1 Sunshine Hunter (20 page)

“Do you want me to stick around until you’re finished and walk out with you?” he asked.

“No thanks. I’ve got it,” I said. “I already checked the back doors, and they’re locked. I just need to make a pass through the women’s locker room. I’ll be fine.”

“Ok, Susan
,” he said. “See you tomorrow night.” He left the building.

Most of the time I didn’t mind being in the club alone. Sometimes I would lock the front doors and relax in the whirlpool or sauna before heading for home at 2:00 in the morning. But sometimes the big empty building gave me the creeps. Tonight was a creep night. It had been a creepy week.

Everyone was out of the women’s locker room. I turned off the sauna and the whirlpool, turned out the lights, and went back to the lobby. In the office, I threw the main switch for all of the club lights to include the parking lot lights. The only lighting remaining was from a few low-light emergency lights that dimly lit the lobby all through the night.

I went behind the counter to get my purse. As I reached down into the cubby under the register, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and a chill went through my body. I was certain I had just heard a court door. Usually the doors bang and make a loud echo when they close. This was a much softer version, barely perceptible.

I picked up a rental racquet in case I needed a weapon and softly tip-toed to peek around the corner and peer down the darkened hallway. There was no one there. I walked softly to the other side of the lobby and peered down the hallway to the second half of the courts. No one was there either.

I was probably feeling spooked from everything that had happened
this week. It was possible a door hadn’t quite shut all the way, and in the quiet of the moment, I heard its final closing sound as it seated into the jamb. I relaxed my grip on the racquet and turned to go back and retrieve my purse. My heart stopped. There on the other side of the lobby stood Wicker Barnes.

I wanted to be brave, but the panic was coming up fast. I thought about bolting for an exit door and tried to gauge the distance between me and the
front entrance, but I knew he would overtake me before I could get out. I hoped I could hold my voice steady to conceal the terror I felt. “What are you doing here?” I called over to him. “What do you want with me?”

He stepped toward me
and said, “You had to ruin everything, didn’t you? You just couldn’t leave Mick alone, could you?” He was speaking in dark, angry tones.

“I … I don’t
know what you’re talking about,” I stammered, looking around to see somewhere to run to, somewhere to hide.

“If you wouldn’t have come along, Mick wouldn’t have left Jenny. If you had any morals at all, you wouldn’t be sleeping with a married man.”

Sleeping with a married man? We weren’t sleeping together. And morals? Who was he to talk about morals? He was Jenny’s boyfriend! But I had enough of my wits about me to not bring any of that up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him as I positioned myself so a table and lounging sofa separated us.

He
came another step closer. I could see he had a racquet in his hand; I clenched the racquet I was holding tighter. “Jenny and I were doing just fine with the way things were. Then you came along and took Mick away, and it ruined everything. I have to fix this,” he said angrily. “I have to make this right again. You have to go.”

He came running at me with the racquet raised above his head. He had a crazed look on his face. Oh my gosh! I was in a bad movie with a crazy cable guy who might as well have a knife in his hand. He w
as going to carve me up with the racquet!

The panic was full-on now. I
screamed and made a run for the main doors. I didn’t even have a chance to open them before he tackled me. We hit the floor so hard, the wind came out of both of us, and our racquets went flying. I tried to get up and was half crawling away, but he pulled me back, first by my legs, then my shirt, then my hair.

I was hyperventilating, gasping for air, and
I couldn’t scream. I flipped over and wrested my hair from his grip. We were still on the floor but facing each other now. We both pushed up onto our knees at the same time. He reached out to grab me, and I started punching at him as fast as I could. I landed a blow to his mouth. His anger was fueled and the real battle began. We were slapping, scratching, and punching at each other like a couple of cyclones. It surely looked more like a cat fight than a beating. One of us was going to wear out first, and it wasn’t going to be me. I knew when you were on the ground, your best weapon was your feet, and kicking was the best thing you could do.

Survival instinct took over, and I startled Wicker by quickly dropping onto my back and throwing my feet up. I started kicking him hard. After just a few kicks, I landed a shoe to his groin. He
let out a howl, and I knew he was hurt, but instead of clutching himself and rolling around in agony as I expected, he was only disabled for a few seconds and seemed more enraged.

I managed to get to my feet. I turned to run across the lobby and promptly tripped on my pink shoelaces which had come undone with the kicking. I was propelled face first into the floor and was
barely able to get my hands in front of me in time to keep from breaking my nose. I stood up again and looked behind me to see where Wicker was. I never saw the racquet that came crashing into the side of my head as Wicker swung it with all his might. I blacked out and crumpled to the floor.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was a shark in the whirlpool, and he had pink shoelaces in his teeth. Why was there a shark in the whirlpool? I wanted my pink laces back, but if I tried to get them, jaws there would attack me. Well, he could have them. I didn’t need a trademark anyway. I would just turn the whirlpool off and get another trademark. But my head hurts, and I can’t find the switch.

“Susan. Susan,
sweetheart, can you hear me?”

I was coming to and moaning. My head hurt. I barely opened my eyes. I could see bright lights and lockers. I could hear a whirlpool. I had to be in a locker room. I closed my eyes again.

“Susan. The paramedics are on their way.”

The voice was soft an
d so far away. I realized I was on a hard floor, but someone was holding me. Strong arms holding me close against a solid chest. I forced my eyes open. I looked up into his beautiful hazel-green eyes. “Mick,” was all I could whisper before passing out again.

My hair was sticking out in all directions from around the bandage wrapped around my head. I looked at my hands and arms. There were a lot of scratches, and I could see bruises starting to form.

