Page 106 of Mirror Image

She nodded without reply, allowing me to help guide her off the trunk. There was no way she could paddle. Not if we wanted to keep the poison from spreading faster. She had to lie down, which meant I had to do it alone. I didn’t like how quiet she was, how dazed and pale she looked. Of course she’d be shocked and in pain, but this felt like more than just a nervous reaction. Once she was positioned on the floor of the hull, legs bent over the yoke bar and head resting on a dry pack, I took over the seat at the bow, took a deep breath, and started the work of getting us out of this nightmare.

Chapter Forty-One

Jenn

Sunday evening

I’m snapping the shit out of the pink band on my wrist as I walk down the path and under the arching portico of the posh but tasteful Coral Gables home. Once I ring the bell, I stand there shifting from foot to foot. Snapping and shifting, shifting and snapping, until he opens the door. David Kellogg is barefoot, in khaki cargo shorts and a T-shirt. It’s jarring to see him looking so normal, like any suburban dad.

He appears to be as perplexed as I feel.

“Dr. Flores. What brings you here at”—he glances down at his watch—“eight forty-five on a Sunday night?”

Shit, it’s later than I thought. I’ve spent the last two hours hunched over in my rental car, reading Julian’s case files by the dome light.

“I . . . uh . . . I’m sorry to show up like this, but I didn’t know where else to go . . .”

His brows draw together. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I need your help.”

The four words come out in a whisper, but, somehow, they’re some of the most impactful that I’ve ever spoken.

For a long, awkward beat, he scrutinizes me, like I might be some Trojan horse trying to slip past the gates of his kingdom.

“Right. Well, then I guess you’d better come in,” he says, stepping aside so I can join him in the house.

Suddenly this feels like a bad idea. A very bad idea. Why hadn’t I thought this through or run it past Gabe first? He’d have talked me out of this inadvisable notion of walking right up to the lion’s den.

Instinctively, I take a half step backward.

“Maybe we could . . . I don’t know, go to a diner or someplace?”

Someplace public.

When he quirks an eyebrow at the same time he quirks a corner of his mouth, I know he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“Cassandra?” he calls out, his eyes never leaving mine. When there isn’t an immediate response, he tries again a little louder: “Cass? Would you please come here for a second, hon?”

Hon? He’s got a hon?

A tall woman about my age steps into view in a silky red kimono and matching pajamas, her hair a cascade of tight, shining curls. The toddler behind her is unmistakably hers—the same graceful features, the same warm undertones in her skin—except for the hazel eyes she shares with the man standing in front of me. Gobsmacked, I stare from her, to Kellogg, to the woman, and back again. He puts a hand on her arm and gestures to me with the other.

“Dr. Jennifer Flores, this is my wife, Dr. Cassandra Middleton.”

“Oh!” she exclaims, her face filling with a lovely, brilliant smile. “Dr. Flores, how wonderful to finally meet you!” She starts to reach out her hand but then retracts it quickly. “Sorry, sticky apple juice hands,” she tells me with a sheepish nod toward the child now peering at me from behind her mother’s long legs.

“Um . . . hi?” I murmur, too stunned to know what to make of this domestic scene.

Cassandra hoists the toddler up into her arms and starts speaking excitedly. “You don’t know me, but we actually travel in some of the same circles. I’m a psychiatrist as well—general family practice.”

It’s too much to process at one time—him, her, the kid.

“I-I . . . uh . . . yes, I—” I pause, take a breath, and try again without the stammering. “Yes, Dr. Middleton, I’ve heard your name before . . .” Just not in conjunction with this asshat. “I didn’t realize you . . . and Dr. Kellogg . . . that he’s . . . that you’re . . .” I blather until she jumps in to save me.

“Married? Oh, yes! A few years now. And this,” she says, bouncing her child, “is Melody—Melly, we call her.”

I give a tiny awkward wave to the little girl, who turns bashful suddenly, burying her face in the crook of her mother’s neck.