Maybe they’d all given up, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped watching.
Ruth Freeman’s office was only thirty paces from reception, but that night it took McGee an hour and half to get there. She was slow. She was methodical. She gave the third floor the most thorough cleaning of its existence. As she dusted, she lifted every stapler, every pen. She vacuumed not just around but even under every chair. She aspired to be the most boring thing ever seen on a security monitor. She wanted to make Darius, or whoever was watching, fall instantly asleep.
By the time McGee finally reached Ruth Freeman’s office, there was no reason for anyone to suspect anything at all. She stopped her cart, unlocked the door, grabbed her duster, and went inside, tools already sheathed in her pocket. She kneeled down in front of the desk. At first she felt as though she were trying to find an unfamiliar light switch in a pitch-black room. She ran her pick along every edge, feeling her way. Whatever was in there, it wouldn’t line up. She reached for the double-prong wrench, and then she slid in the snowman pick. It met no resistance. When she angled the tip, she could feel the wafers rising and lowering in their grooves. And then all at once, the wrench turned, and it kept turning until the lock clicked.
McGee’s breath fell short and shallow as she reached for the handle. The drawer rolled open on liquid wheels. There were folders inside. She reached in and touched them, just to make sure they were real.
Out in the corridor, she swapped her duster for the vacuum. She forced herself to move slowly, full, deliberate motions with pauses in between. On the threshold she stopped to wipe off the doorknob and run her cloth along the jamb. And then, at last, she was back inside, heading directly for Ruth Freeman’s garbage can. She removed the bag. It contained almost nothing, a few tissues and crumpled notes. Then she opened the desk drawer again. She pulled out the files and put them in the garbage bag. She carried the bag through the doorway, lowering it into the belly of her cart.
The photocopier was in a room on the same poorly lit corridor as Mrs. Freeman’s office. McGee stopped her cart just outside the door. Using another wastebasket for cover, she smuggled the files inside. With the papers snug in the automatic feeder, there was nothing left but to press the start button and hope. She closed the door, just as the first burst of green light leaked out from around the edges of the copier lid.
Back in the corridor, she turned on the vacuum. The drone drowned out the whoosh of the copier. Choking the handle with two clenched fists, she tried to keep her eyes on the carpeting, but there was an irresistible pull in those quick flashes of light in the crack under the door.
Even at her most optimistic, she’d never imagined the plan would work so well. Lately it seemed to be the nature of plans to go wrong. Or if not the nature, then at least the tendency. But maybe they’d been having so little success recently because they’d stopped taking risks. They’d fallen into routines. This was her reward for pushing, for making them go further than they’d been willing to go.
McGee drifted off. And when, minutes later, she gradually drifted back, she found herself staring, hypnotized, at the copier room door. She’d forgotten about the vacuum. She’d forgotten about her disguise. She was simply standing there dumbly, waiting for the copier to stop.
A shadow appeared along the edge of the corridor, moving.
The vacuum slipped from her grip.
As Darius came closer, his reflection skated across the surface of a framed landscape — a mountain, a valley, a distant lake. The fallen vacuum was still running, masking the thumping in her chest. Then Darius was beside her. Her hand was shaking. The vacuum vibrated, rattling against the baseboard. Darius bent over to pick it up for her, and he was about to switch off the power when she snatched the vacuum back.
Furrowing her brow, she bent into the machine, rolling it over and over again across the same few square feet, as though she and the carpet were engaged in a fierce tug-of-war. Darius leaned against the wall, watching the brushes spin.
“I don’t want — I hope I’m not making you nervous,” he said when she finally killed the switch.
McGee unplugged the cord and whipped it around the vacuum.
“I noticed—” He gestured over his shoulder. “I think you missed something in the reception. One of the windows …”
McGee hoisted the vacuum back onto its platform, then wheeled her cart down the corridor, speeding away from the photocopier room.
“But you’re doing fine, though,” Darius said, jogging to catch up. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
She stopped short, and he stepped on her heel.
“Did you do this where you’re from?”
They’d reached reception, and she headed over to the windows.
“You’re not — are you going to use that?” Before she could spray, he’d wrenched the bottle from her hand. The first time that had happened, with Calice, McGee had only been able to watch helplessly. This time she had to uncurl her fist to keep from hitting him.
He went over to the cart. After a brief search through its contents, he replaced the bottle with something more to his liking. “It’s just they expect everything to be perfect.”
He sprayed. His finger followed the course of a drop running down the window. When McGee made no move to stop it, he sopped it up with his sleeve.
While he was distracted, she tried again to get away, but Darius caught up with her outside Mrs. Freeman’s office. Not at first realizing where she was, McGee turned and went inside. Then it was too late. She had to do something, but her mind was blank. Darius stood in the doorway looking at her, or looking past her. She couldn’t tell which.
“Cobweb.” He was pointing at a corner of the ceiling. “A cobweb.”
The silky thread was a high wire about a foot and a half long, passing from one wall to the other. McGee stared at it, enjoying the stretch it allowed her neck.
“You can use this,” he said, and his touch awoke her with a jolt. For a brief, blissful instant, she’d been able to forget he was there.
He stood behind her with a broom in his hands. He held it out to her, and when she didn’t take it, he extended it toward the ceiling. After several swipes, not a trace of the cobweb remained.
“Cobweb,” Darius said, pointing at nothing now. “Cob-web.”
McGee got to work on the blinds.
For the next hour they continued on this way, Darius talking, McGee looking for escape.
“At home I do a lot of the cleaning,” he said at one point. “Vacuuming, dishes. I don’t like to dust.”
She made no effort to listen, but it was impossible to tune him out completely.
“My wife cleaned for a while,” he said. “For work, I mean. But not here,” he added. “At the college. Just after high school. Years ago.”
He seemed especially interested in talking about his wife, and at first McGee found this sort of endearing. He told her how they’d met as children, how they’d been friends for a dozen years before finally marrying. But then he started in on their apartment and their neighbors, about a girl who lived upstairs. He had a lot to say about her, this girl, how she fought with her mother a lot, was constantly coming to see him. She was young, wore tank tops and stretch pants. She filled them out, McGee could tell, the way Darius’s eyes glazed over as he described her. He spoke of the girl as a nuisance, which was clearly contrary to what he actually felt, and McGee found it troubling that he would bother lying to someone he believed couldn’t understand him in the first place. But he was calm and soft spoken. He seemed happy just to talk, as if it were some form of therapy.
The files remained in the photocopier, and the thought of them nauseated her. McGee kept telling herself that if he didn’t leave, she would. The plan would be a loss, but she wasn’t about to let herself get caught.