Lori was shocked. Every morning, Katie greeted her with a big, happy smile and a cheerful, Hey, beautiful! Ready to kick some ass today? and Lori would reply, Always, or, You know it. She’d never seen Katie like this before.
Katie and she weren’t close friends, but Lori cared for her, and she was certain that something had to be wrong – very wrong – for her to be acting like this.
She stepped up to the counter. “Is everything all right?”
Katie looked up from her computer.
“I had the worst thing happen to me on the way to work this morning.” Her lips pursed together. Katie made this face whenever she was unhappy – which was rare – but even then, she looked like she was affecting a sexy childish pout. But Lori knew the expression was genuine.
“What happened?” Lori asked.
“I was driving down Bartlett Avenue when this huge black car pulled up behind me.”
Lori felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach when she heard the words huge black car.
“The driver came right up on my rear and stayed there for maybe a mile or more. At first, he made me nervous. I was afraid he might hit me. But then I got mad. I figured the jackass had no right to tailgate me like that. It didn’t matter how late he was for work, you know?”
Lori nodded. She didn’t want to hear any more of Katie’s story, but at the same time, she had to hear.
“I got so mad that I decided to make him back off. I tapped my brakes, just enough to make the lights come on for a second. It was just a warning, right? Well, this guy got really pissed off when I did that. He stepped on the gas and hit my back bumper hard enough that my head snapped forward and back, and I had to fight to keep the rear end of my car from swerving.”
“Jesus,” Lori said softly.
She was afraid to ask Katie the question that was foremost in her mind, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Did you see him? What did he look like?”
Katie’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know. All I remember is he was wearing sunglasses.”
Sunglasses… Lori thought. To hide the smooth patches of skin where his eyes should be?
She shuddered.
“He backed off then and started to pull around me. I didn’t look over at him. I figured I’d only see him yelling at me, probably giving me the finger, you know? When he got far enough ahead, I figured he was going to swerve in front of me and then hit his own brakes, give me a taste of my own medicine, right? But he didn’t. Do you know what he did?”
Lori didn’t, of course, and part of her wanted to keep it that way. But she said nothing, only waited for Katie to continue.
But before she could go on, the front door opened and Debra Foster walked in. She bared her teeth when she saw Lori – her version of a smile.
“So you beat me here for once. Good for you.”
Lori’s own smile was strained. “Good morning, Debra. Ready to get to work?”
“Yep. Not that I think it will do any good. But you already know that.”
Lori did.
Debra was in her early fifties, a stout, gray-haired, broad-shouldered woman who lived alone on a small farm outside town. She’d injured her left shoulder while cleaning out the stalls of her two horses, and she’d been coming to see Lori twice a week for the last three weeks, as prescribed by her physician. Debra believed that physical therapy was barely one step above voodoo.
I’m only here because my doctor said I have to do a month’s worth of this crap before he’d write me a prescription for some heavy-duty pain pills. I don’t expect anything I do here to make a goddamn difference, but if it gets me my meds, then I’ll gut it out.
Lori had tried to tell her that with an attitude like that her condition was unlikely to improve – especially if she didn’t follow up her sessions by doing the exercises at home. But Debra didn’t pay attention to her warning, and Lori had given up trying to convince her. She’d decided to do what she could for the woman, and if Debra ended up with a chronic injury and an addiction to pain pills, it would be her own damn fault.
Lori turned to Katie, but the woman was once more engrossed in whatever was on her computer, a sullen expression on her face. Lori would have to hear the rest of her story later. She turned once more to Debra.
“Follow me on back to the exercise room,” Lori said, doing her best to fake a friendly, enthusiastic tone.
“Might as well get this over with,” Debra said.
Lori felt exactly the same way.
Chapter Five
For the remainder of the morning, Lori worked with one client after another with barely enough time to go to the bathroom or get a soda from the break room. She normally liked being busy – it made the day go faster – and she especially appreciated it today. She couldn’t keep the shadow things, the Nightway, and the Cabal entirely out of her thoughts, but neither did she obsess over them.
When her last client, an elderly woman who’d just undergone her second hip replacement surgery, had left, she checked the time on her phone and saw it was eleven fifty-six. Almost lunchtime. She grabbed her purse and started to leave the exercise room – where some of the other PTs were still finishing up with clients – but before she’d gotten more than a few steps down the short narrow hallway that led to the front of the facility, she heard Melinda Dixon call her name.
“Lori!”
She stopped walking and closed her eyes.
Stay calm, she told herself and turned around as Melinda caught up to her. Melinda was a woman in her late fifties, tall and thin. Her hair had gone prematurely gray years ago, but she never colored it, and she wore it in a long braid down her back. Like Lori, she wore a short-sleeved smock and blue pants, but instead of sneakers – which the other PTs wore because they were on their feet all day – Melinda always wore black flats. Lori had no idea how Melinda’s feet weren’t killing her all the time. Maybe she regularly visited the foot spa next door.
“Yes?” Lori said, her tone wary.
She’d never gotten along great with Melinda. Get Moving! was Melinda’s practice, and all the other PTs who worked there, Lori included, were her employees. The woman was a good PT, and she ran the practice well. She had a doctorate in physical therapy, while the other PTs – including Lori – only had master’s degrees. Melinda had never come out and said she thought she was better qualified than her employees, but she didn’t have to. The way she treated them made her feelings very clear.
“How did your session with Ms. Foster go today?”
