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Chapter 1
Things changed the day I killed my boss. I was trying so hard not to.
He died quickly from cardiac arrest in front of a dozen witnesses in
the glassed-in fishbowl of a conference room at Wolfe, Savage and
Steele, the law firm where we worked. I never touched him physically.
I didn’t have to. His name was Carroll Caine.
The Office Manager’s death interrupted an extended yelling session
aimed at me. Caine was a short, square-built man with small bulging,
blue eyes, a permanently red face and
silver hair, cut brush short. For some reason,
he had singled me out for verbal abuse almost from his first day on
the job. He retired from the Navy as a Warrant Officer. Law firms
like to hire former non-coms on the theory that they work well with a
formal chain of command. But for Caine, taking orders from civilian
lawyers he didn’t respect chafed him like a sandpaper jockstrap.
He took it out on his subordinates. I was a favorite target.
Understanding why Caine attacked me so often didn’t protect me when
he did.
My other co-workers looked away in embarrassment or relief that, at
least for the moment, Caine wasn’t singling them out. Not Francine,
the woman sitting next to me in the conference room. She was petite,
blonde and eager to score points with Caine by digging up the
slightest hint of an error on my part.
Caine picked a bad day to stand over me and settle in for an extended
rant. My Aunt Bess had simply disappeared six months earlier and
without her, I had no one. The pain of her
loss had retreated to a dull ache most days, but sometimes it flared
up into a sharp pain of grief and confusion.
I focused all my attention on breathing slowly and letting his word
roll over me.
I huddled in my chair, trying to make myself invisible, staring down
at the pad of paper in front of me, a pencil gripped in my hand.
Caine paused for breath as if savoring looking down at me. He leaned
in close. “You’d already be out of here if I didn’t suspect you
might have a hidden disability and you’d sue all our asses. Is that
it, Angie?”
“Look at me!”
I slowly looked up and met his eyes. Bad idea. The urge to let loose
the anger that built in every cell of my body. I blinked when a cloud
of black dots like a swarm of tiny insects filled my vision, swirling
between Caine and Francine. I glanced around. Most people stared at
the table or Caine. No one else gave any sign of seeing the whirling
dots.
Great Angie, you’re hallucinating, just what I need.
“Keeping something up your sleeve, Angie? Maybe you lied on your
employment application?” His spit landed on my face. Droplets hit
my glasses. I wanted to wipe them off, but I didn’t move a muscle.
I could smell Caine’s rage under the Bay Rum aftershave and
lingering cigar smoke on his breath.
Something inside me settled. Everything seemed sharper, clearer and
despite the black cloud of dots passing between Francine and Caine.
It couldn’t be real. A voice somewhere in the mists of early life
echoed in my head.
Stop the heart.
Deadly calm washed over me. I felt myself starting to shake as if
there was an earthquake. There was not. Yet an inner vibration shook
me physically like the roars I heard when my aunt took me to the Lion
House at the San Francisco Zoo at feeding time.
I focused on Caine. Not on his face, on his chest. Every sound in the
room fell away. I found his heart. I raised my hand to point at him,
still holding the pencil.
He straightened up. A slow smile on his face told me he was hoping he
had made me mad enough to do something stupid. He had.
“Ya gonna hit me, Angie?” he asked.
“No.” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so calm.
Now.
I snapped my arm a few inches back as if I
meant to throw the pencil at him. Caine instinctively rocked back on
his heels, but there was no escape for him. Energy tore through me.
My fingers tingled as I completed the short gesture toward his chest.
I sensed the familiar but unknown force piercing him like a tool. It
reached for his heart and grabbed it. And squeezed.
The pencil broke in half. The eraser end bounced off the table and
fell on the rug. I lowered my arm, feeling his heart, frozen in a
spasm as if my hand really was squeezing it. The inner shaking
stopped and I took a deep breath, suddenly, oddly at peace.
Caine’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor. He twitched a
few times. I don’t know how, but I could feel his life leave his
body. He wasn’t coming back.
I stood up and backed away as two co-workers rushed past me to
attempt CPR. They knelt beside him, but I knew they wouldn’t be
able to revive him. I jammed my hands into my pockets and finally let
go of the top half of the pencil. I kept my head down because I
couldn’t help myself from smiling. The roaring inside me was gone.
The swarm of black particles was gone too.
I took my hands out of my pockets and saw a couple of wood slivers
had pierced my skin. I was bleeding. It didn’t even hurt. I didn’t
feel anything but relief at the sudden quiet when Caine shut up.
Then the fear hit.
Everything I learned growing up told me I should go home, grab my
getaway pack and leave town. It would be hard to run without my aunt
organizing our escape.
I didn’t want to move again. I loved San Francisco. The
rent-controlled apartment was my true refuge with my grandfather’s
books lining almost every wall.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to run. Maybe no one noticed how Caine had
died. People drew back to the edges of the room while efforts to
revive him got more frantic. No one paid the slightest bit of
attention to me. It wasn’t as if I’d physically touched the old
man. Maybe no one would blame me.
Scratch that.
