Read Stranger in the Room: A Novel for Free Online

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   4
    I delivered the weekly reports to Super Nannies On Call, then stopped at Rapid Placement, a headhunting agency at One Atlantic Center on West Peachtree in Midtown to deliver routine background checks. It wasn’t the most exciting work, but both these companies, along with a handful of law firms and a couple of insurance agencies that used me for everything from surveillance to process serving, paid my ridiculously high mortgage every month. And then there was Tyrone’s Quikbail.
    I had been a registered bond enforcement agent since leaving the Bureau. Turns out I have a knack for fugitive recovery. It supplements my income nicely, and it’s far more interesting than most of the work I do, which usually consists of sitting on some street somewhere, trying to guess what color the next car will be, listening to audio-books and drumming my fingers on the steering wheel to stay awake until somebody runs out without their crutches or shows up with a prostitute. Bail recovery is also the part of my job that Rauser hates most. But he is not allowed to go on about this. We have an agreement. I don’t whine about him being a cop and he doesn’t interfere in my career choices. At some point, both of us had stretched the limits of this agreement. Out of fear, mostly. After we’d both been hurt so badly last year, making peace with him going back to APD took somedoing. But I did it. While he was home recovering, he worried when I left the house. He insisted I carry my gun everywhere. I was the only woman in produce with a mango, some asparagus, and a 10mm Glock. We’ve adjusted because we have to. When it comes to career, neither one of us is willing to give an inch.
    Tyrone’s Quickbail is in a chipped yellow stucco building near the capitol, Fulton County courthouse, tons of county service offices, block after block of bail bonds companies, and some pretty good soul food. I found a metered spot across the street from Tyrone’s office in the three-hundred block. I saw him through his third-floor window at the desk that looks out onto Mitchell Street. I got out of my car and dropped a couple of quarters in the parking meter, then went back for the bag I dared not leave. A block and a half from about a million cops around the government offices and it was still a terrible place to park a classic car. I wished I would have thought to bring the other car, a banged-up Plymouth Neon no one ever seemed to notice. It was like driving around with some kind of cloaking device.
    I grabbed my bag and looked at the green-and-white box of doughnuts I’d stopped for on the way. What was left of them. Krispy Kreme had picked up where alcohol left off. Few things sent oxytocin surging through my system like the glowing neon
Hot Doughnuts Now
sign and the promise of an original glazed right off the line. Dr. Shetty says replacing one addiction with another is dangerous. She recommends developing better coping skills instead. Apparently, my love of and perhaps obsession with food is symptomatic of the larger problem, which is: I’m insecure, needy, controlling, and stressed out, and I have intimacy issues out the wazoo. Oh, let’s not forget the penis-envy thing. I cannot believe I pay a shrink to tell me this stuff. I mean, what’s the friggin’ problem with a little replacement therapy? I exercise, if you count pacing. And it’s not like I’m shut in a closet somewhere with sugar all over my face and my finger down my throat. I often remind my brainy doctor that sometimes things are exactly what they seem. I love food because my mother, Emily Street, is just about the best cook in town and I grew up with her gourmet take on traditional southern. I love doughnuts because, well, they’re good. Okay, so maybe my cut-off switch is broken. Thankfully, my metabolism is something like a wood chipper. I thought about that. Would itlast? Once I moved past the mid-thirty point, would it slow to a crawl?
Shit
. Okay, so maybe I needed