Page 61 of Wait For It

I shook my head, fighting to clear my head. “Wait. You’re telling me that Ari, the woman you had lunch with yesterday, attacked you?”

“Yep.” She nodded emphatically. “I’m telling you, there was evil in that girl’s eyes.”

“Ari, the woman who is usually in a wheelchair with a nurse present, came at you, unprovoked?” I drummed my fingers against the table, suddenly keyed up.

Given the way Helen had treated her, Ari would have been well within her rights to lay the old woman out.

But it didn’t fit with the girl I knew.

“I don’t know what you’re not understanding here, young man.” Helen’s voice grew louder. “She attacked me and that—that oriental nurse of hers practically encouraged it! And do you know the worst part? That mulatto director says I can’t claim it was racially motivated, even though it’s obvious the cow worshipper has it out for me.”

Jesus Christ.

I didn’t even know where to begin in tackling half the things she’d just said. “Uh, Tsega is Ethiopian, Helen. You’d know that if you’d taken the time to read the staff bios in the hallway. And I’m like one-hundred percent sure that every term you just used is politically incorrect, not to mention, offensive to—well, to basically everybody.”

Her lips curled up in a sneer. “Are you calling me a liar? Look, I’m just telling you to stay away from that girl because she’s a menace. And after everything I did for her—”

“What exactly did you do for her?” I instantly regretted asking.

“Um…” Helen cleared her throat and lowered her chin to her chest, suddenly finding her half-eaten chicken riveting. “Nothing, really.”

The old woman was more crooked than the Brazos.

“I’m sorry I didn’t quite understand your mumbling. Did you say nothing?” I pushed.

“Well, I…” She danced around it for several more seconds before admitting, “I guess, in hindsight, I did it for you. Saved you from being manipulated by that snake.”

“How in the hell do you figure that?”

So, I was a little defensive.

For whatever reason, the mention of manipulation had triggered some very detailed fantasies involving the aggressor in question and a pair of handcuffs.

Helen mashed her lips together firmly, glaring across the table. “I will not be spoken to like that, young man. I don’t give a hoot who you think you are!”

Clearly, if I wanted the old woman to admit to anything, it was going to require me to stop fixating on a certain redhead.

“Look,” I sighed. “I just want to know what you did, so I can thank you properly. It really sounds like you put yourself out there.”

Helen nodded along to every word, the hard line of her jaw softening. “I did. I most certainly did. The way she was watching you during our lunch yesterday was downright deplorable.”

“Mmm-hmmm…” I mashed my lips together, fighting to remain serious.

“People like that need to be taught a lesson in manners. Someone failed her along the way, so naturally, it fell to me. I was certain she was after you because of who you are, so I might have gone a bit overboard.” She snorted. “That girl read over my notes like she was going to be tested on them later!”

“That’s—”

Impossible.

If what Helen was saying was true, then Ari had dressed up because she liked me enough that she was willing to take someone else’s advice no matter how crazy it seemed. She could have thrown the old woman under the bus when I came to her room, but that wasn’t who she was.

And Helen was a woman in dire need of a few tread marks.

Confused irritation grew into a simmering rage when Helen began cackling again. “That’s not even the best part! Turns out, the little monster didn’t even know who you were until this morning. She saw a newspaper article—oh, you should’ve seen her face! Like someone just ran over her dog!”

Well, she was absolutely correct on one point. There was a psychopath in this facility, and she just happened to be sitting directly across from me.

“Wait—” I released a pained breath, unable to decide which was worse—the fact that Ari had gotten hurt by this hateful and entirely racist bitch of a woman, or that I’d been the cause of it.

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