71...

All sound went out of the world. Alexis watched wide eyed as Louis tried to say something, that confused look never leaving his face until his eyes slowly closed as if he were going to sleep. Louis' body slumped over and gravity took the cue and pulled it to the floor of the backseat. Alexis instinctively tightened the grip she had on her necklace, she smelled the air like an animal sniffing for a predator.
She felt the point of what she assumed to be a very sharp knife lightly touching her back. All the sound rushed back like a vaccuum beraking hold.
"Hey Sheryl. Oh sorry, I mean Alexis."
Alexis slowly turned her head and glared. Matthew stood behind her with a matter of fact look on his face. He looked as though he may be washing dishes, cleaning the gutters.
"Matthew..."
"Get in the car, driver's side, front."
Alexis paused, for only a moment, trying quickly and vainly to come up with something. That moment was reason enough for Matthew push the tip of the knife easily through the fabric of her shirt, and slightly into the flesh of her back.
"Fucking do it."
She began moving and he kept right up behind her. As they passed the backseat, Matthew moved with the grace of a dancer, sweeping the keys out of Louis' still hand.
Acting on a well-trained instinct, Alexis swung back with her elbow, already forecasting the feeling of meeting with his nose as he brought his head back up. Unfortunately, he realized what was happening and easily dodged his head back. So, so quickly, he grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulled her head back and put that knife blade right up against her throat.
"I don't want to have to do you right here, but don't think I won't."
Gone was that awkward and shifty-eyed Matthew that she had shelved books with, here was a cool, cool killer with more discipline than she probably had.
"You're gonna do me, just do it and get it over with Matthew."
"Uh-uh. We're gonna have a little talk. Get in the car." He pushed her away, around the trunk.
And just as the thought entered her mind, he said, "If you think you're gonna run, I will make sure you are still alive and breathing when I start removing parts of your body that should never see the light of outside."
He watched her closely as she moved around the far side of the car, hugging the opposite side, slightly warm steel pushing against her clothing. She watched as he reached into the backseat and pulled Louis' body out and threw it to the ground like some sort of morbid prop, watched as he made another of those graceful moves and quickly plucked the young man's wallet out his pocket.
“Get in,” he said with a voice that could chill the air.
The two of them opened the car doors simultaneously. The two of them sat down in the car simultaneously. The two of them closed the doors to the rest of the world simultaneously.

70...

"What do you think?" Louis asked with a grin.
"Nice," she replied evenly. "Large."
"Yeah. I saved up for a couple of years for this," he was grinning like a child showing off a clay imprint of their hand, complete with incompetently scrawled first name. "A bunch of shitty jobs like fast food and delivering papers."
"Uh-huh."
"I got it used from a guy out by Saddleback. He kept it up real nice, I hardly had to do anything to it. He had just split up with his wife and was selling some stuff off. Sort of desperate, you know? I mean not like it was a total bargain or anything, but I got a pretty decent deal for it."
"Uh-huh."
The words were floating over her, surging through the warm Southern California night. Alexis was focused and watching him warily for any sudden movements. She had her fingers on the charm hanging from her necklace; a necklace that had yet to break. She moved the charm back and forth almost coquettishly.
"And black! It's awesome huh?" Louis asked wildly. He looked at her closely, breaking his revelry. "Do you like the black?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah I figured you would," he pulled his keys from his pocket. The keys dangled from what looked to be a metal lizard.
"Hey Louis?" she asked in a low and even voice.
"You should check out what I did with the speakers in the backseat," he opened the back door of the Cadillac. The dome light lit the inside up with a pale yellow of softly forgotten dreams, just out of reach.
"Louis?" she asked once again in that small voice.
Louis had one knee on the backseat of the car. He looked over his shoulder with wide eyes and a smile.
"Seriously, check this out."
Alexis yanked the charm in her fingers. The clasp of the necklace gave with practiced use and the chain fell to dangle on either side of her hand.
"Louis," she said. She used a little more authority in her voice this time.
"Yeah?"
"How's Vanessa?"
"Who?"
She moved closer to him, slowly but with purpose.
"Earlier, you said 'travel my way'. I'm just wondering how Vanessa's doing."
Louis looked confused. He shook his head slowly.
"I don't know a Vanessa. It was something Matthew told me to say to you, said it was an inside joke of some kind."
A large noise erupted from what sounded like the trash area behind the mini mall, behind the bookstore. Alexis, surprised, spun and looked and then quickly remembered the threat before her. When she turned back towards Louis, he was looking up at her from the backseat with sad and confused eyes. It took her a moment to notice the red line that ran below his chin like a ragged smile.
And then that smile began to fill his shirt with an impossible amount of blood.

