Bargains and Betrayals Read Online Free PDF Page B

clients with your guards nearby, of course.”
    I touched a shirt on the top of the stack. “Color theory. It’s supposed to keep us subdued, right?”
    “Same reason the walls are painted eggshell or ecru,” she said with a shrug.
    Oddly like Junction High’s decor. I rubbed at the goose bumps dotting my arms.
    She pulled the cart to the first stop. “Sheets have all been changed, so don’t worry about that. Clients on this wing are currently either in the common room or in private sessions. All you do is—” She pulled out a card that dangled from a lanyard around her neck and slid it through the lock.
    A twist of the handle and a push and we stepped inside, the cart’s wheels squeaking. The room looked exactly like mine. Sterile. Indistinct. Dull, dull, dull.
    “Here.” She withdrew another lanyard and electronic key from her pocket and hung it around my neck. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “It only works on interior client doors.”
    “Ideas? Me? Not at all. Absolutely no ideas.”
    She sighed. “Just look at the list and take two sets of pants, two shirts, and a single pair of socks and lay them on the bed. The doors lock automatically, so you’ll have to slide your key to open it.”
    “What if I wedge the cart in the door?”
    “An alarm triggers. Extra paperwork for all.”
    “So let the door close. Got it.”
    “Your guards have a master key in case there’s a problem.”
    “Are there usually problems doing laundry? I mean, other than mixing reds and whites, which”—I tapped the stack again—“obviously isn’t an issue here.”
    “No problems to date,” she remarked, “but it seems you have a knack for getting into trouble.”
    I couldn’t disagree. At least not honestly.
    “Don’t take too long. Some clients get aggravated if they realize someone was in their room. So in and out.”
    I nodded, put a checkmark on the list, and took the cart. It wasn’t a difficult job and it reminded me of my service learning assignment at Golden Oaks Adult Day Care and Retirement Home, a place I’d met many great older people dealing with issues my mother never had the chance to face and fight. My fingers tightened on the cart and I pushed out a breath, refocusing.
    Except for the checkmarks that differentiated patients by number—not name—everything mercifully began to blur.
    It was as I was setting clothes on yet another nondescript bed that I heard movement behind me—
    —too late.
    The bathroom door opened the rest of the way and the occupant of room 26, the odd import named Harmony, stared at me, narrowing her eyes. “You will not take me back.”
    I dropped my gaze—totally nonconfrontational. “I’m not—”
    “Liar!” Enraged, she lunged at me, snarling. With a savage kick she knocked my feet out from under me, taking me to the ground. My left knee burned so hot I cried out and my breath snared in the back of my throat, rattling.
    Bent over to straddle me, her mouth frothed, and she drew an arm back, rolling her fingers into a fist.
    I raised my hands in front of me. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, trying to avoid direct eye contact, hoping submitting might work. But as my gaze flicked back to her raised and quaking hand I saw something in her change.
    “Guards!” I shrieked. Reaching up, I grabbed her upper arms and rocked back onto my shoulders hard, throwing her off balance and over my head.
    She hit the floor, but even as I screamed again for the guards and jumped to my feet, she scrambled to hers. She was fast and she was strong.
    Crazy strong.
    Spittle foamed at the corner of her mouth as she worked her jaw, an eerie red light rising in her eyes, and I stumbled backward, slamming against the door as she came at me. “Sorry,” I whispered, narrowly avoiding her charge. “I thought you were out. Guards!”
    There were plenty of times I wanted to be right. But recognizing the instinct that had stuck with me since first seeing Harmony in the hall—that identified