Serving Mr. Stevens, Part Four: The Price of Pleasure -- An Erotic Romance (Part 4 of 5) (5 page)

“The Stevens Building,” we replied in unison. Looking at us in the rear-view
mirror, I saw his eyebrows perk up at our response, but he didn’t say anything for now except to give us a stiff nod and start the car into motion. In the next moment, we’d pulled away from the curb.
As we left my neighborhood, we all fell silent for a few moments, each lost in our own private thoughts.

“So, have you heard from him, then?” asked Carl,
breaking the silence
as soon as we
’d hit the highway
.
His voice had a level tone, but I could still detect a hint of worry in it. Carl had known Mr. Stevens longer than any of us, after all.
He’d been driving the family around since Mr. Stevens was just a little boy.
I could only imagine what Carl was going through, forced to keep a professional distance
from
any
personal
affection
he had for the man
.
I felt an urge to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but I knew it wouldn’t be proper to do that.

“He texted last night,”
I said. “Well, this morning, to be more specific. Here, I’ll read the text to you. One second.” I fumbled around in my purse for it, casually at first, but then more frantically as I realized
I didn’t see it
anywhere.

“Shit,”
I cursed. “I think I left the phone at home.” I looked at Katarina with panicked eyes. “What should we do?”

“Want to turn around?” asked Carl, looking back at us as he drove. “We’ve only been gone a few minutes. It’ll be a twenty-minute detour
,
tops.
”

“No!” cri
e
d Katarina sharply, with a haste that took me by surprise.
I stared at her, shocked. She lowered her head a bit, looking embarrassed to have shouted. “…I think we should just get there as soon as possible,
and wait for him to show up,
” she said.
“We need to be there for him when he arrives.”

“
She’s right,” I said to Carl. “Let’s keep going.” She had a point: we had no idea when Mr. Stevens would get there, and we
shouldn’t risk it. But I couldn’t help but wonder if she had some other reason for not wanting to go back. Maybe that old, jealous flame she had for him was still burning, however faintly? But whatever the reason, we
’d made up our minds. I shook any other suspicions
out of my head
–
I
just didn’t have room for them right now.

The three of us fell back into a grim silence as we cruised down the
Hudson Parkway. On any other morning, this would have been a beautiful drive: we had the Hudson River on one side of us, dark-blue and turbulent in the morning breeze.
And on our other side, the streets of the city passed by us in a
pleasant
, bustling blur, with children
laughing and skipping
on their way to school, and grandmothers lugging empty shopping carts on the sidewalk,
heading out to take care of
the day
’s shopping. But
today, I was too preoccupied with our current circumstances to enjoy much of anything.

I glanced up at Carl’s face, and
I could see the dark worry
clouding
his eyes
.
He seemed to be brooding just as deeply as I was.
Katarina didn’t say much of anything either,
but spent the drive wringing her palms together in a nervous fit.
Looking at her now, I felt
guilty
for suspecting her of having ulterior motives
; it was obvious
how much she cared for Mr. Stevens, and how affected she was by all this. Wasn’t that reason enough to explain why she’d reacted so strongly? We were all on edge, and each of us were dealing with it in our own way.

And so we
passed the time in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. It was a relief when we finally reached downtown Manhattan and I saw the Stevens Building loom into view.

“We’re here,” said Carl, stating the obvious. I looked at him to see if he was trying to be funny, but he wasn’t grinning. Rather,
in the face of all this uncertainty,
he seemed to be clinging even more strongly to the fixed protocols of his daily routine. This time, he didn
’t let us open the doors for ourselves, and I was happy to let him
show us this bit of professional formality.

“Thanks, Carl,” I said t
o him, stepping out of the Town C
ar. I looked at him intently. “For everything.”

He returned my steady gaze, nodding
graciously,
with the
humility
of someone who takes utmost pride in their work.

“The pleasure is mine, miss,”
he replied
simply
.

