Only one. My next mark.
Chapter Five
Since I’ve never worked anormal job, I call the one person in my life whohason my way to pick up the girls that afternoon.
“One sec.” Piper talks to someone in the background. Her femme-and-them-only fitness club started as a single location, but now there are three in the greater San Antonio area, and she’s on the hunt for sites four and five. “Sorry about that. What’s up?”
“How’s work?” I try to ask more questions thanCan you watch my kids?and, apparently,Have I hit the glass ceiling?
But Piper doesn’t fall for it. “What do you want?” she deadpans.
Despite my sour mood, it yanks a laugh from my throat. “Can you watch the girls? Tomorrow night? It’s date night. Our regular babysitter isn’t available.”
“I thoughtIwas your regular babysitter.” She’s joking. Kind of. We do occasionally hire a high school senior up the street, but she’s a social butterfly and has canceled twice at the last second.
“Well—”
“It’s no problem. I just need to leave by nine.”
“That works.” Brian and I are hardly the type to stay out late. “How was your date?”
“So good,” she purrs. “So, so good.”
“Jesus, Piper.”
A bark of laughter. “I gotta go, new potential hire to interview. But I’ll be there at five tomorrow?”
“Wait, I have a question.”
“Hmm?”
“When you left your job in corporate America…” I chew my lip, flip my turn signal on, pull into the pickup line. Twenty other cars are parked ahead of me, gleaming Lexuses and town cars with drivers, delivery people for the rich parents’ children.
“What about it?”
“You were getting paid less, right? Than the men?”
She gives a huff of annoyance. “I started at the same time as this guy named Frank—and he was awful at his job. Meanwhile, I was pulling in new clients left and right, and I was makingfifty thousand dollarsless than him. Fiftythousand. That’s half of a new car.”
Oh, to be young and single and think $100K is a normal price tag for a vehicle. The sight of the school’s principal coming out of the building in a skirt suit and tie distracts me. I frown. Does she make as much as a male principal would? “So, did you ever speak up about it?”
A beat of silence.
“Why are you asking? You’re self-employed. Give yourself a raise.”
“I’m just curious.” I tap the steering wheel, hanging on her words, wanting toknow. She’s told me the story before, but this is the first time I’m getting details. The principal catches sight of me and waves with a big smile. I clench my teeth in response. Surely it looks vaguely smile-like from this distance.
“I did speak up.”
“And?”
“They said no. Said the business couldn’t support a raise, that their hands were tied.”
“What did you say?”
She gives a half laugh. “Nothing. I quit.”
That sounds like my big sister. We finish our call, and I inch forward in my minivan. For me, quitting is not an option. I love my job. Moreover, I’m driven by a psychological need—to stalk, to study, to kill. When I go too long between jobs, the pressure builds inside me—slow, steady, until it feels like it might boil over. My hands tighten, thinking of it. Thinking that in a world where I wasn’t raised by a good family, I might be the sort of serial killer you read about in newspapers. The bad kind, who eventually gets caught and put to death or sentenced to life in prison.
