Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(82)

No. Not an option. She’d seen what she had seen. She’d surfed on rivers of blood. She had to face it, own up to it, and deal.

“I cannot go back out there,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Marla’s face tightened. “You’re running out on me in the middle of one of the most important events of the year because you slept with the wrong guy? For God’s sake, Becca! Everyone’s done that a time or two! Get over it! Grow up!”

I didn’t sleep with that slimy son of a bitch. I would rather die.

She wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs. She swallowed the impulse down, and it bumped like a big rock in her throat.

She both liked and respected Marla. Despite her sharp tongue and her bitchiness, she was protective and supportive, even maternal to her younger employee. Becca genuinely valued Marla’s good opinion.

But at this point, she had two options. Marla could think that Becca was a weak-willed, scared slut, or else she could think that Becca was a deluded paranoid nutcase. Both options were painful.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, meaning it with every cell of her body. “I have my reasons. I just can’t do it.”

Marla’s eyes narrowed, and opened her mouth. At that moment, another woman came into the bathroom and headed for one of the stalls. Marla waited until the stall door clicked shut, and then leaned forward and whispered savagely into Becca’s ear.

“I will give you five minutes to rethink that decision. If I don’t see you out in the Crystal Ballroom after that amount of time, I’ll consider that your letter of resignation, effective immediately. Goodbye, Becca. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.”

She left, heels clicking angrily on the gleaming marble tiles.

Becca clutched the marble sink, white-knuckled, as the shape of her world shifted. Hope, daydreams, expectations suddenly, brutally readjusted.

Fired. So. On top of rape, torture and murder, she got to worry about how she was going to pay her rent, too. And Carrie’s. And Josh’s.

She tried to comfort herself. It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose. There was unemployment. She’d stood on that slow-moving line before. If she didn’t go out and work the banquet, she lost her job, yes. But if she did go out, she’d get dead. Dead girls held down no jobs.

She shook with ironic laughter, doubling over with her hand on her still fluttering belly. Gee. Some comfort. A real winner, that.

OK. Getting fired was definitely her clue to scram. She squelched her fear and shock, and looked out the bathroom door, looking to the right and the left. No one. She sprinted on tiptoe down the corridor towards the administrative offices at the end of the wing.

A quickie trip to her office to collect her purse, cell and keys. She tossed her coat on. Put up the hood. God, how she wished she’d bleached her hair, as Nick had begged her. Why had she been so stubborn? Why was she such a fluff-headed dork? Why?

She lingered for one wistful moment in the office she had shared with Shay, Marla’s administrative assistant. Where she’d worked so hard for three years. All that effort, up in smoke. Marla wasn’t going to give her a reference after tonight. She was back to square one, professionally. Waitressing, catering gigs, temping. No benefits, no health coverage, no future.

Concentrate on staying alive, birdbrain. She pried the keys to the office off her chain, and left them on Shay’s desk with a note of explanation and farewell. She flipped off the lights, pushed the door open and peeked out into the hall.

She ducked immediately back inside, her heart thudding madly against her rib cage. He was there. Right there, less than ten yards from her office door. In the second it had taken to register who he was, he’d been too busy arguing with a woman to see the door crack open.

A dark-haired woman in a long raincoat. Not Helen Mathes.

She closed the door, very gently, and locked the knob. Trying to breathe, to think, over the deafening thumps of her heartbeat. Her insides were icy-cold mush, getting mushier with each successive adrenaline surge. She cringed against the door, tears squeezing out of tight shut eyes. Wishing she carried a gun like Nick. That she could snap necks, slice throats, blast off asses, if anyone messed with her.

Basically, she hoped they would just go away, and give her an opening to flee. Like the cowering crybaby that she was.

Click. A door opening. Click. Light suddenly flooded in from the adjoining office. Marla’s office. Her boss had left it unlocked. The connecting door between the offices was yawning wide open.

Oh, Jesus. She was right in their line of sight as they burst in the door, already arguing.

“…the hell you think you’re doing here, anyway! Have you gone completely insane?” Mathes hissed.

“But they sent us all the data on the blood and tissue typing!” The woman’s voice quavered, verging on tears. “You’ve seen it! The girl is a perfect match for—”

“And you trust their doctors? Their paperwork? Their lab equipment? For the fees we’re charging, I cannot have the slightest doubt about any of the details. We test, we check, we double check, and then we triple-check. Is that clear?”

Becca couldn’t breathe. Her mouth shook. She was afraid that if she unlocked her lungs, and tried to suck in air, they would convulse, make a sound like a barking sob. She couldn’t risk it. Air could wait.

She slid, very slowly, her back against the door. Trying not to rustle, not to squeak. Until she was down, behind the water cooler, curled up, trying to be as small as possible.