LITMIR.BIZ

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do. But, I want to follow where this leads.”

      “Why?” she asked him. There was something defeated about her. She’d given up her kidnapper routine, and it had taken her backbone, too.

      “I don’t completely believe you. I don’t think you’re right about Zuma, but you got the package from the lawyers and things started happening, so yeah, I want to follow along.”

      It sounded lame even to his own ears. But Liv looked faintly hopeful. She wanted someone to believe her so badly, it made Auggie feel like a heel.

      “I need to go to Hathaway by myself.” She worried her lower lips with her teeth in a way that focused his attention on her. “I want to talk to them.”

      “I’ll drive.”

      “No.” She wasn’t willing to go that far.

      Thinking of his cell phone, and the charger in the glove box, he said more certainly, “Let me. I’ll stay in the car. I’ll wait outside for you.”

      She gazed at him uncertainly. He could tell she was thinking it over: was it safer to leave him at the house, or take him on her expedition?

      “Okay,” she said.

      “Okay?” He held out his palm and she stared at it. “The keys. I’m driving, right?”

      “No, I . . .”

      “You can hold me at gunpoint, if it makes you feel better,” he said dryly. “And is there any chance we can get breakfast on the way? Drive-thru McDonald’s sounds fantastic.”

      The look on her face was priceless. “McDonald’s?” she asked.

      “I’ll buy. Oh, wait . . . no wallet.”

      She grabbed her backpack, zipped it open, put the gun inside and pulled out her wallet and the Jeep’s keys. “I’ll buy,” she said.

      Then she dropped the keys in his palm.

      Hathaway House was just as Liv remembered it: respectable. The buildings were simply brick and mortar surrounded by trimmed oak trees and several stately Douglas firs and a boxwood hedge and azaleas, which were months past flowering, their green leaves gleaming dully in the heat of the sun. In Liv’s dream-mind the windows were eyes and the front door a yawning mouth. Today, it looked carefully tended, if a bit tired, as if all the scrupulous landscaping couldn’t disguise the darkness inside.

      Shaking her head at her own paranoia and what it had driven her to, Liv trudged up the front steps, glancing back once to where the Jeep was parked at the curb across the street. She could see Auggie through the driver’s window, drinking from his McDonald’s to-go coffee cup. He was looking at her and she wondered if he would just drive away once she was inside. Why wouldn’t he?, she asked herself. If the situation were reversed, she would.

      She just irrationally hoped he would wait for her. She’d had a helluva time getting him to stay in the car; he’d insisted on coming with her. But she’d been adamant that she was going in alone, and in the end he’d reluctantly agreed.

      With a faint prayer to the powers that be, whoever or whatever they were, she pulled open one of the institution’s dark green double doors and stepped inside the administration entry hall.

      The place smelled like floor wax and dust and took Liv zinging back to the time she spent here. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, as she walked toward the reception area at the end of the short hallway. The overhead lighting was dim and made pools of illumination along the polished linoleum, like a fuzzy string of pearls, which led to a more modern counter that hadn’t been there when Liv was a patient.

      A woman with a grayish shag hairstyle sat behind the counter, wearing a headset. She didn’t look up at Liv’s approach. Liv surreptitiously glanced down the hallways that radiated both left and right behind the counter. Those were the same hallways she’d traversed when she’d been a resident, although there had been a wide wooden desk, mahogany maybe, that had gleamed like the floor where the counter now stood. Hathaway House had prided itself on its sense of period, circa 1940s as far as Liv could tell, but that had apparently finally given way to modern times. There was an electrical conduit running along the edge of the wall and it burrowed through a small hole in the counter to feed the computers, telephone and other electronic equipment.

      The woman said into the headset, “Dr. Knudson will be back on Monday.” By her tone it sounded like she may have already delivered this information to the caller at least once. “Yes. Monday.” A pause. “You can leave a message on his voice mail. Yes. I’ll connect you.” She quickly stabbed a few buttons and then darted Liv a look. “How can I help you?”

      “I’m looking for a doctor who once worked here. Maybe still does. Dr. Yancy?”

      “Dr. Yancy retired.”

      Liv absorbed that. “Is there someone else I could talk to?”

      “I’m afraid not. Our director will be in Monday.”

      “Dr. Knudson?”

      She smiled tightly. “Yes.”

      “Maybe there’s someone else on staff I could speak to?” she asked, but the woman shook her shaggy gray hair.

      “It’s Saturday. I’m sorry,” she stated flatly in a tone that suggested she wasn’t in the least. “Dr. Knudson is the one you should talk to.”

      Realizing she wasn’t going to get any information by going through the correct channels, Liv thanked her and turned away. She didn’t want to draw too much attention by being a nuisance. She was just going to have to wait.

      She returned outside and felt a rush of relief at the sight of the Jeep. Letting herself in through the passenger door, she slammed it shut. The interior still smelled like sausage and hash browns from their breakfast on the go. It took her a moment to realize how tense Auggie was.

      “Thanks for waiting,” she said. Then, “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Bullshit. What happened? Something happened?” She looked around the car wildly, her gaze falling onto the glove box. Without any clear thought she pressed the button and it snapped open, the wires of an electric charger popping up.

      “Don’t—panic,” he warned.

      “What is this?” Her brain wasn’t connecting. “You had the glove-box key?”

      “It . . . was under the mat.”

      He was staring at her, and she realized he was expecting her to say something else. And then she finally woke up. “That’s your cell charger. It was in the car all this time?”

      For an answer he pulled his phone from his pocket. “I plugged it in while you were inside,” he confessed.

      “And made a call?”

      “You didn’t give me enough time.”

      “I don’t believe you. Hand it to me.”

      “It doesn’t have enough power. I had to rip it out of the charger when you came back.” He placed the phone in her hand, and she stared at it, wishing she knew one damn thing about cell phones. She pushed the green button and nothing happened.

      “You have to hold down the red button to turn it on, but it’s not going to work until it gets some power,” he said.

      “You were going to turn me in.” She felt betrayed. Ridiculous, but true. She sank back against the seat and covered her face in her hands, struggling for composure.

      “No, I want to help you,” he said again.

      “If I had any energy left, I’d laugh,” she said behind the protection of her hands. She was moving to a strange psychological place, she realized distantly, the place where you just give up completely.

      “I think there’s

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