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“No, Wingo,” Camille said, her voice impatient. “You shouldn’t have come in. That’s against the law. You need to be invited in.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” he said. The flame went out. “Are you going to call the police?” he asked miserably.
“No, I’m not,” Camille said, taking a seat next to him on the sofa. “But this has got to stop. You need to go home.”
“What if I promise to call first and make an appointment? Will you start seeing me again?”
“No, Wingo, I can’t. We talked about this.” She could almost feel the despair coming off him in the dark. “Are you thinking about hurting yourself, Wingo?”
“No,” he said. “I just want to talk.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear that. But there are better ways to ask for help. Go home. Call one of the other therapists. They’ll be able to help you.” Wingo didn’t answer. “Why did you remove the light bulbs?” she asked.
She felt him shrug next to her. “I didn’t want you looking at me. I knew you’d be mad.”
She sighed. “I’m not mad, Wingo, just concerned. You’re not my client. I thought I made that clear.” In the distance, came the wail of a siren. “Needing help is nothing to be ashamed about,” Camille told him for what must have been the hundredth time. “We all need to talk to someone at one time or another.”
The sirens were growing closer. She could see the flash of red lights just outside her living room windows. Her neighbors must have seen Wingo crawling through the window and called the police. Dammit, she thought. This only complicated things.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone else. Only you. But I can pay you. I promise I can get the money. My dad said he would give it to me,” Wingo said, his voice taking on a note of hope.
Alarm bells sounded in her head. She heard the sound of a car door being slammed. “No, Wingo,” she said tightly. “We talked about this, remember? You can’t tell anyone about our arrangement. I was doing it to help you. I could get in trouble for seeing you after hours, for not keeping an official file on our visits. You wanted it that way, remember?”
“Yeah, but you said I shouldn’t feel bad about asking for help,” Wingo said, getting to his feet.
“You need to call one of the other therapists that I referred you to, Wingo,” Camille said. “They will be able to help you and that’s what we all want. For you to feel better.”
“Is that the police?” Wingo asked. “Why did you call the police?”
“No, it wasn’t me, probably a neighbor,” Camille said, trying to think fast. How was she going to explain Wingo’s presence in her home this late at night? Wingo’s father was a local judge. If he found out that Camille was seeing his son off the books, he could ruin her. There would be an investigation, an audit of her practice. She could lose her license or worse. What had happened to her? Camille wondered. Somewhere along the way she had traded her professionalism for self-preservation.
“We’ll just tell them you were confused,” Camille said. “That you came in here by accident. You just have to remember we don’t know each other.”
There was a rap on the front door. “Police,” came a deep voice. “Everything okay in there, Dr. Tamerlane?”
“But I wasn’t confused,” Wingo whispered. “You have to tell them you’re my doctor. Otherwise, they’ll arrest me.”
“Just a moment,” Camille called out. Her voice shook with fear, but it wasn’t Wingo that she was afraid of. It was of the world finding out she was unethical, a thief.
“I can’t do that, Wingo,” Camille said. “Your dad is a judge. He’ll help you. Just say you’re sorry. That you came in the house by mistake. That we don’t know each other. I promise I won’t press charges.”
There was more pounding on the door. “Dr. Tamerlane,” the officer repeated. “Please open the door. We got a call that someone broke into your house. We need to know that you’re safe. Are you safe?”
Wingo flicked on the lighter so she could see his face. “Tell them you’re safe,” he whispered, his eyes begging. “Tell them you know me.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it. This was her career. Her life.
Panic filled his face. He dropped the lighter and it clattered to the floor and the room went black. “I’m not safe,” Camille called out shrilly. “Please help. He’s somewhere in the house. And I think he has a gun.”
THIRTY-ONE
THE BEST FRIEND
Maire flinched as Camille pulled the trigger, expecting to hear a loud bang, expecting to see an explosion of blood and brain matter. But there was nothing but a whispered click.
With shaking hands, Camille returned the gun to the center of the table. She looked so small, so defeated. This game was cruel, sadistic, and it was becoming clearer that perhaps there wasn’t really ten million dollars at the end of this twisted rainbow. But...if there was one iota, one sliver of a chance that the money was real, Maire wanted to be the one to grab it.
“Okay, then,” Fern said, her voice shaking. “We have one strike against Camille. And remember, three strikes and you’re out. Go ahead and give it a spin, Camille.”
