As he ate last night’s reheated, leftover pasta for lunch, Michael struggled to stay awake, watching nothing happen in the foyer. The security guard paced in perfect time as Laura pointedly took no notice of anything going on around her.
Scraping up the last piece of penne, Michael dropped the plastic container on the table in disgust. As if she’d been startled by the sound, Laura jumped up, raising her iPad with an intensity matched only by that of the security guard, who stopped and stared, too. Michael watched a girl with long, dark hair walk into the building, seemingly unconscious of the attention she’d attracted. Laura kept taking pictures as the girl approached her, then sat down again as the girl passed her on the way to the lift. The girl pressed the button for the top floor, shifting from foot to foot impatiently as Laura typed furiously on her touchscreen.
Who in hell is she? Michael wondered, zooming in on the girl’s back. She started to play with her hair, revealing a little of the writing on her shirt. Michael waited, egging her on under his breath, as he hoped she’d show him something that’d help him identify her.
In one swipe, the girl pulled her hair over her left shoulder and Michael could read the back of her shirt.
Not an angel, the shirt proclaimed, with the angel in much larger print than the rest, crowned with a halo. She tossed her hair back across the shirt, so all he could see was the haloed angel again.
Michael burst out laughing. The girl had to be Laura’s angel, even though her shirt said she wasn’t. He skipped the video back a little, to see if he could get a better look at the girl’s face. As he did so, he noticed that the security guard’s fixed stare didn’t follow the girl as she passed him. Instead, his arms spread wide as if he wanted to hug the man who entered the building behind her.
A gay security guard. Hell, I didn’t see that. Is that his boyfriend?
The man stopped a good metre away from the security guard, with a nod and a tight smile.
Maybe not, then, Michael decided.
The security guard’s hero was a blonde man dressed in navy cotton work clothes and carrying a heavy-looking toolbag. The stereotype of a blue-collar worker, the air-conditioning repair guy gave the security guard a worried smile as he spoke.
Nodding at the conversation, the blonde bloke gestured toward the lift with his hand as his face clearly said, “No worries, mate.”
The girl was gone when the two men entered a lift and Michael ticked the angel off his list as the doors closed on the men in blue.
Fuck, he wasn’t staring at her at all, Michael realised. Does that mean the repair guy should be on my list, or is that girl really Laura’s angel? Fuck!
He looked up at the foyer footage, feeling panic as he realised Laura’s seat was empty. Before he could reach for the mouse to scan back, the camera feed went black.
What the hell just happened?
YOU ARE READING
Going Down (Nightmares Prequel)
Mystery / Thriller“Find Al Himar. That’s one terrorist who’s going down!” After a dead terror suspect’s body is found, anti-terrorist operatives search her house. The only clue she left was a handwritten diary. Cryptic references to Al Himar and six people are all th...
