Page 6 of Healer’s Betrayal

Mama May takes a deep breath and sighs. “Kayla, sit down.” I do as she says, but my mind is racing. “Nobody told them anything about you; I made sure of it. And I’ve made sure every employee keeps their mouth shut about you or any other employee going forward.” She watches me a moment. “You're not the only employee I’ve ever hired with a past.” I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t. She faces Jessie, and Jessie puts her hands up.

“I won’t say a word.” She glances at me, and I can see the questions in her eyes. Questions, I’ll have to answer at some point.

“Thank you,” I tell both of them. I try to approach this with a calm head. “What did they ask about me?”

Mama May leans back in her chair and studies me. “That’s the funny thing. They didn’t ask about you, exactly.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “What does that mean?”

She studies me and then looks over at Jessie before looking back at me. “They didn’t ask any specifics. The questions were so general that I would have overlooked them if you hadn’t told me your past.” She pins Jessie with a look. “Do you have anyone you’re hiding from?”

Jessie’s eyes widen, and she puts a hand to her chest. “Me? No. Why?” I’m just as confused as she is.

“That’s how vague the questions were,” Mama May says.

“What did they ask?” I ask her.

“Well, only one of them did the talking. The other was silent, but he was the one in charge. I’d bet my life on it.”

“The one that asked the questions?” I ask trying to clarify.

Mama May shakes her head. “No, the one that didn’t say a word.” Her eyes meet mine. “In this business, I’ve met a lot of men, some scary men. But that man?” She doesn’t look away. “He was the scariest man I’ve ever dealt with.”

Fear blooms, and I resist the urge to jump in Jessie’s car and drive to Noah. “Can I just check with my babysitter, please?” Mama May waves me on, and I pull out my phone and call Renee. Please answer. Please be all right.

Renee answers. “Kayla? Is everything all right? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Renee, is Noah all right?” I ask, unable to wait any longer.

There’s a pause. “Yeah, he’s still asleep. What’s wrong?”

It takes my stressed-out mind an extra minute to catch up to the fact that she’s whispering. “Are you sure?” I can’t help but ask.

It’s silent a moment, and then I hear my phone ding. I pull it away from my ear and see I have a text from Renee. I open it and see my brother asleep on his air mattress. The knot inside my chest loosens, and I feel like I can breathe again. “Kayla, what’s going on?” Renee asks quietly.

I try to gain control of my racing thoughts. “I just needed to check. Everything’s okay; I’ll tell you more when I get back this afternoon. Thank you, Renee. Seriously.” I take a breath. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.” She waits a beat. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” I force out. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I can tell she’s unconvinced, but she hangs up anyway. “Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Jessie asks.

Mama May stands to her feet. “It’s not my story to tell. I will give you girls five minutes and then you need to be on the floor.” She turns her intense gaze on me. “You’re safe here. No one will tell them anything about you or your brother. If they should come in again, we’ll get you out the back door.” She pulls out her phone. “I’m showing all my staff their picture, so everyone knows who we’re looking for.”

She turns the phone towards us. I'm not really sure what I thought I'd be looking at, but it’s not what I see. “Whoa,” Jessie says quietly. I stare at the phone, committing as many details to memory as I can. The two men are sitting across from each other in a booth. I know instantly that they were the two men I watched walk in last night. The man on the left is good-looking with shaggy brown hair and a sculpted jaw. But it’s the guy on the right that catches and holds my attention. I know instantly that this was the quiet one, the scary one, as Mama May says. He’s got reddish-brown hair that’s in great need of a cut. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in at least this decade. He's wearing, of all things, a long sleeved shirt when I know for a fact it was ridiculously hot yesterday. I look closer and see it’s a flannel shirt; that makes absolutely no sense. “Wow, they’re both really, really, really—” Jessie seems to catch herself and looks up first at me and then Mama May, who has her brows raised. “Hot,” Jessie whispers. I give her a wide-eyed look, and she wrinkles her nose. “I’m sorry; they are.”

“What did they ask?” I force myself to look away from the phone and back at Mama May.

“They were all really vague questions. Like I said, I wouldn’t have thought twice about them if I didn’t know you were on the run from your uncle.” Mama May eyes me. “They asked me a few casual questions like how long I’d owned the café and how many people I employed. They, well, the one that talked, asked if I had a high turn-over rate. We chatted about that a little bit, and then they asked if I had any new hires and how the newer ones were working. I didn’t tell them any specifics,” she rushes to say. “When he asked if my newer hires were male or female, I wizened up and told them I had to get back to work. So, like I said, they were general questions. But I wanted you to know.”

I blow out a breath. “Thank you.”

She stands and walks over to the door. “Five minutes.”

Then she leaves us alone. Jessie turns to me. “You’d better start explaining.”

Chapter 4