Page 2 of Girl, Accused

‘Will? That you?’

A voice he hadn’t heard for a while. One that conjured up decades of memories, most of them good.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ he said.

‘Hate to tell you this, but you might have the wrong number.’

‘I don’t think so. I need your help.’

‘Myhelp? Have you gone mad?’

‘It’s about Ella Dark,’ Edis said.

A pause stretched between them, filled with static and shared history and all the things they'd never said out loud. All the operations that never made it into official reports. All the times they'd bent the rules until they screamed.

‘What about her?’

Edis glanced up at the building that had been his second home for the past decade. Somewhere up there, behind those tinted windows, one of his best agents was either the victim of an elaborate frame job or exactly what the evidence suggested.

‘It’s complicated. Can you get to HQ?’

A brittle laugh. ‘HQ? Will, it’s midnight, I’m not in D.C. and I don’t work for you anymore.’

‘So it’s a no?’

A sigh. ‘Well, as it happens, you might be in luck.’

‘How’s that?’

‘You called at the perfect time because thereissomething I need to talk to you about. And there’s a good chance it involves Dark, too.’

William Edis had been at the top of the Bureaucratic totem pole for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to be grateful, but he welcomed this strange sensation with open arms.

‘When can you get here?’

Another pause. ‘I can be there by morning. Meet me in the west parking lot at nine. Keep the fire door unlocked. I don’t want anyone else seeing me or knowing I’m coming, clear?’

‘Crystal.’

‘Good. See you in nine hours.’

Edis pocketed his phone. Nine hours until a reunion he never thought he'd have – or even wanted – with one person might just help him make sense of this mess.

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Evelyn Summers had long passed the age where she defined her self-worth by her career, but with the absence of much else in her life, she'd come back around to measuring her value in client hours and speaking fees. And that was how she justified being in the office at one AM on a Thursday morning.

Such self-awareness was alien to most people, Evelyn had learned. Twenty years of working as a clinical psychologist had taught her that only the hardened few would step out of their boxes and take a good, no-holds-barred look at who they really were. Evelyn modestly placed herself in that category because she wasn't above admitting her own toxicity when needed. Too stubborn, too proud, too reliant on the rush of new triumphs. Writing two books wasn't enough, so she'd written a third. Working out of her home office wasn't enough, so she'd had a sleek new one built right on the waterfront. She'd accomplished both feats in the past year, although her office was still in dire need of jazzing up. Right now, it felt more like a log cabin than a place for people to come and share their mental woes. All she had was a desk, some framed certificates, and a few chairs. None of that old-school couch nonsense in her practice. The best psychologists had moved past that Freudian cliché years ago.

Evelyn pushed her gold-rimmed glasses up her nose and shuffled through the day's caseload. Jim Sanders had been first. He’d received a Silver Star for pulling three of his fellow soldiers from a burning car in Afghanistan, and given how Jim had spent the next twenty years drowning in whiskey, a cynic might say that Jim’s life would have had more meaning if he’d died that day. Evelyn had spent two hours circling the drain while she pretended that survivor’s guilt was a real thing.

Next had been Charlotte Weber, society wife and professional victim. Her particular cocktail of Xanax and martinis hadn't mixed well with her husband's wandering eye, but Evelyn suspected the real problem was boredom. These women married money young, then spent the rest of their lives trying to buy meaning with designer dresses andbreast enhancements. No wonder today’s twenty-somethings were all so confused. They didn’t understand that hard work was the real reward.

Evelyn stretched in her Italian leather chair and considered calling it a night. Her townhouse waited across town, empty except for her Maine Coon cat and whatever bottles of wine had survived the week. Tomorrow's first session wasn't until ten, which meant she could still grab eight hours of sleep if she was lucky. She doubted it, though, because insomnia had been her constant companion since the divorce. Andrew had been missing in action since the paperwork came through, not even stopping by to pick up what remained of his clothes. Probably too busy working his way through every impressionable young woman in Granville. Then those women would end up in Evelyn's chair in ten years, talking about how an older man corrupted them during what should have been their prime years. And so completed the circle of life.

She flicked to her last of the day’s case notes. Now here was a real patient. Mr. Caldwell, newly-converted extremist who'd found God in a prison cell. His particular blend of religious delusions and martyr complex made for fascinating study, though she'd never admit that in her notes. The pharmaceutical cocktail Evelyn had prescribed wasn't touching his more colorful beliefs about sinners and salvation, but at least it kept him out of trouble. It was funny, Evelyn thought, how mortality had a way of reshaping your worldview.

It wasn't so long ago she'd been in a similar position. She glanced at the photographs on her table; Her Harvard graduation. The launch party for her second book. A vacation in Tuscany that had been Andrew's last attempt to save their marriage. Photos of children were noticeably absent, as a lot of her clients liked to point out for reasons that continued to elude - and upset - her. That dream had died slowly, marked by years of fertility treatments and carefully scheduled intimacy that felt more clinical than passionate. Now, her biological clock had wound down to silence and left her to mother other people's problems instead of children of her own.

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