QUINTON

The coffee maker was broken.

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t the end of the world. The coffee maker was always broken at the shitty, regional bank where Quinton Reid had spent the last six years of his life.

But he was tired. He'd popped a tire on the way home last night, then he'd cut himself shaving this morning, and now this.

“Ryan,” he said, before his assistant could leave the office. "Don't forget."

Ryan had come in to drop off the latest batchof mortgage applications. A dozen futures to shape before lunch, and all Quin could feel was exhaustion. The optimism that had held him through the long nights once upon a time had dissipated years ago.

Ryan paused, a brow raised. "Huh?"

“Close the door behind you, please.”

Ryan hummed unhappily. “Yes, sir.”

The door clicked shut, and Quin tapped the pen frenetically on his old, worn desktop.

It had been three days since he'd had met with the woman in the red dress, and he was almost positive he could still smell the low notes of her perfume in his office. 

The reminder was haunting him.

It didn’t help that the windows hadn’t opened in here since long before he’d taken over. Painted shut during an overzealous renovation a decade ago. It was musty and stale in all of the worst ways, old ceiling foam absorbing every wayward odor like it meant for him to savor it. Burnt coffee. Last week's lunch. The sharp tang of his printer after he'd given it too much to copy.

Still, it somehow felt right that she lingered.

Marika Cervena.

She wasn’t the sort of person that was easily forgotten. She was beautiful, for one — long, dark hair. An angular face with a hooded gaze.

It was more than that, though.

She looked dangerous.

Quin had heard that expression before, but he’d never felt it the way he had when she stepped into his office. 

Meeting her cold, dark eyes felt like looking through the bars at a zoo and watching a predator feign domesticity. He thought, if he'd kept her there another moment, she may choose to snap his neck for the trouble.

I won’t bite, her faux smile said, and it was a lie if he had ever seen one. It’s okay to come a little bit closer.

Her application was so perfect that it set his teeth on edge. A good down payment, impeccable credit, two long-established bank accounts and a steady job with plenty of history. She acknowledged paying over asking price. She explained it cleanly, and promised to cover the difference.

Fake, fake, fake.

It was out of his hands, though. He could only approve or disapprove based on what he saw, and what he saw left little room for argument. He had given his stamp of approval and seen the paperwork all the way through the process.

Quin was in charge of mortgages, sure, but it was in name only. He was a nobody. Washed-up and nearing thirty without a single interesting quality to his name. He couldn't hold her up forever.

You could be interesting again, he thought unhelpfully. You decided not to be.

He had been alone since this morning, and it was the only reason he hadn't torn his own eyes out. Ryan had spent most of the day doing grunt work elsewhere. He was pleasant enough, but Quin wanted to tranquilize him semi-regularly, just to lower the volume.

“Closing time!” He declared at the stroke of six, throwing open Quin’s door and pressing the handheld bell from the front counter with wild abandon. “It is time to leave your office, Mr. Reid!”

“I still have work to do,” Quin grumbled, running a hand over his face.

“You are not required to stay past six!” Ryan strode towards his desk and snatched away the application Quin had been reviewing for the past twenty minutes. He could not recall a single word of it. “You are the only member of management who bothers to stay this late in the first place.”

“That’s sad,” Quin told him.

“They do not pay you enough to care this much!” Ryan began packing up his laptop and empty lunchbox. Quin knew better than to try and stop him. He began hitting the bell again. “The same way they don’t pay you enough to try and smoke out financial crimes when the paperwork is all in order.”

“You knew?”

“Please, Quin.” Ryan leveled him with something approximating exasperation and set the bell on Quin’s desk. “You were giving her the third degree. You’re a middle manager at a regional bank, this is not your fight.”

“I was curious.”

“You’re going to end up ‘curiously’ dead in a warehouse if you don’t leave these things be. You’re making enemies for no reason.”

Quin knew that. Of course he knew that.

But he couldn’t help himself.

It was a bad habit. His friends had called him on it constantly, back when he’d bothered to see them at all. 

You’re going to get yourself killed, Q.

Leave it alone. No good will come from it.

He’d been different then. Quin wasn’t an interesting person, so he sought them out. He'd become interesting through them. He meddled. He looked for trouble until he found it. He tried to feel alive, because all he had ever felt was nothing.

He’d been doing so good avoiding the urge since college. He’d built himself a place where it wouldn’t find him, and he couldn’t be tempted. A boring career at a regional bank. A small apartment in a safe neighborhood. A schedule, a pattern, a bubble.

Then he’d seen her name.

Hello, that same terrible instinct had said, awoken from its long, self-imposed hibernation. You look like trouble.

Ryan handed him his laptop bag and satchel. “You ready?”

Quin sighed and swiped his phone from its spot beside his printer. 

Maybe he would call his friends tonight. Maybe he would remind himself why they had begged him to stop in the first place.

“I’m coming in early,” he mumbled, locking the door behind them. Locking away Marika and her perfume. Leaving it for a version of him that was well-rested enough to resist the urge to dig deeper.

Ryan grinned at him, putting his glasses in his bag and shoving a hat over his wild, curly hair.

“Whatever you say, boss.”