One Step Ahead

Change My Number

November 12th, 8:45 AM

      Wrapped in a towel, with her hair still dripping, Briar stood in front of her bathroom mirror and groaned at her reflection. "Terrific! I look like a raccoon that lost a bar brawl," she mumbled, as she noted the large, deep-blue bruise that had spread across the right side of her face, nearly matched by the circles under her eyes, and her bottom lip, which had swelled to half again its normal size. She glanced at the makeup littering the side of the counter for a moment, then said, "Fuck it, I don't have anywhere to go today, anyway."

      She stepped back into her bedroom and walked to the dresser, whipping off the towel as she walked, and using it to rub the excess moisture from her hair. Opening the drawer, she selected a pair of underwear and stepped into them, and then reached for a bra before remembering her bandaged ribs and reconsidering. Moving to the closet, she opened the door and paused for a moment, scanning the contents,  then pulled a pair of red leggings and an Aerosmith T-shirt from the shelves and put them on, after removing the plastic wrap she had used to cover the bandages.

      She then padded barefoot down the hall to the living room, and disconnected her phone from the charger, dropping onto one of the tall stools next to the counter that separated the living room and kitchen and pressing a button. There were two rings on the other end, and then a gravelly voice said, "Hey there, Pix! What's up?"

      "Hey, Ted. I hate to do this on such short notice, but you're gonna have to get somebody else for the bungee jump tomorrow, I'm kind of out of commission for a couple of weeks."

      Ted Ramsey, the stunt coordinator for her current job, instantly responded, "Damn! What happened, did you crack up that new sports car already?"

      "Get serious, you know I'm a better driver than that! No, this was something rather... different."

      "Different, how?"

      "Well, I was having dinner with a friend last night, and we sort of got... blown up a bit," she informed him.

      There was complete silence for several seconds, and then he finally said, "Holy shit, Briar, tell me you're not talking about that car-bombing thing that's been all over the fucking news this morning! You're not, are you?"

      The fact that he had called her by her actual name, rather than the nickname he had bestowed on her, told her how startled he was by her statement. "Yeah, I'm afraid I am, dude. I've got three busted ribs, five stitches in my bottom lip, and my face looks like I got up-close and personal with an MMA cage-fighter. But I guess I came out better than a lot of people did. They said at the hospital last night that the restaurant owner didn't survive."

      "Yeah, and they said on the news this morning that somebody else died, too," Ted told her. "Last tally on the news was two dead, six critical, eight stable, and another eleven treated and released. Guess you must have been one of the eleven."

      "You guess correctly. My friend and I got out of there about twelve-thirty this morning, after we talked to the police, who actually wound up bringing me home, since his car was a smoldering heap in the parking lot. And they're coming back in about..." she paused to look at the clock, then continued, "an hour and a half to check out how secure my building is."

      "Say what?!" Ted shouted into the phone. "What the fuck is that about?"

      Briar sighed, then said, "Remember me telling you about the stalker thing the other day? Well, they want to check everything out, and take precautions until they can be sure that there's no connection to the bombing. There's a team going to my friend's place, too, because he apparently has a similar problem."