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heavyweight bodybuilder with fists of steel, Blade Saw is not a man to be trifled with.
    A crack. A scream. Bob drops to his knees. “My arm!”
    The bouncer lumbers to his feet and races over to help Bob. A shadow darker than night bellows with a voice so low my toes curl, intercepting him midstride. The bouncer flies through the air and crashes against the wall. Throws and takedowns are Obsidian’s specialty.
    “Hey, leave one for me. I can’t write up a report saying I just stood around doing nothing.” A tall man with broad shoulders and a shaved head wades into the fray of thudding fists, cracking heads, groans, and screams. This must be Fuzzy, the cab driver’s son.
    Although I try to push myself up, pain knifes through my shoulder and arm, driving me back down to the ground. The cab driver kneels beside me and strokes my head. I wait for him to tell me how disappointed he is in me, one of my father’s favorite phrases. Instead, his face crumples. “I shouldn’t have left you. I should have dropped you at Redemption and driven away.”
    My mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out. Speaking is too much of an effort. All my energy is focused on not succumbing to the blackness creeping into my vision.
    “Amanda.”
    Nononononononono . Squeezing my eyes shut, I turn away from that voice. The voice I hear in my dreams every night. The voice I heard in the boardroom last week. I must have hit my head harder than I thought. I must be delirious. Jake is not here. He said he didn’t fight anymore at Redemption.
    “Look at me.”
    Unable to resist the opportunity to torture myself further, I turn and look into a deep blue sea of concern.
    Jake. So handsome. I can’t look away.
    “Jesus Christ.” His face contorts into a mask of anger. “What did they do to you?”
    I would answer if I knew, but the world is a jumble of sounds and memories…and pain.
    The cab driver puts a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “We need to get her to a hospital.”
    “NO.” I find my voice as darkness creeps across my vision. “No hospitals.” Hospitals mean my parents will find out where I was and what happened. Hospitals mean confrontation and anger and a father’s disappointment.
    “What were you doing here?” Jake gently brushes my hair off my face. “I mean…this isn’t your kind of place.”
    “She told me she lost her job,” the cab driver interjects.
    Hmmm. Maybe he’s not so great after all. Kinda meddlesome. And violating my right to privacy. Doesn’t he know what’s said in the cab is supposed to stay in the cab?
    “I got the feeling she was going off the rails,” he says, clearly unable to read my thoughts. “I tried to talk her out of it.”
    Jake’s face tightens. “What do you mean she lost her job? I saw her at her office last week.” The blood drains from his face. “When?”
    “She said it happened last Friday.”
    “Friday?” Jake’s strangled tone has me shaking my head. “Fuck. It’s because of me. It’s my fault.”
    My heart squeezes at the pain in his voice. I want to tell him it isn’t his fault. I want to tell him it would have happened anyway.
    But the words don’t come. Instead I close my eyes and succumb to the darkness.
    Jake’s anguished face is the last thing I see.
    ***
    “I have never been so disappointed in my life.”
    My father brushes off his gray Hugo Boss suit and glares at me across the hospital room. Although he’s almost fifty-five, women still think he’s quite a catch with his piercing blue eyes, trim body, and square jaw. But I think my mom was the catch. Five years younger than my father, her soft blond hair curls gently around a perfect oval of a face, and her eyes are a soft blue, like a summer sky.
    “Your mother called Farnsworth to tell him you wouldn’t be in to work and he told her…” He draws in a ragged breath and turns to my mother. “Tell her, Viv. Tell her what we had to hear from one of our dearest friends.”
    Head fuzzy from