catnip into a plastic bag and shoved it in the back of a kitchen drawer. She couldn’t stand the sight of it, but she knew it wouldn’t be smart to throw it away.
As she slammed the drawer shut, her eye caught the calendar on the door of the fridge. The kids were due back in the apartment in just a few weeks. She couldn’t imagine how she could allow them to live here with the killer possibly closing in on her and the police breathing down her neck. Perhaps she could ask Jack to keep them longer in the Hamptons than planned. She could say she was swamped with a project and needed to work on it 24/7. But if Jack was the stalker, wasn’t this exactly what he was trying to do: create the impression of a mommy who was coming unglued?
I have to get a grip, she told herself as she stripped off her top. It was essential to keep her wits about her so she could watch her back at all times. That also held true with the police. She needed to keep a cool head if they showed up sweating at her door again. And if Jack was behind all the cat madness, she had to outsmart him, too. It all seemed overwhelming, but she had to do everything she could to save herself. If she didn’t, she would lose Will and Amy—and perhaps much more.
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.