Girl Undercover 1, 2 & 3: Three-Part Bundle Page 21

  I sighed. Only time would tell who was behind the texts. In the meantime, I’d better watch my back.

  A bitter laugh escaped my lips. What else was new?

  I pushed myself out of bed and got ready for a new day.

  It only started to get interesting as I got into the early evening and met the client I was taking over from a trainer who had given her two-week notice some time ago. I could barely contain my shock as the two of us were doing her initial evaluation session.

  I had never before met a woman who had body fat levels under twelve percent and whose fitness goal was to get it even lower. You’d think she’d realize she was already only skin and bones when she checked herself out in a mirror. Basically, the poor thing looked like she was a skeleton covered in tight skin. Truly, what she needed was not a trainer but a psychologist to set her head straight.

  “Eve,” I said, gazing at the very slender twenty-six-year-old blonde standing before me on the body fat scale. “Your weight is dangerously low. You’re almost five nine and weigh one hundred and ten pounds. Most runway models aren’t that skinny.”

  Eve looked at me with an outraged expression on her surprisingly round face.

  “That’s not true! I can tell you about two who weigh less than me and are even taller!”

  The way she was staring at me, like she was daring me to defy her, made me believe her. Even so, Eve was so skinny she was in danger of all kinds of health problems if I got her body fat even lower. The question was, how would I make her understand this? She obviously didn’t realize there were health risks associated with being too skinny.

  “Besides,” she continued, “Sarah told me I could get my body fat down to ten percent if I just worked out a little harder. I hate this fat!”

  She grabbed the pale skin on her stomach and pulled it out in my direction. I obliged her by looking at it.

  “There’s no fat there,” I told her. “Only skin.”

  “Yes, it is. If there wasn’t, I’d be able to see my six pack. That’s what Sarah told me.”

  I was so glad Sarah no longer worked for Nikkei Sports Club. She was obviously crazy trying to make this young woman before me think she was fat when she was anything but. She just had a body type that had very slender arms and legs, which meant she would not be able to develop a six pack the way someone with an hourglass figure like Sarah usually could. I didn’t think it was genetically possible for a girl like Eve to ever have a ripped midsection. Sarah must not have realized that, or at least not cared enough to educate Eve that there were differences in body types. If the latter was true, a strong sense of ethics couldn’t be high on Adler’s list of requirements when hiring trainers. Thank God I was assigned this client so I could try to enlighten her.

  “You don’t have the body type to get a six pack, Eve,” I explained. “But why would you? You have a great stomach. Women would kill to have a stomach like yours.”

  Eve looked at me like I was crazy. “No, they wouldn’t. I’m a fattie.”

  Oh, God, this girl so needed a therapist… And a few sandwiches with lots of mayo and cheese.

  I took a deep breath. “Listen, you’re so skinny that you may die if you get any skinnier.”

  She stared at me, even more outraged now. “What a terrible thing to say! I won’t die if I get skinnier! Sarah is nine percent body fat and she’s still alive. Or are you telling me this machine is wrong? Sarah went on it to show me her body fat levels.”

  Eve jabbed with her thumb at the body fat scale she was still standing on.

  “Yes,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “Well, at least Sarah’s body fat measurements must’ve been wrong. All the machine does is measure your hydration levels, so sometimes it’s off. Please believe me when I’m telling you, Eve. You’re already as lean as it humanly possible to be.”

  A picture of Sarah, blond and blue-eyed and fair-skinned just like Eve, materialized in my head then. Even though she had an hourglass figure, she was extremely slender and all of her body parts so tight it looked like she was a Barbie doll. Nonetheless, I refused to believe her body fat levels were nine percent. She must have been exceptionally hydrated the day she stepped on the body fat scale to produce such numbers. Or the machine was no good.

  To my surprise, Eve didn’t fight me, just stepped off the scale and sank down on the chair she’d sat on when we started the evaluation session. There was a vulnerable expression on her face. “Do you really mean that?”

  I looked at her, confused now. “What? That you’re dangerously skinny?”

  “Yes. Am I really that skinny?” Her voice was tiny, like she was only a little girl.

  “I’m afraid that you are. What we should be focusing on is not to get you even skinnier, but stronger and gain more muscle.”

