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Someone is pounding on my door.
My body feels like it’s chained to my bed as I drag it up, reluctant to leave the comfort of sleep, even from a bare mattress.
“Charlie! Open up!” It’s Ginger and she sounds frantic. Worry blooming inside me, I stagger out to the front door in a rush, throwing it open without caution.
“You’re alive!” she exclaims, stalking past me, into my apartment. The ties of her colorful bathing-suit top poke out beneath a red-and-white striped sundress. “It’s the fourth time I’ve come by today. I thought you were dead! Go and get ready.”
“What?” I scratch my head absently, picking through my blurry memories. Get ready for what?
“It’s after three o’clock and we’re going to Storm’s.”
After three o’clock? “What?” I don’t believe her. Dashing over to dig my phone out of my purse, I confirm with a rising bubble of panic that she’s not lying. No . . . I need to get to the bank and then sell my car and then . . . leave Miami. I won’t have enough time!
Ginger makes herself comfortable on my couch, remote in hand, twirling a hot-pink strand of hair. And I know that, short of agreeing to go with her, it will take a fire or a forklift to get her to leave. Her eyes drift over the flowers adorning my table. “Those are gorgeous. Who are they from?”
“No one,” I mutter absently as I stagger back to my bedroom and shut the door. Falling back against it with a sigh, I close my eyes. What do I do?
I know that if I could shake Ginger, I could still make it work. I’d just be arriving in a foreign state and town in the middle of the night. I check the burner phone sitting in my purse, a twinge of anxiety stirring that I could have missed a call from Sam.
No missed calls. I release a sigh.
What if . . . could I stay for another day? I mean, is there really any danger in staying for just one more day? I have weeks before I can expect another drop request and Bob couldn’t even get into Penny’s if he wanted to cause me harm before then. And Sam is . . . I have to believe he wouldn’t harm me on a whim or a hunch, even as paranoid as he is. I’m too valuable to him. I’m his unsuspicious pawn.
He’d come down here first. He’d visit me in person, see for himself. I have to believe that. After all, he did raise me. That has to account for something.
My resolve dissipates in seconds, as if it were never there. Or maybe it was, up until last night. The swirling nausea in the pit of my stomach finally relents to a burst of anticipation. Throwing open my suitcase, I quickly root through my clothes for my bathing suit.
Suddenly, I can’t get to Storm’s fast enough.