More like a bullet that took a chunk of bone with it.
Willow swallowed back bile at the unbidden memory of agonizing pain, hoping nothing of those feelings showed when she said in a low, soft tone, “The past is over, Tim. It’s not something I want to talk about or dwell on. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go dry off and change clothes before meeting with Jade.”
Jade Lambert was the community center’s aquatic director, and their boss. She was a pleasant woman in her mid-fifties, calm in a crisis, and certified in first aid, CPR, and AED. She was a rock and Willow trusted the other woman with her life, because Jade—real name unknown—was in the same boat as Willow. Yet while Jade’s new life was permanent, Willow still had hopes her own was not.
Tim opened his mouth, paused, then said, “Yeah, okay, then. Just make sure you have food in your stomach before you take those aspirin.”
Her tummy rumbled at the reference to food. “My stomach is already ahead of you.” Willow grinned, doing her best to ignore Tim’s heated gaze. His unwanted and unwavering interest had begun to rattle nerves already stretched too thin between her forced exile and sleepless nights. “See you later.”
“Yeah. See you Friday,” Tim said as she quickly headed toward the woman’s locker room and out of his sight.
Willow waved a hand in confirmation before stepping into the solitude of the room and padded over to her assigned locker. Everything would be better after speaking with Jade, especially when combined with the burger and fries—long denied by her rigid diet—that awaited her at Chili’s down the street.
She worked the combination lock automatically, thinking ahead to a quick shower to rid her skin of the salt from the pool, followed by a nice, juicy hamburger. Focused as she was on the future, she had to blink several times at the sight inside her locker before it registered.
There, hanging from the top hook by their ribbons, was a brand-new pair of light pink pointe shoes, the type of shoe Willow hadn’t seen, much less worn, in over six months. Her first reaction was the curling of her toes in horror at the remembrance of standing en pointe, or on her toes, for extended periods of time.
Her next reaction was a visceral what the hell?
A slip of yellow paper was attached to the ribbons with a scrawled message. Miss these? I know I missed you.
She backed up a step, landing with little grace on one of the hard, white plastic benches scattered in front of the wall of lockers, her hip protesting at the jarring movement. Heart dancing a frantic jig in her chest, she scanned the small, narrow room. Across from the lockers were four empty toilet stalls and two shower stalls with their mold-resistant plastic curtains pushed open. At the far end of the room was a vanity with two sinks. The second exit, the one that led to an employee break room, was actually behind the wall of sinks, the backside forming a sort of entryway into the room.
Someone could easily be hiding around that corner, secretly laughing in demented glee at her reaction to their “present” or waiting to pounce on her as she exited the locker room.
Tensing, Willow held her breath, listening for breathing, or shuffling, the movement of fabric. Anything. With all the tile in the room, even the slightest noise echoed. Yet after a minute of hearing nothing but her own racing heart, she gave up.
If someone were spying on her and wanted to harm her physically, wouldn’t they’ve done so by now? If the goal was simply to freak her out, then kudos, because mission definitely accomplished. But if the individual who left the shoes wanted to immobilize her with fear and then attack, she needed to get her feet moving. But she couldn’t get past the tense of the verb in the message.
If someone missed watching her dance, wouldn’t they have written I miss you rather than I missed you? It was the missed part combined with the shoes that made her queasy. To her frazzled state, the past tense meant the shoes were from the same person who shot her that horrible day four months ago—the day her life was saved, but when everything she knew and loved had been ripped from her grasp.
Based on the evidence in her locker, the Victim Witness Protection Program wasn’t as secure as Rome made it out to be. She needed to get dressed and out of this room before whoever left those shoes decided to come back.
At that potential threat, Willow galvanized into action. Not bothering to change, she yanked jeans from the locker and tugged them on over her swim bottoms. The skirt of the bottoms, chosen to help hide the scar on her hip, made zipping impossible so she left it undone and threw on the T-shirt and lightweight cardigan she’d worn in. Grabbing her sneakers and purse, careful not to touch the hanging slippers, she slipped into the shoes sans socks. Not the most comfortable, but nothing of what she currently wore was, what with the dampness of her suit seeping into her outer clothing.