Repercussions Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

  Repercussions

  Nearly fully recovered from a car accident that caused a major concussion, Edie Black is hopeful about returning to her life as a freelance journalist and college teacher. A series of bizarre incidents and the persistent feeling that she’s being followed make Edie question the reliability of her thoughts and instincts. Edie meets Skye Kenny, a brilliant and shy former soldier, and their immediate connection has Edie confessing her paranoid thoughts. Skye convinces Edie she is in real danger, and together the two women discover that information was embedded in Edie’s brain during her concussion recovery and whoever put it there will do whatever it takes to get it back. On the run, Edie and Skye must uncover who is behind this plot while keeping Edie and her mind intact. Trusting Skye with her life, Edie can only hope she can also be trusted with her heart.

  Repercussions

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  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

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  Repercussions

  © 2017 By Jessica L. Webb. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-926-6

  This Electronic Original is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: July 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Jerry L. Wheeler

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design by Melody Pond

  By the Author

  Dr. Kate Morrison Thrillers

  Trigger

  Pathogen

  Troop 18

  Repercussions

  Acknowledgments

  I had a lot of help in researching various components of this book. Thanks to Kelly for sharing your experience with concussion, to Stewart for helping me frame Edie’s history as a journalist, to Mikey for talking to me about guns, and to Connery for more than a few Sunday evening conversations about the Canadian Armed Forces.

  A special thank you to Katie, my head of research and beta reader extraordinaire. Your input and support was invaluable. I’m so thankful you started it.

  As always, thanks to my editor, Jerry. I am learning.

  For my wife, Jen. Who has loved me every step of the way.

  Prologue

  Edie eyed the concrete spiral staircase leading up to the bridge as she ran along the canal. It was still a block away and totally empty. If she’d had breath, she would have groaned. If the staircase had been full of tourists, she could have bypassed the thirty-six steps up to Rideau Street. But the tulips that drew the crowds were still rows of unfurling green buds. The crowds wouldn’t arrive for another few weeks, when the tight-lipped and multi-coloured tulip petals blossomed.

  Today the staircase was empty, so Edie took the corner hard without faltering. No excuse once her mind was made up. Counting each step, her footfalls light, feeling the burn in her quads and thighs. Pretending she didn’t enjoy it. She smiled triumphantly at the lazy voice in her head that wished for an extra hour in bed. Slightly dizzy from the fast pace of the spiral staircase, Edie ran straight to the lights, the downtown core just now sluggish with early morning commuters. Timed just right, as always, Edie entered the intersection as the pedestrian light blinked permission.

  Her thoughts were already three blocks ahead in her apartment, on the shower, then the coffee and maybe a leftover croissant from yesterday’s department meeting. Even still, Edie registered each car, each cyclist, each bus, and each pedestrian. She’d been back in Ottawa for a year, after two years as a journalist and aid worker in Afghanistan, and she was still getting used to the change in pace, setting, and sounds. Today was calm, nothing pushed against the predictable fabric of this late April morning.

  Two blocks now, and Edie slowed her pace, stores and offices giving way to houses and apartments. One block and she walked, tugging the thin toque from her head and running her fingers through her sweat-soaked dark hair, letting it fall against her neck as the air cooled her scalp.

  Already breathing easier, already tasting her first cup of coffee, Edie checked the one-way street for cars. Empty. As she stepped onto the street, she registered the idle of an engine. Second step, and it revved oddly in this residential neighbourhood. Third step, and she heard the trip of tires not quite gripped to the road. She halted in the middle of her fourth step and saw the car as it careened around the corner, wrong way down this one-way street. Every muscle screamed at her to backpedal.

  She did, sinews tight with spiked adrenaline, racing and tripping backward to the safety of the sidewalk, waiting for the car to screech to a halt. It didn’t. Time for only one more step. Edie, desperate with fear-soaked certainty that the car was going to hit her, turned to launch herself out of harm’s way. The car hit her hip mid-step, a shocking, dull ache, and sent her flying over the sidewalk. She only had time to duck her head and prepare for impact before she hit the brick wall.

  Chapter One

  One year later

  “We can’t have a meeting without coffee.” Edie was adamant.

  Her psychologist, Dr. Hera Wallace, agreed. They were setting up in the church-run community centre, preparing for the first concussion and acquired brain injury support group meeting. And that meeting required coffee, regardless of what the perfectly nice but unhelpful maintenance guy who stood before them was saying about the basement kitchen being under an inch of water from a leaking pipe.

  “All I’m saying is the kitchen is out of bounds,” the maintenance guy said.

  “We’ve identified the problem, let’s solve it,” Dr. Wallace said. Edie smiled and continued to set up chairs. She could not count the number of times she’d heard that in the last eight months during therapy. “We are using the upstairs community room for another meeting, so we bring the coffee down here from that kitchen.”

