The Other Woman

Prologue

The rural counties to the west were expecting eighteen to twenty-four inches of snow, but Boston Harbor often took the edge off whatever the rest of the state was getting. The weather forecast that night called for five to ten inches of snow in the city for over six hours. The wet, heavy mix had started falling around ten, but the temperature was plummeting, and what was coming down now was a fine, clean powder - the fluffy kind of shit people put in snow globes.

The storm was a perfect excuse for Steven Sullivan to call his wife and tell her he'd be late. He claimed a meeting had gone over and that he was nervous about traveling now that icy slush was accumulating in the streets. Really, it was a perfect opportunity for the grown man with a teenage boy's haircut to spend some extra time with Nancy Danvers, the pretty new bottle-blonde in billing.

The affair had been escalating for weeks. First, it had been flirtation while out for drinks with other colleagues. Next, they started eating lunch together in an isolated corner of the break room. Nancy would occasionally find an excuse to touch his hand or his shoulder. Stephen would slip in compliments about her hair or her dress. At first it was just the color, but then the cut and the way it flattered her figure. For weeks he had been testing the boundaries until he was sure that Nancy was on the same page.

Tonight, Steven had smuggled a 375ml bottle of Jim Beam in his briefcase to help break the ice. Each had made a show of having "just so much work to do" as their coworkers left at reasonable hours for a Wednesday night in February. Now they were the only people left on their floor. The lights, all automated, had gone out, leaving them in the glow of one LED daylight bulb from Nancy's desk lamp.

The phone call to Maggie Sullivan had been placed an hour ago. Steven had already drunk three shots' worth of the whiskey. Nancy, who didn't like straight liquor but wanted Steven to think she was one of those cool girls, just let it touch her lips and then slip back into the glass to make a show of sipping it. Each was trying to work up the courage to cross the line.

"Cindy on Channel Five says the snow isn't going to stop until four in the morning," Nancy said, setting her glass down. "I think we're snowed in." She reached out and touched Steven's knee.

"Yeah," he said, unable to think of anything clever or enticing to add. He looked down at her hand and then up. Their eyes met. Nancy sprang forward, climbing into his lap and trying to straddle him as he sat in the wheeled task-chair. It was clumsy and chaotic and ugly, but it felt like the hottest thing in the world to Steven, and the complaining of the chair and the shuffling of clothing was enough to mask the sounds of thumping and shouting that were muffled through the floor above them.

But the sounds got louder and eventually the thumping was enough to make Nancy, stone sober, break away from her suction lock on Steven's mouth. Terrified she was about to be caught, she looked up over his shoulder at the massive skyscraper windows that were the only other source of light in the open plan office space.

"What is it?" he asked, kissing her neck, just drunk enough to be oblivious to the disturbance. A few more thumps, moving away from them in space, and a loud crash.

The shout was only audible for a moment, like someone twisted the volume knob hard clockwise and then just as quickly back to the off position. Nancy would have thought she had imagined it, had she not seen the shower of glass and the shadow of a human body drop past the office window.

Even Steven heard that. He pushed Nancy off his lap and spun hard in the chair. "What was that?" he asked, all the color draining out of his face.

"I think someone fell out the window," Nancy said in a whisper.

"What?" he asked.

"The window," she said, panic now rising and propelling her voice higher, louder. "The goddamn window! Someone just fell out the window, Steven!"

"Shit, fuck, shit," Steven said, rising to his feet and gripping his bangs. He paced near her desk while Nancy ran to the window. She pressed her forehead to the glass and covered her mouth with her hand.

"We have to call the police," Nancy said.

"No! They'll... my wife!" He looked down at his lap and the erection obviously showing through his pleated khakis. How the fuck was he going to explain why the only other coworker who got snowed-in with him was a single woman ten years his junior?

"Oh, fuck your wife," Nancy said. "There's a man splattered on the sidewalk!"

Nancy rushed back to her desk to grab her phone. She unlocked it with shaking hands, Steven pleading with her as she did so. "Please, if they ask why we were here alone-"

"If you're that afraid of her finding out, start walking home." Nancy finished dialing. Steven walked towards the window, running through a list of excuses in his mind. He stopped inches from the glass and looked down. The body on the Franklin Street sidewalk was quickly becoming covered by snow, but blood blossomed through the layer of white.

Blue lights reflected off the glass face of the building at the nearest intersection. Steven knew he should feel some sort of way for the poor soul dead on the concrete below, but he just couldn't. All he could think about was how very, very fucked he was.

Author Note: The rest of this book is going through another round of edits before posting begins, so make sure to add this book to your library so you can be notified when it goes live! The whole thing will be added for free here in chapters.