Page 37 of Killer Body

“How soon we forget.” She taps the plastic-shrouded paper. “We’re looking at some serious weight loss here.”

I study this revealing sheet of statistics, see the dropping numbers and get angry all over again. How could any professional think this kind of loss could be normal?

At the end of each week, someone had scrawled time, date and initials next to Lisa’s stats. I don’t want to give away anything, but I have to know.

“I’d like to talk to my regular counselor,” I say. “Could you set me up with an appointment?”

“Joyce? Sure thing.” She takes the card once more. “Let’s see. You started about a year ago, right?” Before I can answer, confusion clouds her eyes. “What are you trying to pull on me?”

Sweat breaks out on my neck. I’m caught, and I know it. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me.” She slams her hands on her hips. “Are you from Corporate, one of Mr. Warren’s spies? ’Cause if you are, lady, you can tell him I do Killer Body by the book. I’m a good employee, a great employee. You tell Corporate how good I am, and you’d better not lie.”

“I’m not a spy for Mr. Warren,” I say. “What could possibly make you think that?”

“This.” She shakes Lisa’s chart in my face. “We always initial the forms after every meeting. Your last five were stamped in by Corporate. Explain that, why don’t you?”

I’m angry by the time I get to the newspaper. I don’t care that I’m wearing only sweats and a T-shirt. Or that my unruly hair is sticking up like feathers. Or that makeup hasn’t touched my face. I can only see the Killer Body woman’s know-it-all sneer, her smug indifference at the information on the card that should have screamed danger to anyone who can think. Throughthe roaring in my ears, I keep hearing that damning word. “Corporate.”

Dennis Hamilton’s office door is closed, meaning he’d prefer not to be disturbed. I storm in. He’s working on his computer, back to the door, but whirls around when he hears me. I know how it feels to be taken by surprise and know in that flash of his pale eyes that he hasn’t gotten over what happened with us that night any more than I have.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“What’s wrong?”

Only now do I realize my hand is shaking, and that I am clutching Lisa’s Killer Body card.

“I yanked it out of her hands,” I say. “It was my cousin’s. I just took it.”

“Sit down. Tell me.”

The simple commands, his raspy voice, connect with the sane part of me, the part that feels buried. I let them guide me out of the pitch-black cave where I’ve been lost since my visit to Killer Body.

I do as he says. I sit. But my hands still tremble.

Trying to explain them away, I say, “I am so damned pissed.”

“Can I look at that?” He gets up and comes around the desk, closes the door. Standing next to me, he waits. I hand over the card, and he sits in the chair beside me. He doesn’t just look at the card; he reads it, both sides. Then he glances up at me, his pale-green, bloodshot eyes almost the same color as his faded khaki shirt. “How’d you get this?”

“I went back to that place. Didn’t say I was press this time.” I force myself to say the rest of it. “Said I was Lisa.”

“Shit.”

“I know. But look at the last five entries, Den.”

“Quite a drop.”

“Not just the weight, the signature.”

“It’s not a signature. It’s a stamp.”

“Exactly. Killer Body Corporate, the counselor said. She was pissed, thought I was some kind of spy for Bobby Warren.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that he has spies.”

I take the card from him, look at the KB stamp again. I can’t sit still. I want to confront Bobby Warren, make him tell me what he and his people did to my cousin.

“Come on.” Hamilton nudges me. “You want some coffee?”