As I surreptitiously dabbed Caine’s saliva off my face and glasses
with the cuff of my long-sleeved blouse, I raised my head and looked
straight into the eyes of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He
twirled a pair of sunglasses in his hand and continued to stare right
at me.
He had a tousled mop of sun-streaked light brown hair. He wore a tan
suit about the same shade as his hair and a light blue shirt and gold
and darker blue striped tie. His angelic face, even features and
sensual lips seemed familiar. Maybe I’d seen him in one of those
semi-porn underwear ads—the kind where you don’t look closely at
the model’s face because you’re too busy checking out that
impossibly lithe and muscular body. He leaned against the
receptionist’s desk as if he owned it, as
if he owned any place he stood simply by standing there.
He stowed his glasses in his jacket pocket and raised a blond eyebrow
at me as if asking a question with luminous blue eyes.
The receptionist, a sixty-something retired airline stewardess with a
British accent, had already called 911. Now she leaned over her
counter at the perfect angle to check out Underwear Model Man’s ass
at the same time that she watched the drama around our co-workers
struggling to revive Caine.
Underwear Model Man held my gaze and nodded at me. I flinched in
surprise. He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes crinkled as if we had
a secret understanding. A deep feeling of dread settled like lead in
my gut. This couldn’t be good.
I made it past the reception desk and nearly to the elevator when
Underwear Model Man fell into step beside me. He was taller than me.
I’m five ten, he must have been around six feet.
“Meet me for coffee after work,” he whispered, leaning close. He
smelled of Irish Spring soap. “There’s someone you need to talk
to. Someone you have a lot in common with. You won’t regret it.”
I kept moving without answering. Every woman in the place stared at
this guy. He was that magnetic. The last thing I wanted at this
particular moment was anyone paying attention to me.
But the stranger followed me and held the elevator door while I got
in. “Seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to an offer that
would get you out of this...place.” He didn’t have to say “This
hellhole,” it was implicit in his tone. I couldn’t disagree with
him. The only thing I liked about Wolfe, Savage and
Steele was the paycheck.
“An offer I can’t refuse, huh?” I snapped at him. “That
turned out so well for the guy who found the horse’s head in his
bed.”
The man chuckled. “No dead horses, I promise. But your skills
deserve better.”
“You know nothing about my skills,” I
kept my voice low.
“Don’t I?”
Francine and three other women slipped past Underwear Model Man into
the elevator with me. They all stared at and me, then back at him
again.
He let go of the door and it closed before I could say another word.
An older woman whose name I didn’t know commented on how fine that
young man was. Then the elevator bell dinged for our floor and we all
filed out in silence. No one mentioned Caine.
Underwear Model Man was leaning against the building waiting for me
when I went out the front door. He’d taken off his tie and it was
hard not to look at the tanned skin and a curl of golden chest hair
showing where the top button of his shirt was open.
“Hi, I’m Chad Falconer.”
At least I didn’t have to keep calling him Underwear Model Man.
Automatically, I responded, “Angie Faust.” I instantly regretted
that. Now he knew my name.
I needed to get away fast. Men like him don’t follow women like me
home from work without some agenda. Whatever his reason it didn’t
involve flowers, dinner dates and happy
endings. Maybe he sensed how desperately I missed my aunt. Predators
can read body language and track wounded animals.
“Whatever it is you’re selling, I can’t afford it.”
He grinned as if I’d said something terribly witty. “Fair
enough,” he said, falling into an easy pace beside me. Chad
persisted, walking closer and tilting his head down to get my
attention.
“Whoever you are and whatever you want, I don’t trust you,” I
said.
“The only reason you should listen to me at all is that you and I
seem to be the only two people who understood what was going on this
morning.”
I stopped so fast he almost ran into me.
“My boss had a stroke or heart attack while he was yelling at me.
He was an old man. He had a strenuous day of verbally abusing people.
His heart just gave out.”
“It doesn’t usually happen that way though, does it?” Chad
said. “I don’t know about you, but the people I want to see die
usually go on to live a disgustingly healthy life of making everyone
miserable and die peacefully in bed at 95.”
“You can’t blame me for what happened,” I concluded, my voice
wavering a little.
He seemed to understand because he stepped
away a foot or so. “Believe me, Angie,
blame is the last word I would use to describe you or anything you
do.” He stepped in front of me to stop for a moment but he held out
his hands out with palms up. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Maybe. Will you let me alone if I do?”
“Absolutely. The only thing I ask is that you come with me to a
coffee shop and meet someone who understands your great gift.”
“Gift?” I snorted a small burst of laughter at that thought.
“Seriously, it’s a public place, a café not far from here. No
pressure.”
I stared at him. I never admitted that I was responsible for the
violent things that happened around me. My aunt and I rarely spoke
about it. “Where is this place?”
“It’s an easy walk. Come on, it will only take half an hour of
your time.”
I admit I was curious and absurdly relieved that he didn’t seem to
be selling anything or whipping out a chloroformed rag and forcing me
into a car. But mainly I agreed because of a vain hope that there
might actually be a way to cope with
whatever the hell it was that I had been fighting my whole life.