  “Down two flights of stairs?” the maintenance guy said. “With a full 40-cup coffee perc?” He raised his bushy eyebrows in obvious skepticism. Edie did not appreciate the sexism she heard in his tone. She never did. And she felt a familiar surge of irritation liable to come spilling out of her mouth without filter at any moment. She couldn’t blame that lifelong trait on her concussion.

  “Actually, we’ll be bringing down two full 40-cup coffee percs,” Edie said, snapping open another folding chair. “Regular and decaf.” Caffeine was on the post-concussion shit list. She’d started sneaking it back in about six months ago, happy to jump on the slippery slope.

&nb
sp; The maintenance guy sighed. “You’ll have to sort it out with the folks upstairs. I can get you a cart, but you’re on your own for the stairs. My sciatica is too bad, and we’re still fundraising to fix that lift.”

  Edie shrugged at Dr. Wallace as the maintenance guy left. “I can do it.”

  Dr. Wallace narrowed her deep brown eyes behind her glasses. She has laser vision, Edie thought. She drilled down past vibrato and bullshit and the lies that people told themselves, sifting and sorting them into unstable foundations of fact. She was sharply intelligent, direct, but also infinitely patient.

  Dr. Wallace snorted indelicately. “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “Hey, we need coffee. What if I promise to trip my ass down the stairs with that coffee and make sure to hit my head on every step?”

  Dr. Wallace gave in and laughed. Irreverence was one of Edie’s favourite character traits.

  “You ready for tonight?” Dr. Wallace said.

  She had asked a few months ago if Edie would be part of this group, both as a participant but also as a sort of mentor. She’d been through a lot in the year since getting hit by the car. The physical recovery from her pelvic fracture and a broken radius had been complicated by infection from the road rash. And of course, the concussion had knocked her off course more than anything else. For someone who prided herself on quick-thinking, gut-driven responses and her ability to pull together thoughts and words as a writer, the concussion had left her with a shaky sense of identity. Her core belief in herself had been shaken.

  “Yes. I think I’m ready.” Edie wanted to tell Dr. Wallace about her anxiety, about the surfacing of paranoia in her life, the odd sensation of thinking she was being followed. Perhaps this was a new and entirely unwelcome aspect of post-concussion syndrome.

  The sound of feet on stairs and voices echoing down the hall interrupted Dr. Wallace’s response. A few people had obviously come early, stepping tentatively into the room. Edie felt a moment of relief as Dr. Wallace went over to greet them warmly, welcoming them into the space. No time to get into Edie’s newest neuroses.

  Edie edged toward the stairs, allowing Dr. Wallace to welcome the participants to the group.

  “I’ll be up in a moment to help, Edie.”

  Edie waved away the offer, picked up the grocery bag of industrial coffee and filters, and headed up the stairs. She barely noticed the exercise until near the top of the second set of stairs. She’d been focused on physical and mental recovery, the appointments, exercises, and fitness filling the void left by her freelance writing, editing contracts, and teaching gig at Carleton University. All on hold for now, though Edie had high hopes of picking up a class in the fall. She had four months to put herself back together.

  Edie wandered the top floor of the community centre, all beige hallways and patchwork floors with no helpful signs. She followed the sound of voices and passed a door where a meeting was already in progress. Not wanting to interrupt, she kept moving until she finally found the kitchen.

  The small space was already occupied. The woman leaning against one of the counters immediately straightened when Edie walked in, and Edie couldn’t tell if she was coming to attention or preparing for an attack. She was a few inches taller than Edie, and she had short, messy, sandy hair that disappeared into a floppy blue beanie that seemed to defy gravity as it slouched on the back of her head.

  Edie quickly took in the loose green pants tucked into work boots and the fitted black, long-sleeved T-shirt barely hiding her impressively built arms. Edie tracked back to the woman’s face to meet her guarded, but not unfriendly, yellow-green eyes. She was a glorious butch, and Edie felt a distant, almost forgotten moment of heat as instinct, intuition, and the whispers of attraction coloured her thoughts.

  “Hi, I’m Edie,” she said, walking over and holding out her hand. Start strong, start sure, one of her early mentors at the paper had always said.

  The woman shook hands without hesitation. “Skye,” she said. Her grip was strong, but she backed away again almost immediately.

  “I’m here to make coffee,” Edie continued, holding up the grocery bag as evidence.

  Skye glanced across at the two percolators already plugged in and chugging away on the counter. Then she looked back to Edie.

  “You with Dr. Wallace?”

  “Yeah. We’re just setting up for the first concussion and acquired brain injury meeting. You?”

  “The PTSD group just started fifteen minutes ago. I told Dr. Wallace I’d babysit the coffee.”

