Read Online The Advocate (The Advocate Series) by Teresa Burrell - Free Book Online

just some term of endearment. After all, Sabre often used it herself with her buddy Bob. Reading the letter might give her the answer, but she resisted the temptation.
    Sabre got ready to leave for court. She felt comfort in the fact nothing odd had happened tonight at the office. It seemed there had been something strange every night she had worked late for the past few weeks.
    When Sabre reached the back door to leave, she noticed the porch light was out. She reached for the switch to flip it up, but it was already in the “on” position. She set her files down, walked over to the cupboard, and took out a light bulb and a flashlight. She turned the flashlight on, but nothing happened. “Damn it,” she said out loud, remembering she forgot to buy batteries.
    Though not afraid of the dark, Sabre felt some trepidation after all the things happening at the office recently. She cautiously opened the door and looked around. Seeing nothing, she reached up to unscrew the bulb; it jiggled. When she tightened it, the light came on. Just then, the phone rang and Sabre jumped. She jerked her arm back inside, slammed the door, and locked it. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and answered the phone. No one responded. Her hand shook as she hung up the phone. Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest, and her muscles tightened. She had to tell herself to breathe.
    “Okay, Sabre,” she said, as she breathed deeply, “it’s time to calm down. It’s just a stupid, loose light bulb and a wrong number. Stop acting crazy.”
    She sat down at her desk for a few minutes to gain composure. Once her hands stopped shaking, she picked her files back up, walked to the door, and peeked out again. With her key in her hand she stepped outside. Still looking around, she locked the door and darted to her car, feeling a mixture of fear and paranoia as she drove away.

8
     
     
    At 6:43 a.m. Sabre found a parking spot in front of Clara’s Kitchen, her favorite breakfast spot. Bob would arrive any minute. His son, Corey, had to be at school at 6:30 on Thursdays for band practice, so Bob would drop him off. He and Sabre met at Clara’s Kitchen for breakfast every Thursday before court.
    It was a little, family-owned restaurant where the locals ate. The building, an old, two-story house, had once been a bed and breakfast. Clara Johnson, the original owner, began renting out rooms after her husband passed away. Her seven children were mostly grown by then and several of them had moved out, leaving empty bedrooms. Eventually, she stopped renting out the rooms and converted the entire downstairs into a restaurant. Clara continued to live on the second floor with her granddaughter, Maggie, who had come to live with her after the child’s parents had been killed in a car accident when she was three years old. She grew up in Clara’s Kitchen and learned all her secret recipes, recipes Clara shared with no one else. Maggie, twenty-four-years old when Clara passed away, loved the Kitchen as much as her grandmother had and worked hard to keep it going in her honor.
    Sabre walked in and sat at her usual table by the window so she could see Grandma Clara’s flower garden. She had a standing reservation. Instead of calling in each week, she only called when she couldn’t make it.
    When the waitress came over to her table, Sabre exchanged pleasantries with her and ordered a black coffee for Bob and a decaf for herself. “Fill the cup one-third of the way with the coffee and then fill it up with warm, non-fat milk, please.” The waitress laid the menus on the table and left to get the coffee. Sabre knew the menu by heart so she seldom looked at it anymore. Instead, she gazed out the window at the rows of snapdragons in yellow, pink, purple, and white, the bright pink petunias, the pansies of every color, and a beautiful patch of blue flowers she couldn’t identify, about six inches high and two feet in diameter, surrounded on three sides by rose bushes that