Page 69 of Never Flinch

10

Holly gets them out the South Hall of the Macbride as soon as Kate’s gig ends, leaving the autograph seekers empty-handed at the stage door. (She discovers later it won’t always be that easy.) The bookstore has provided a sedan. Kate, floating on a post-performance high, doesn’t even complain about going to a Holiday Inn.

“It was good tonight, wasn’t it?” she asks.

Corrie says it was very good and Holly says the same, but once Kate really got rolling, Holly didn’t have a chance to appreciate the woman’s wit and outrage. Her clarity. She would have relished those things as a member of the audience. But she’s not here to relish and appreciate.

She gives Corrie several photographs, screengrabs she asked the stage manager to provide her. They are from the audience cams and show the first three rows of the center section. Due to the stage lights, the faces are quite clear and turned up to look at Kate. “Do you see anyone who looks like the woman who attacked you in Reno?”

Corrie goes through them and shakes her head. “It all happened so fast. And it was raining. I can’t say she’s not in one of these and can’t say she is.”

Holly takes the pictures back. “It was a long shot.”

Kate is paying no attention. “You thought it was good, right? Tell the truth.”

Corrie assures her again that it was good. Holly checks behind them—it’s the fourth or fifth time—for follow cars, but now thatit’s dark, who can tell? They’re just shapes behind headlights. She’s got a headache, small but nagging, and needs to pee. She reminds herself—also for the fourth or fifth time—that if another potential bodyguarding job comes along, to think twice.

Her dead mother sometimes speaks up in Holly’s head, usually at the most inopportune times. Like now.

If Kate McKay is killed on your watch, you won’t have to worry about any of that, will you?And then, with her old longsuffering sigh:Oh, Holly.

Chapter 11

1

Holly is in and out of sleep, and what she gets isn’t particularly restful. Their Holiday Inn is in the Coral Ridge Mall, which is fairly quiet after ten PM, the only party at the far end and by midnight it was winding down, but the motel is between I-80 and the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, and the long-haul trucks—eastbound, westbound—drone 24/7. That sound usually soothes her, but not tonight. She’d specified three rooms, Kate’s on one side of her and Corrie on the other. She keeps waiting for the sound of a door breaking in or one of their anti-rape alarms blasting off. She knows she’ll be having thin sleep for the next week. Longer, if she continues with the tour. Catching the woman who threw the bleach and delivered the anthrax would help, but even then…

Holly keeps thinking of the booing section last night, those men and women wearing blue shirts saying LIFE AT CONCEPTION. How righteously angry they looked. These are the people who protest at abortion clinics. Sometimes they throw bags of animal blood at the women and girls who come to have the procedure. And in several cases they have attacked doctors and nurses. At least one doctor Holly knows of, David Gunn, was shot and killed. She finally drifts off into a deeper sleep and dreams of her mother.

The idea that you can protect those women is ridiculous, Charlotte Gibney says in this dream.You couldn’t even remember your library book when you got off the bus.

While she’s brushing her teeth at quarter past six, her phone rings. It’s Jerome, asking if he can treat John Ackerly to breakfast on the company dime. “I want to ask him something about that AA guy. The one he found dead? I tried to call you yesterday, but your phone was off.”

Holly sighs. “This job doesn’t allow for outside distractions. What do you want to ask him? Keeping in mind it’s police business, not ours.”

“It’s about the appointment book. Never mind, I’ll go ahead and pay for breakfast. We’re talking twenty bucks, thirty tops.”

With the success of your book, you could certainly afford it, Holly thinks. “No, put it on the Finders Keepers card. Just tell me if there’s anything to tell.”

“I will. It’s probably nothing.”

“Then why did you call? Not just to ask if the company would buy breakfast for a possible source. I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I’ll tell you if anything comes of it. Even if it doesn’t. How’s it going out there in flyover country?”

She thinks about pushing Jerome for what’s on his mind—he’d tell her, she thinks it’s why he called—then decides not to. “It’s all A-OK so far, but I’m a little on edge. The woman stalking Kate means business.” She fills Jerome in, finishing with the forced door and the bloody mess poured over Kate’s luggage.

“Has she thought about packing it in?”

“She won’t. She’s… dedicated.”

“Do you mean stubborn?” Jerome suggests.

A moment of silence from Iowa City. Then Holly says, “Both.”

“I’m a little surprised her publisher didn’t pull the plug. Those people tend to be timid.” He’s thinking of the run-up to the publication of his own book, and how the editor brought a sensitivity reader onboard to go over his manuscript. She suggested a few minor changes. Which Jerome made, guessing there would have been more if he were white.

“The publisher’s not in charge,” Holly says. “Kate’s doing this tour on her own. It’s politics more than publicity for her new book. She does have an assistant that’s coordinating with bookstores along the way. Her name is Corrie Anderson. I like her. She’s very capable. Which is good because Kate can be demanding.”

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