66...

"Yeah Louis, let's go ahead and get started," she said with a sigh.
Alexis turned back towards the computer and brought up the program the store used for its daily business. She could feel Louis draw closer to her. She tried to push the grimace away from her face before it manifested itself. She didn't like the way this guy just made her skin crawl.
"Okay," she said, managing to wrangle a bushel of patience from the cosmos. "This is the program we use, it's called Marker. You can use it to check inventory, order status, pretty much anything you need. It's also what we use to ring up sales and count out the drawer."
She looked over at him, checking for the resounding enthusiasm she was sure she was instilling in him with this knowledge. She was looking directly into his eyes. They once again appeared darker than they were due to the fall of shadows. And he had that grin of a child molester, lost in playground dreams. She could see herself quite clearly landing a practiced blow onto that part of his neck where the Adam's apple sat. The thought of him crumpling to the floor and choking on blood made her grin a little bit despite herself.
He grinned a little wider, and somehow a little more lasciviously, in response.
"Got it so far?" she asked. He nodded. "Great."
Alexis turned back to the sun bleached monitor and popped open a screen.
"Okay..."
Louis slyly brought himself closer to her, if clumsy and shambling steps and a theatrically feigned interest in the computer screen were sly. His arm was touching her torso and waist and it somehow made her think of warm seaweed.
Alexis slowly and deliberately turned her head and looked down into his face with scorn that had wilted ardor better than flames did wax. She fully took in that stringy, black and seemingly waxen hair. She looked at the pale skin that seemed to shimmer with the pulsing of the florescent lighting. She looked at the small patch of crust that clung to the corner of his chapped lips.
"Louis, would you mind backing off a little bit."
His smile collapsed momentarily, but he took a step away and brought it back solid as steel.
"Travel my way," he said a bit under his breath.
Alexis froze. She attempted to keep the slightly detached smile on her face, she fought to keep her body still and not rigid. Inside, her wiring had just been charged like a machine set to standby.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she asked in what she thought was a calm, steady and somewhat confused voice, but she had honestly lost all perspective on things.
"Nothing," he said with a sadistic little grin.
Alexis turned back towards the computer system. She could see her fingers punching keys, but they seemed to belong to someone else. There was a fierce and blinding white adrenaline charge coursing through her and she was using everything she had to keep the genie in the bottle, to not show her cards.
It couldn't have been a coincidence. 'Travel my way' was what Vanessa said when she was on the trail of someone; when she was so, so close to taking them out.

65...

She scanned a wide variety of web pages, most of them fakes, most them pages that people would only stumble upon accidentally. She looked at pages that showed lines of clothing that had never been designed by designers that had never been heard of. She looked at pages that chronicled bands that were the fantasies of boys turned to men who had never dared to dream it; including bland songs in MP3 form designed to be forgotten. She looked at a web diary of girl named Susan, knowing full well that Susan was actually three men and a twenty-one year old woman named Vana who had a mad desire for killing through strangulation. She looked at the biography for a figurehead spiritual leader which advertised autographed copies of his book, knowing that the picture of said leader was that of a man that had been engulfed in the flaming wreck of his tampered with car three years ago, and knowing that anyone who happened to try ordering the book would get an apologetic email stating that it was currently out of stock.
She quickly glanced over the HTML code before her, looking for tell-tale messages that would be addressed to her. She saw nothing that had not been there before. She went back to a page advertising forgettable sweaters, looking at the picture of a purple, cashmere, deep scoop, V-neck sweater. She read the description below.

Luxurious 4 season Mediterranean cashmere in a fine 12 gauge knit. Rib trim at neck and cuffs. Three quarter sleeves. Rolled edge at hem. Hits at hip. Import. Dry Clean. Item #3055708-7092653.

