Shay swung around. "I did nothing wrong."
"Are you sure your employer will believe that when we've pulled our business?"
His threat didn't shock her. It focused her. Get away. Then fight back.
She ran.
Moments later, she was alone in the elevator, headed back downstairs. She stared at the geometric design on the rug until her eyes began to burn. James was right. Eric wasn't going to go away. This would never be over, until she did something about him. Even if it cost her everything.
* * *
"Seriously, that shit is unreal. Sorry."
Shay didn't even look up. The sight before her was so awful she couldn't look away from the reason for the passerby's comment.
Etched into the paint of the driver's door of her car in crude capital lettering were the words DIE CUNT.
Under the parking lot's lighting the jagged words gleamed silvery where the blue paint had been scrapped down to the door's metal.
It was too much. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the insult. All she could think of was that her car had been violated, again, and that she could not afford to erase the damage this time.
She could not drive home like this.
On legs that felt wooden, she stiff-walked her way to the trunk of her car and pulled out the roll of duct tape she kept for emergencies, along with an old map. Within minutes, she had covered the scrawl. Yet it seemed to her as if the hideous words might burn through for all to see.
She sat behind the wheel, staring out at the darkness. Night had fallen with the suddenness of late autumn. It didn't matter. She was blind with rage.
Pick on someone your own size, dickface!
Bullies never chose the strong. They had a mean hunger that could only be fed by taunting the weak. Even after she had forced herself to finish her job, sitting in plain sight all afternoon as if nothing had happened, did she still look like a victim?
The long-ago day came tumbling back into her mind with a clarity that ripped through her blind rage.
When she'd mentioned the skit to James, she hadn't felt a thing. But now her heart accelerated. She closed her eyes. Her hands flexed over the steering wheel as she held on for dear life. She was no longer remembering the past. She had dropped into it.
It was a skit for homecoming weekend. Her junior year. New school. New town. New life. Nine weeks into the semester, she was doing okay. At least, she was not being looked at weirdly, as she had at her former school. She didn't worry about friends yet. The only person who talked to her regularly was the junior varsity team captain, Ned Jackson, who was failing precalculus. Because she wasn't, he'd been paired with her to do in-class practice assignments. Boys made her nervous but Ned didn't seem to notice that she was a girl, so it seemed to be working.
The only time he'd said a personal thing to her was the day before the homecoming game. The school always held a pep rally, he told her, and he was going to be in one of the skits. She should come and see it.
So she went and sat in the bleachers, ignored by anyone who thought enough to even look in her direction.
Midway through the rah-rah speeches and drill-team-led cheers, the skits began. Finally, there was Ned in his football uniform, sitting at a desk before a blackboard. A chill slipped up Shay's skirt as a girl student joined him. She wore jeans and a big baggy sweater, and a fake ponytail hiked so high it look like a horse's tail growing out of the crown of her head.
The snickering began in the audience but Shay didn't really pay much attention to it. Her gaze was glued to the stage. The girl wrote a math problem on the board then stopped to listen as Ned made lame attempts to solve it. Each time he got the answer wrong, the girl got twitchier.
Shay began to fold up inside. They were making fun of her. But that wasn't right. She thought Ned was becoming her friend. How could he betray her like this?
The girl wrote another, easier problem. Ned hammed up the dummy role. As he voiced more wrong answers the girl started to writhe in frustration. When he finally got even 2 plus 2 wrong, the girl suddenly screamed in primal rage, whipped out a giant pair of scissors from behind the chalkboard, and began stabbing the team captain. On cue, the band began to play. It was the music from the shower scene in Psycho, shrieking clarinets punctuating the stabs.
Paralyzed by shock, Shay sat there, her heart pumping so hard her body shook with every beat.
When Ned was sprawled on the floor, the girl stepped forward and cried, "Don't mess with Psycho Shay!"
A blur of faces had turned toward her, many laughing, others staring at her in doubtful surprise or horrified recognition of what the skit meant.
In that instant, shame burned her to the ground. All her mother's efforts and planning and secrecy had come to nothing. Everyone knew!
Someone rapped on her car window.
Shay nearly jumped out of her skin.
Doris Butler was peering in at her, her gaze sharp and mouth primmed. "Are you okay, Ms. Appleton?"
"Yes. Of course." Her words sounded awkward, as if the muscles no longer knew how to work together to form words.
"Very well. Good evening."
Shay watched as Doris moved on toward her own car. She was sweating. Her blouse beneath her jacket was sticking to her back. Her face was damp and her hands were slippery on the wheel. Yet in her core, she felt ice-cold.
She had not gone back to that school. But word always got around. Another school, another revelation. When she begged to leave, her mother lost it. For the first time in two years she had a really good job paying wages that put a decent roof over their heads. She had sacrificed so much. No, everything for her daughter. Shay would just have to find a way to live with what she'd done, to both of them.
After that, the crack that had been there between mother and daughter since the night of the stabbing widened a little more each day.
At eighteen Shay moved out and changed her name legally to one that she hoped would allow her, and her mother, to outrun the past.
Only she hadn't. The past was still ruling her life.
Shay leaned her forehead against the wheel. The joy of the morning had dried up and blown away. She wanted back that rare and precious feeling of happiness in the worst way. The impulse to reach for her phone and call James was strong. He'd given her his number in case of emergency. Didn't this qualify?
Her reach stuttered to a stop just short of her purse. James was new in her life. This might be the one thing too many, even for him. Or perhaps he would come back to Raleigh and confront Eric. He was a police officer. If he assaulted a civilian he'd be in more trouble than the average person. It could ruin his career, his life.
Shay felt the familiar glowing coals of rage kindle to life inside her. It wasn't a new feeling. Yet this time the fury felt more focused. She wasn't a helpless fourteen-year-old. She'd come through that, and a lot more since. She knew exactly who her enemy was, and why.
She'd let Eric's rat-bastard bullying and abuse go on for too long. She'd told him it was over but he refused to accept that.
Eric had made it clear he thought he was calling the shots. The phone calls, now the damage to her car. He was playing mind games with her. And it was escalating. Only a fool would think he would stop now.
But this time she wasn't going to ask for help. She wasn't going to be the cause of any more destroyed lives, except maybe her own. She just needed to think through the plan forming in her mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Shay let out a long breath as the elevator doors closed on the top floor of Halifax Bank. She had just lit a match to her reputation, and possibly her job future. Shay smiled at her metallic reflection in the doors. It felt glorious.
She'd been waiting in his outer office when. Cadwallader Jones, president of the bank, arrived this morning. She had expected to wait hours to see him but he ushered her right in.
"What can I do for you, Ms. Appleton?"
Shay lifted her chin, her cheeks burning as she made eye contact with the man into whose hands she was about to place her future. "I'm here to report systemic sexual harassment by one of your employees. And, I suspect, misuse of Halifax Bank funds."
Cadwallader Jones blinked behind his glasses. "You should take a seat, Ms. Appleton. Do you mind if I record our conversation?"
Shay hesitated only a second. She was about to tell the truth. It couldn't hurt her more than the lies Eric meant to spread.
He called in his secretary.
In the beginning, Cadwallader Jones listened to her with a neutral expression, neither commenting nor reacting. But she noticed a slight tightening of his mouth as she told him about Eric courting her a year ago. There was a banking policy against interpersonal relations between upper management and employees who reported to them. The story of their illicit trip to the Caymans on the company's dime briefly widened his eyes. As she ticked off their other travels, financed by the bank or bank customers, his eyes narrowed to slits. Then she moved on to the sexual harassment charge.