I was staring at myself in the restroom mirror of the emergency room. The nurse who prepped me had been wonderful. She carefully section
ed and pinned my hair to expose the gash in my head. She cleaned it and did a minimal amount of shaving around it. She patted my hand, smiled at me, and said, “I have daughters. They never let me forget to be thoughtful about a patient’s hair when I can.”

The doctor arrived to stitch the wound. “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. “The racquet missed your temple by less than an inch. You could have had a much worse injury here. I’d like to keep you o
vernight for observation so we –”

“No,” I cut him off before he could say anymore. “I’m going home. I have a headache, but I feel fine, and I want to go home.” He looked at me indecisively. “I promise I’ll come back if anything changes.”

“Well …” he looked at me and saw my steadfastness. “I’m advising you to stay, but I’ll send the nurse in with forms for you to sign and a prescription for pain.”

I was now in the restroom looking at my frighteningly thrashed appearance and waiting for a cab to arrive. My head was throbbing. The fatigue was overwhelming. The fight with Wicker had taken all of my strength, and it was an effort to move. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. A few tears slipped out, but I had no energy to really cry. I thought I had seen Mick at the club before the ambulance arrived, but he wasn’t here, so I must have been dreaming. I pushed the restroom door open and made my way to the emergency room lobby. Hopefully, the cab I had called would arrive soon.

The cabbie deposited me at the back door of my apartment building. It suddenly dawned on me I didn’t have my purse; it was still at the club. I started to plead my case with the cab driver, promising to find him tomorrow and pay him, but he looked at my bandaged head and overall sorry state and said, “Forget it, lady. It’s on me.”

Inside the building, I trudged up the three flights of stairs. My feet hit the top floor, and I looked up to see Mick sitting with his head in his hands on the floor outside my door. “Mick,” I said surprised but happy to see him, “what are you doing here?”

He jumped to his feet and rushed to me, putting his arms around me and pulling me close. “Susan,” he whispered my name as a sigh of relief, “I was so worried about you. Why did you leave the hospital?”

“I wanted to be home in my own bed
,” I said. It seemed like an eternity since I had slept in my own bed. “I just wanted to be home.”

“Come on, let’s you get you inside
,” he said. He looked at me for my key. I pointed to the top of the door frame.

“You’re kidding, right?” he
asked as he gave me an amused smile.

It was embarrassing to admit to having a key on the door frame. Who does that in this day and age? But I had locked myself out of my apartment enough times that not only did I have a key on the door frame, but Darby held a spare for me, too.

He unlocked the door, picked me up, and carried me over the threshold. I was gently deposited onto the sofa and a pillow tucked behind my head. He covered me with the afghan from my grandmother and went to the kitchen to put on a kettle for tea. This was Mick. Always considerate, always caring. I was grateful for the afghan. The apartment was cool from the air conditioning, and I felt cold from fatigue. It was 4:00 A.M, and I had been up for 24 hours now.

“Mick,” I
said softly. I had so many questions but didn’t know where to start, so I started with the obvious. “What happened at the club? How did you wind up there, and why was I in the locker room?”

He came
in from the kitchen and sat down at the other end of the sofa. “Well, let me tell you the whole story. At least the part that I know,” he said.

I nodded.

“I had to run to a job site this morning, so I didn’t have time to look into Wicker Barnes until this afternoon. I did a search, probably like you did, and saw his picture and bio with the Marshall Community Theater. But I kept searching. I wanted to see if I could find out anything more about him.”

I nodded again.
The kettle whistled.

He
went back to the kitchen and made a cup of hot tea with honey for me. I sat up, pulled the afghan over my lap, and gratefully took the tea. He sat down beside me and continued, “I found a news article about a guy named Ted Burns who was arrested three years ago in Indiana for swindling a woman out of her life’s savings. It seems Ted had a bad gambling habit and a lot of gambling debts, so he worked out a scheme to use the local theater to find an unsuspecting woman to give him money. I think he only served jail time for a year. The reason this matters is because Ted Burns used a stage name when he performed.”

“Wicker Barnes,” I said.

“Yep,” Mick nodded.

“Well, how does that story connect to Jenny?” I
asked. “He kept telling me I ruined everything, and I took you away from her. He wanted to fix things and make it right. What was that all about?”

“I didn’t know at first
,” he said. “All I could find out was that they had performed together in a couple of plays, and the rumors about Jenny seeing someone romantically, well, she was seeing Wicker. I knew I had to ask her about him. Do you remember I told you I was chaperoning a school dance for Alex tonight?”

I nodded.

“Well, Jenny dropped him off at school before I got there, so when I took him home around 11:00, I went in to have a talk with her. I asked her about Wicker. At first she was defensive and didn’t want to say anything, but I got Alex’s laptop and showed her the news article about him. She broke down then and told me everything.”

He stood up. There was sadness to his demeanor and a look I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he was going to tell me.

“Mick,” I stopped him. “You don’t have to tell me any of this. If it’s too personal -”

He cut me off and said,
“No. No. It’s not too personal. I just wish I would have known about this sooner, or would have paid more attention. I might have seen it coming.” He started to pace. “Jenny said Wicker gave her a lot of attention. He was nice to her; he helped her with her lines and gave her acting tips. They really hit it off.”

I could see his discomfort. Was he jealous of Wicker hitting on his soon-to-be ex-wife? I felt uncomfortable.

“We aren’t wealthy, Susan, but you know I make a good living. Most of my focus is on work, so Jenny pays the bills, and I don’t pay much attention to the money. Everything is always taken care of, everyone has what they need, and I’ve never worried about how she handles our finances. I look over my investment portfolio from time to time, I see she’s depositing the money I’ve asked her to, and that’s that.”