69...

The overhead fluorescents were on in the backroom. The radio on the shelf was playing something off of the top 40 charts, and playing it softly. The lamp was turned on at the big desk against the wall, as was the adding machine with a good six and a half inches of paper coming out of the top of it. Alexis could even see the green digits on the face of the machine, reading 7,002.
"I sort of figured that Jeff would be back here," Louis said softly. He walked over to the time clock, grabbed his time card and pushed it in. "I don't have to wait for him or anything, do I?"
Alexis shook her head. She slowly took in the surroundings of the room.
"Cheryl, are you okay?"
"Yeah," Alexis said with a voice that sounded slightly distracted. "Jeff should be back here. Robin too."
"But I can go ahead and go. I mean it's time for me to leave. Legally he can't keep me here longer than I'm supposed to be here."
Alexis narrowed her eyes and pierced him.
"No one is keeping you, go ahead and leave."
"Sweet," he said under his breath and walked out of the room.
Alexis made another sweep of the room. Something was definitely wrong here and she could feel it. She was unsure which way to turn, where to look for an advancement at her back. She quickly punched out, deciding to make everything at least look like it was alright. She grabbed her purse from atop the employee bookshelf and started for the door. She wanted to keep Louis in her sights. She heard the air conditioning come on with a sigh, heard the air push some loose piece of paper on the desk with a whisper. Alexis let the door close behind her on the empty room.
"Ready?" Louis asked.
Louis was about twelve feet from the front door. Alexis quickened her pace towards him, feeling the air slap into her skin.
"Let's hit it."
Louis opened the front door for her. She reached over his head and grabbed the door allowing him to go out first. She followed him out and allowed the door to close itself behind her. Louis was walking across the sidewalk and into the parking lot, which still held a number of cars at an hour that was considered “getting late” in a Southern California suburb. He quickly turned around with a questioning gaze. She instinctively reached into her purse for anything that could be at least damaging if not deadly.
“Shouldn’t you lock up?” he asked with serious concern.
“I’m not a manager,” she said a little baffled. “I don’t have keys to lock up.”
He thought about this for a moment, slowly nodding his head. His face suddenly erupted in a childlike smile.
“Hey, come check out my car!”
He quickened his pace into the parking lot, waving behind him for her to follow. He stopped next to his prized possession, beaming.
The sodium parking lot lights turned the black of that Cadillac into the color of some long forgotten ink shade, the color of liquid night, the color of a curse floating through a revelation.

68...

