you’ll miss your train.”

  “Oh, I can’t possibly leave you like this,” the woman fretted.

  “Look, the bleeding’s almost stopped,” Kinley said, having no idea if that was the case or not. She hated being fussed over, especially by strangers. She’d never had anyone dote on her or nurse her through her hurts growing up, and it just felt awkward now.

  After another thirty seconds, both her helpers finally nodded at her and entered the train. Kinley got to her feet and swayed for just a second.

  She could still feel the hand on her back. She knew there was nothing there now, but it felt as if her skin burned.

  Someone had pushed her! They’d wanted her to fall right onto the tracks in front of the oncoming Metro.

  Kinley wasn’t an idiot. She’d always been pretty decent at math. She could put two and two together.

  She’d witnessed a possible serial killer with his latest victim hours before the girl had been found brutally murdered. She’d expressed her concerns to her boss, who was friends with the alleged killer. Then two days later, she’s fired and almost pushed in front of a train.

  Surprisingly, the main emotion she felt at the moment was anger, not fear. Oh, the fear was there, but luckily tamped down for now.

  Kinley mourned the loss of her phone; she’d thrown it into her box of belongings when she’d been packing up her desk. It was now shattered into a thousand pieces under the rails of the Metro, along with all her other things.

  Clutching her purse against her—thank God she’d slung it across her body instead of putting it in the box with her other things—Kinley held the bloody handkerchief to her chin and headed for the escalators.

  She had to get out of there. Whoever had tried to kill her could still be watching, waiting for another opportunity to get rid of her.

  When Kinley got back onto the street, she didn’t hesitate before hailing a cab. Thankfully, one appeared right after she’d exited the station. She climbed in gratefully and gave him her address.

  When she was on her way, Kinley still didn’t relax. Someone could cause her taxi to crash, or run into them on purpose.

  Her mind was spinning with all the ways someone could kill her. A botched robbery, carjacking, home invasion. She wasn’t safe, and she knew it.

  She was more sure now than ever that what she’d seen in Paris was exactly what she’d feared.

  Drake Stryker, the president’s choice to represent the United States in its dealings with France, was The Alleyway Strangler.

  And evidence was pointing to the fact that her boss—ex-boss—either knew it or was in on it.

  She knew she hadn’t sent any emails leaking his schedule, but she had no way of proving that. Just as she had no proof of what she’d seen in that alley in France.

  Well, that wasn’t true. She’d seen the girl. Knew what she was wearing and could describe her shoes. But she knew it would be hard for the police to believe the girl had spent the evening with the US Ambassador to France.

  Kinley’s head hurt, and she suddenly felt even more alone in the world than she had an hour ago.

  Then she thought of her smashed phone again—and suddenly gasped. Her phone! Normally she wouldn’t care that it was destroyed; it wasn’t as if she needed it to talk to friends or anything. But…

  Gage.

  He’d sent a quick text to let her know he’d arrived back in Texas, and said he’d be in touch soon.

  But now her phone was gone. She could get a new one and reply to his text, but as soon as she had the thought, she dismissed it. If Stryker and Brown had someone who could plant evidence in her email and get her fired, surely they could hack her previous phone too. Could find the text from Gage.

  Closing her eyes in pure relief that she hadn’t answered Gage’s message, Kinley knew she couldn’t tie herself to him electronically. The very last thing she wanted was to get him in trouble.

  He had a highly sensitive and secret job. If Stryker set his sights on Gage, he’d probably be able to plant something that would get him fired too. It was bad enough she was unemployed and allegedly had a serial killer who wanted her dead because of what she’d seen…but if she got Gage involved in this mess, she’d never forgive herself.

  Kinley knew what she had to do. She had to leave. Get the hell out of Washington, DC, until she figured out what to do next.

  She didn’t even think about staying silent. That girl in Paris had only been fourteen. She’d probably been scared out of her mind. Or maybe she’d been like Kinley…alone and desperate for some sort of affection.

  But Kinley needed some time to figure out w
hat her next step would be. How could she expose Stryker, and possibly her former boss, without dying in the process?

  She had no answers by the time her cab driver pulled up in front of her apartment. Kinley paid him with the little cash she had in her purse and climbed out. She hurried into the small foyer and raced up the stairs, not willing to be trapped inside the elevator with someone who may or may not want her dead.

  Even after shutting her door behind her, Kinley didn’t feel safe.

  Not even bothering to look around, she raced into her bedroom and pulled a large duffle bag out of her closet.

  Some things didn’t change. Even though she’d been on her own and out of the foster care system for over ten years, she still made sure to always have a bag ready to be filled at a moment’s notice. There had been too many homes where, out of the blue, she was told she’d be leaving. She could only pack what she could carry, so having a sturdy duffle bag was imperative.

  Kinley had learned not to get attached to physical belongings. She’d had to leave way too many behind over the years. With that in mind, she packed what she could and tamped down any sentimental feelings about pillows, towels, and other household items that could easily be replaced.

  When she was done packing, she wrote a note for her landlord and put it, and another month’s rent, in an envelope to mail. She hoped she’d be back before the end of the following month, but she honestly wasn’t sure.

  When that was done, Kinley put her back to the refrigerator and slid down until her butt was resting on the floor.

  She wrapped her arms around her updrawn knees and put her head down. She realized she was shaking. Fear and adrenaline. It wasn’t even noon yet, but she wanted to wait until it was dark outside before she snuck out. Her car was parked in a garage about two blocks away. She didn’t use it much, as it was easier to use public transportation because of the awful traffic in the city, but she’d never been as thankful for her reliable Toyota Corolla as she was right this minute.