His office door swings open just as I arrive. Two feet separate us. I can smell his fear. For a moment, I hesitate. I can’t get my brain around things. My thoughts are without focus. Is he going to be a witness or isn’t he?

“John, what in the hell—?” Carl cries.

I empty the entire clip into his chest and face. His blood splatters over me. Fragments of his bone cut into my skin. I want to tell him it’s all Roberta Jennings’s fault, but it’s too late. I slump against the wall, breathing heavily. They never would have understood. They never would have cared how much being a doctor meant to me.

All at once, I stop.

My God, I’ve done something very bad. Now the board of medicine will be hard-pressed to let me keep my license at all. I’ve made a terrible mess of everything. I replace the clip a final time. Then I close my eyes and press the muzzle of the gun to the side of my temple. I picture Chloe in my mind. I’m going to miss her most of all.

Wondering how it all unraveled so quickly, I pull the trigger.

CHAPTER 1

One hour down. Three hours to go.

The afternoon was turning out just as Lou had hoped it would. Enough traffic through the ER to keep things from being boring for Emily, but nothing that would leave her with a lifetime of nightmares and therapy bills. Not that the teen wouldn’t be able to handle just about anything that came down the pike. But in an inner city emergency room—even a small satellite facility like the Eisenhower Memorial Hospital Annex, the pike, on occasion, might be carrying violence of the highest order.

“Okay, Em, Mr. Schultz is being a perfect patient. Ten stitches and not a peep out of him. Two more and we’ll get him bandaged, up, and home.”

“Thank you, Doc,” the man beneath the saucer-shaped light said in a raspy voice that could have cut stone. “I didn’t feel a thing. Your dad does great work, miss.”

“Thank you. I know,” Emily replied. “He loves sewing my jeans when they tear, and he was always stitching up my stuffed animals, even when they weren’t ripped.”

“My son’s school has Take Your Kid to Work Day, just like yours,” Schultz said, “but I’m a roofer. Three stories up with the wind blowing doesn’t seem like a great place for a nine-year-old, so Marky went to the nursing home with my wife and helped her put the trays together. What does your mom do, miss?”

“My name’s Emily, Mr. Schultz,” she reminded him. “Emily Welcome. My mom’s a psychologist. Mostly couples therapy. She didn’t think her patients would enjoy having her thirteen-year-old kid sitting in on their sessions.”

“I can see why she might feel that way.”

“But for a second choice,” Lou said, tying off the final stitch, “I believe Mom might have chosen to send Emily up on the roof with you, rather than into this place.”