CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sara Langdon normally liked to work late at the office, often going several hours beyond any of her colleagues. It meant that she had the place to herself after everyone else had gone home, and she could get things done without any distractions.
Working late was also a big part of her role as a junior partner in the business. She was as responsible for its successes and failures as anyone now; but she didn’t have the cushion of years of service that the senior partners enjoyed. She couldn’t just clock off the way a normal employee might. She had to be here late, if she was going to have any hope of getting her work done.
She couldn't really afford to have anyone else in here with her, either. The whole point of this was that she could get her work done in peace.
But tonight, Sara had her own problems to deal with. She had a presentation due tomorrow, and if it didn’t go well, then the whole Florida deal was likely to go badly. She had gotten into the office early enough, and she had planned to only work until seven. It was already seven fifteen, and she was still barely a quarter of the way through everything she needed to get done. At this rate, it was going to be past midnight before she was finished with it all.
She was far too distracted. Maybe some of the distraction was down to the news that Adam Riker had escaped from prison. Sara had known Adam, back when they'd both been teenagers, and Sara had been kind of wild. She'd even gone out with him, for a while, before they both decided to break things off.
He had been a bad boy, a little older than her, and he'd had a whole host of issues that she never really understood. Even then, she had known that he was just the sort of guy that she needed to stay away from, but he had been so charming, and he had pursued her so relentlessly that she had given in, after a while.
It had only lasted a couple of months, though. She'd tried to keep up with him, tried to go along with all his crazy ideas. She’d thought that he would be fun, but in the end, he'd just been too much for her.
She'd seen the darkness in him. Some days, Sara found herself wondering if, had she told someone about him earlier, they might have been able to stop him before he hurt anyone. She wondered if she had some kind of responsibility for what he’d done.
But what could she have said? She couldn't have predicted what he would do. The young man she had known back then had his problems but was nothing like the killer that he had become.
He was out now, though, and that was the thought that had consumed her ever since she heard the news. She glanced at her watch. It was almost half past seven. She was tired and she still had plenty of work left to do. She needed to finish up on these accounts, and then she needed to get home and get a good night's sleep.
She was still trying to work when she heard the sound of a footstep, somewhere behind her. Sara turned, ready to deal with whatever this was.
"I didn't realize that there was anyone still in the office. Did you need-"
Adam was standing right in front of her, wearing dark clothes, just standing waiting, as if her thoughts had conjured him.
Sara froze in place. She knew that she should try to get to something she could use as a weapon, or try to run, but in that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to even begin to move.
She looked at the man in front of her. He was staring straight at her with those cold, dead eyes that she’d seen before, the last time she’d been with him. It was those eyes, more than all the rest of it that had made her break up with him, running as far as she could.
She had heard what he'd done, but she couldn't quite believe that it was Adam there in front of her. He looked different now. He looked like a stranger.
"Adam?"
He was right in front of her, right in front of where she was standing in front of her desk. A few more steps and he would be level with her.
"This is crazy," she said. "You can’t be here like this. When you broke out, I thought you’d run. What are you doing here?"
She tried to reason with him. She wasn't sure what she was hoping for. A simple apology, maybe, or a promise that he wouldn't hurt her.
Instead, he just kept walking towards her, until he was just a few feet away from where she was standing.
"Adam, you need to talk to me. What are you doing here?"
"Do you need to ask, after everything you did to me?" Adam replied. He had a bag in his left hand. From it, he took a pair of handcuffs and tossed them onto her desk. "Put these on. Don't try calling for help. There's no one else in the building to hear you."
"You don't have to do this," Sara said. He couldn’t do this. But she was beginning to think that she was wrong. Adam was serious. She could tell from how calm he was being. There was a coldness to the way he spoke that said that there was no reasoning with him.
She didn't want to put the handcuffs on. She knew what would happen if she did. This whole situation made her so afraid that it was making her sick. She only had to look into Adam's eyes to know that he was going to kill her.
She looked over at the closed door. He had said that he was the only one here. There was no one else there to help her. That meant that Sara had to deal with this herself. She needed to remember that she wasn’t helpless. She needed to get out of here.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, edging towards the door. If she could get close enough, she might be able to run.
"You know! You know what you did!"
He stepped forward, striking her hard and sending her spinning to the floor.