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At Mountain View Hospital, Dr. Jalicia Ramsby rotated the kinks from her neck as she walked down the hallway to her desk. It had been a morning of meetings, first with her women’s group, which consisted of five women who had suffered through abusive relationships, and then an administrative meeting, where she was told that she’d have to cut costs in her department, probably losing at least one aide.
“Times are tough,” Hedgewick, the administrator, had told all the department heads. “The economic decline is taking a hefty toll.”
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“But people are still sick. They still have to get treatment for mental illness,” Ramsby protested, a few of her peers rumbling agreement.
Hedgewick had appeared concerned, his lips pursing, his eyes behind his reading glasses darkening, his hands clasping over the smooth table top and his neatly typed pages. “That’s what makes our job challenging,” he said, placating her. “We have to offer the best services possible while staying within the constraints of the company budget.”
She thought about the Mercedes he drove but held her tongue. His wife was rumored to be wealthy in her own right and it didn’t matter. Hedgewick always kept his eye firmly on the bottom line. Now reaching the door to her office, Jalicia looked down toward the far end of the hallway where a woman quickly slipped around the corner. For a heartbeat, Dr. Ramsby thought the petite woman with the dark hair was Padgett Long.
Which was ridiculous. Padgett never moved faster than a slow walk and she was in the secure wing. Maybe someone who looked like the silent patient? Ramsby walked swiftly enough that her lab coat billowed as she headed toward the corner. She had to have been wrong. As far as she knew Padgett had never been out of her wing and surrounding yard. Which was sad, but true.
So why . . . ?
Within seconds she rounded the corner to the landing area where she could have sworn the woman had darted.
The corridor was a dead end to a wall of windows now splattered with rain from the ominous clouds scudding across the sky. On the right were two ser-
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vice elevators; on the left, restrooms. Ramsby noted that both elevator cars were heading downward, one at the second floor, the other stopping on ground level.
Had the woman gotten on one?
Had it been Padgett?
Jalicia had never been one to discount a person’s feelings or gut instincts and she’d often felt that something was off around Mountain View. Curious, she stepped into the women’s room and found it empty. The men’s was locked.
Hmmm.
Telling herself she was imagining things, she waited near the elevators, her arms folded over her chest, her eyes on the restroom door, her hunger for a cigarette burning through her blood like fire, though she hadn’t smoked in over eight months. Maybe it was time to try the damned patch. Brrring! She nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell phone went off. Checking the screen, she saw that her secretary, the ever-impatient Annette, was calling. “Yes?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Annette said, obviously peeved. Again. Soon, Ramsby feared, it would be time to have an attitude adjustment talk with the woman.
“I was in a meeting.”
“I know, but that lawyer Barton Tinneman’s called again. I thought you’d want to know.”
Hubert Long’s, Padgett’s father’s, attorney. She wondered what he wanted now. “I’ll have to call him back later.”
As she snapped her phone shut, the door to the men’s room clicked open and Dr. Langley, a fraillooking psychologist with a thin white beard and 240
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perpetual knit brow, was tucking his shirt into his pants as he walked out. He looked up and caught her eyeing him.
“Anyone else in there?” Ramsby asked, her gaze doing a quick once-over of the tiny room while the door was open. She caught a slice of her own worried reflection in the mirror over the sink before the door slowly closed.
“Pardon?” Scott said, coloring slightly. He cleared his throat and adjusted his tweed jacket.
“I thought one of my patients may have wandered . . . oh, never mind.” Ramsby felt suddenly foolish. “I was mistaken.”
“No one was with me in there, Dr. Ramsby, if that’s what you’re asking.” Langley’s white eyebrows inched up a notch.
