Page 14 of Sanctuary

No such luck. She felt the woman’s presence before she noisily pulled out the adjacent stool and settled beside Lori.

“Your friend can’t hold her alcohol, I guess.”

Lori closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “She had some bad clam chowder at the restaurant.” She made swift and short eye contact to avoid being rude and then continued to flick through to her latest Max video to check the comments.

“Aren’t you going to tell me which restaurant, so I know to avoid it?” She put her hand out between Lori’s gaze and her phone screen. “My name’s Casey. What’s yours?”

Lori looked at the woman’s hand for a moment, trying to decide what to do. She didn’t like to be rude, but she also didn’t want to take any steps into this dance. “Sorry, I don’t shake hands. Not with COVID still being around.” She registered the woman’s fleeting eyeroll. “I work with vulnerable animals, so I have to be extra careful.” She sighed inwardly at her own pandering to someone else’s issues. She shouldn’t have to explain why she did or didn’t do anything to a complete stranger. And yet…

Casey gave a throaty laugh and pulled her hand back. “I’ve heard of vulnerable adults but not animals. How’s that work?”

Lori checked the restroom door in her peripheral vision, but it didn’t move. Fifteen minutes could seem like a very long time when you were having a conversation you didn’t want. “I work with horses and dogs, some of which have had surgery.”

“So you’re a vet?”

“No.” Maybe if she kept her answers shorter, Casey would get the hint and go away. She laughed again, a sound that Lori already found irritating.

“This is like getting blood out of a stone. What do you do if you’re not a vet?”

“I run a specialized shelter for ex-service animals.” She scrolled down the comments, liking and responding to them, and prayed for Casey to leave her alone. With every question, she pushed a pungent mix of alcohol, stale cigarette smoke, and halitosis in Lori’s direction. Casey’s breath was looking like it might succeed where Lori’s dinner had failed in making Lori nauseous.

“What? Like police dogs?” Casey asked, exhaling a noxious cloud in Lori’s direction.

Lori nodded and took a long sip of her drink, inhaling deeply and hoping that the vodka might dull her sense of smell.

“Looks like your friend’s gonna be a while. Are you sure I can’t buy you a drink?”

“I’m sure. Like I told your bartender friend, we’ll be leaving as soon as she comes back.”

Casey blew out a long sigh, and Lori had to quell her gag reflex. Lori was tempted to give her gum but didn’t want the offer to be misconstrued.

“Maybe your friend could go home, and you could stay.”

Lori looked up, no longer able to maintain her polite rebuttal ploy. “My friend isn’t feeling well, so I’ll be going home with her because that’s what good friends do. But even if we weren’t leaving, I wouldn’t accept a drink from you because I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not interested, okay?”

Casey huffed and pushed off her stool. “No need to be a?—”

“Don’t,” Lori said. “Please don’t finish that sentence. I didn’t ask you to come over here, and I tried not to be rude. I came out with my friend for a quiet night, and I wasn’t looking to hook up with anyone. I’m not being anything other than straightforward with you. Okay?”

The bartender reached over the bar and tugged on Casey’s shirt. “Come on, dude. Leave the lady alone. She said she’s not interested.”

Casey looked at the bartender. “Fine,” she said and moved away.

“I’m sorry about that.” The bartender wiped the bar around their drinks. “She’s harmless enough until she has one too many knockbacks.”

Lori raised her eyebrow. “So not harmless then?”

“I guess not.” The bartender shrugged and walked away to serve another customer.

Lori rolled her shoulders and moved her head from side to side to relieve the tension that had crept in as that encounter had continued. It had been a while since she’d had to fend off unwanted attention, and she was rusty. She’d been blunt, and that didn’t sit well, but neither did overconfident people who didn’t take no for an answer. It was probably for the best that Rosie hadn’t been there, or she might’ve gotten out her pepper spray and Casey would’ve ended up with bloodshot eyes as well as bad breath.

She refocused on her video’s comments and saw one had been posted a few hours ago by SoldierGabe: I served with this #RealAmericanHero. Max located hundreds of explosive devices and saved thousands of lives. The comment had garnered a ton of responses and hearts but more importantly, promises of donations. With the vague hope that at least some of those might be real promises and not just for the sake of social media appearances, she switched to the Sanctuary’s PayPal account. Her jaw dropped when she saw the amount of money that had come in since she’d last checked early that morning. Their balance had risen by over twenty-five thousand dollars. She refreshed the screen, not quite believing her eyes, but there it was.

Time for a little light stalking. SoldierGabe’s profile pic was of a beat-up old truck, but it was too small for Lori to see whether it was the vehicle Gabe had come to the Sanctuary in. And honestly, Lori couldn’t remember the color of it, much less anything else. She’d been too focused on the woman who’d stepped out of it. She clicked on SoldierGabe’s icon to go into her profile. The info was sparse and didn’t give Lori anything of interest. But the posted videos did: Gabe in an Army camp doing bicep curls; Gabe under the hood of some kind of tanky-thing in just a tight T-shirt and her combat pants; Gabe bench-pressing another soldier; Gabe playing fetch with Max. Talk about a thirst trap. Even if Gabe hadn’t posted them with that intention, they certainly had that effect on Lori. She was dehydrated, but she wouldn’t be doing anything about it in the foreseeable future. Just like she’d told Rosie, she had no idea how long her heart would take to heal, and her mind needed plenty of work too.

Tomorrow afternoon, Gabe was making her first visit since Lori had agreed she could see Max regularly. She checked her watch to see how long Rosie had been in the bathroom and whether she should go rescue her. Now Lori wanted to get home so she could bake something more substantial than a few cookies to say thank you to Gabe for her comment. Obviously, she couldn’t have known that it might get such an amazing reaction, but Lori still wanted to show her gratitude. That kind of money usually took months to raise, not hours.

She closed PayPal and flicked back to TikTok and saw there were some trolls too, mainly anti-Americans. She deleted them and blocked their accounts. She never engaged with the negative stuff on there. It was too mentally draining and a time suck she didn’t need. But twenty-five thousand dollars? She and the Sanctuary definitely needed that.

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