She considered a space near the ER, remembered Jerry Greenwood’s dead wife, and drove to the main lot instead, passing three narrow-looking spots close to the entrance. As scatterbrained as she felt, she’d rather walk two extra rows than scrape the car of a doctor who was trying to save Scott Canton’s life.

A nurse showed her into the ICU. “Mister Canton’s daughter-in-law is here.”

A female voice answered. “Daughter-in-law?”

Caitlin recognized the woman in the Denny’s uniform next to Scott’s bed. “Sorry I’m late, Charlese.”

Charlese took the hint. “Oh, his daughter-in-law. Hi, darling.”

The nurse left them alone, and Charlese gave her the latest. Scott had suffered a stroke between love-making strokes, possibly due to the little blue pills made popular by those commercials on the Golf Channel. The doctors had induced sleep but expected him to wake in the next hour. Overall prognosis, alive and expected to recover, possibly some damage to his center of speech. Caitlin said she’d stay while Charlese found a cafeteria breakfast. She took the chair next to the bed, faced Scott, and forced a smile.

“Two trips to hospitals in three weeks.”

She saw no movement from his eyelids, no wiggle from his nose, despite the oxygen tube in each nostril. A piece of tape kept an IV stuck into the man’s wrist.

“Once for a girl I can’t trust anymore—and now you, Professor.”

She took a breath, shook her head, and tried not to cry again, unable to even pinpoint the primary cause.

He’s expected to recover. You’re crying for yourself.

She groaned the thought away and leaned in to whisper, “I’ve heard this happens to people in therapy, Scott. Just like going to chiropractors, I got hooked. Now I can’t imagine doing this without you.”

She stood, pulled a curtain from the wall to the end of his bed, sat back down, and recapped her last two days out loud. After five minutes of listing every detail she could remember, she still didn’t have the missing piece.

“I have absolutely no proof that Lakshmi drugged her girlfriend. I’m going on the last-minute claim of a kid looking at twenty years in prison, a kid who may very well have killed both Paige Lauffer and Angela Chapman.”

She noticed a shake in her pointer finger. Her heart rate clicked along like a roller coaster on a steady climb toward its apex, with inevitable drops, twists, and turns on the other side.

“Can’t talk to Greenwood ’cause I blew up on the BPD and the FBI. Can’t talk to Mary—may have botched that too. And why couldn’t I keep it together with the chief? I’ve dealt with tougher gatekeepers than Renton. Is this what I am now? Some sad woman who loses her edge and talks to herself?”