Free Shadowkiller by Wendy Corsi Staub

in hell. You know that.
    But once the crazy thought flashed into her head, she couldn’t help but hold her tobacco-saturated breath until he answered.
    â€œI’m going to go home and see my mother. That’s what I’m going to do.”
    She exhaled, secretly disappointed—but not surprised at having been right, as usual.
    â€œDo you live with her?”
    â€œNo. But near enough. My parents are in Hoboken. I’m in Jersey City.”
    She nodded and stood up. Now she was anxious to get going, away from him and this unsettling connection that had come out of nowhere on a night when nothing was as it should have been.
    He stood, too, and pointed at the skyline to the north. “How far uptown are you walking?”
    She wasn’t sure yet. Maybe she’d just jump on the subway at Union Square. Maybe she’d had enough warm fresh air. Enough . . .
    She looked down at the cigarette in her hand, tempted to toss it down and grind it out with her heel.
    â€œBecause I’m heading back up to the Port Authority,” he continued, checking his watch, “to catch a bus home to Jersey. It’s a quarter to six. I can make the six-thirty bus, no problem. So maybe I’ll walk with you, as far as you’re going.”
    And maybe she hadn’t had enough warm fresh air after all. Or smoke.
    She bit back a smile, took another slow drag. “That’s fine. I’m catching the subway at Times Square, so I thought I’d walk all the way up Fifth and then go across Forty-second Street.”
    â€œWorks for me.”
    Together, they started walking north, toward the solid old stone arch, an homage to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe and the gateway to Fifth Avenue and the part of the city she loved best, where everything fell neatly into place and made sense.
    As they walked, puffing companionably, he asked what her name was. For a fleeting, wild moment, she was tempted to give him her real name.
    But of course, she couldn’t.
    â€œCarrie Robinson,” she said.
    â€œCarrie. Nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand, and shook hers as they walked. His brief clasp was warm, as she’d known it would be. Safe.
    â€œI’m James,” he said, “but everyone calls me Mack.”
    She almost gasped. Surely she’d heard him wrong. “Did you say Matt?”
    â€œNo, Mack. It’s short for my last name, MacKenna.”
    Mack .
    His name was Mack.
    It was a sign, Carrie thought. A sign that he was meant to be a part of her life.
    â€œD id you go vote yet, babycakes?”
    Allison Taylor looked up to see her friend Luis standing in the doorway—if you could call it a doorway—of her cubicle.
    He was a production editor at 7th Avenue magazine, where she’d been working for about six months now, having been hired away from her postcollege internship at Condé Nast.
    The glamour factor was higher there, but here, she was actually getting paid. Her duties were pretty much the same: basic entry-level stuff—though sometimes, not even. Her supervisor, Loriana, kept her hopping with ridiculous nonsense, such as fetching cups full of tepid water—Loriana’s preferred afternoon “snack,” ever since she read somewhere that tepid water burns more calories than hot or cold water.
    Having adapted a your-wish-is-my-command corporate philosophy, Allison figured she could put up with just about anything for the promise of working her way up the ladder and one day—hopefully soon—seeing her own name on the magazine’s masthead.
    â€œWhy are you calling me babycakes?” she asked Luis.
    â€œBecause you asked me to stop calling you toots.”
    â€œOkay, well, stop calling me babycakes, too, okay?”
    â€œOnly if you promise me you’ve voted. Or that you’re going to vote.”
    â€œI can’t. I’m not registered here yet.”
    She hadn’t been registered back in Pittsburgh,