More squeaking and I turned my head. Hurry. Waffles today!

It made me smile. It was so Vicki. We’d learned in the interval between her death and the wake that she could carry on a full conversation with only minimal responses. Whole sentences tired her quickly, but a few carefully chosen words were enough to interact.

For a moment I wondered how the investigation into her murder was going. Alex had specifically warned me to back off, to let the police do their job. God knew they were under enough pressure already with Vicki’s parents in the mix.

Vicki’s parents were Cassandra Meadows and Jason Cooper, the Hollywood power couple and an industry unto themselves. Jason wasn’t such a bad guy, but Cassandra could be absolute hell on wheels. Not just a bitch, a raging bitch. I knew this from personal experience. The woman hates me with an unholy passion.

Another squeak underlined the Hurry. Vicki’d loved waffles in life—thick Belgian ones with malt in the batter. Coat them with fresh butter and real Vermont maple syrup and she could probably tie the Guinness record holder for number eaten in a sitting.

I let out a little chuckle as my shoes made a little hop across the floor toward me. “Okay, okay. I’m hurrying.”

I shoved my foot into a pair of (you guessed it) gray slippers. I didn’t like them much, no arch support and they were too loose to be completely comfortable, but nobody was allowed shoes with laces at Birchwoods. A precaution against suicides, no doubt, but annoying as hell.

You okay? screeched across the mirror in front of me and I smiled sadly.

“Think I’ll ever make it out of here?” I paused as the frost began to form. “Truthfully?”

There was a pause on her side, too. Vicki had been a patient at Birchwoods for a long time. There was a good chance she really had been mentally unstable, but certain traumatic events pushed her over the edge. She came to Birchwoods looking for peace and for the most part had found it. But we weren’t the same sort of people . . . our friendship was based on the “opposites attract” principle. While I like quiet, peace isn’t really my thing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a bodyguard for fun and profit.

Dunno . . . , was the reply, followed by a :-(

“C’mon,” I said after a long silence that threatened to ruin what small amount of good mood I had. “Let’s go do waffles.” Even though I really don’t like waffles all that much.

The frown was replaced by a :D

Text messaging from the beyond. My life is so weird.

Like most of Birchwoods, the cafeteria is bright, sunny, and clean. It looks more like the restaurant of a nice hotel than a cafeteria. Lots of plants and greenery, round wooden tables with matching chairs with a light oak finish. There are two separate sections, divided by a glass partition. Not smoking and non-smoking: suicidal and not. Those with any hint of suicidal tendencies get foods that don’t require cutting and there’s a much higher supervisor-to-patient ratio.

I have plenty of problems, but suicidal tendencies aren’t among them. So I chose a corner table just outside the reach of the sunlight shining through the windows and sat at a place set with a real china plate and actual silverware. Not that I could use it. The changes to my body mean I don’t get to eat actual solids. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Still, the waffles, even though in blended, liquid form, were actually good. Enough for seconds. My first gulp caused a surprised smile and Vicki showered me with flower petals right there in the cafeteria. Of course, having a four-star Michelin chef working the line probably helped. Money talks and what chef wouldn’t love a truly captive audience to experiment with new textures and flavors? It was the ultimate test of his skill to make diners with weird-ass physical requirements happy.

I had just started a second helping when I saw Heather walk into the cafeteria. Heather was Dr. Scott’s personal assistant. According to hospital gossip, she’d gotten the promotion thanks to her cool head in a crisis—helping Dr. Scott face down my bloodlust. She didn’t like me much. No surprise there. But she was the only person here who might actually be able to tell me if Ivan had tried to reach me. Assuming Jeff let her. That was a coin toss.

I waved to her and waited for her reaction. She was too polite to grimace and it was too late to ignore me, so I got to watch her steel herself and bring her tray over to my table.

“Can I help you?” She smiled, showing lots of straight white teeth, but her eyes were wary, her body language nervous. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. A couple of the nice attendants began moving closer, more or less discreetly.

I decided to cut to the chase. I figured she’d appreciate it. “The night I was picked up, a man from the Rusland Secret Service was there. He said it was urgent that he speak with me, but what with the kidnapping and all we didn’t get to talk. Has he, by any chance, tried to get in touch? Left me a message or anything?”

She gave an unhappy sigh and looked put-upon, as if every patient in the facility was constantly trying to get messages in or out. Then again, they probably were. I tried a slightly different tack.

