it was just a dumb mistake.”
This was interesting, but it wasn’t the affair I wanted to know about. What about Subject 5?
So I asked him, straight out. “What about your relationship with April Voss?”
He gasped, which was an answer in itself.
When he spoke again, his face was pale. “How do you know about her?”
“You’re the one who first told me about April,” I said. “Only that night in the Conservatory Gardens, you referred to her as Subject 5.”
His eyes widened. “Lydia doesn’t know, does she?”
I shook my head and checked the time on my phone. We still had several hours before Dr. Shields believed we were meeting.
He took another healthy swig of his drink. Then he looked me directly in the eyes. I could read genuine fear in his. “She can never, ever find out about April.”
That was almost exactly what he’d said about us a few seconds ago, too.
The door to the pub swung open so hard it banged against the wall.
I flinched as Thomas whipped around.
“Sorry!” A portly guy with a red beard stood in the doorway.
Thomas mumbled something and shook his head, then turned back to me. His expression was grim.
“So you’re not going to tell Lydia about April?” he asked. You have no idea what you would destroy if you did.”
I finally had something on Thomas. It was the opportunity I needed.
“I won’t tell her,” I said.
He started to thank me, but I cut him off. “As long as you tell me everything you know.”
“About what?” Thomas asked.
“About April,” I said.
He didn’t give me much. I thought about what Thomas had revealed while I walked to meet Noah for a late dinner at Peachtree Grill following my second drink of the day with Dr. Shields’s husband, the one in which we’d read our lines like actors onstage.
Thomas had said he’d been with April only once, last spring. He’d gone to meet a friend at a hotel bar. After the friend left and Thomas lingered to pay the bill, April slid into the seat across from him and introduced herself.
It’s the scene Dr. Shields had me re-create at the bar at the Sussex Hotel with Scott, I think, and suppress a shudder. But I don’t reveal that to Thomas; I might need to hold information over him again.
Did Dr. Shields set up April to test Thomas, and did April lie about it—just like I did?
Or is the truth even more depraved than that?
According to Thomas, he went to April’s apartment later that same night and left a little after midnight. Aside from the way they met, it sounds eerily like our date.
Thomas insisted he had no idea until after April died that she was connected to his wife. But given that April was a subject in Dr. Shields’s study, too, there was no way it was a random encounter.
The cover story Thomas and I created for Dr. Shields tonight might buy us a little time, I think as I approach Peachtree Grill. I heard relief in her voice when she thanked me after I told her Thomas was devoted to her.
But something tells me it won’t last.
Dr. Shields has a way of pulling the truth out of people, especially when it comes to things they want to bury. I’ve learned that firsthand.
Tell me.
It’s like I can hear her voice in my head again. I spin around and search the sidewalk. But I don’t see her anywhere.
I resume walking, even faster now, eager to get to Noah and the normality he represents.
A secret is only safe if one person holds it, I think. But when two share a confidence, and both have self-preservation as their main motive, one of them is going to give. I deleted the text chain in which I asked Thomas on a date before I knew he was married to Dr. Shields. But I doubt he did.
Thomas is a cheater and a liar; strange traits for someone married to a woman who is obsessed with morality.
He says he wants out of the marriage. Who’s to say he won’t sacrifice me to do it?
I know three things happened last spring: April served as Subject 5 in Dr. Shields’s study. April slept with Thomas. April died.
What I need to do now is find out which one of them, Dr. Shields or Thomas, first drew April into their warped triangle.
Because I’m not entirely convinced her death was a suicide.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
Friday, December 21
Thomas is waiting on the steps of the town house.
His first words defuse the suspicion that formed