AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This thug might tail her, she thought, so she circled the turnout and headed back down the hill toward the flats, the opposite direction from Dr. Parks’s house.
But Boris did follow Masha down.
He stayed out of sight, seven cars behind, and trailed her for miles through Beverly Hills. An hour later, he climbed in the back and let his friend drive. They followed her back up to Dr. Parks’s. They drove right by as she pulled through the gate, then turned and drove a mile down, pulled over, and parked.
Boris was good at being patient. He was happy to wait until later that night to climb the gate and get inside. He called New York.
“I’ve got them,” he told his boss in Russian. “We’re good. By morning, the boy will be dead.”
CHAPTER 7
“THEY MADE HIM wear a diaper,” cried Lulu into the phone.
“A diaper? What?” Dr. Parks frowned.
“His proctor made him put a diaper on, over his jeans! For a week! Because he cried in group therapy.”
“Come on. That’s impossible.” Dr. Parks looked up at the ceiling. Was it impossible? Would they, could they do this at Wellborn?
“And they locked him in a closet!”
“Honey. That cannot be true. It’s not a torture house. It’s not a cult.”
“But that’s what he told me.” Lulu was now fully sobbing.
“Who told you? Who did you speak to?”
“Um,” she said hesitantly, with her Valley girl lilt, “Josh? He—he called me last night? Did he call you?”
Call his mother from rehab? No. Josh hadn’t called Dr. Parks. There were no phones at Wellborn Ranch. Not for the kids.
“Josh? Called you?” the doctor said for confirmation. She was stunned.
“Yes. From a computer. He bribed the chef. He gave the chef money to borrow his laptop. Or maybe the line cook?”
Great. The doctor picked up a pen. She jotted the wordschefandmoneyinto her Filofax and underlined them three times. At Wellborn Ranch, the rules were clear: no calls and no cash. Josh had managed to come by both? She’d call Adam Shaw, Wellborn’s director, first thing tomorrow. About the chef. They’d left Josh at Wellborn with empty pockets. How did he find money? He was like a magician, Steven said. Josh bought his way out of everything—with Steven’s money. So Steven had frozen Josh’s accounts, canceled his allowance, and, despite her disagreement, written Josh out of their trusts. Not for forever. But as a scare. To wake him up. His therapist had said: “Love can’t conquer Josh’s addiction. You have to cut off his cash.”
“Lulu,” the doctor gently explained, “he’s not supposed to be making calls.”
The doctor wanted to like this girl. She wanted to like all her son’s friends. But she was trained as a neurosurgeon and understood teenage cognition. Neurologically speaking, her son was literally insane right now. His brain was sixteen. Its capacity to assess risk and reward was deeply affected by emotional arousal—meaning it was affected by girls.
And Lulu was nothing if not arousing.
“He needs to come home,” Lulu whined like a four-year-old. “You need to go get him. Pick him up. Please, Mrs. Parks.”
This girl had been in their lives for years. She and Josh had gone to Buckley together. Then, in ninth grade, her dad shipped her off to boarding school on the East Coast. But three months in, Northfield Mount Hermon expelled Lulu for hacking into their security systems and hiding chardonnay in her dorm room. She was good with computers and liked to party. For this combination, the school sent her packing to Calabasas by Christmas vacation, and she called Josh, rejoicing.
“Adderall for exams,” she’d said, “and wine for the weekends to celebrate my grades!” She’d been making straight Cs! How dare they send her back to LA! Josh had been glad to see his friend home.
This was the last thing the doctor needed. “Lulu,” she said, resting her forehead in her hand, “I spoke to the staff at Wellborn this week. Josh is having some up days and down.”
“But—”
“He must’ve called you on a down day.”
“He was totally down. Super down. And Steven won’t go get him either. I tried.”
Steven? This girl was calling Josh’s dad by his first name?