“Can you check with Dr. Scott to see if he’ll let you look into it?”

“Fine. I’ll check with Dr. Scott. If he says it’s okay, I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

That was the best I was going to get and I knew it. So I smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks,” and Heather hurried over to the table where a number of other staff members were eating. The attendants went back to their posts, back to scanning the room.

I left the cafeteria at 8:50, giving me plenty of time to make my way to Dr. Hubbard’s office for my 9:00 individual therapy session. On the way I pondered whether or not I could stand living here long term. It wasn’t a bad place. But I was already restless, after just a couple of weeks. And I couldn’t stop thinking about things on the outside. I was seriously worried that I hadn’t heard a peep from Ivan since the night of the attack. While I tried to tell myself that the situation, whatever it was, had probably blown over, I didn’t believe that. I hoped Heather was being honest about going to Dr. Scott; I hoped that Dr. Scott would be willing to let her follow up. Neither seemed like a good bet. It made me feel helpless. I can’t tell you how much I hate that.

“Good morning, Celia.” Dr. Hubbard’s greeting drew me out of this fairly unpleasant reverie. She greeted me with a warm smile that lit up a face that was otherwise plain. A woman of late middle age, she was attractive but not stunning, with ash-blond hair, minimal makeup, and a suit that was both businesslike and unremarkable. Then again, therapy is about the patient, not the therapist. The non-threatening, unnoticeable doctor might not bear a lot of resemblance to the woman I’d meet outside of work.

“Ann.”

“So, what would you like to discuss today?”

This was how the sessions always started. She’d ask what I wanted to discuss, but in the end we’d wind up digging into all the stuff I really didn’t want to talk about. Gotta love therapy.

An hour later, wrung out from crying, I was done with Dr. Hubbard for a few days. I’d recover just in time to go back and dredge more gunk out of my subconscious.

Usually I had group therapy at 10:30 A.M., but today I’d be skipping it. I’d be meeting with my attorney instead. Doing witness prep and going over my testimony for my court hearing wasn’t going to be fun, but I was tired of being the center of the group’s attention. I mean the others had drug problems, depression, maybe out-of-control talent. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. My problems, on the other hand, were spectacularly weird. My fellow patients waited for each session like soap opera addicts. Which seriously creeped me out. The only upside I could think of was I was meeting a lot of high-end potential clients.

We were scheduled to meet in one of the small conference rooms in the administration building. I went there under escort. Patients don’t get to leave the main building without. Because of the whole siren thing, I got to be escorted by a female guard. Greta was big, blond, Nordic, and no-nonsense. When she talked, which was seldom, she had a thick accent. Her uniform might look like that of a tour guide, but she herself looked like a prison guard.

I’d slathered myself with another layer of sunscreen, so I was able to walk down the sunlit sidewalk without singeing, but I was still glad to get back indoors. I was even more glad when Greta left me alone in the conference room, shutting the door behind her. No doubt she’d be waiting right outside when the meeting was over. But in the meantime, I wasn’t sorry to see her go.

I settled into a comfortable leather chair at a small, round table and proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. Since Roberto is normally excruciatingly prompt, I had to wonder what was wrong. But nobody came to tell me anything. So I sat at the little wood-laminate table and watched the hands on the wall clock move slowly around the dial. Forty minutes had crawled by when the door finally opened and my attorney came in, looking harried and worried.

“What’s wrong?” Okay, maybe not the best conversational foray. I mean, usually I lead with “Hi,” or “Hey, Roberto, good to see you’ ” But something was obviously amiss. It wasn’t just that he was late. He was troubled and he wasn’t bothering to try to hide it from me.

Shaking his head, he set a large briefcase onto the conference room table and took the seat across from me.

“Has anyone else been here to meet with you?”

That was an odd question, especially since Birchwoods’ rules allowed me to meet with my attorney and no one else. I told him as much.

“I know.” He took off his glasses and proceeded to clean the lenses with a snow-white handkerchief. It was a nervous gesture and so completely out of character it threw me. Roberto doesn’t get nervous. He just doesn’t. Which is why he’s been lead counsel defending the famous and infamous, winning the unwinnable cases.

“Why do you ask?”

He met my gaze, dark eyes earnest. “I have messages for you from Bruno DeLuca, and the Landinghams—Warren, Emma, and Kevin. And I was contacted by a representative of King Dahlmar—”