Then the elevator stopped and so did he.
As he stepped back, I had to lean on the cart to keep from falling over. Swooning, I guess they would call it in a romance novel. His eyes searched mine, and a chill went through my bones. From up close, I could see his eyes, and they were flat, a green-gray swirl that stopped on the surface. It was like looking into the eyes of a statue: lifeless. Disappointment trickled down at the back of my mind. For me, it had been the best kiss I’d ever had. For him, though, it seemed like nothing at all had happened.
The elevator doors opened, and still I stood there like a dummy. The doors had started to close when his hand shot out to hold them back.
“This is your stop?” he asked.
“I—oh—yes, I—” I stammered. I moved slowly, like I was underwater. One of the library cart wheels got stuck in the elevator gap and I shoved it hard to get it going. It was only when I finally got the cart out of the elevator that I realized what the overall goal of this whole thing had been. I turned around to face him.
“Uh, I—that is, would you like to go out on a date?”
“Sorry,” he said, smiling just as politely as before, the skin around his eyes smooth and soft. “I don’t date.”
With that he let go, and the steel elevator doors closed slowly over his gorgeous face, his flat empty ocean eyes.
Jules came running over from the staircase. My heart was pounding so fast that I thought I was going to have a panic attack.
I pulled out my backup pills from my pocket and swallowed them dry. Panic attacks were no fun, and they definitely weren’t fun at work - I was sure Sheryl was already looking for where her assistants had run off to. If I could just breathe normally until the anti-anxiety meds kicked in, I’d be fine.
“Are you okay, Kat?” she asked.
I gulped and pressed my lips together.
“Fine. I’m fine. Totally one hundred percent fine. Just need to calm down a little.”
“And? Did you do it?”
I shook my head, blushing hard as I pushed the library cart into the stacks.
Why did I lie? I don’t know, not really. I didn’t want to provoke myself into another anxiety attack, that was one thing. Reliving the crazy kiss that had just happened… well, just thinking about it sent me into a dizzy spin. But that wasn’t everything.
There was something else that I couldn’t talk about, not with Jules. I was sure she’d mock me mercilessly, but I couldn’t explain what had come over me and I definitely didn’t want to explain to her how he’d kissed me back and sent my heart racing, and my mind down a road of dark, sensual daydreams. And then left me without so much as a phone number.
Anyway, there was no way I would ever date that guy. Apart from the fact that he was way out of my league, he apparently didn’t date. And the way he looked at me was... weird.
“No,” I said, picking a book up to reshelve it and casting one last glance over at the closed elevator.
“Kat, how could you do this to me? That guy was like, Fabio. You passed up the chance of a lifetime.”
I shrugged my shoulders, trying not to give myself away. Lucky for me, I blush at the drop of a hat, so Jules could believe that I was all hot and bothered by nothing more than standing at Fabio’s side in an elevator. I knew differently. That kiss was something I wanted to keep a secret. For some reason, I thought that the man with the cold gray-green eyes would feel the same way.
“Guess I am boring after all.”
CHAPTER TWO
Gav
I reached the fourth floor and passed by the man I was going to kill later. His cologne was horribly overpowering; I could smell it as I crossed behind him, one aisle of books away. The shadow came with me, urging me on. I pushed it back. Patience. Yes. We would have to be patient. But as I walked down the aisle, I thought that maybe I could kill a week early. He was going through exactly the same motions as he had the week before, and the week before that.
Maybe an early kill. If the parking lot was clear. If I had the opportunity. I smiled, glad that I had thought to bring the syringe with me. I tried to make every tracking as much like the real thing as possible. Preparation. Yes. That’s what separated the good killer from the great.
I picked out a book at random and opened it up, holding it in front of me without seeing the words. The man shuffled his feet and stood, indecisive, in front of the shelves.
Pick one, I thought. You won’t get to read it, anyway.
The smell of the book in my hands was an old smell, the smell of paper rotting into dust. Libraries were resting homes for all of the dying books. Dead books, dead authors. Incredible, that characters could live so much longer than the people who wrote them. A character in a book might live forever, as long as there was someone there to read him and remember him.
We, though, are mortal, and I do not expect anyone to remember me.