PROLOGUE
There are things that, once seen, can never be unseen. Horrible things. Traumatizing things. No good, very bad, terrible things, and dead bodies aren’t even the worst of them. I should know. I’ve seen more than my fair share of those, the most recent one barely a month ago.
And even that wasn’t as terrifying as what I was facing now.
There are some lines a person should never cross, but this determined young man was too bullheaded to listen to me. He was about to make a mistake he could never undo. To see something that would haunt him for the rest of his life, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.
“No!” I thrust out a hand and grabbed hold of his sleeve. He glanced over at me, a testing, teasing smile on his face as he took one more step toward the white line taped to the floor. Like this was all just one big game to him. He was so close to crossing that boundary. Barely three steps away. He couldn’t begin to comprehend the horror that awaited him behind the paper-thin blue drape on the other side of that line, but in my compromised position, there was no way I could hold him back.
My legs were useless. I was trapped in place. The doctor was too focused on her task behind the diaphanous barrier to register what was happening right in front of her. I heard the snap of her latex gloves behind the partition. Small metal tools clanked softly against the rolling tray. An icy finger of dread pierced through me, and all I could do was hold fast to the kid’s shirtsleeve.
I racked my brain for anything I could say that might get through to him—an ultimatum or even a threat—but he’d been seized by his own curiosity, driven by some primitive impulse, and I knew by the set of his mouth there would be no reasoning with him. Before I could issue another warning, his sneakers bolted across the tape.
“Zach, no!” I doubled my grip, crying out his name, nearly tumbling off the exam table as my two-year-old wriggled out of my grasp. Every part of me clenched as he darted toward the end of the exam table, where my bare ass was precariously perched on the edge, my feet spread wide in their socks and stirrups. A nurse rushed into the room. She caught Zach under his armpits and scooped him off his pinwheeling feet a second before he managed to get a look.
“Silly boy,” she said, plopping him back into the plastic chair at the head of the exam table. He pouted at her and clenched his little fists. “I told you,” she said, shaking a finger at him, “you have to be a good listener and stay behind the tape.” She procured a lollipop from the pocket of her scrubs. The pursed lines of Zach’s mouth softened as she handed it to him. He reached for it happily, the medical tape she had drawn across the floor all but forgotten in his hurry to open the candy.
I slumped back against the exam table, my heart still galloping. “Thank you.”
The nurse winked at me. “Not all heroes wear capes.” She stoodlike a sentry between Zach and the stirrups. Disaster averted. For now, at least.
Dr. Wiley’s silver curls appeared over the sheet of blue paper stretched across my knees. “Everything okay up there?”
“Everything is fine.” I averted my gaze to the ceiling to avoid being blinded by the spotlight on her forehead.
“You know, Finlay,” she said, dipping back below the drape, “we have strict policies against allowing children in the exam rooms. If your mother wasn’t one of my oldest patients, I never would have agreed to this. I would have made you reschedule your appointment and shown you the door. I’m overbooked as it is.”
“Thank you for squeezing me in.” I flinched a little as she nudged my knees farther apart. “It’s just that I lost my insurance two years ago after my divorce, and my mother was worried that it had been too long since my last exam,” I rambled. “I would have left my son at home, but I didn’t have a sitter. Veronica, my nanny, was…” Was what?Extradited to Maryland? On indefinite house arrest at her mother’s house while she’s awaiting trial for grand larceny?I stared at the ceiling, struggling to figure out how to explain Vero’s circumstances without making her sound guilty. She wasn’t guilty. At least, not of this particular crime. Vero and I had both broken plenty of laws in the short time we’d known each other—burying bodies, concealing evidence, hot-wiring cars, impersonating cops—but stealing from her former sorority house hadn’t been one of them. “My nanny’s been a little tied up. That’s all.”
“Your nanny? Your mother told me you stay home with the children.” The doctor didn’t sound impressed as she positioned the speculum.
I sucked in a breath as she cranked it open. “I work from home.”
“Doing what?”
I hated this question. It always opened the door to uncomfortableconversations during which people with big titles and tiny egos felt the need to share with me their opinions on the merits of my career, which by their estimations didn’t amount to much. I didn’t bother to beat around the bush. There seemed to be little point in being evasive while the woman was elbow-deep in mine. “I’m a novelist.”
“No kidding?” the doctor said with a hint of surprise. “I don’t think I’ve had a patient who was an author before. Have you written any books I’ve heard of?”
I bit my tongue. I seriously doubted this woman was a fan of steamy romantic suspense novels, but given our current positions, it seemed safer to be polite. I rattled off a few of my titles since she wasn’t likely to be familiar with any of them. Until very recently, I could have counted all my readers on one hand, and most of them had done so only out of a sense of obligation, probably because they were related to me.
The doctor was quiet through an extended pause. After an ominously long silence, I heard the rustle of latex as she stripped off a glove. There was no movement behind the drape. No prodding or scraping. No intrusive questions about my sex life or lectures about the importance of breast exams. No verbal instructions to scoot closer to the end of the table. Just the unnerving feeling of being left hanging off the edge of it.
I shivered, wondering what she was doing. Had she found something unusual? Was she recording measurements? Taking notes?
“Hello?” I lifted my head, searching for the doctor over the top of the drape. I looked over at the nurse, but she only shrugged. “Dr. Wiley?” I called out. “Is everything okay down there?”
Her awed whisper came from somewhere between my legs. “Would you look at that?”
“Look at what?” I asked, beginning to panic. Had I shaved offsome critical piece of my anatomy during my rushed sponge bath over the sink that morning? Or worse, had she discovered some horrible malignant growth?
The doctor sat up taller and beamed at me over the drape. She held up her phone, showing me the screen. “Look! I found you on Amazon. Did you know you have twenty-six reviews? And they’re actually pretty good! Don’t move,” she said, holding up a finger. “I’m going to order your book right now. It’ll only take a minute.”
I flopped back against the exam table, an arm slung over my face, while she finished her shopping.
A moment later, the tools of her torturous trade clanked against her tray. The nurse gave me an apologetic smile as she helped me sit up. I adjusted the paper drape to cover myself, though there seemed to be little point. Two people in the room had already seen what was under it, and the other was too preoccupied with his cherry Dum-Dum to care about it anymore.
“You mentioned you’re divorced,” Dr. Wiley said, rolling on her stool to her computer. “Have you been sexually active?”
