by Alice Ward
She shook her head.
At first, I thought she was kidding, but her face was solemn and deadly serious.
I grabbed her wrist. “No?” I was surprised by the desperation in my voice.
She shook herself away, still blushing. I watched her pull her skirt up over her slim hips, zippering the back, thinking that I’d just made the dumbest decision of my life by pushing her away.
“But maybe I’ll see you around,” she said almost casually, hefting her bag onto her shoulder.
Casual. Too damned casual. The tables were turned now. I sat back, stunned, overcome by a deep feeling of loss as she strode to the door and opened it. She looked at the placard on the door, where I’d written, SHE IS ALL MINE. She let out a small laugh and disappeared.
Fucking Cassandra. Even if I did see her around, would I recognize her without the mask?
Something told me I’d never forget that hair, those thick pillowy lips. Those gorgeous legs.
She’d come in here a timid mouse, and now she was leaving here a lion, and I couldn’t help but feel a little proud of her, my creation, my Cassandra, as she set out to wreak havoc upon the wide world.
The problem was, I soon realized I wanted to keep that havoc all to myself.
CHAPTER FIVE
Brooke
I’ve always been one to overprepare. To obsess. To find something I wanted and go for it with gusto. I’d told myself that when I started my first real job out of college, I’d get a good night’s sleep. I’d eat a light dinner the night before, lay out the clothes I was going to wear, practice my firm handshake, and go to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could arrive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the day.
But when the alarm went off the morning after my foray into The Black Room, I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there. I couldn’t even tell you my own name.
In fact, I didn’t even hear the alarm going off for forty-five minutes.
When I did, I pounded my iPhone, feeling like I’d died as I blindly searched my surroundings with my hands. All familiar. Thank god, my own bed. I couldn’t remember much that happened after I’d gotten out of the…
I groaned. The club.
Oh, god.
I tore open one eye and sought out the screen of my phone. It was so bright, it made my eyes hurt. I couldn’t do it.
I’d had precisely one hour and forty-five minutes of sleep, and the worst hangover known to man.
Not that I’d had a lot to drink. In fact, last night had been tame as far as drinking went. What had been off-the-charts wild was… well, just about everything else.
Memories started leaking in, drawing me from the lull of sleep. That smoky club, littered with naked bodies. I rolled over, a sharp pain hitting me right between the eyes, and the muscles in my back and upper arms aching worse than they did after a tough sparring workout. When I swung one leg and then the other over the side of the bed, the tendons of my inner thighs screamed.
Ouch.
Falling out of bed, I landed naked in the pile of clothes I’d dropped there at four in the morning — my red underwear, the pink cashmere sweater, and too-tight pencil skirt. One of my heels must’ve been under there, too, because its hard edge dug into my backside. I pulled the sweater out from under my butt, brought it to my nose, and sniffed.
It smelled like smoke, sure, like sex. But it also smelled, just a little, like him.
SHE IS ALL MINE. That’s what he’d written on the door. Cameron Brice had wanted me all to himself.
And I couldn’t deny that I wanted him too.
I shuddered at the memory of him between my legs, of his commanding tongue. It brought me back to a magazine article I’d once seen about him somewhere, where he’d been dubbed The Man with the Silver Tongue. They’d meant he could say no wrong, but last night I’d learned just what kind of superpowers his tongue possessed. It could do no wrong too. I’d never had a man I hardly knew go down on me, so maybe I should’ve been embarrassed. But I was far from that.
And I was hungry for more.
Maybe that was why I was shuddering. I mean, I hated Cameron Brice. Kiera didn’t refer to him by name. She called him The Douche, and I’d always just agreed. He was cold, unfeeling, and had done absolutely nothing as a politician that I agreed with. He’d single-handedly doomed an entire species of toads essential to our fragile ecosystem… and he’d smiled about it, saying that, “Sacrifices had to be made in the name of progress.” What kind of heartless jerk did that?
The kind of heartless jerk, it appeared, that had made me come in record time last night. The kind that could make me feel things I never had.