  “Okay. Yes, I’d like to get stronger.” Her wide eyes moved slowly from one side to another as though she was considering something. She frowned and met my gaze again. “Why did Sarah keep telling me my body fat levels were on the high side then? That’s why I thought I was so fat! Before I met her, I always thought I was too skinny, really.” Eve pressed her red lips into a thin line and shook her head. “I should sue her. And Nikkei for hiring someone like her...”

  I shook my own head, mad now. I couldn’t believe Sarah had been telling this girl she was fat. Thank God she was no longer working for the club. In fact, she should not be a trainer at all.

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Eve,” I said, “but at least now you’re training with me and you know that you’re not fat after all. Okay?”

  Eve exhaled, like a big weight had just been lifted off her shoulders. She smiled. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  We finished the evaluation and moved on to the workout. I went easy on Eve since she had barely eaten that day, thinking she was chubby. I just had her do dynamic stretches and some floor exercises. When our time together was over, we booked the next session for the following day. Mostly because Eve had insisted, eager to get stronger.

  As I went home later, I couldn’t help but keep feeling disturbed by what Sarah had made this poor girl believe. It was beyond irresponsible. I wondered how many more of her clients she had given such extreme and unrealistic expectations—like all trainers at Nikkei these days, Sarah had had a full roster of clients. Unfortunately, Eve was the only one I had been assigned to train, so I didn’t think that I would ever know. It didn’t hurt to keep my eyes and ears open, though, in case I stumbled upon someone else while prowling the gym floors. Yes, I would certainly watch out for more misguided members now.

  ***

  Eve didn’t show up for her session the following evening. I called, texted and emailed her to double-check that she was aware she had requested to train with me today to be sure we hadn’t misunderstood each other. I got no response.

  When thirty minutes had passed from the time we had decided to meet, I concluded she was not going to show at all, so I left the club to take a walk outside and get some fresh air. I had spent all day inside and was in dire need of it.

  By the time I was going to bed, I had still not heard from Eve. I wrote her off as a flake and switched off the light on my nightstand.

  As I got ready for my morning clients the next day, I turned on the local news to see what was going on in the city. I almost dropped my cup of tea when the anchor reported that a girl had been found murdered in an alley yesterday afternoon. A girl who had been identified as twenty-six-year-old Eve Koch.

  Twenty-six-year-old Eve Koch as in my new client.

  If I had any doubts it was really my client the anchor was speaking of, I didn’t after they showed a photo of the girl. It was her all right.

  According to the reporter who was at the crime scene, Eve had been stabbed to death by a homeless drug addict with severe mental health problems. The bum in question had already been taken into custody after two eye witnesses, a man and a woman, had identif
ied him.

  I watched the story about Eve in its entirety and remained seated on the edge of my couch for a couple of minutes, still digesting what I had just learned. I felt terrible for what had happened to her of course, but I also thought something about how she had died sounded off.

  How could she have bled to death on the street in the middle of the day? It seemed the two witnesses could have done more to save her. Eve had been stabbed eighteen times and from what it appeared, the couple had seen each and every one of those stabs, leaving little doubt who had committed the crime. I couldn’t believe the man and the woman hadn’t intervened, done something more than simply watched her being murdered. You’d think the man at least would have tried to pull the homeless druggie off Eve. How could you just stand by and watch while someone was butchered to death like that? They both claimed to have been too scared to do anything, and when they finally regained their ability to act, they had called 911.

  I sighed heavily. Maybe I was being too hard on the two witnesses. Sexist for thinking the man should have done more. They didn’t have my training. They were merely civilians. I couldn’t expect them to do more than they had, no matter how much I thought they should have.

  Realizing it was getting late, I stood up and finished getting dressed and then left for work.

  I was still shook up about what had happened to Eve when I saw Ian for a session a few hours later. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since I was at his place and determined he wasn’t behind the vile texts after all. Just to appease him, I’d gone through another thousand of the club’s members in search of additional politicians. So far, Chatterly and the North Carolina senator were the only hits.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as he reached the top of the staircase where I waited for him.

  “My new client was stabbed to death yesterday,” I replied morosely.

  He stared at me, taken aback. “Your client was stabbed to death? Who stabbed her?”

  “A crazy homeless guy. Yesterday. He was found passed out not far from the victim. There were two eye witnesses to the incident—a man and a woman—so the perp has already been ID’d.”

  “The man and the woman were watching him as he stabbed her to death?” He looked like he had a hard time swallowing those words.

