Her eyes shot to the rearview mirror. Behind her, a woman in a minivan was looking as stressed as anybody who no doubt had a carload of kids, too many appointments, and no privacy in the bathroom would be.
Cait hit the gas and began the ascent, giving herself all kinds of pep talk. But as she got closer and closer to the top floor, her body was flooded with no. Which was really pretty crazy. Again, it was broad daylight, and people were all over the place, getting in and out of cars. No isolation, no darkness.
“Nope. Not doing this.”
Wrenching the wheel to the side, she rerouted, heading for the exit arrows that would ultimately take her down instead of up.
She had to use all her self-control to keep from punching the accelerator and going all Jeff Gordon on the escape.
At the bottom, she presented her ticket to the woman in the kiosk and began to explain to her adrenal gland that she was about to get out of here. Really. Like, for sure—
“Wait a minute,” the ticket taker said. “Did you just come in? Or am I getting another misread?”
“I, ah—I forgot my phone. Have to go home.”
The woman batted the air in front of her. “Oh, honey, I know all about that. You go through. There’s a minimum of an hour, but we’ll just pretend you were never here.”
Amen to that. “Thank you so much. It means … a lot.”
The ticket taker beamed like doing a good deed had made her day.
And didn’t that make Cait feel like crap about lying—but was she really going to explain why she was panicking?
And what do you know, it looked like God Himself approved of her decision to leave her car on the street—twenty yards past the garage entrance, there was a vacant metered space. Backing the Lexus in, she grabbed her purse and checked her new hair in the mirror.
Wow. Even after a two-hour painting class and a breezy, slightly humid day? The stuff was hanging like a champ, the color glowing, the layers bringing out the natural curl.
As scrambled as she was inside, it seemed bizarre that her image was so collected.
Getting out, she locked up and found—bonus—that there were twenty-three minutes left on the meter—so she only had to put one dollar and seventy-five cents on her credit card.
“Once more with feeling,” she said as she walked toward the Palace Theatre’s sign.
As she went along, she fussed with her yoga pants and her loose J.Crew barn coat. Chances were good G.B. would be in something casual, right? No way they would make him practice in a tuxedo.
Crossing over that mosaic stretch in the pavement, she opened the door to the foyer. The first thing she smelled was floor cleaner, and over in the corner, there was a polisher plugged into an outlet, standing at attention as if ready to be called back into service.
“Careful,” a man in a navy blue uniform said as he came out of the lobby. “Just finished waxing it.”
“Thanks.” She hiked up her purse on her shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you. But I’m supposed to be meeting someone here? I’m a little late—”
“Yes, you are.”
Cait turned. It was the receptionist from the night before, the one from the glass office who’d lost it all over G.B. Dressed in something short and tight, she was propping open the door of that staff-only corridor next to will-call—and the good news was, she didn’t appear to be as angry as she had been, but she wasn’t any sort of Suzy Sunshine, either.
Matter of fact, that expression of haughtiness and superiority rubbed Cait like barbed wire.
“Follow me,” the woman said in a bored voice.
You know, you had to wonder why people did jobs they hated, Cait thought as she headed across the slippery floor.
Although in this economy, you took what you got, she supposed as she stepped through into the corridor.
“He’s very busy, you know,” the receptionist announced as she strode off like something was on fire down the hall. “G.B. is a very busy guy.”
Then why did he ask me to come, Cait thought dryly. “I can imagine.”
“He’s the most talented one here. But then, he works so hard.”
“Uh-huh.”
By this time, they were already passing by the glass office, the receptionist’s high heels making like a snare drum—to the point where you had to wonder how she stayed upright.
Thank God for flats. And the gym.
As they went deeper and deeper into the theater complex, things began to clutter the hallway, a controlled chaos of props, stray chairs, and lighting equipment taking up space as the corridor widened. Double doors began to crop up with signs like REHEARSAL I and MUSIC III mounted over them, and then a fleet of bulletin boards appeared, one every ten feet or so, their faces covered with schedules, notices, ads for take-out places.
Suddenly, the receptionist with the attitude disorder stopped short with no notice. As she pivoted on her stillies, she smiled with enough condescension to strip paint off a car door. “You can’t go any farther—they’re doing a read-through onstage. But I’ll let him know you’re here.”
As she sauntered off, her chin was up, her body moving with a sinuous strut—like she was used to being stared at.
“Wow,” Cait muttered as she leaned in and checked out the nearest bulletin board. “I can so see why they hired that for reception.”
But at least how the woman behaved was her own issue. And with any luck, Cait would never have to see her again.
Lifting a production schedule out of the way, she eyed a flyer for a Chinese place, and then a B.C. comic strip that made her smile, and … a couple of business cards from a psychic down on Trade Street.
For no good reason, she thought of the vibe from the night before as she’d run for that elevator.
Funny, there had been two times in her life when she’d been as afraid as that. One had been a couple of summers ago, when she’d been waterskiing on Saratoga Lake and had gone outside the boat wake just as they were heading into a turn. Momentum being what it was, she had shot forward, her speed overtaking her skill in the work of a moment. When she’d lost her balance, the initial impact had been so violent, it had felt as though she’d crashed into pavement—and then things had gotten nasty. The skis had popped off her feet in a messy fashion, twisting her ankles, wrenching her in midair as she had bounced like a skipping stone across the water’s surface.
The PFD had kept her from sinking when things had eventually slowed down, but she’d ended up facedown in the water. Stunned, in pain, unable to coordinate her arms or legs, she had opened her mouth for air and gotten nothing of the sort.
A friend had dived in at just that second and rolled her over in the nick of time.
The terror had come that night. Lying in a bed at that stuffy cabin she and Teresa had rented for the week, she had passed out from pain meds, discomfort, and exhaustion—only to wake up screaming in panic.
The dream had been that she was trapped on her stomach, and instead of help coming and flipping her over for air, she’d breathed in water until she was choking, drowning … dying.
Same sensation as she’d run from whoever had been chasing her last night.
And the other time she’d felt that scared? It had been much earlier, back when she’d been twelve. She’d been standing in a hospital corridor, waiting for news about her brother’s condition. As things had gotten worse, the fear had been about reality setting in. No matter how bad the accident had seemed, she’d never thought they would lose him—and when that had been a possibility? True terror.
In both those situations, there had been a good reason to feel as she had. And yes, getting chased in a parking garage would also do it—but there had been more to the experience than that.