enough vials with her for the digitalis to overpower the sedative?
Cat flicked the light switch on the wall next to her. She turned the vials in her palms. There were only three, not four.
Two epinephrine. One insulin. No digitalis.
The doctor stared at these for a long time before her peripheral vision made note of the empty sofa. A gray chenille blanket poured like a waterfall off the cushions and onto the floor.
Cat spun, looking for Beth, expecting to see her emerging from the bathroom with a tissue or from the kitchen with a glass of water. How could she have awakened so soon? And where could she have gone without the horse? Anywhere in town!
Or merely down the stairs and across the building to Nova.
Of course, Beth would have gone looking for her, not running away from her.
The foolishness of her plans to erase Beth from Burnt Rock was clear now. Beth might have told a dozen people of her plans to seek out her grandfather. All of them might have come looking for her, at the very least her mother. And Nova, who probably wouldn’t die of her misguided grief, would tell anyone who asked that she had seen the girl, and that Cat had seen her too.
There had to be another way.
With killing now out of the question, Cat sank into a pool of relief and found the calm center of it. Her lungs deepened into a healthy rhythm, and the trembling in her core slipped away. She crossed the room and laid the medications and the syringe—definitely the wrong size, she could see that now—on the dining room table. She picked up the blanket from the floor and folded it across the arm of the sofa. Then she left the apartment and pulled the door behind her and went to Nova’s home.
Her restored sense of well-being faltered when she saw that Nova’s door was closed.
And locked.
Cat rapped gently. “Beth? Are you in there? I was downstairs in my office doing paperwork—I should have left a note.”
When no answer came after several seconds, Cat put more force into her knock. “Beth?”
Perhaps she’d fallen asleep again here, the effects of the drug not being completely worn off. Cat pounded.
“Beth! Wake up!”
“You wake up!” Nova’s voice was clear and bold, magnified rather than muffled by the wood between her and the doctor, as if she were shouting into a megaphone. “She knows about Garner, you fraud.”
How could Beth know Garner was in her office even now, sickened by the same fungus that had sickened Nov—
This was not what Nova meant. Beth knew Garner was alive. Cat rattled the doorknob, and when that didn’t yield, she pressed both hands to the door and pressed her forehead into the wood.
“What did you tell her?” Cat demanded.
“I told her you’re a killer.”
“That’s a lie. You’re . . . you’re unstable. Crazy with grief.”
“I’ll prove it eventually.”
Panic did a cannonball dive into Cat’s pool of calm. “Prove what?”
“You’re no more a doctor than I am.”
“Where’s Beth?”
“You killed—”
“Where is she!”
“—my baby.”
“You can’t kill a fetus,” Cat hissed. “I saved a baby from a miserable life with you, you pathetic creature.”
It was Nova’s silence that returned Cat’s words to her like a verdict. Her confession was out there, impossible to retract.
“I could have helped you,” Cat said, but she didn’t care if Nova heard her or replied. Nova was the least of her concerns now. Cat fled down the stairs and back to her offices, to Garner, to the only person she’d ever known who’d appreciated her love and returned it.
She couldn’t stay in Burnt Rock. Nor could Garner. They had to leave. Now, within the hour, before the sunlight exposed all of Cat’s lies.
She went to her desk first. She closed her computer and slipped it into her case. The laptop contained all the most important components of her false life—passwords and résumés and diplomas and operational ID numbers, all of which had cost her so much money—and contact information for the people who could provide all that to her again.
The thought of beginning once more after so little time brought an ache to Cat’s head. Could she do it? Could she enter another town, another set of lives, with a life of her own so perfectly groomed and presented that they couldn’t help but love her? The false her? The doctor who was no longer a doctor, who gave so much and asked for so little?
She took what her fingers touched without thinking about