Gia spent the next few worrisome hours cleaning her apartment while she waited for the inevitable phone call. By five that evening, she had a sparkling home and clean clothes, but no calls, no texts, and no email from the office. Not even from Mr. Reede, whom she’d halfway predicted might try to get in touch with her after having one of his stooges do a deep dive on the internet in search of her personal history.

          To say she was confused would be putting it lightly. As long as she’d worked with Brady, she’d never known him to make idle threats. The fact that she hadn’t heard anything could only mean two things—either Brady hadn’t contacted the office…yet…or he had, and the office was being slow to react.

          Parking herself on kitchen chair, she debated what her next move should be. Should she go ahead and report to Brady’s house tomorrow morning for work? If she’d been replaced, but somebody dropped the ball and failed to notify her, she’d encounter her replacement when she got there, and they’d send her home.

          She contemplated calling Bert and asking him if he’d heard anything, but chances were he wouldn’t be able to tell her anything. As long as he wasn’t directly affected by the staff change, he’d have no idea she’d been replaced until Brady told him or Bert tried to call her about something and she’d have to tell him.

          There was also a moment when she’d debated with herself as to whether or not she should phone Rall Rentals, if for no other reason than to let them be aware of her encounter with Mr. Reede. Let them figure out if him meeting up with her was an odd coincidence, or if it meant he’d been attempting to find out who his Renter was. And if they believed the latter like she did, what did they plan to do about it?

          It was almost nine p.m. “Bert will be leaving the house by now,” she told herself. Brady wouldn’t be in bed just yet. He preferred to stay up and watch his shows until ten, sometimes eleven o’clock, before calling it a night. Since he’d had one of those slings like the kind he had in the bathroom installed in the bedroom, he was able to put himself to bed.

          She remembered asking him why he didn’t have a TV installed in his bedroom, and watched it from there after she or Bert put him to bed.

          “It feels too damn much like I’m back in a hospital room,” he’d admitted. “Besides, there’s an additional charge from the cable company if they have to put one of those boxes in there. Plus I’d have to buy another TV.” He’d shaken his head. “That’s an expense I can do without. The one in the living room is good enough for me.”

          “If I leave now, he should still be awake by the time I get there,” she noted. “We need to talk. We need to get this out in the open.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t leave with him thinking I’ve betrayed him. I love…I love him too much to ever do such a thing.”