Burning for You (Blackwater) (7 page)

“What?” I say, not sure if I heard
her properly.  “Not sure what you mean.  Who’s we?”

“Ash and I are going to take you
out of here, away from Gabe Locke,” she says, looking dead serious.  “You can’t
stay with him.  We don’t know what he’s planning, but it can’t be good.”

“What are you talking about?” I
say.  “I can’t just leave him.  We’re on a date!”

“You can and you will,” Erika tells
me.  She blocks the door and even though I’m a head taller than she is,
something about her demeanor indicates I don’t want to mess with her.  She
pulls out her phone and starts typing on it.  “Ash will meet us out back. 
Let’s go.”

Wordlessly, I follow her out the
bathroom door and toward the kitchen at Chez George.  No one says a word to us
as Erika and I walk right through, passing by flaming skillets and furiously
chopping line cooks, right toward the back door.  I see Ash is waiting in his
black SUV.

“Get in,” Ash says.  I take him in,
his arm dangling casually out the window, his face shadowed and chiseled the
way a stone marble statue would be.  He literally takes my breath away to the
point where my hand closes on my inhaler in my purse.  Erika gives me a little
shove toward the SUV and opens the back door for me.  I slide in compliantly,
practically falling on my side in the vast expanse of the backseat.  I have no
idea why I’m going along with this, but it’s almost like I have no willpower
right now.  I feel captured in a trance, and sit staring out the window as we
drive away.

“Why am I going along with this?” I
ask no one in particular, echoing my own thoughts.  Perhaps I’m talking to
myself.  “I forgot my jacket.  Dammit.”

“Trifles,” Erika tells me from the
front seat, confirming I’m speaking out loud.  “You have no idea what could
have happened had you spent any more time with Gabe.”

“He seems nice enough,” I say.  “We
were just on a date.”

“A date that could have gotten you
reaped,” Erika says.

My eyes widen in alarm.  “I hardly
think it would come to that.  He doesn’t seem like a rapist.”  Ash laughs, and
I have no idea what’s so funny, considering I’ve been kidnapped from a nice
dinner.  “What’s so funny?  You shouldn’t call someone that just for fun, you
know.  What did you give me in that vial?”

“Reaped, not raped,” Erika
explains.  “Gabe is a reaper.  He reaps your ability to craft.”

“Whatever that means,” I say
lamely.  “I really can’t do much in the way of crafting, anyway.”

“Maybe you just haven’t found your
catalyst yet,” Erika says, a sarcastic note to her voice.  “Or have you?”  She
looks hard at Ash, who says nothing and continues driving.  I focus on the back
of his neck from my vantage point.  His hair is so perfectly trimmed along his
neck, you’d never know he’s all party in the front with that sexy lock that’s
always spilling along his forehead.  “As to what was in that vial,” Erika says,
“I told you, I gave you something to help with your asthma attack.”

“Then why do I feel so out of my
own head?” I wonder.

“Well, there might have been
something else in there to make you more willing to come with me,” she
continues.  “I didn’t want to have you kicking and screaming.”

“I see,” I say.  “So basically in
one night you’ve met me, drugged me and kidnapped me.  To what do I owe the
pleasure?”

“Just looking out for a friend,”
Erika says.  “I do hope we can be friends after all of this.”

“Well considering I have zero
willpower right now, if you demand my friendship, I guess you can have that
too,” I say, settling back against the seat and sighing heavily.

“Good girl,” she says, winking back
at me.  She’s even prettier when she smiles, I note sadly.

Ash is quiet, but I see he’s
driving toward my house, which is good.  I’d hate to be kidnapped and not
returned home.  How does he know where I live?

“I can’t believe you guys did this
to me,” I continue, feeling that I need to reprimand them a little more than I
have been.  “I mean, I just came back to Blackwater.  I don’t have a job or
friends or money.  I probably shouldn’t be severing connections so early in the
game.”

“Gabe isn’t the kind of connection
you want,” I hear Ash say, startling me because he’s been so quiet.  “Trust
me.”  He pulls into the driveway of my house, flicking his headlights off and
putting the car in park.  He turns, fixing those black eyes on me.  I feel like
taking my panties off from that look, but I restrain myself.  “Goodnight, Miss
Holt.  I trust you’ll sleep well tonight.  If you don’t think you will, I’m
sure Erika can give you something for that as well.”

