I drifted away, crossing to the other side of the street. Walking faster, I could scan the crowd ahead of him. And then I saw her, in a white tank top and overalls.
He was following Hiromi Kennedy.
26
What the hell?
I stared at my phone, waiting for an answer.
A moment later, Arabella appeared beside me, wearing orange again.
“Didn’t you throw that hoodie away?”
She smiled. “Classic misdirect.”
“Why is that man following Hiromi?”
Arabella didn’t answer, pulling me into the shade of a grocery-store awning. Next to us, a shelf full of sliced watermelons gave off a sweet, heavy scent. Hiromi and the target kept moving away.
Arabella was silent, letting me think.
“He works for Lyon,” I said.
“He’s a client. Sometimes they do things for their therapist.”
“Is that normal?”
“Like I said, Dr. Lyon doesn’t practice psychiatry. He gets inside rich people’s heads to control them.”
“Ah.” I finally saw why my family was focused on this man. His business model was too close to our own.
“We thought he was blackmailing his patients,” Arabella said. “But then we bugged his office—all he does is talk. No threats, justempathy.”
A shudder went through her.
Lyon was like some awful inversion of us.
“We’ve sent him the recordings,” she went on. “Proof that he abuses his patients’ trust—manipulates them, takes their money. But he doesn’t even react. He’s not afraid of exposure.”
I stared at her. My whole life, I’d been taught how to spot the vulnerable, the weak. This man was neither.
“Wolves don’t eat wolves,” I said.
“We don’t want to eat him. We want him to join us.”
“As a Morton?” Outsiders married into my family, and a few—like Uncle Orrin—found a home with us by simply being who they were. But to take over a whole psychiatric enterprise…
Grandmother Elizabeth was ambitious.
“What Lyon has is precarious,” Arabella said. “Cults of personality always crumble in the end. We can protect him from the law, the press. But first we have to find out what he wants.”
“Hiromi,” I said.
“His only weakness.” Arabella pulled out her phone. On its screen, a blue dot was traveling east through Chinatown. “Get close to her, and you’ll wind up in a room with him. Then we can talk terms.”
“Can’t wait,” I said, reaching for the phone.
She kept hold of it. “Jessica. Did you burn down Halcyon Hall?”