I looked down at myself. I had bruises on my wrists and ankles. Fantastic. With the goosebumps popping up everywhere, I looked like a Butterball getting ready to go in the oven.
But hell. I hadn’t pegged myself as the kinky type. But being tied up?
I’d flat-out loved it.
The bluish tinge in my skin wasn’t helped by the fact that my apartment was like ice — the climate control was on the fritz again, one of the few things that bothered me about it. It was a block or so from Temple campus, in a cruddy neighborhood as most of Temple was. It was small and crumbling, but the rent was cheap. Best of all, my roommates had all moved out after college, but I could still afford it. Technically, I should’ve surrendered it after graduation because it was a “campus apartment,” but I’d managed to keep it, partly with a promise that I might attend grad school, and partly with Owen Blakely’s help since it was only a short walk to Brice’s campaign headquarters.
Crawling to my feet, I stumbled across the room in search of Excedrin. I found some in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and downed two with handfuls of water from the drippy faucet. Then I closed the cabinet, and my eyesight sharper now, looked at myself in the mirror.
Holy hell.
My eyes were bloodshot, with mascara caked in every one of the creases under my eyes. My skin was a sallow, jaundiced color, and my hair was dark with grease. I could only hope I’d looked a little better last night.
By the time I got done gawking at the atrocity that was me, I ventured another look at my phone.
Seven forty-five a.m.
That made me gasp… late.
For the first time ever, I was going to be late.
Shit.
I turned around and reached over the tub, cursing myself because I didn’t do late. I’d wanted this too much, and I’d always been the teacher’s pet, the girl who did everything right. In school, I relished being the goody-two-shoes. After a few moments of playing with the faucet, trying to get the water to run, it only came out as a trickle. I banged on the pipe with the heel of my hand, but it didn’t help.
Forget it. I turned to the sink and scrubbed my face and armpits, trying to get the odor of smoke from my pores. I still felt like I smelled, so I doused myself in body mist. I took a whiff of my hair. It smelled like cigarette smoke, so I tied it up into a tight bun, sprayed more mist on my head, and raced into my bedroom.
It’s okay, I told myself. For this assignment, you are definitely not going to look your best.
I hadn’t laid out the clothes I wanted to wear as I’d planned, but I knew where to find them — in a garbage bag under my bed. I’d gotten them from the Goodwill shop on the corner the moment Blakely called me about the job. I pulled them on, trying to ignore that they smelled like mothballs. The cardigan was in a red, home-knitted chevron pattern my grandmother wouldn’t have been caught dead in, and the Easy Spirit Mary Jane shoes, though comfortable, gave me something like clown feet. I needed a strategically placed safety pin at the waist to hold up the shapeless denim prairie skirt that hung down to my calves. It all served very nicely to cover up the bruises my “new employer” had given me the previous night.
I threw my oily bun into a wig cap and fastened a mousy brown wig with obnoxious bangs over my head. Then I shoved a pair of giant horn-rimmed spectacles on my face. When I peered in the full-l
ength mirror behind my door, I hardly recognized myself. I looked like the quiet, unassuming librarian, the type of person nobody noticed.
Perfect.
On instinct, I reached for my Michael Kors purse but stopped when I remembered the camera still weighing it down. As a clerk, I didn’t think I’d get very close to Cameron Brice, but I couldn’t take a chance of him remembering it. Plus, it didn’t really go with the disguise. Quickly, I switched the essentials into my school backpack, grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, and headed out the door.
As I ran, I fished my phone out of my pocket to check my messages. There were twelve texts from Kiera, the first asking what I was up to, the remaining eleven asking why I wasn’t responding with increasing urgency. The last one screamed, We are not best friends anymore! There were at least a billion exclamation points climbing down the screen.