  I smiled wryly. Funny that Ian would have the same reaction as I had at the sound of there being eye witnesses to the actual incident. And he didn’t even know how many times the perp had managed to stab her yet. I told him this when I confirmed he had heard me correctly.

  He tskd. “Wow… It must have been a very daunting homeless man.”

  “Not really. Apparently he was fairly small. But I guess when you have a knife in your hand, you become a lot scarier.”

  Ian nodded, looking pensive. “That’s certainly true. Still, I can’t help but think they should’ve done something… The guy at least. So she was dead when help arrived then?”

  “That’s what it sounded like from the developing story on Channel One this morning. Maybe you can check out the police report tonight, see what else is going on?”

  “Yeah, I will definitely take a look and see what they have to say about it. Something about it sounds fishy. It’s tied up too neatly.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Let’s go up to the fifth floor and lift some weights today. You can use a break from the intervals.”

  “Okay,” Ian said and we began climbing the stairs to the floor above us. As soon as we were quiet again, I sensed that something between us had shifted. I couldn’t tell what, only that something was different. Was he mad at me for thinking he was the one behind the texts? Considering how cool he had been when I left his place, it was possible. Oh, well, I thought. He’d get over it.

  “I’ve gone through almost half the membership now,” I said to lighten the mood.

  We reached the fifth floor landing and continued into the vast open area where all the heavy free weights, bench presses and squat racks were and used primarily by grunting males.

  “And what did you find?” Ian asked as I pointed to a seated row machine. I’d have him warm up by doing a long set of light rows. He took a seat on the bench while I adjusted the weight stack.

  “So far the only politicians of interest are Chatterly and the senator from North Carolina.”

  Ian started pulling in the machine’s handles. “You haven’t found a single other person in the government here?”

  “Nope. Not a single one.”

  “Interesting. Well, hopefully you’ll find a few more as you go through the rest.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Now do a few stationary spidermen with torso twists.”

  The stationary spiderman exercise was a great dynamic flexibility exercise for men especially as they tended to be tighter than women. Ian went down in a pushup position and began doing the exercise.

  “Have you seen either of them at the gym?” Ian asked while turning his upper body toward me.

  “Only Chatterly that one time. But then again, I’m not sure I’d recognize the senator if I saw her in person. Do you want me to check if she’s been here?”

  “That would be great.”

  “Okay, I’ll check when we’re done training.”

  We spent the hour working every part of Ian’s body using either his own bodyweight or heavy dumbbells. Then I stretched him and said goodbye, having booked the next session for three days later.

  After Ian had disappeared down the stairs, I went to the fitness desk to check on the senator and the governor. It turned out both of them had been at the club almost every day this past week. I made a mental note of telling Ian about it when he contacted me later to discuss the contents of the police report regarding Eve’s murder.

  I received a call from him just when I got inside my apartment. Throwing my tote bag on the floor, I picked up and plopped down on the couch in my living room, beat from the hardcore workout I’d put myself through before leaving Nikkei.

  “I assume you got some news for me since you’re calling?” I said by way of greeting.

  “I do. But that wasn’t the only reason I chose to call instead of texting. I like listening to your voice.”

  My stomach made a weird flip not only because of what Ian had just said, but because of the intimate voice he’d used, too. I opted to ignore his comment, only noting that he must no longer be mad at me.

  “You read the police report?” I asked, making my own voice business-like.

  “Yeah. But I didn’t learn much of interest from that. According to the NYPD, Eve Koch’s murder is a pretty open and shut case. I learned much more as I ran a search on her on my computer. Get this—she filed a lawsuit against The Adler Group only hours before the bum attacked her.”

  “What? Why would she do that? She has no reason to sue them, does she?” Even as I asked Ian these questions, I heard Eve talking in my head: “I should sue her. And Nikkei for hiring someone like her...”

  “It’s a personal injury suit,” Ian explained. “Her claim was that her life was at risk due to the trainer who used to train her. You mentioned she was a new client, so I assume she was referring to her old trainer.”

  “Yeah, she must have. Wow… That’s crazy. Well, maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised. Now that I think about it, she did say something about wanting to sue them because of the bad advice she’d been given—and she was given really bad advice—but I thought she was just mad and didn’t really mean it. So she actually got a lawyer and had a lawsuit filed the very next day?”

  “She used the same lawyer she always uses. It’s not the first time she’s suing people or companies, so she knows how to get it done quickly. Or her lawyer does.”