****
Forest waited until she was certain that Leith was gone before venturing back into the alley to retrieve her gun. It had landed next to the smelly dumpster. She looked at the overflowing trash receptacle, so very metaphoric to her mood. Every memory and emotion connected to Leith was like that putrid garbage.
She kicked the dumpster as hard as she could, sending the rats living behind it scampering. She shouldn’t have to put up with this, dammit. She was a warrior, a formidable one at that.
With her .45 tucked back in the waistband of her pants, Forest retreated to the shadows of the club. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the concrete wall, concentrating on her breathing. She was seething and torn about reporting Leith. Focus. Focus. Focus. Reporting him would bring attention to her failure to control the traffic through her post. Nuts to that.
She had two hours and thirty-seven minutes left to work. It was no good—she couldn't do her job when she wanted to kill everyone in sight. She pulled out her phone and sent a text to her boss, Kindel, telling him she was cutting out early. Forest went out the front door and headed straight for her car. Traffic was light, and she zipped through the streets of downtown, jumped onto the Mopac expressway, and arrived back at her luxury, north-Austin condo in no time.
Her mind was in a terrible snarl. She dropped her bag and her keys on the floor and stomped into the dining room. Bracing both her hands on the table, she closed her eyes and tried breathing deeply. But calm would not come. Emotions swelled like a tsunami and came gushing out violently. She grabbed the glass fruit bowl on the table that was full of peaches and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. Shattered glass, splattered peaches, and tears fell. Would her life ever be her own?
Destroying her fruit bowl felt good, but it wasn't enough violence to assuage the storm within. Not nearly enough. Her body felt flattened where Leith had touched her. She wiped at the tears on her face, vomit rising in the back of her throat. Growling, Forest grabbed a shard of broken glass from the floor and went into the bathroom. The lights stung her already burning eyes. She let loose a scream of rage at her reflection. Crying! Crying was weakness.
Forest pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor. She turned to the side and looked at the pattern of her scars Leith had marked her with so many years ago. Biting down on her bottom lip, she took the shard and stabbed it a quarter inch deep into her shoulder. Wincing, she dragged it in a jagged line down to her elbow, then dropped the bloody glass into the sink and splashed water on the self-inflicted wound. She watched it for a few minutes. A searing rushed through her flesh, causing her to yell obscenities at random and kick the vanity.
She splashed water on her arm again and looked at it closely. It was no good. She healed too quickly to build scars on top of scars. The pattern remained unaltered. Sighing, she left the bathroom.
In her living room, she surveyed the mess. She would clean it up tomorrow.
Dawn began to color the sky as Forest dropped on her bed and fell asleep.
Chapter Two