She had seen it 2 weeks ago, the coded message that had told her to lay and wait, told her where and what she should most likely do to keep inconspicuous. The advice was unnecessary, but sort of sweet when you thought about it in a certain way. It may be too hot out there for a phone call just yet, but she had hoped that someone would at least toss out a line, anything to keep her from letting her imagination get the worst of her. She felt like a lone sailor, lost at sea.
Alexis was doing her best to not feed that quick and dangerous little paranoia monster busy shaking its cage. If she got twitchy, jumped the gun on something, she could not only wind up dead but could royally fuck things up for other people. But, when you were involved in a business that could get you killed at anytime, the threat of death as a deterrent was a little silly.
But there was the threat of an awful, bloody, prolonged and painful death at the hands of someone who seriously enjoyed inflicting a death of this sort.
She quickly glanced through the sites again, looking for any sign of Vanessa Park. She found what appeared to be the last mention of her on website touting the productions of a theater company in Ukiah, California. A rousing edition of My Fair Lady was set to never arrive in November. From what she could tell, Vanessa was last supposed to be in New York. But Vanessa liked to flaunt procedure and she could be anywhere.
“Sheryl?”
Alexis spun away from the computer, senses jumping and at the ready, alt shifting away from the website automatically. Louis stood there behind the register counter looking up at her with a crooked grin.
“Are you ready for me?” he asked.

64...

The guy had these eyes that looked black, nothing but black. It was some sort of trick of the light though, he blinked one or two times and Alexis saw the deep brown that must have been there the whole time. He had a nose that came to this strange sort of point, and this snide little smile that did its best to put her off center, but she hung on.
"Hey Louis," she said, adjusting her smile to warmer and putting out her hand.
He didn't say anything. He looked at her hand for a few seconds before shaking it. He looked back at her face with that odd detachment.
"As Jeffrey said, my name's Sheryl. I guess I'll be training you." She could feel her posture aching with forced straightness.
"That's right," Jeff threw out with a mock booming voice. "You and Sheryl are going to get on great! And this is Robin, our whiz with non-fiction and true crime."
The two of them, Robin and Louis, gave a brief nod of affirmation at exactly the same time. Neither said a word.
"I'm going to continue to show our new guy around the store a little bit, the back room, what not. Why don't we start his register training in about twenty?"
Alexis smiled, but the mischievous eyes above that mouth were throwing bad ideas, violent ones. Jeff smiled back that big, empty salesman smile, but she noticed a flicker in those dead eyes she had missed before. He wasn't just oblivious, he was enjoying fucking with her. Alexis genuinely smiled with the realization.
"That will be fine Jeffrey."
"Good," he said. His voice came down a tad and his eyes rested on hers for a few moments longer than they normally would, as if he had found temporarily safe footing on a rough climb. "Well, let me go find Matthew and we'll be up front in 20.”
With his boom back in his voice, Jeff led Louis away. Alexis watched them go and blocked out Jeff's lecture regarding the special interest rack. She noticed Louis' head turn to the left, as if he were about to look over his shoulder and back at she and Robin. He stopped halfway, as if he knew that Alexis was still watching him, and surreptitiously scratched his chin on that shoulder.
"Yeah, short creepy looking guys," Robin muttered in a monotone. "That never gets old."
Alexis smiled, but it was empty. She suddenly felt something shifting within her, outside of her. She suddenly felt dwarfed and contained by the rows upon rows within the store. She felt a pressing desire to run to ground, to hide. She tried to tell herself that she was just jumpy because she hadn't heard from anyone yet, but her right pinky began to twitch, a sign that had always served her well before.
Could she just up and leave this place? Wouldn't that raise unnecessary concern if she were to just walk out of this place and never come back? Hell, people left their crappy jobs all the time. It wasn't like she was working some high powered corporation. It wasn't like she had a lot of people around her worrying, a lot of friends.
Still, the fewer questions always the better. If she were going to go, she should probably at least wait until after the store closed. She was still not completely sold on the paranoia she felt, but she could not mistake that feeling of something closing in on her. Yes, she could possibly leave tonight; slip out quietly with no harm done.