Shit.
I can’t hear the footsteps anymore.
Then, right next to me behind the curtains, a loud bang on the patio doors. I shoot away from them, my heart thundering. Someone’s right there. And then a man’s voice comes, furious and gruff, “I know you’re in there, Marni. Open the door!” I retreat farther back into the kitchen until my back comes up hard against the basement door.
I’ll be safe down there.
Gently I raise the latch and ease the door open, peering down into the darkness below. A chill wells up from the basement. I leave the door ajar enough to shed some light down the stairwell but I leave the lights off. I don’t want to attract his attention. Feeling my way down each cold stone step, I creep into the darkness.
At the bottom of the stairs I make a break toward the closet on the far side of the room. But, as I run a brutally sharp stab of pain shoots up through my foot, then another, then another. I fly forward, landing hard, sprawled across the basement floor. Pain thunders through my hands now too as they connect with the sharp objects littering the floor. I try to muffle my reaction but I can’t help but cry out at the sheer intensity of it. Raw with wounds, I curl tight into a fetal position—the pain is everywhere. I hold a hand up to the half-light and see the dark wet marks blossom across my palms. Blood. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness and I see the floor around me is glittering with bright slivers of broken glass caught in the moonlight. I try to crawl to my feet but let out a moan of agony and drop back down. Above me, through the smashed basement window, two booted feet appear, and I’m suddenly blinded.
A flashlight, I think. I squint up into its glare. The man’s voice comes again. “What the hell are you doing down there, Marn? Why aren’t you answering your sodding phone?” I try to shield my eyes from the glare of the probing flashlight to see the face above me, but as I do he must catch sight of my bleeding hands.
“Jesus Christ, Marn, you’re bleeding! Are you okay? Wait—just stay right there, don’t move. I’ll…I’ll jump down.”
“Chris?” I ask, bewildered.
“Yeah, of course. Who did you think it was? There’re basically only two police officers around here.” A big tall figure drops down through the broken window into the basement next to me with a grunt. “Oh God. Listen, just don’t move, shit, there’s glass everywhere.”
“What’s going on, Chris? Why the hell did you break my window?”
34
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 11—WALKING ON BROKEN GLASS
“It was Zara, wasn’t it?”
He looks up from my foot, tweezers in hand. “I don’t know,” he answers thoughtfully. “You mean who broke the window? Or your cover?”
My bleeding feet rest on a towel-covered cushion on his lap as he delicately removes each splinter of glass. Chris had carried me up from the basement and put me on the sofa before he headed off to find a first-aid kit for my wounds.
“Did you tell her? Who I was?” I ask.
He looks up at me, his feelings clearly hurt. “What? No, of course not. Why would you think that?” He holds my foot firmly in his hand now and pulls.
“Ah! Jesus, Chris. This hurts so much.”
“Don’t be such a baby.” He smiles, amused. “I can’t believe you thought I was coming to get you. That’s hilarious. Oh God, not hilarious that you thought someone was coming to get you obviously, but I mean that it might be me—” He fumbles to a stop.
I know what he meant, and to be honest I’m so pleased he’s here he could literally say anything right now. I smile. “Well, then maybe you shouldn’t be creeping around outside people’s houses like a murderer, Chris.”
“Yeah, I definitely need to stop doing that.” He smiles mutedly before his expression drops slightly. “But someone did ring you to let you know I was coming, right?”
“Yeah, I literally just got off the phone with Pe—with someone.” I catch myself. I’m not sure if I should be mentioning Peter at this stage. I know he’s in close contact with the police but I don’t know if it’s above Chris’s pay grade. I move on swiftly. “They said someone would be coming. I just didn’t know you’d get here so quickly.”
But Chris catches my misstep. “Who called you, Marn?” he asks, suddenly serious.
I rub my eyes. I’m so tired. “Please stop calling me Marn, Chris. I haven’t been Marn for years. And it’s none of your business who called me, okay? That’s confidential.”
I regret my tone instantly when I see his expression.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I’m sorry about all this, the press finding out. I didn’t know Zara would do this. She threw me out this morning, by the way, so…I don’t know. She thinks we’re having some kind of affair.” He shakes his head dismissively, as if the thought were beyond absurd. “Anyway, I’m just saying that I’m not sure whoever you’re working for really has your best interests at heart. I mean, they could have moved you somewhere safer than this for a start, couldn’t they?”
“What do you mean she threw you out?”
“Don’t change the subject, Emma.”
“What was the subject? What? Why I’m staying here, in the middle of nowhere? Well, for a start they wanted to keep me away from Holt,” I reply indignantly.
The mention of Holt silences him and when I look back he’s intent on my foot again. I sigh and fall back into the cushions. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’ve just got a lot going on in my head right now.”
He tugs and another spike of glass pulls painfully free. “Are you scared? About what will happen tomorrow?”
I close my eyes and blow out a soft breath as he pinches another shard out.
“Yes. I am. I’m very scared: for my mother, what she’ll wake up to in the morning, for Joe and how he’ll have to pull Chloe from her daycare. I’m scared for all of them waking up to reporters on their doorsteps, and it being my fault that their friends won’t look at them the same way again, and I’m terrified of the questions, and of the judgment.”
“It won’t be as bad as before, I don’t think. It can’t be.”
“Chris, have you seen those TV crews outside the hospital? The world is a totally different place than it was fourteen years ago, everything is bigger, faster, meaner. This time it will be everywhere.”
“You know, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t read about it, at the time. It seemed wrong to read about your personal life like that. They shouldn’t have released some of the things they did. I’m sorry it happened.” He wipes both feet with an alcohol wipe and presses on a final dressing. “All done here, Dr. Lewis.” He throws me one of his ridiculously handsome smiles, gives my ankles a warm squeeze. His skin on mine.