Kate White - Hush

Alexis shook her head back and forth angrily.

“Those bastards,” she said. “So if Brian ever relents, they’ll just say I had fewer than I thought-or that some deteriorated.”

Unexpectedly, tears welled in Alexis’s eyes. It was the first time Lake had seen her look truly vulnerable.

“I’m going to do my best to help,” Lake said. “I’m headed to the clinic later today and will try to see the files. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

As Alexis walked Lake to the door, she grasped her arm so hard it hurt.

“I have to get my baby back,” Alexis said. “There has to be a judge who will give her to me, if you can prove what Sherman did.”

When Lake hurried out of the building minutes later, she saw the doorman study her curiously and she realized how rattled she must look. Halfway down the block toward Fifth Avenue she sank onto a stoop. Could Alexis’s story really be true? she wondered. It seemed so farfetched. And yet it couldn’t be a coincidence that Keaton had Melanie’s name.

If doctors at the clinic really were stealing embryos, they weren’t doing so just to make their patients wild with joy. It was obviously to improve their success rates and enhance the clinic’s reputation as a place that was expert at making older women pregnant. And that guaranteed greater profits.

This had to be why Keaton had been killed. He’d figured out somehow that Melanie had received someone else’s embryos and had decided to contact her.

Or what if Melanie had begun to have suspicions and reached out to him ?

Lake dug her BlackBerry from her purse and called 411. There was a listing for a Steve and Melanie Turnbull in Brooklyn. She started to punch in the number and then paused. It was one thing to cold-call Alexis because she’d already approached Archer’s producer with her concerns, but what could Lake possibly say to Melanie? Your baby may not belong to you and we need to chat?

No, she would have to find something in Melanie’s file linking her to Alexis. Lake rose from the step and glanced at her watch. In nine hours she was due to give her presentation. She dreaded the idea of being back at the clinic, especially in light of what she now knew. She also dreaded the idea of going into the file room again. But she had to. Since there’d be no chance of going through the records after the presentation, as the clinic was closing, she needed to arrive early.

Back home she rehearsed her presentation several more times. She knew the only way to get through it tonight was to focus totally on the slides and not on the people in the room. How utterly ironic it will be, she thought, when she reaches the slide about capitalizing on the clinic’s success with older women.

Melanie Turnbull flashed in her mind again. Lake started to worry about her plan to search the files once more; she had learned nothing from going through the patient charts so far. What, if anything, would she find tonight? She reconsidered talking directly to Melanie.

At around two she made a salad-just canned tuna and an onion so old it had thick green sprouts shooting from one end-and ate it listlessly. She felt stalled-marooned, really. She had told herself before that she needed to take action, to outsmart Levin as well as Jack, but she was just sitting here, betting on some paper files.

Without giving herself time to think it over anymore, she grabbed her BlackBerry from her purse and punched in Melanie’s number. A woman answered, sounding unhurried, pleased with the day, and in the background Lake could hear classical music playing and the babbling of a child. What a contrast, she thought, to Alexis Hunt’s sad apartment.

“Is this Melanie Turnbull?” Lake asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Who’s calling?”

“My name is Lake. I-I’m a friend of Dr. Mark Keaton’s. You two spoke, right?”

“What?” Melanie asked, sounding mildly irritated now. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Dr. Keaton-with the Advanced Fertility Center. He was murdered last week. I know that there were some-well, confidential things you needed to discuss with him. About your baby.”

The woman didn’t say anything for a moment, though Lake could hear the baby fussing in the background.

“Like I told you,” she finally said, all the softness gone from her voice. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Do not call here again. Do you understand?”

A hard click followed. Damn, Lake thought. She’d blown her chance. She should have talked to Archer first and plotted out a clear strategy. Now everything rested again on what she could find in the files.

Feeling drained, she wandered into the living room and sank onto the couch. The drapes were pulled and the room was dim. She swung her legs up on the seat and closed her eyes. The last thing she remembered was Smokey hopping up next to her and nuzzling her face.

When she woke, she felt sticky, and her mind was fuzzy. She glanced nervously at her watch, worried about how long she’d slept. It was just after four. She had the odd sensation that a noise had woken her, though Smokey was nowhere in sight. She listened carefully. Then she heard the sound of her BlackBerry, ringing softly from the kitchen, where she’d left it. She shot up awkwardly from the couch and hurried to answer it. Maybe it’s Archer, she thought. But the screen said “caller unknown.”

“Lake,” a woman said.

“Yes,” Lake said quietly. She didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Melanie Turnbull.”

Lake nearly gasped in surprise.

“Hello,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about your call,” Melanie said. “And actually I do think we should talk.”

“Thank you,” Lake said, still taken aback. “As I said before, Dr. Keaton-”

“In person, though. I don’t want to do this over the phone. And as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” Lake said. “You tell me when and where.”

“Tonight. I want to get this over with.”

Lake winced. She wouldn’t be done with the presentation until at least seven.

“I have a little hitch tonight. I have to work until around seven.”

“That’s not a problem. I don’t want to do it until I’ve put my daughter to bed, anyway. At around nine?”

“Okay. Where should we meet?”

“I can’t come all the way into Manhattan so it’s going to have to be in Dumbo.” She gave the name of a restaurant on Front Street and said she’d meet her at the bar.

“Uh, that’s fine,” Lake said, jotting down the information. Melanie told her that she was tall with shoulder-length blond hair. Then she brusquely ended the call.

Lake felt like sobbing with relief. The fact that Melanie had called her had to mean something.

There were some logistics to work out. As long as she left the clinic at around seven-thirty she would reach the restaurant in time. Taking the subway there would be a hassle, though, involving at least one transfer, and it would be tough to find a taxi at that hour, and then again when heading back home. The smartest approach, she realized, would be to take her car. That meant driving to the clinic. She needed to get moving.

By the time she parked her car in a garage on the East Side, Lake felt fried. Traffic had been awful and the trip had taken longer than expected. She was wearing a black skirt and a pink jacket, and they both already looked rumpled, as if she’d picked them from a pile of worn clothes on the floor. But as she hurried down the street she knew she had bigger concerns tonight.

There were a few patients bunched at the reception desk and she skirted around them, heading directly toward the back. No one was at the nurses’ station, indicating that the staff was involved with patients. As she turned one corner she saw the backs of two people in scrubs emerging from the OR-Sherman and Perkins, it looked like.