That simple. She quit.
“I’ve made arrangements for my replacement,” she told them, careful not to let her giddy laughter escape. She quit. Tomorrow she would not walk through the front doors and take the elevator up to her executive office on the penthouse floor. Tomorrow she would be in another place. Another city, another state. Maybe even another country. She passed around the hiring reports her secretary had typed up and bound neatly with cheery yellow covers. “I’ve done all the preliminary interviews and narrowed the candidates down to three—any one of which I myself would have utmost faith in as the new president of Carver Software.”
All twelve members of the board starting talking at once.
Marie held up her hand. “Should you decide to hire an outside candidate,” she said, “you would, of course, require my approval as the major stockholder of this company. But I think you’ll be impressed with the choices I’ve given you here.” She rapped the yellow-covered report with her knuckles. “I ask that you hold all of your questions until after you’ve read this. If any concerns remain unanswered, you can reach me at home until six o’clock this evening. After that, I’ll remain in touch with my secretary, whom I’ve promoted to Executive Assistant.” She smiled. “I appreciate your understanding, and will see you all at the next annual shareholders meeting.”
She gathered up her briefcase and walked quickly out of the room.
THE OPIUM WAS working.
His pupils had retracted almost to a pinpoint and he was drooling slightly, blinking sleepily as he watched her dance.
This was the part she liked. This was where she showed him what he would never again have the chance to experience, to violate.
True, this one had been gentle. His soft, old hands had never struck her. He’d been careful not to hurt her. He’d given her expensive presents, fancy gifts. But the act itself would always be an act of violence, always despicable, always requiring punishment.
Capital punishment.
Her dress fell in a pool of silk at her feet, and she deftly stepped out of it. His eyes were glazed, but not enough to hide his hunger at the sight of her. He stretched one hand out toward her, but he didn’t have the strength to reach her.
And still she danced, to the rhythm of the blood pounding through her veins, to the anticipation of the moment when he would gaze into her eyes and know without a doubt that he was a dead man.
FREEDOM.
It hit Marie like the coolness of the air that swept through the open door at the end of the hall. It felt fresh and clean, like that very spring breeze, bringing hope and life and renewal. Through that open door she could see her car, sitting out in the parking lot, ready for her escape.
“Mariah.”
There was only one person on that board of directors who could slow her departure. Susan Kane. Aunt Susan. Marie turned, but kept moving, backward, down the hall.
Susan followed, her long, batik-patterned dress moving in the breeze, disapproval in her slate-blue eyes. “Mariah,” she said again, calling Marie by her childhood nickname. “Obviously you’ve been planning this for some time.”
Marie shook her head. “Only two weeks.”
“I wish you had told me.”
Marie stopped walking then, meeting the older woman’s sternly unwavering gaze. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I didn’t tell most of my own staff until this morning.”
“Why?”
“The company doesn’t need me anymore,” Marie said. “It’s been three years since the last layoffs. We’ve turned it around, Sue. Profits continue to rise—we’re thriving. You know the numbers as well as I do.”
“So take a vacation. Take a leave of absence. Sit back on your laurels and relax for a while.”
Marie smiled ruefully. “That’s part of my problem,” she said. “I can’t relax.”
Susan’s face softened, concern in her eyes. “Is your stomach still bothering you?”
“Among other things.” Like, for instance, the fact that Marie was thirty-two years old and since her divorce four years ago, she had no life outside of the office. Like, the fact that she still worked long overtime hours to increase profits, to expand, to hire more people, even though the failing computer software company that her father’s sudden fatal heart attack had thrust into her lap had long ago become a Fortune 500 business. Like, the fact that each morning she found herself walking into the new, fancy office building into which the company had recently moved, and she wondered, what exactly was the point? What purpose did she serve by being here, by stressing herself out enough to develop stomach ulcers over the mundane, day-to-day operation of this business?
One day she was going to wake up, and she was going to be sixty years old and still walking into that building, still going home much too late to that sad excuse for a condo, still living out of boxes that she still hadn’t managed to unpack.
And she’d look at her life, and all those meaningless, wasted years would stretch back into her meaningless, wasted past.
Because the truth was, even though she’d dutifully gotten her degree in business as her father had wanted, Marie had never wanted to run this company.
Shoot, it had taken years before she’d admitted that to herself. As far as knowing what she really wanted to do, Marie honestly didn’t have a clue. But there was something that she did know.
She wanted to do more than keep a multimillion-dollar corporation up and running. She wanted to have a sense of real purpose. She wanted to be able to look back on her life and feel proud—feel as if she’d truly made a difference.
She was considering running for office. She was also thinking about joining the peace corps. She had found a list a mile long of volunteer organizations that desperately needed man power—everything from accountants for the Salvation Army to hands-on, hammer-wielding home builders for Foundations for Families.
But before she could do anything, she had to handle her stress.
Step one was cutting herself off from this company—breaking her addiction to this job and the company’s addiction to her. She was going to do it cold turkey.
The company would survive. Marie knew they’d survive. Any one of her three job candidates would bring a freshness and vitality to the job that she’d lacked for nearly two years now. Whether or not Marie would survive was a different story…
“Where are you going?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know,” Marie admitted. “I’m just going to take my camera and go. I read in a book about stress-reduction that I should take a few months and leave everything behind—including my name. This book recommended that I temporarily take on a new identity. Supposedly that’ll help me distance myself from everything that’s been causing my ulcers.” She smiled. “I’m going to leave Marie Carver locked in my condo—along with all my doubts about my sanity and my worries that Carver Software will go into a nosedive the moment I leave town.”
Susan pulled her in for a quick hug—an unusual display of affection. “The job will be yours again when you come back,” the older woman whispered. “I’ll make sure of that.”
Marie pulled away, unable to answer. If she had her way, she’d never be back. If she had her way, Marie Carver and her damned ulcers would be gone forever.
SHE USED THE KNIFE TO CUT off a lock of his hair.
He didn’t have too much, just a light fringe of gray at the back of his head, but that didn’t matter. It was the only thing of his that she would keep.
Besides the money.
He was handcuffed now. He’d let her do that willingly, thinking she was playing some new sex game, never suspecting he had