Who: Olivia Landon What: The changing of the guard When: Friday night Where: The bank branch Warnings: Suggested violence.
The building was steel and it was glass, frosted calm in the dark of an evening and the wind was a chill that climbed her throat like a warning, nipped at her the way her shoes - impractical, fanciful things, they were blue and they were soft and they didn't look like they were going to hurt, that morning - had begun to bite at her heels, rub insistently until they throbbed. It was quiet - sensible people, with families and friends and plans of an evening had long since gone home - but her lighted office and the path she had dredged from one set of files to the next, muffled steps on thick carpet, had kept the lights within the office jumping like draggled fireflies, dogging her with all the cheerful willingness of automated systems. Artificial light that mimicked daylight, they had managed, a building suited to the clientele come in for meetings and by the time the clock on her computer ticked over to half past twelve, her eyes were gritty with reading and Olivia's temples had the dull throb of a headache as yet to arrive.
It was a bank, this sprawl of a building but the vaults and lock-boxes were tucked deep and far from the offices that clients were greeted in, a rich display of anonymous, calm wealth to soothe spirits as they walked into the glorious hush. There were no tellers, no artificial-bright lamps, no cameras to swerve with each motion that ticked across the concrete out front. Olivia walked and her heels clicked sharply across the entrance, the castanet clip of warning gone slithering down her spine. She was used to it now, the ever-present hum of her own adrenal system, gathering itself in both hands, in readiness for a threat that never came.
Stop it, Olivia said silently, reproachfully. There was time enough for silliness, for the evening ritual of crossing her doorway with the low, dark dread of looking for what lay in shadows. The road was bare, empty of cars and of people, and the lamplight flickered and sputtered, a dying bulb directly across from the path. She shivered, prescience trickling icily down her spine and dredging in through the smart silk-wool blend of a suit that wasn't made for Vegas nights. Fury was silent, back of the head abandonment, disgust filtering down through synapses, through thoughts and sentiments felt she didn't own herself.
"Stop." She stopped; a cold wash of something like laughter, like shock, like adrenaline soaring, seeping through each inch of her body and soaking her in chilly realization. There was a hand on her arm, warm, pressing. It was heavy - masculine, Olivia noted, wildly, but so too was the voice, low and urgent and with some menace splayed out in the single word. Something hard and blunt nudged her spine, through the silk-wool suit, through the blouse beneath. Oh God, thought Olivia, something she'd abandoned in adolescence, Oh God.
There would be the bank, a demand - the bank she had no control over, nothing at all; the butt of the gun dug into her, insistent.
"Your purse," he said, gritty confidence in his voice, muddied over with desperation. "Give it. Now." She was shaking, she was shaking, all that flooded adrenaline and nowhere to run, she couldn't - she was, Olivia thought, as if far away, as if not stood beneath the bloom of a streetlamp and just beyond the cameras, going to die. It was certain. The gun - it had to be a gun - was heavy, a promise.
"I - I need my, my keys," she heard herself speak, cool and thick and the words were slurred on her tongue like wine, like shock - yes, thought Olivia, like shock, "Please." The strap slid along her arm, like butter melting. She'd forgotten the Mace, the metallic clunk of it against her wallet, the keyring shaped like a weapon, to slide over her fingers. She'd come out without them, these irrational purchases made late at night, foggy with wine and the determination of a man who sat in the very back of her head and guided her. She'd forgotten them all, they were buried, in Italian leather, soft as skin. "Please."
The weight of it was gone, her arm light, freed - she heard footsteps, heavy, running - before she felt the shudder of the wind at her back, the scent of him (oily, old sweat and need) an absence and the wedged weapon mercifully gone. She was shaking, she was shaking and she was laughing and she was - her face was damp, she put the heels of her palms beneath her eyes and was fascinated, they came away wet - she was crying.
The logistics of getting home now complicated, Olivia quaking, she did not notice the voice that folded itself into nothing.