The Second Man

Sunday the sky turns the color of a bruise at four in the afternoon, and by seven the storm is beating on your windows like it wants in.

You haven't seen Verena since the stairwell.

You knocked on 2206 this morning with the photograph in your hand and your speech ready. Nobody answered. You knocked again at noon. At three you slid a note under her door that said We need to talk and then, because you're you, underlined need twice.

You texted the unknown number.

I found the photo in the garage. Before 11/14. What is this?

Nothing.

Verena.

Nothing.

I'm calling the police.

Nothing. And you didn't call the police, because what would you say? A woman I met four days ago keeps saving my life and I don't know her last name? Instead you called Fi, who said come stay with me, and you said I'm fine, and Fi said you are the least fine person I know and hung up to drive over, and then called back twenty minutes later to say Lake Shore Drive was closed at Fullerton for flooding and she'd come in the morning and lock everything.

You've locked everything.

You sit on your couch with a kitchen knife on the cushion beside you that you will absolutely never use, the thumb drive on a string around your neck like a teenager's house key, and the photograph face down on the coffee table.

Before 11/14.

You've done the math twelve times. Twenty-seven days.

Lightning floods the room white. The thunder comes almost on top of it, a crack so loud the windows hum.

And every light in the building goes out.

The refrigerator hum stops. The heater clicks off. The dark is total for a long second, then your eyes adjust and there's only the grey storm light from the window and the rain sheeting down the glass.

Somewhere far below, a car alarm.

You pick up your phone. The flashlight beam jitters over the walls.

Power's out. Are you here?

Nothing.

The elevators will be dead. You hear the building settle, the tick of cooling pipes. You hear rain.

Then you hear a key in your lock.

Not a knock. A key. Slow and careful, the way you'd turn a key if you didn't want to wake anyone. The deadbolt slides back with a soft, oiled click.

You stop breathing.

The door opens. A shape fills the doorway, broad and dark against the black hallway. A beam of light swings across your floor. A flashlight. A man's voice, bored and friendly:

"Building maintenance, ma'am. Checking for leaks."

He steps in and closes the door behind him. Locks it again.

In the next flash of lightning you see him clearly. Late thirties, forties, thick through the shoulders, grey coveralls with the building management company's logo on the chest, a name patch you can't read. A toolbox in one hand.

He doesn't look at the windows. He doesn't look at the ceiling. He looks at you.

"You're the auditor," he says. Still friendly. "Sit tight. This won't take a minute."

He sets the toolbox down. When he straightens, there's something in his hand that isn't a tool.

You grab the kitchen knife. Your hand is shaking so hard the blade rattles against the coffee table. "Get out. Get out of my house."

"Easy."

He takes a step.

Behind him, the door you heard him lock swings open without a sound.

You don't see her come in. One second there's the man and the dark doorway; the next there's a second shape behind him, slim and black, and the flashlight jerks sideways and hits the ceiling. Lightning. You see her face in the white flash, perfectly calm. You see his arm go up. Darkness.

It's fast. It's so much faster than movies. A grunt, a crash, the coffee table going over. The flashlight rolling across the floor throwing its beam in circles, so you see it in pieces: her hand at his wrist; his shoulder hitting the wall; something clattering away under your couch; the two of them going down hard on your kitchen tile.

A sound you will hear for the rest of your life. Short. Final.

Then quiet. Only the rain.

The flashlight stops rolling. Its beam lies across the kitchen floor, and in it you see a man's hand, open, not moving.

Someone stands up.

"Ava." Verena's voice. Level. A little out of breath. "Are you hurt?"

You can't answer. You're standing in the middle of your living room with a kitchen knife in your hand, and you're not sure how you got on your feet.

She picks up the flashlight and turns it so it points at the ceiling, filling the room with dim grey light. She's wearing black, head to toe. There's a red scratch on her cheek. Her hair is wet from the rain; she must have come in from outside. She looks down at the man on the floor for a long moment with no expression at all, the way you'd look at a column that finally balanced.

Then she looks at you, and her face changes. It breaks open. Just for a second.

"Put the knife down," she says gently. "You're going to cut yourself."

You look at the knife. You put it on the counter. Your fingers won't uncurl properly.

"Is he..."

"Yes."

"You killed him."

"Yes."

"In my kitchen."

"He was going to kill you in your kitchen. I preferred this version." She crouches beside him, checks something at his collar with two gloved fingers, then stands. "His name is Cadwell. He's freelance. He's not supposed to be in Chicago at all."

"How do you know his name?"

She doesn't answer. She looks at the overturned coffee table, the photograph that slid off it and landed face up on the rug. Your face. Your coffee. Your life, through a long lens.

"You found that in the garage," she says.

"What is this?" Your voice cracks in half. "Who are you? You moved in with one box. You knew my name. You were on the platform, you were in my kitchen, you were in the garage, you're here. You said on the phone I was a job. Tell me the truth. Tell me right now or I swear to God, Verena, I'll scream until the whole building..."

"Okay."

She says it so quietly you stop.

The storm rolls over the building. Lightning, far off now, lights her face from the side: the sharp jaw, the scar through her eyebrow, the grey eyes that have been watching you for four days.

She doesn't come any closer. She stays exactly where she is, beside the man on your floor, and she lets you see her.

"The man in the van yesterday pushed you on the platform on Wednesday," she says. "He was the first one. This is the second."

"The first one what?"

"Someone paid three million dollars for you to die before your thirtieth birthday, Ava."

The rain. The dark. Your own heartbeat.

"I know because they paid it to me," she says. "I'm the one they hired to kill you. I took the contract so nobody else would."