Louis spent the rest of the evening jumping around like a dog who had been promised a treat, with a light in his eyes and more excitement than Alexis had thought possible. She would smile warmly at him, trying to keep him excited and unsuspecting. If he was excited, he was more likely to slip up. And if he was unsuspecting, she had the advantage.
Alexis wondered why those who made the decisions at North Creek Sign Company had sent him out here for her. Okay, she was sort of fooling herself when she assumed all would be well coming back down to Southern California after the last job up by Davis. She had fucked up and taken things too far, she had gotten a little overzealous. And while it had crossed her mind that they might call her in, that they might send someone in the night to drop her, she had begun to delude herself into thinking it would be okay. She could have run, but she checked in as was expected. Well, she didn't tell them exactly where she was and what she was doing, but she figured after a few months with no creep showing up, or better yet no Vanessa showing up to take her out that she was in the clear.
"Ready to clock out and go?" Louis asked from behind her.
She turned to look down on his lamely grinning face.
"Yeah let me just shelve this last handful of books and we'll go."
She turned back towards the romance section and placed books. She could feel him staring at her back and to avoid lashing out with the anger that she could feel rising, she thought back to that last job, that night on the railroad tracks.
The guy had been a professor she was pretty sure, that was what he was passing himself off as anyways. She could remember how cold and sharp the rails seemed in the white-blue light of the three quarters moon. She remembered his mumbled pleading, one hand up towards her, one clutching a shining rail, his tongue already thick with the small amount of poison she had slipped him. She remembered beginning to unclasp the chain around her neck, the chain that she would slip around his neck and tighten and tighten and tighten... She remembered, sort of, some sort of switch turning in her head that short circuited rational thought. She remembered re-clasping the necklace and bending down to pick up a large and heavy rock next to the rails.
She slipped the final volume of clichés and sexual synonyms into its place on the bookshelves and turned back towards Louis.
"Let's do it."
The two of them walked to the door of the back room and Alexis punched in the code that would give them access. She opened the door and Louis followed her in. He ran into her back when she stopped suddenly.
The sound of adding machines and banal discussion uttering mostly from Jeff's mouth were what she had expected, but they were met with silence in the back room. Alexis moved aside and let Louis in before her. She looked back over her shoulder and out into the bookstore, quickly checking for anyone, before following him into the empty room.

67...

Alexis spent the rest of that evening in a shell of panic. She explained the ins and outs of working at Fountain Books with a mouth that seemed unattached from her screaming mind. She delivered a trite monologue to Louis, who she was positive wasn't listening and would never need the information anyway. She no longer saw Louis' open mouthed gaze as creepy and lust filled, but as overloaded with murderous intent.
"So that's pretty much it," she could hear herself saying. She locked her eyes on his and pushed with a frightening focus. "I know you probably didn't get everything, but it just takes a couple of times doing it yourself and you'll be fine."
He turned away from her glance, looking around the counter area and shuffling his feet before looking back up towards her.
"Thanks," he said quietly. "I can probably figure it out."
Alexis smiled and nodded, glancing around the store for the others. She knew Matthew had left about an hour before even if she hadn't seen him go. Robin was floating around somewhere, as was Jeff, but she could not see either one of them right now. Suddenly, something dawned on her that she felt stupid for not thinking about to begin with.
"Jeffrey," she muttered.
"What?" Louis asked, still looking at her intently.
"Oh, I was just wondering where Jeff was. He should be coming around... to give you directions."
Had Jeffrey brought this kid in? How the fuck had he been able to get to her? He was working here at the store before she even arrived, it wasn't possible, he had no way of knowing where she going to end up. Did he get on the payroll though? She remembered that look of dark understanding they had shared earlier.
She looked back through the store towards the door to the back room. She imagined Jeff keeping Robin busy back there while this rat boy did his thing up here. That voice, the one she called her Zen Voice, the one that often spoke up when she was in stress and needed direction, chimed out.
You are paranoid and scared, you are jumping at shadows. Sit still and think this through.
"Hey Sheryl?"
Alexis came back from her inward thinking and stared intently at Louis. "Yes?"
"Do you guys all hang out together? Y'know, all the people that work here? Hang out after work and stuff?"
"Ummm?" Alexis looked at him questioningly.
"'Cause Matthew said that he was gonna go to the Fairweather, up the street? And I was gonna go, and I was wondering if you wanted to come and get a drink with us?"
"Uh sure," she said with a demure smile. "I'll come get a drink."
He probably didn't know yet what she knew, wouldn't be expecting a fight. And it would be a bad idea to take him out here in the store, a really bad idea.
"Can you give me a ride?" she asked.