We entered the building and made our way to the executive-suite elevator, bypassing the concierge’s desk and not paying any attention to the throngs of people around us. For them, it was just a
normal workday – at least on the surface. Did they suspect anything? Had they heard the news? I had no idea what sort of media attention the death of a man like Peter Kearns would warrant, but I figured it was only a matter of time. But for now, at least, it seemed like business as usual.

Katarina and I exchanged barely a glance as we entered the elevator, and no words passed between us.
There was a tension in the air, and I don’t think it was just due to our nervousness. I felt a sudden urge to bring up what had happened between us
,
to
try and… explain myself, somehow.
But there was nothing to say, really. It was just like she’d told me: our encounter last night was what we’d needed at the time
–
nothing more.

I sighed heavily and kept my silence.
How could I tell her that I’d absolutely loved it?
…
That I was dying to try it again?

The elevator opened, and we stepped out into the executive suite on the 66th
floor of the building. I thought back to the first time I’d come here, so naïve, so unprepared for what was about to unfold.
The office now
looked just as it had th
at day,
which surprised me for some reason –
but
why would it look different, after all? The sudden turn of events last night had
shattered my worldview, and I was bracing for a new trauma lying in wait at every turn.
S
omehow
, I
’d
expected to find bloodstains on the walls
,
or
a
murder weapon lying on the floor. I would have laughed at the idea if the situation weren’t so serious.

T
he place was dead silent, and t
he door to Mr. Stevens’ office was closed. There was no indication that he
’
d been here at all.
If only I had my damn phone,
I thought to myself. He’d sent that text hours ago, and it had said he’d be at the office “soon.” But what did “soon” mean? It was already 10:00 in the morning
–
late
by his standards
.
As if I weren’t worried enough already, the questions about what might have held him up started to spiral through my head.

I kept myself calm by watching Katarina.
Just like Carl, she appeared to take comfort in the act of settling into her daily routine.
She went straight to her desk and fired up her computer, then looked at all the paperwork spread out over her desk, perhaps
looking to s
ee
if anything was missing. She sat down and started typing away
at her computer,
as though it were
just another
ordinary day.
How odd
, I thought. Again, I had to wonder if she was in shock or something.
I had just
opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing
,
when she turned the monitor around to face me.

“I wondered what the news about this would say,” she said.

I gasped.
She had pulled up at least half a dozen windows, each with a different headline about the murder that had been committed last night.
I leaned closer to the screen and started to read the first article. “MAGNATE MURDERED AT MASQUERADE,” screamed the headline.

“Oh, no,” I said softly,
my eyes widening in fear.

“Peter Kearns, the well-known New York business tycoon, was found brutally murdered last night
at a black-tie
fundraising
gala for his philanthropic organization,
”
the article continued
.
“Just after midnight, a member of the waitstaff found Mr. Kearns
lying dead in a coatroom, having suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest. A
panicked
scene ensued, throwing
what should have been a night of celebration into terrified chaos. Though no arrests have been made in the case, police sources say that suspicion has fallen on
Kearns’ former business partner,
Thomas Stevens,
owner of the Stevens building and president of Henrickson & Stevens
, LLC. Authorities are unaware of Mr. Stevens’ whereabouts at this time, but they have named him as a person of interest in the case.”

A sharp pain in my arm made me recoil suddenly. I realized I’d been digging my nails into the flesh of my forearm, my knuckles white with the effort.
I looked at Katarina,
willing her to tell me it was all a dream
.
She looked as scared as I did. I
opened my mouth to speak, but my panicked silence said more than words
ever could.

I shook my head slowly, still staring at the screen, reading over the article a second and then a third time. Frantically, I began clicking through the rest of the windows; they were all variations of the same thing, big on drama, short on any real facts. But one thing they all agreed on was that Mr. Stevens was the most likely suspe
ct. What that meant for him – for us – I didn’t know.

Just then, the sound of the elevator startled us both. As we whirled around to face the doors, Mr. Stevens
burst forth from them in a rush,
entering
his own office as though he was breaking into it.

He stopped
when he saw us
,
and looked at us for a moment
with wild eyes
. Suddenly, he
let out a visible sigh of relief.

“You’re here
,
”
he
said simply.