That was Kiera, my dear drama queen. As far as friendships went, ours was pretty new. I met her last summer while interning for her father, setting up his campaign office in Radnor, across town. We quickly hit it off, even though she was all about partying and I was the straitlaced one. We spent most of the summer holed up in that cramped office, making photocopies of campaign flyers and telling each other our life stories. She was UPenn all the way, like her father. Now, she was attending UPenn Law, also like her father, but it was kind of a joke because I knew she’d give up her career aspirations in a second if she found a boyfriend who’d give her a ring.
As I ran, I texted back, Sorry, I’m alive, narrowly avoiding a wayward overturned garbage can on the sidewalk. Tell you about it later. On my way to Ground Zero.
I added a little nervous emoticon to convey the butterflies swimming in my stomach.
Biting my lip, I wondered if I’d see him, then decided I probably wouldn’t. After all, I was just a clerk, so I’d probably have no interaction with him whatsoever. From what I understood, candidates rarely stopped into their campaign headquarters. I’d only seen Owen at his headquarters a handful of times.
Certain I had nothing to worry about, I picked up the pace, glad for the comfort of those Easy Spirits.
After a short dash down Susquehanna, I stopped at an unassuming brick row home. Kiera told me that the Republican Party decided to base their operations in this rundown part of Philly in an effort to appeal more to the “common man,” but it clearly hadn’t helped. Despite his Ivy League education and inherent wealth, Kiera’s dad was down-to-earth — he wore Dockers everywhere, never flaunted his money, and staunchly campaigned for expanding welfare to those less fortunate. If Brice wanted to appeal to the people in that neighborhood, he could’ve tried not wearing a three-piece suit everywhere he went.
There used to be a sign outside that announced the home as the Republican campaign’s headquarters, but it was gone now. It had been defaced with a giant penis a week ago. I knew as much because I’d cased the place out even before I got the assignment. They’d also removed all the FUCK BRICE graffiti from the brick facade. Now, it appeared they were going incognito, which was probably a smart move.
It occurred to me I was probably taking my life in my own hands just working there, so after checking to make sure no one had followed me, I quickly ran up the crumbling brick steps and threw open the door.
Inside, I was greeted by a small staircase, and off to the left, there was a makeshift office. It was just as rundown inside as it was outside, cramped, and smelling of someone’s burnt toast breakfast. There were a bunch of people huddled over their desks, looking extremely serious, and well, Republican. All heads swung to look at me, frowning like they knew I was infiltrating their domain. I found it quite ironic how the morning sun slashed through the blinds in the front windows, painting prison bars on their faces.
“Uh, hi—” I stopped abruptly and jumped forward as the door actually swung back and hit me in the ass because I hadn’t stepped far enough inside.
I’m a total moron.
“Hi,” I started again, speaking to no one in particular, moving to swipe a mousy brown lock of hair off my face, but stopping when I remembered it was a hastily donned wig and I might push it off my head at any moment. I tried to think of the alias I’d given during the interview, but only Cassandra came to mind. Shit.
An older man with a graying mustache stared at me. “Are you Violet?”
Violet. Yes. Yes! That was the name I’d given them during the screening. I tilted my head forward in a shy gesture and spoke haltingly, like I could barely get the words past my introvertedness. I knew that changing my bearing would go a long way in disguising myself, more so than even the wig and hideous clothes. “Yes. Violet Wilkes. I, uh, start work here today.”
He came around his desk and shook my hand, smiling. “Welcome. I’m Bob Simmons, Cameron Brice’s campaign and finance manager. We spoke on the phone.”
“Oh, yes. Hi!” I said again stupidly, just happy to see a smiling face.
He motioned me into the room and showed me to a tiny and uncomfortable-looking metal desk in the corner. “This’ll be your new home until we get our boy elected this November. You can set your things here. Can I get you some coffee?”
I placed my backpack and bottle of water down on the seat and shook my head, relaxing.
“We’re super glad to have the extra hand,” he said, though everyone there looked more curious about me than glad. One girl, who was probably my age, eyed my Easy Spirits like they were piranha attached to my feet… as if her petal-pink blouse with the bow in the front was any better. “Lots of work to be done to get our man a seat in Harrisburg.”
