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“Perfect! Let’s just give him a call and—”
“No!” she shrieks and immediately covers her mouth. She pulls me back towards the bathrooms. It’s at this point that I should ex
tricate myself from her grip. After all, this is my first day at my job, and the sooner I’m back in my cubicle, the higher my chances are of actually having a job when I wake up tomorrow. Still, I’m a pushover, and I allow this frantic woman to pull me into a handicapped bathroom that’s gender neutral. As soon as she locks the door behind us, she explains, “My ex is the one who did this to me.”
At this point she pulls her jacket off, revealing a sleeveless blouse and arms covered in bruises and scratches. This brings my focus back to her face. In the glaring fluorescent light of the bathroom, the dark spots on her jaw and around her left eye shine through despite the cosmetics that have been so meticulously applied.
“And he’s a cop?” I can see the problem now.
She nods.
I’m rolling this information around in my head. It clashes with the reason I’m here in the first place, and the workplace I really should be getting back to. But I can’t just walk out of this bathroom without doing something for this poor girl. “And you think I can help how?”
“I need to get out of here.”
“That’s easy enough. I’ll walk you to your car and then—”
She’s shaking her head so that her blonde curls bounce over her face. “It’s not that easy. There are cameras everywhere. He followed me here, so I’m sure he’s got the security guards looking out for me. All he has to do is tell them that I’m some criminal, and they’ll all be on the lookout for me.”
Without thinking about what it will look like, I glance down at my phone. Even if I make a beeline for the parking garage and catch all the green lights back to the office, I still might not make it before everyone is back from lunch.
She shakes her head and looks to the floor. “If you don’t have time, you can just leave me here. To die.”
I can’t say that I’m much a fan of her tone. It’s the same sort of passive-aggressiveness that caused me to leave my one and only long-term girlfriend. But whereas Bethany would refuse to move on for days if I set her off, this woman is quick to realize her mistake.
“I’m sorry,” she says, closing the gap that has widened between us as we leaned against opposite walls of the single-occupancy bathroom. “It’s just that I’m used to guys not caring about what happens to me. I guess that’s where that snarky attitude came from.” She places her hand on my forearm. “The truth is that if you don’t help me, right here and right now, I don’t think anyone else will.” Her hand grazes down the length of my arm until her fingers caress mine. “So will you?”
Chapter 3
Kate
When I look around the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Eyes shining. Make-up ruined. Terrified out of my mind. And across from me, my possible savior. A hapless bystander that I’ve dragged into my mess. I can’t be sure, but in his suit and tie, he looks professional. Perhaps even on the wealthy side. The way that he’s keeping a respectful distance from me, even in this confining bathroom, also makes him the image of trustworthiness. While my reflection appears only pitiful.
“If we’re going to do this, we should probably know each other’s names,” he says. “Mine’s Brad. What’s yours?”
“Kate.” I lick at my lips before biting them in a way that might be sexy if we weren’t hiding in a bathroom that smells of stale urine. It’s not an action that’s meant to be intentionally sexual either. It’s just a nervous tic. One that Trevor always accused me of using to flirt with any other male I might come across. A tic that cost me many bruises and swollen lips.
“Okay, Kate,” he begins with. “So let me get this straight. You’re running from your ex-boyfriend. Who is violent. And who also happens to be a cop. Is that right?”
I give a quick nod.
“And if he catches you, it's going to be bad. Really bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he replies.
“For dragging you into this. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just running and then I saw you. You looked nice. I mean, you certainly seem nice. And now you’re involved and I don’t know what he’s going to do if he catches us together.”
“Oh,” Brad mutters. “I didn’t even think about that part.”
“So what are we going to do?” I ask in a shaky voice.
“We’re going to….” he says but then stalls out, like a plane climbing too high too fast and losing its grip on the sky. After a deep breath, he tries again. “We’re going to get out this bathroom and find the emergency stairwell. There shouldn’t be too many cameras down there.”
“But what if there are?”
He looks around frantically, as if the answer is going to jump up out of the toilet. His eyes land on the shopping bag in his hands. He holds it out between us as with excitement, like he’s finally remembered the answer to the hardest question on a test.
