In the Dead of Night

Chapter 1

I frantically scanned my surroundings in the pitch black, a scream choking in the back of my throat as he pushed down on me. If I could find just one way out I can bring Chrissy justice.

"So you figured it out you stupid bitch? I had hope you would be just as dumb as you looked." I tried gasping for air as he tightened his hold around my neck. The cold cement against my back is starting to feel as if it's fading away. I see the glint of a knife in the low moonlight spilling in through the cracked windows. I start scratching at the pavement as tears spill out of my eyes realizing I'm in my final moments.

"Please..." I manage to choke out in a raspy voice just before the gleaming knife comes down.

***

I am startled awake by a heavy slam on my desk. I lift my head up from the crook of my arm and blink wearily at James standing over me. I start to rub the sleep from my eyes. It has been a few long nights of work in a row trying to catch a cheating husband for a well-to-do housewife.

"I'm not paying you to sleep. I need you to file these." James pointed to a stack of papers and photographs in a manilla folder on my small desk. It creaked under the weight of him leaning on it.

"You hardly pay me at all." I mumbled thinking of the childhood twin bed I'm still sleeping in at my parents' house. Student loans were more expensive than anticipated, and this job isn't enough for me to live on my own at the age of 25. I am okay with my situation though, I know one day I'm going to miss the texts from my mom asking what I want for dinner each night.

"You're lucky I'm paying you at all," James joked, "many people are just dying to get hired by me." James has always had a good sense of humor about the current situation of "Stoked to be Investigating" private investigator firm. I think the lack of serious cases might have to do with the bad play on words with James's last name. James has been longing for a case that is more exciting than catching cheating husbands of housewives that never seem to divorce despite the concrete evidence of cheating we always find.

"Can we take off early today? Please???" I put emphasis on the "please" given that I spent the past two nights sitting in James's run down Toyota outside a sleazy motel waiting to take pictures of some 52 year old with a beer gut. No surprise he had been soliciting prostitutes while his wife nearly 15 years younger is pregnant at home. I was exhausted and thoroughly uncomfortable with the report we had to give to a pregnant mother.

James just shakes his head at me, but his face lights up. "We have a new client coming in for a meeting today. I heard that he looked expensive." James walks back to his desk in the center of the cramped room and starts organizing his pens. "Can you try to make sure this place looks somewhat clean? We can't afford to lose any clients." He sounds more eager than normal. I can't wrap my mind around him being excited for another cheating scandal, but I can see him being excited in earning enough money to finally have a better office space. The stained carpet from the 70s has probably seen more action than James's whole business.

I begin shuffling around the room trying to find a vacuum cleaner to at least get rid of some of the dirt tracked in from James this morning. I fear for what his apartment looks like knowing the state of this office. James is hard at work shoving old coffee cups into an incredibly small trash can behind his desk meanwhile he shoves every loose paper he can find into random drawers that won't close completely. I sigh as I pull a vacuum out of a small closet that is almost empty of any cleaning supplies except the vacuum that might be from 1992. It doesn't take me long to pass the vacuum through the whole room given its size is comparable to what would be considered a nice dorm room. I look over at the lack of supplies or personal items on my desk to show I have worked here for the past seven months. I shove the work I have to file later into the school desk James trash picked for me when he hired me. I open up my own personal laptop to start the organizing of the most recent case on a spreadsheet far beyond James's capability of organizing.