Kate White - Hush

She showered and then forced herself to microwave and eat another frozen mac and cheese. After stabbing at the dregs of it in the plastic container, she paced the hall of the apartment. The one sure way to save herself, it still seemed, was to figure out what was going on at the clinic. The discrepancy about Sydney Kastner’s embryos bugged her. It could very well point to attempts by the clinic to jack up profits. And she couldn’t ignore the odd Keaton connection. He’d consulted on Sydney’s case and encouraged her to do what was right for her. Perhaps right before the celebratory dinner, Keaton had figured it all out and confronted Levin.

But how do I figure it out? Lake wondered. She thought again of the odd letters on Sydney’s information sheet. Even if she summoned the nerve to look through files again, she didn’t know what she was really looking for. Her thoughts rushed back to Alexis. There was clearly something she hadn’t told Lake, something she’d been close to revealing. It seemed Lake’s only hope was to convince Alexis to share what she knew. Lake glanced at her watch. It was almost ten. She would phone Alexis in the morning. And she would try to learn what she’d meant by cherchez la femme .

She slept with the table once again propped against the door. All through the night, Smokey paced up and down the bed as if he sensed how tense she was. The last time she remembered looking at her clock it read 2:27.

The late summer sun nudged her awake just after six. For a moment she luxuriated in the soft feel of it on her face until, with a jolt, she remembered everything. She sat up against the headboard and ran her hands through her hair. She didn’t want to wake Alexis-she sensed she’d have the phone slammed down in her ear if she did-but she didn’t want to miss her if she went to work someplace. She decided to call just before eight. Until then she would rehearse her presentation.

After dressing and making coffee, she opened her laptop. Client presentations were the part of her work she’d always liked the least, and in the early years she had positively dreaded them. She’d felt so exposed, at times even wondering if the shadow of her birthmark was actually darkening and pulsing as she spoke. But she had worked with a speech coach and learned to feel more at ease.

As she went through her presentation out loud, she seemed to stumble over every other word. It would be even worse at the clinic, she knew. Levin had been so cool to her the other day, and Brie may have since gone running to him about finding Lake poking through the files-hardly the makings of a receptive audience. To say nothing of the fact that the killer might very well be one of the people sitting at the conference table during the presentation. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever manage to appear confident and professional.

At twenty of eight, unable to wait any longer, she phoned Alexis. The same blunt, unhappy voice said hello. A male voice-from the TV or radio-yammered in the background.

“Alexis, this is Lake Warren. I came by to see you-”

“I remember.”

“Of course. I-”

“What do you want?”

“You said the other night that you were reluctant to share more with me because you weren’t sure of my agenda. It’s true that I wasn’t very clear. You see, I’m actually working at the clinic-as a consultant. I was afraid to tell you that because I was going behind their back.”

“And your point is? I’m not sure why you’re confessing this now.”

“Because I want the chance to speak to you again,” Lake said. “I’m really concerned that something wrong might be going on there. If you tell me what to look for, I may be able to find evidence.”

There was a very long pause. If Lake hadn’t still heard the background voices, she might have thought Alexis had disconnected the call.

“You actually work there. At the Advanced Fertility Center?” Alexis said finally.

“Yes. I’m sorry I was reluctant to tell you before.”

“All right. I’ll speak to you again. When?”

“As soon as possible. I’m finishing up my work there, so if I’m going to try to get any proof, I have to act immediately.”

“All right-come now, then.”

Lake was in a cab in ten minutes. The whole way to the East Side, she warned herself to handle Alexis delicately, to resist pouncing. She couldn’t come away empty-handed this time.

Alexis was wearing another wrap dress, this one in pinks and browns. Her apartment looked exactly the way it had two days before, like unchanging scenery for a play.

“So you work at the clinic,” Alexis said coldly as they took the same seats in the living room they had on Tuesday. “What an interesting detail to have left out of our previous conversation.”

“I’m sorry. Like I said, I was afraid of making trouble…until I knew it might be justified.”

“Is business booming these days?” Alexis asked sarcastically. “I read the other day that the average age of marriage is increasing for women. That kind of news must make Levin and Sherman positively gleeful .”

“I know they want to build their business-that’s why they hired me. I’m a marketing consultant.”

“ Marketing? So you’re not in the lab or anything like that? Do you have any medical expertise at all?”

“No. I’ve had other clients in the health-care field, but-”

“Damn.” Alexis shook her head hard to the left, as if she were flicking water from her hair. “I need someone in the lab.”

“Why?” Lake asked, surprised. “Is that where you think the problem is?”

“Look, I really don’t see how you can help me,” Alexis snapped.

Lake could feel her own anxiety starting to balloon. She couldn’t walk out of there without the truth.

“Please let me try,” she urged. “You can tell me exactly what to look for. If there’s something less than kosher going on, I want to help you expose it.”

“ Less than kosher? ” Alexis said. The testy tone was back, like a tiger that had suddenly slunk out of the bush. “Excuse my eyes from bulging out of my head, but considering what they did to me, that has to be the understatement of the year.”

“What do you mean?” Lake asked. “What did they do?”

“They stole my baby.”

Lake played the words back in her mind, trying to decipher them.

“Your baby?” she said. “But I thought you weren’t able to conceive?”

“I did conceive-in a petri dish. And when I was denied future access to my embryos, they gave them to someone else.”

Involuntarily Lake’s hand flew to her mouth.

“My God,” she said. “How-how did you find out?”

“I saw the baby with my own eyes.”

“At the clinic?” Lake asked.

“No. At a store on Madison Avenue. I’d been running errands and had gone into this little gourmet food store to grab a sandwich. They have a few tables in the back there where you can eat lunch. And then this woman- Melanie’s her name-came in with a toddler in a stroller. And the baby was the spitting image of Charlotte.”

Okay, Lake thought, so this is the nut-job part that Archer had mentioned.

Alexis smiled wickedly with her tiny pink lips.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said.

“No, it’s not that,” Lake said. “I’m just digesting what you said.”

At that, Alexis shot up and for a brief second Lake wondered if she was going to walk over to the couch and slap her. But she hurried out of the room, leaving Lake alone. When she returned a moment later, she was carrying a small piece of paper in her incongruously slim fingers. On her way back across the room, she picked up the silver-framed photograph of Charlotte.