I smiled, keeping my thoughts firmly clamped behind my teeth. Hell, no. Cameron Brice should not be allowed anywhere near Pennsylvania’s state capital. But Simmons seemed nice, even if he had been drinking the Brice Kool-Aid.
He introduced me to the remaining team members, whose names I quickly forgot. They all seemed fine, nice even, despite the first impression and their obviously faulty political beliefs.
Then he gave me a quick tour of the place, which was cramped and had obviously once been someone’s house before it was converted to headquarters. There was the main room in the front with five desks, which must have once been a living room. It was covered with photos of the elder Brice, who was standing in front of the White House with a bunch of suited people I couldn’t name on sight. Before him, the then-president was giving a speech behind a podium with the presidential seal. Other than that, the headquarters contained a meeting room with a giant American flag on the wall, a kitchen with two vending machines and an avocado-colored fridge from the seventies, and in the back, two offices. One for Cameron, and one for his father. As I predicted, and much to my relief, Cameron was nowhere to be found. The doors to both offices were closed, and the frosted window in each door revealed only darkness beyond.
The rest of the morning was spent stapling in absolute silence except for the soft stylings coming from some easy-listening station on the radio on top of the filing cabinet. I couldn’t exaggerate the monotony. I must have stapled together five-thousand packets while listening to every Barry Manilow song known to man. Every single cover page said, The Man For The Job: Elect Cameron Brice for Senate, and had Cameron’s smiling face on the front. I tried to concentrate on getting the staple perfectly in the corner, because each time my eyes wandered down to Cameron’s intense gaze, his chiseled jaw, his smiling mouth, I thought about the way his tongue had felt on my core, and I shivered visibly.
He’d clearly been the man for that job.
Dammit.
Meanwhile, people milled about, constantly in my business. They all had to pass by my desk to get to the kitchen and were constantly looking over my shoulder while they fetched cups of coffee. I didn’t see how in such close quarters I’d be able to complete my real job, which was digging for dirt.
But at lunchtime, to my astonishment, the place cleared out. First, a young girl in the bow blouse — I thought her name was Alicia — pulled her blazer on, grabbed her
phone, and went out the front door. Then, the two other men, who could’ve been twins —one was Harvey, maybe— stopped typing at their computers, nodded at each other, and followed. That left Bob, who gave me a smile and said, “Half hour for lunch.” Then he disappeared too.
I exhaled deeply and finally dug my fingers under my wig to scratch my scalp, which had been screaming for attention since approximately nine in the morning. I checked my phone, which had only one message from my mother. You up for a protest on the 25th? I’ll get the picket signs!
I typed half-heartedly. Always.
My mother was an environmental attorney, my father, an immigration attorney, and they were always picketing for some good cause or another. With our busy schedules, despite the fact that they only lived outside the city in Bensalem, protests were usually the only time we had a chance to bond.
Then I stood up and used the bathroom, checking to make sure my disguise was still in order before heading to the lunchroom where I got coffee and Cheetos out of a vending machine. Not the best lunch, but I had things to do.
I went back to the main office and wandered about, trying to determine a plan of attack. I went to a filing cabinet with the letter “A” on the front. Pulling a squeaking drawer open, I paged through it, finding nothing but old campaign posters and newspaper clippings.
Well, Cameron Brice was no idiot, obviously. He wouldn’t leave anything damning in an unlocked file cabinet, where anyone could find it.
I paced the office, wandering down the hallway, contemplating. Where would I be if I were something Cameron Brice wanted to hide? When I came upon his office door, I knew the answer was obvious. I had to get inside.
A quick glance toward the front of the building, and I placed my hand on the door. I tried to twist the knob, but it didn’t budge.
Locked, of course.
But that was it. My fingers twitched, my spine straightened. That was the Holy Grail.
Then I heard noises in the front reception area.
Sighing, I walked back to the front of the office to see Bob Simmons standing at his desk, looking at me. Already back. Fuck. “How goes it?”