I want to tell him to come upstairs
and put me to sleep, but I’m pretty sure Erika would kick my ass.  She looks
like she could, despite her stature.

“Goodnight,” Erika chimes in. 
“Once that potion wears off, you’ll be sleepy anyway.”

“And when will it wear off?” I ask
her as I step out of the car.  “Am I in danger of my mother telling me to clean
the house and actually listening to her or something?”

Erika laughs as I shut the door and
Ash opens his window.  “Good night, Miss Holt,” he tells me.  “I hope you wake
up tomorrow and find a job and some friends and money to go along with it.”  He
turns his headlights back on and backs out of the driveway.  I stand shivering
without my jacket, watching him take off and wish I was going with him instead
of returning to my mother’s house.

When I walk inside, my mother is
standing in the foyer, looking livid.  “Who dropped you off?” she asks me. 
“What happened to Gabriel Locke?”

“I got a ride home,” I tell her. 
“It’s a long story.”

Monday morning and I’m driving in
Betsey, dressed in a dark brown pants suit and coral silk blouse in hopes of
finding a job.  I have the brilliant idea to go straight to Blackwater Memorial
Hospital and see if my expertise in medical billing and coding will get me
anywhere.  I have no idea if there are any actual job openings, but the only
marketable skills I possess are health care billing related.  The hospital
seems like a good place to start, otherwise I’ll have to go get a retail job or
something.  I hate retail jobs.  The last time I worked retail was with my
friend Eleanor at a store called “Young At Heart” that sold lingerie to old
ladies.  Fitting an eighty six year old woman for a bra is a great weight loss
method.  You’ll never want to eat again.

I find a spot in the visitor’s
parking lot, then grab my portfolio with my resume and start to walk toward the
entrance, unsteady on my one inch heels.  Whatever Erika gave me last night
knocked me out cold, and I’m still feeling the effects.  I feel confident
enough that I can slur my way through an interview, should one come from this
venture.  The air is brisk and my lips feel chapped by the time I walk through
the sliding glass doors and up to the guard at the front desk.  He’s an older
man with a droopy white moustache and mismatched reddish hair.  “Excuse, me,
can you please direct me to human resources?” I ask him.

“Sure can,” he says.  “Down that
hallway and it’s the last door on your left.”

I thank him and head in that direction. 
Perhaps this will be easier than I thought.  I expected him to ask whether I
have an appointment, but I just get waved right through. 

In heels, the hallway goes on
forever and ever and ever.  When I walk in through human resources, my heart
sinks when I see about twelve people waiting and filling out applications. 
They probably have appointments.

“May I help you?” the receptionist
asks.  “Can you please sign in?”

“I’m actually here to inquire about
any open positions,” I tell her, signing my name and the time on the sheet.  “I
checked online and in the newspaper but Blackwater Memorial doesn’t seem to
post any jobs.”

“We post them when we have them,”
the receptionist replies cheerily.  She’s one of those people who delivers
sarcasm in the same tone that she would say “happy birthday!”  Her tight red
shirt is low cut and practically painted on, and her hair is so bleached that
it could probably walk off her head if it wanted to.  I stand uncomfortably
wondering if I’m supposed to turn around and walk out at this point or stare
her down until a job magically appears.  “But here,” she blurts out suddenly,
as if my stare has broken her willpower.  “Fill out this application and we’ll
see if anything fits.  If not, we’ll put your application on file and call you
if something comes up.”

I nod, repressing a deep sigh and
thank her.  I accept the clipboard with the blank application on it and back
away from the desk.  There’s a seat between a middle aged man who smells like
syrup and a young girl with horrible acne where I settle and begin to fill
everything out.  I’ll freak out if there are no jobs available.  I need to do
what I know, and while medical billing may not be everyone’s dream job, at
least it’s something I’m good at.  I have this strange ability to memorize
useless information, and medical procedure codes come with the territory.   

