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A nod. “He drove me here. And he’s driving me straight home.”
“Good.” Another squeeze of her hands. “I’ll visit you tomorrow. In the meantime, just rest. Don’t think. Don’t plan. Just let yourself feel what you need to feel. If your parents agree, I’m sure Dr. Hawke will see you right away. She’s a compassionate and understanding woman. You can trust her to listen and to help you.”
“Okay,” Shannon said in a small voice.
“I’ll walk you to the car.”
Julie led Shannon through the gym and to the waiting chauffeur. She wouldn’t let Shannon put herself in harm’s way.
But Julie herself was another story. No one was going to hurt this wonderful, joyous young girl, strip her of her hopes and dreams, and get away with it.
She was going to get the proof she needed and lock the bastard away.
Alexei took a final drag of his cigarette and then tossed the butt out his car window. He’d kept the souped-up black Civic idling in neutral so he could take off at a moment’s notice if he was approached. Hands on the steering wheel, he leaned forward, peering inside the gym’s bay window. His stare was fixed on the glass wall of the small back office, giving him a clear view of the occupants inside. The little gymnast was shaking with sobs and talking to Julie Forman. There was no doubt that she’d told her. The trainer was hugging and consoling her. He couldn’t make out much else, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to know what was happening.
Shannon Barker had spilled her guts to Forman. All that mattered now was what that nosy bitch planned to do about it.
He ducked down as the two of them walked to the front door. Another hug, and the teenage girl left the gym and gingerly slid into the backseat of the waiting Town Car. The driver eased out of the parking lot.
Alexei followed close behind. He had to make sure that the kid was going straight home like a good girl. After that, Slava was expecting a phone call. Alexei would report in while he drove back from the kid’s house. But he knew what his boss would say.
Keep a close eye on Julie Forman. And make sure her mouth stays shut.
Julie went through the motions for the next few days, biding her time and planning her course of action. Shannon was in therapy. She’d be okay—eventually. She was an astonishingly strong young woman. And Julie wasn’t about to screw up the girl’s life—or maybe even threaten it—by giving in to the burning urge to beat the shit out of Jim Robbins. What she had to do was quietly find the evidence she needed, and then use it to destroy his career—and him.
So she waited.
She forced herself to go through her regular days, planning to leave several days between Shannon’s meltdown and her own purposeful intervention. Let Jim think he was safe. Let him figure that Shannon had locked herself in her bedroom and was curled up in a small ball of self-pity, sobbing buckets of tears. As long as he believed that she was keeping her mouth shut, he’d relax.
And that’s when Julie would act.
On the day in question, Julie worked her regular hours and then headed home. She listened to Lisa’s amusing stories of the Rich Ladies’ Club, as she called the gym members she catered to each day. Then, as the evening approached, she told Lisa she was going out to the convenience store and running a few other errands.
She didn’t take her car. She took the bus. That way, if someone was following her, they’d have trouble picking her out if she exited with a group of people.
The expansive Apex Center—where Shannon did her hard-core Olympic training with Yuri Varennikov—was fairly quiet when Julie arrived. There were, of course, some athletes training, but today was Jim’s day off. She’d made sure of that. She walked through the front door, waving at the security guard. He waved back, recognizing her from the many times she’d been here to watch Shannon run through her dizzying workouts.
Once inside, Julie headed down to the hal
lway to where the business office was located. She didn’t have the skills to hack into their computer system, but Jim wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist. Hopefully, he would file his records in an old-fashioned file cabinet, rather than scan and save them electronically. There wouldn’t be anything overt, obviously, but Julie was willing to bet she could find something incriminating—even the tiniest scrap of paper alluding to “special” transactions he’d made, whether through a doctor, a pharmacist, or some other scummy medical products dealer.
Jim wasn’t a professional drug dealer. Dollars to donuts, he’d be sloppy enough to make a mistake. And she was going to find it.
She waited in an alcove until she saw Martha Peele, former Olympian and owner of the Olympic Center, walk out of the office and head down the hall to the ladies’ room. Then, she peeked through the pane of glass on the door.
The room was dark. Julie turned the knob.
Unlocked.
She had to work fast—before Martha returned to finish her work and lock up for the night.
Julie yanked open the file drawers, looking only for the ones with labels on them indicating they belonged to Jim. Most of the papers inside were reports on his athletes, recommendations for future training, and injury treatment regimens. Nothing unusual—except that a half dozen of the athletes’ reports had little red stickers in the upper right-hand corner.
Weird.
Just in case that was in some way significant, Julie held on to the files that held those stickered-reports. The rest of the files she returned to the drawers.
As she was putting back the last of them, her knuckles brushed up against a raised flat surface way in the back of the drawer—a raised surface that moved at her touch. Gripping it with her fingers, she pulled it out.
