Tell No Lies Read Online Free PDF

group,” Daniel said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

 
    Chapter 5
    “Daniel Brasher, don’t you run away from me!”
    Session had ended, and the members finished filing out, mixing with a group of sullen teens from the juvie group up the hall. Daniel turned with a smile as Kendra Richardson, a mountain of a woman, ambled up the corridor after him, bracelets jangling about her wrists. The corridor emptied out, doors banging, elevator dinging, leaving them alone with the faint hiss of the heating vents.
    Setting his satchel briefcase at his feet, he gave his program director a hug, disappearing into that delightful blend of Ed Hardy perfume and cinnamon gum.
    “Did you sign your termination agreement?” she asked. Then, off his blank expression, “Look, baby, I’m happy if you don’t. ”
    “What termination agreement?”
    “The one that went out to you last month.”
    “Went out to me where?”
    She drew back her head. “Where you think? Your work box, here.”
    “You mean they haven’t been forwarding my mail to my house?”
    She fluttered a hand at him. “That whole mess again? Remind me the problem?”
    They’d been over it half a dozen times. The mail room in the bowels of the building had never been upgraded, the employee boxes no more than a bank of creaky wooden cubbyholes, each with a sedimentary layering of brittle, flaking labels—the remnants of workers past. Daniel had landed a box near the top, just beneath the outgoing-mail cubby, which was labeled OUTG IN MAIL . Which meant that folks accidentally shoved their mail into his box all the time. Which in turn had led him to make multiple requests that all his mail be forwarded to his house so he’d no longer have to sort through his colleagues’ mail or the painstakingly addressed letters of various parolees just to get the occasional departmental notice. Kendra’s administrative assistant was supposed to check his box to make sure everything was being appropriately routed, though she rarely showed interest in tasks aside from applying makeup and conducting cell-phone conversations at high volume.
    “The problem is,” he said, “that the only mail I get here is other people’s.”
    “We’ll get it straightened out. Just in time for you to head off to your fancy-pants private practice and forget all about us.” She flipped her chin sharply away in mock offense. Kendra ran the perennially understaffed department like a benevolent matriarchy; affection and guilt were rarely in short supply.
    He said, “First of all, I could never forget the woman who gave me my first break in the field”—a slight softening of her rigid neck—“and second, I’m still here another couple of months. Don’t go writing my obituary yet.”
    He’d been steadily downsizing his workload so it would be a smooth transition for the program when he left. At one time he’d been juggling four groups, but he’d concluded three as the members graduated out. Kendra had begged him to stay on with this last group, though they’d need to phase in another therapist to see the members to the finish line. He’d have to tell them soon that he was leaving, give them time to adjust.
    After promising Kendra that he’d dig out his termination agreement, he found the back stairs and descended to the mail room. He checked his watch; the hallway chat had put him behind for his already late-night dinner with Cristina, so he quickened his pace. The lights were on motion sensors to save money for the city, the corridors illuminating in swaths as he hurried forward. Sure enough, his mail cubby was stuffed with mail, so he stretched his satchel briefcase open and raked the envelopes in. He’d sort them out at home, bring back what wasn’t his on Wednesday.
    Sliding out a last stack of mail, he caught a splinter in his knuckle, and then the lights went out on him. He leaned back, balancing the briefcase on one knee and waving a hand to catch the sensor. He had to laugh a bit at