The door to HR opens and slams,
causing me to jump in my seat at the interruption.  “Fiona, we have a problem,”
the woman who comes through the door announces immediately upon entering the
room.  She’s really tall, which is something I don’t say very often,
considering I’m well above average height.  Her body reminds me of a pencil
with a shock of white hair at the top, almost like one of those troll dolls
that Heidi and I used to collect and put on top of our pencils.  Her suit
doesn’t fit her very well, which isn’t surprising considering she’s so tall and
thin.  She looks around, seemingly surprised and embarrassed to find herself
surrounded by so many people in HR, so that she walks up to Fiona’s desk and
bends down to speak to her in soft whispers about whatever her problem may be. 
I go back to filling out the application, which is a regurgitation of
everything on my resume.  The flustered tall woman leaves before I walk up to
Fiona’s desk and hand it over. 

“Will you call me if something
matches?” I ask.  “Can you show me a list of open positions?”

“Hold on,” Fiona replies, scanning
my application with a long, magenta nail trailing over my handwritten words. 
“How many years of billing and coding do you have?”

“Seven,” I answer.  “All at the
same company.  We were a small third party administrator.  I started off as a
coder and when I left I was a manager.”  As of last Friday I was a manager,
actually.  It feels weird to start from the beginning.

“Hold on,” Fiona tells me.  She
picks up her phone and dials an extension.  “Hi, it’s Fiona.  Can you come back
down here?  I might have someone for you.  Yes, already.  I know.  Okay,
thanks.”  She puts the receiver down and looks at me.  “Talk about timing!” she
exclaims.  “Have a seat, you’re about to have an interview.”

“Seriously?” I ask.  I hate to look
a gift horse in the mouth, though, so I walk back to my chair between Mr.
Pancakes and Ms. Pimples and have a seat.  They both look at me, probably
wondering how I got so lucky, while they’re stuck in vinyl chairs, doomed to
fill out applications that will stay on file for ages.  I tap my heel
nervously, waiting for whomever Fiona called on the phone.  When the same pencil-troll
woman walks back into the room, my heart skips a beat.  I watch as she goes up
to Fiona’s desk and Fiona hands her my application and resume.  The woman does
a quick scan and then looks up.

“Leah Holt?” she says, searching
around the room with her eyes.  I stand up and come up to her and extend my
hand.  She shakes it and smiles.  “I’m Gwen Giles, the hospital administrator. 
It’s nice to meet you.  Fiona, where can we go to talk?”

“Room three,” Fiona replies,
standing up and grabbing her keys.  We follow her down a short hall past two
doors and up to a third.  Fiona fiddles with the key in the lock and opens the
door.  Inside the room is a small table and two chairs on either side.  There
is one window looking out the side of the hospital.

“Thank you Fiona,” Gwen says. 
Fiona nods and steps out, shutting the door behind her.  “Well this is a stroke
of luck,” Gwen tells me, walking toward a chair and sitting down ungracefully. 
I do the same, sitting opposite her.  “I was literally just down here telling
Fiona that we’re having some billing issues and we need to either replace
someone or create a new position, and you appear out of nowhere.” 

“I saw you when I was filling out
my application,” I explain.  “Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are.  I
came in here not expecting much.”

“So tell me about yourself,” Gwen
asks me.  “I see here you’ve been at the same company for seven years…in
Chicago?”

I nod.  I tell Gwen about my
background, not leaving anything out.  Something about her makes me want to
explain everything as directly as she appears to be with me.  I mention how I
dropped out of college when I was twenty and got a job as an adjuster at a
small health insurance company in downtown Chicago, and then went on to get my
medical billing and coding certification because the company had offered the
training for free.  I went on to accept a promotion as a medical billing and
coding analyst, which my job as an adjuster had helped with, since I understood
the claims side as well.  After three years, I became manager.  There are a few
things I decide to leave out, like how I married my old boss when I worked in
claims, or how I left him on Saturday morning.

“So now let me tell you a bit about
what we’re experiencing here,” Gwen starts after I’ve finished my piece.  “We
have two ladies who handle the billing right now, but we’re experiencing a lot
of difficulty with some of the new requirements since we’re required to submit
our claims in 5010 format.  Are you familiar with the 5010 requirements?”

I nod confidently.  I tell Gwen
that moving from 4010 to 5010 requirements was a project I led when I worked at
Trustwell Care.  Considering how new the requirements are, it’s all very fresh
in my mind.