Against the Clock

Chapter 1

A/N: For those who read Sober or It's All Greek to Me (or both), please bear with me. I'm THAT author, the one who gets a new idea every other day. I'm going to try to stick with this one till the end, with my ideal sequence including finishing Sober and then It's All Greek, but depending on my ideas and reactions to this, I might continue this series or begin another idea of mine about Disney World murders. So, if you're waiting patiently, I apologize and want to say you're freaking awesome for reading this in the first place (thanks for that!!) and promise a story that'll be worth your while with this one. So, without further ado, Against the Clock.

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1

In retrospect, accepting an ad from the paper when finding a new home in New York might not have been my smartest idea. For all I knew, my new roomie could’ve been an axe murderer… or a rapist… or a lawyer. All very scary ideas, but none quite so… peculiar as what I actually got.

“You’re… mute?” I ask slowly. The girl nods.

She was probably the same age as me, maybe a little younger. Long brown hair framed her simple, yet elegant, face, a face that clearly believed in the ‘less is more’ makeup theory that I did. She had sort of a new-age hippie vibe to her, her bare feet poking out from under an ankle length skirt and digging into the pale pink shag carpet. She moves her fingers and hands around swiftly in a way I don’t understand.

“I… uh…” I start weakly, wondering if she reads lips, but she rolls her eyes, and grabs my wrist before dragging me to the kitchen of her apartment. There’s a white board posted on the wall. Phone numbers and sticky notes litter it, but she grabs a black marker and finds a clear space to write.

You don’t sign, do you?

I shake my head when she looks at me expectantly.

My name’s River Hartford. $500 a month each and you have to pitch in with errands. It’s a three bed one and ½ bath place, and too big for me. If you say yes, you can move in today.

That seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me. I was ready to nod like a bobble head, that I would take the room immediately. But I still had my other roommate to worry about. She was out job hunting today, and not with me to look at apartments. And without her, I didn’t feel it would be right to accept a place.

“Is it okay if I look around for a little while, and come back tonight or tomorrow with my roommate so she can see it?”

River nods.

The apartment wasn’t huge, but it was no hole in the wall like my last place (6 flights up over a Yoghut downtown--1 bed ½ bath with the nearest shower being downstairs in creepy Bradley Hammond’s place). River’s place had a very earthy feel. The shag carpet extended everywhere else throughout the house except the bathrooms and kitchen. One bathroom was clean and nice, and the other littered with hair brushes, flat irons, makeup, loofahs, and other assorted girl crap. That one must’ve been River’s bathroom, the one that I would potentially share.

I enter one of the rooms, currently empty, except for a couple of cardboard boxes. There’s an epic view of the New York skyline out the window. It’s beautiful. I hope we can rent this place. It’s perfect!

My phone buzzed, sending my ring tone of I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry blasting through the room. I glanced down at the caller ID and saw a picture of Bridgette looking up.

Bridgette Mahoney is my roommate from South Carolina, where I lived before I moved to The Big Apple. She’s a former gymnast, current health nut, and a teacher. But when I got transferred to New York after completing FBI training, she packed her bags and came with.