sted, she should be able to think clearly.
After buying gas, lunch and paying for a parking ticket, she only had seventeen dollars and seventy cents left. Her payday was on the fifteenth, five days from now. She should watch her money carefully. Maybe she shouldn’t drive far away from the office so she wouldn’t burn money on tolls and gas. And maybe she should just eat cookies from the vending machine instead of grabbing lunch from the deli. Anything to survive until she received her paycheque.
And this time, she would have the full amount of the money she’d earned for herself. No more sharing it with her drunken father. Her father had lived on disability cheques since he’d been injured from construction work years ago. He’d become a bitter man ever since her mother had died and everything had pretty much gone downhill from there.
Her father blew his money on booze. They wouldn’t have been able to pay the bills or buy groceries if she hadn’t got a job and chipped in. She didn’t mind doing that. Her father was the only one she had left in the world. She loved him, even though he was a mean drunk and hadn’t been a father to her ever since she had turned ten. Lately, his violence had escalated from shouting to a beating when she hadn’t give him booze money. The final straw had come when he’d swindled her meagre savings. Bea had planned to use the money to return to college, but her father had a new pill habit to feed. He was addicted to painkillers, aside from his alcoholism. They had had a fight and it had ended up with him, high as kite, chasing her across the lawn with a baseball bat, cursing every obscenity known to mankind. That was when Bea had realised she couldn’t live like that anymore.
One day, he might have slipped and she could have ended up in the county morgue.
While the cops had arrested him for assault, she had packed all her belongings and had driven away in her van. If she had stayed, nothing would have ever changed. In the following twenty-four hours, her father would have called her from jail, begging to bail him out and promising to change his behaviour, and she would’ve been riddled with guilt until she had done what he had asked. Things would have returned to normal for a couple of days until the addiction would have kicked in and her father had got hold of some booze. Then the vicious cycle would have started all over again.
Bea shuddered as she towelled her hair dry.
She couldn’t go back to her old life. Things were bad now, but once she got her pay cheque, she could afford a cheap motel room and proper meals. She would sort everything out once she got cash in her hands.
As she slipped into her jogging pants and a comfy shirt, she remembered that she still had Alex’s wallet. Inside it was a few hundred dollars. Would Alex mind if she borrowed sixty bucks to rent a nice motel room for the night? She was tired of sleeping in the cold and uncomfortable back seat of her van. She could keep the van warm, but that would burn gas, and she couldn’t really afford that either.
No. That’s crazy.
Bea shook her thoughts away. She couldn’t take her boss’ money. She must return the wallet to its rightful owner. Maybe he would show up at work tomorrow and she could put all this craziness behind her. She could pretend that she had never pulled him out of the Harlem River and she had never seen him transform into a lion.
Yeah. That’s what I should do.
Four days aren’t terribly long. I can totally make it.
Bea was stuffing her dirty clothes into the bag when she heard the bathroom door creak open. She glanced at her watch. Jeannie, the owner and trainer of this place, must have come to warn her that she wanted to lock up for the night. The gym closed at eleven.
“Jeannie?” Bea called.
No answer.
Bea tied her shoe laces and craned her neck past the stalls. The narrow hallway to the door was empty. She frowned. Who the hell had come in just then? Had she misheard? Bea turned back to retrieve her bag. Her face instantaneously hit a solid wall of chest. She squealed.
“Ssh!”
Her eyes widened. “Mr Larousse!”
A pair of strong arms steadied her on her feet. Even though he had dressed immaculately, Alex looked worn out. There were dark shadows underneath his eyes. His hair was tousled. “Bea.” Even his voice sounded tired.
“How did you get in here?” She glanced at the door. “How did you find me? This is the women’s bathroom.”
“So I noticed.”
Bea fought an unbearable urge to hug him. Luckily, she was able to restrain herself at the last second. That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Hugging her boss as if he were her best friend. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Bea. Are you finishing up?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I’m going to escort you home.”
“Home?”
“It’s almost eleven. You should be home at this hour. It’s not safe.”
Right. Problem was she didn’t have a home to go to. “Yeah, I’m just about to leave.”
“I’ll escort you.”