Forgotten by Evangeline Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

before, but in this case, she would have had to agree with her
mom’s opinion—the sight was pretty gross. Still, she had to control
her personal revulsion and just humor the customer.
    The thing was, he
was going to buy
the watch. Kate had seen it the moment she shook his hairy hand
when he came back into the shop. He was rich enough that seventy
thousand was a minor splurge—he would buy it as a treat to
himself—the way Kate herself might have stopped by Haagen-Daz and
bought an ice cream cone if she’d been especially good that day and
gone to the gym. But he wanted to be sold on it—wanted to admire it
and be admired wearing it. So, even though her nerves were still
jangling from the strange encounter with the big Kindred, Kate
accommodated him…as well as she could.
    “ Did you know,” she said,
“That every Rolex is subjected to numerous strenuous tests to be
certain they’re up to the high standards set by the
company?”
    “ Is that right?” The
customer looked up from admiring the watch nestled in his arm
hair.
    “ Un-huh.” Kate nodded.
“They go through over twenty drop tests where they drop the watch
from much higher than it would ever normally fall. And then there’s
the ram—it’s a kind of metal arm that shoots out and slams into the
watch face at the equivalent of five thousand Gs—hundreds of times
what it would be subjected to, even in the worst car
crash.”
    “ Truly?” He looked
impressed.
    “ Oh, yes.” Kate nodded
again. “And tell me this, Mr. Denrek—do you do any
swimming?”
    “ Well…” He puffed his
hairy chest out importantly. “I’ve been known to do a triathlon
from time to time. I really enjoy competing in the Ironman
competition—there’s a swimming section in that.”
    Kate knew none of this was
true—the customer had run a half marathon once and hadn’t been able to finish
it—she’d picked it up when she touched him. But she widened her
eyes anyway, as though she was awed.
    “ Wow—isn’t that supposed
to be really hard?”
    “ It can be.” He shrugged.
“If you haven’t trained enough. That’s why I try to spend at least
an hour a day at the gym.”
    Sure you do. Kate looked at the considerable paunch stretching
his t-shirt. She didn’t need the Knowing to know this was a fib. But
the customer wanted to be flattered and she needed to sell this
watch so of course she would go along with it.
    For a moment she felt a
rush of despair. What was she doing here? She could have been using
her gift for something that mattered instead of picking some hairy
rich guy’s brain to sell him an overpriced watch. In fact, she had
a feeling she had done something like that in the past but she couldn’t be
sure. There were holes in her memory—the three year gap was the
biggest but it wasn’t the only one—not by a long shot.
    “ I can see you work out,”
Kate said, getting back to business. She tapped the watch face
gently with one fingernail. “Which is why this is the watch for
you—it would suit your, uh, your active lifestyle.” She cleared her
throat. “You know that every Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master Rolex is
subjected to stringent waterproofness testing? Before being shipped
every single one is tested at a depth 10 percent more than it’s
guaranteed for. Which means that—”
    “ Which means you’re going
to hand it over or this pretty little bitch is going to be wearing
your brains on her blouse.”
    Kate gasped and looked up. The customer was
frozen in place and there was a tall guy in a gray hoody standing
right behind him. He had a small but deadly looking gun pressed to
the side of the hairy customer’s head and he was looking grimly at
Kate.
    How had she missed him? Kate couldn’t
understand it—why hadn’t her Knowing kicked in? Or failing that,
why hadn’t she at least seen him walk into the store?
    I was too focused on
trying to sell this damn watch, she
thought to herself numbly. Too busy using
my gift for stupid, trivial