1
OLIVIA
She could do this.
Olivia Harper approached the nondescript coffee shop across the street from her apartment in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.
The place wasn’t necessarily her favorite. The servers could be rude, the food overcooked and the coffee rather bland compared to the place she preferred a few blocks east. The ambience at the Kozy Kitchen wasn’t particularly cozy, or “kozy,” either, for that matter, featuring cracked vinyl booths and walls that had needed a new coat of paint about a decade earlier. The Kitchen, as those in the neighborhood called it, was too tired and dingy to attract many hipsters, with their laptops and their slouchy knit caps and their carefully groomed facial hair.
Right now, it was perfect for her needs. Olivia stood outside the door, ignoring the drizzle and the pedestrians hurrying past her on their way to somewhere far more interesting and important than this run-down diner.
Every instinct inside her cried out for her to rush back down the street, race up the three flights to her apartment, climb into her bed and yank the covers over her head.
Any normal person would feel the same in her situation, especially after enduring a life-changing event like she had experienced five days earlier.
Her reaction wasn’t out of the ordinary. In the five days since she had witnessed a horrific assault at another diner, the nightmares still haunted her, so vivid she had awakened every morning smelling spilled coffee, blood and fear.
She closed her eyes, still hearing the screams of the barista, the enraged yells of the junkie senselessly attacking her, Olivia’s own harsh, terrified breathing.
She could feel the floor tiles under her knees and the cushions of the booth pressing into her back as she huddled on the floor, trying to make herself disappear.
Until that experience less than a week earlier, Olivia had blithely gone through life with absolutely no idea what a craven coward she was.
If she had ever thought about it, which, quite honestly, she hadn’t, she might have assumed she would be the kind of person always ready to step up in the face of danger. Someone who could yank a child out of the way of a speeding car or dive into a lake to rescue a floundering swimmer or confront a bully tormenting someone smaller than him.
Someone like her beloved father, who had given his life to save others.
Instead, when her moment to stand up and make a difference came along, she had done absolutely nothing to help another human under attack except crouch under a table and call 911, all but paralyzed by her fear.
Shame left a bitter taste, even five days later. She hated remembering that she had done nothing while that junkie had fired a gun in the air then used it to pistol-whip the barista again and again.
Olivia had wanted desperately to run out of the coffee shop and find help but she’d been afraid to do even that, not sure if he had more rounds in his weapon.
The attack had seemed to last hours but had only been a moment or two before the barista herself and another customer, a woman approximately the age of Olivia’s mother, had finally put an end to the horror.
That customer, just walking into the otherwise empty coffee shop, had sized up the situation in an instant and demonstrated all the strength and courage that had completely deserted Olivia. Instead of hurrying out of the coffee shop to safety, she had instead run to the barista’s aid, yelling at the junkie to stop.
Startled, he had paused his relentless, horrifying random attack and had eased away slightly. That had been long enough for the barista, battered and bleeding and crying in pain, to pick up a carafe of coffee and throw it and its piping hot contents at him.
Olivia could still hear his outraged yell and the shouts of a neighborhood police officer who had finally responded to her call, ordering everyone down to the ground.
In five minutes it was over, but Olivia had relived it for days, especially coming face-to-face with the stark realization that she was a craven coward.
Steve Harper would have been ashamed of her.
Amazing, the lengths a person could go to deceive herself. All this time, Olivia thought she was strong and decisive and in control.
In certain areas of her life, maybe. Hadn’t she moved away from her hometown in Northern California to go to college twelve years earlier and never looked back? That had taken strength. And she had built her own social media marketing company in her own time, working nights and weekends until she now had clients across the globe.
Of course, she was terrified to take the leap and make her side hustle her full-time job. She still put in long hours handling information technology for a medical conglomerate because the pay was good and the benefits amazing—even though her ex-fiancé worked in the administration for said conglomerate and made her life unnecessarily difficult, simply because she had broken off their engagement six months earlier.
She was constantly running from any situation she found emotionally threatening.
“Are you going in?”
A man was holding the door for her, she realized. He was about her age and not bad looking in a slightly rumpled, professor sort of way.
She started to take a step inside after him but fear froze her in place. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she lied.
“Here’s a crazy idea. You could always wait inside, where it’s dry.”
He smiled, his brown eyes friendly and with a glimmer of interest.
“I’m good,” she mumbled.
He shrugged and let the door between them close with a disappointed sort of look.
Yeah, she was a coward when it came to dating, too. She had one serious relationship in college that had ended by mutual agreement. Then she’d become engaged to the first guy she dated out of school, until she realized neither one of them loved the other. They were simply together for convenience.
She had convinced herself that a mildly enjoyable relationship was the safer choice. What if she loved someone passionately, fiercely, and then lost him suddenly, as her mother had her father? Sixteen years later, there were times Juliet still seemed shattered.
So many things could go wrong. A car accident. A plane crash. A heart attack.
A burning building where a man might run inside to save people, despite his daughter begging him not to do it.
Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets against the damp Seattle afternoon. Nothing would take the chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave, huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done anything but make her crave cake.
She couldn’t hide away in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have to reenter life and go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a typical spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.