“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I said I’m fine.”
He had placed one of the pale blue tablets in my palm and curled my fingers around it.
“Let me take care of you.”
At the time, I had mistaken his quietness for concern.
Now every tender moment seemed contaminated.
I leaned my forehead against the cool window.
Mara rested her hand over mine.
“What did the pills make you feel?” she asked softly.
“Tired. Foggy. Sometimes my heart raced.”
“For how long?”
“About two months.”
Elena watched me in the rearview mirror.
“Do you still have any with you?”
I searched my handbag. In a small side pocket, I found a silver packet containing two tablets.
Elena held out a plastic evidence pouch.
“Put them in here.”
“You carry evidence bags?”
“I carry many things.”
She sealed the pouch and placed it in the console.
“Your father arranged for a laboratory to test an earlier sample,” she said.
My stomach tightened. “And?”
“The tablets contained a mild sedative and a stimulant.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“The combination can create exhaustion, anxiety, uneven concentration and heart palpitations. Over time, a person may begin to doubt her own judgment.”
Mara’s hand closed more firmly around mine.
“Would it cause a heart attack?” she asked.
“Not normally in the quantities we found. But someone could increase the amount.”
I looked at the rain sliding down the glass.
Jasper had watched me lose my train of thought at dinner. He had finished sentences for me in front of friends. He had told people I was overwhelmed by grief before my father was even dead.
And I had thanked him for being patient.
“Why didn’t my father tell me?” I asked.
Elena did not answer immediately.
“Because he wasn’t certain whom you would believe.”
I turned toward the front seat. “He thought I would choose Jasper.”
“I think he feared you already had.”
The car continued north, away from the business district. Buildings became smaller, streets quieter. Finally, Elena turned into the underground garage of an aging apartment complex beside the river.
She parked near a service elevator.
“My father is hiding in an apartment building?”
“Your father is waiting somewhere no one associates with him.”
The elevator smelled faintly of dust and machine oil. Elena pressed the button for the seventh floor.
When the doors opened, we entered a hallway with faded green carpet. At the far end, Elena knocked three times on an unmarked door, paused, then knocked twice more.
A chain slid free.
The door opened.
My father stood before me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
He wore a blue sweater I remembered from childhood winters, and there was a white bandage above his left eyebrow. One side of his face was bruised. He looked older than he had three days earlier, but alive—solidly, unmistakably alive.
“Camille,” he said.
I crossed the distance between us and threw my arms around him.
He staggered back half a step, then held me.
All the fear I had contained since opening the flash drive broke at once.
I cried into his shoulder with the helplessness of a child. My father’s hand moved slowly over my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I struck his chest once with the side of my fist, not hard enough to hurt him.
“You let me think you were dead.”
“I know.”
“You let Jasper tell me—”
“I know.”
“You could have called.”
“I wanted to.”
I stepped away, wiping my face.
“Then why didn’t you?”
His gaze shifted toward Elena.