  The woman grimaced slightly, like she’d just said more than she intended. A spark of curiosity made Edie want to dig deeper, but a whisper of caution told her not to.

  “Well, what do you think? Can I squeeze in and start another batch?”

  Skye shook her head. “We’ll trip the breakers. The basement kitchen is on a different circuit if you want to—”

  “Basement kitchen’s flooded,” Edie said. She walked into the kitchen, preparing to jump up on the counter. Skye stiffened and leaned farther back into the counter as Edie walked by in the small space. “I’ll wait, if that’s okay with you.”

  “It’s fine,” Skye said. Nothing about her body language said it was fine. Edie wondered how to put her at ease, what question to ask or comment to make that would ease whatever tension existed. She’d relied on that skill both as a freelance journalist and as an aid worker, but she no longer entirely trusted it.

  Edie wedged herself between the sink and giant plastic tubs of sugar and flour. Skye watched her but not directly. Wary, Edie decided. Skye exuded wariness. The steamy burbling of the coffee percolators punctuated the silence in the kitchen. Edie watched the near-hypnotic, dancing tendrils of steam. Skye fidgeted in her peripheral vision, first with her sleeves, then she pulled a phone out of her pocket and almost immediately put it back. Then with a barely audible sigh, Skye jumped onto the counter, mimicking Edie’s pose. Edie snuck a glance at the woman and Skye met her gaze squarely. Edie took heart from this small gesture.

  “Dr. Wallace will be pissed if we don’t talk,” she said into the silence. Her statement was a tentative agreement to engage. Edie held her breath, suddenly wishing with a startling intensity that Skye would choose to engage. Silence stretched as Skye seemed to test the question, test Edie’s motivation in asking, test the possible consequences of answering.

  “‘Pissed’ is Dr. Wallace’s natural state, I think,” Skye said, and she smiled. Her smile was only a hint, Edie decided, as thoughts and emotions tumbled around inside her. It was a fraction of what she was capable of.

  “You’re not wrong.”

  Skye looked away, but her smile lingered. Shyness surrounded this tough woman, but Edie wanted to batter her cautious barrier. She tempered her emotions, unsure if she was going with her gut. Confused and angry at not being able to trust her instincts, she spoke without thinking.

  “Is there any way to ask how you’re involved in the PTSD group without asking about your whole life story?”

  A terrible example of what her mentor would have called a demolition question. They were meant to dig fast and deep but they were guided, carefully placed, with a clear plan as to what was being carved away and exposed. No, this was simply a bomb dropped into a tiny room filled with two strangers and the smell of coffee.

  Skye answered with silence, looking everywhere but at Edie. The percolators kicked into high gear, signaling the end of their cycle. Skye hopped off the counter and got everything ready quickly and efficiently. She left and returned with a wheeled cart for one of the 40-cup percolators. Edie stayed where she was, not blaming Skye for wanting to get away from her as quickly as possible. I asked the wrong question. She was surprised when Skye glanced up.

  “I’ll deliver this down the hall, then I’ll come back and help you take this one downstairs,” Skye said.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Edie said.

  Skye looked Edie up and down once. Clearly, she was found lacking.

>   “We always have more than we need,” Skye said. “And, no offence, but there’s no way you’re getting that thing down the stairs by yourself.” Skye loaded up the cart and wheeled it out of the room.

  Edie blew out a breath and hopped off the counter. She opened and closed cupboards, looking for another percolator for the decaf. She was annoyed—with herself, with Dr. Wallace, with agreeing to be part of this group. She found a scratched silver percolator half the size of the other ones and pulled it out. Her thoughts began to spin as she shoved a huge filter into the top of the carafe and started measuring out the decaf coffee grounds. Self-loathing followed quickly on the anger as she spun and re-spun the brief interaction with Skye. Would she ever have a normal interaction with someone? Edie slammed cupboards as she looked for a water jug. Would she ever get it right again?

  Edie plugged the percolator in and hit the power switch. Nothing.

  “Fuck,” she said, suddenly close to tears. Another new and exciting side effect of post-concussion syndrome. Edie never cried. Her brother, Shawn, had always been the crier. But not Edie.

  “Bertha giving you a hard time?”

  Edie wheeled around, not having heard Skye come back into the kitchen. She stood in the doorway with her hands in her pockets.

  “What?”

  Skye pointed at the percolator sitting silently on the counter. “Bertha. She’s temperamental.” If Skye noticed Edie’s teary state, she gave no indication. “May I?”

  Skye edged closer to the coffee perc, reaching around Edie with such extreme caution, taking such obvious pains not to touch her, that Edie wanted to laugh. The ricochet from sadness to laughter left her slightly hollow. She felt guilty she’d made Skye feel that ill at ease.