Lovely Wild

Uncomfortably Ryan looked from side to side, but if anyone in the park was bearing witness to this drama they had the good sense to pretend otherwise. Also, he noticed uneasily that the man looked unkempt, but not necessarily unhinged. “Should I?”

“You should, since you screwed my wife and then killed her.”

Shit. Shit and damn and double damn. Ryan stood, lunch bag forgotten. He towered over Gerry Somers, but the other man didn’t even back up enough to give Ryan room to take a step. Trapped between his former patient’s husband and the bench, Ryan had the sick feeling he was going to have to get physical.

“I didn’t kill your wife.”

“You might as well have. What the hell kind of doctor are you, anyway?” Gerry spat to the side before fixing Ryan with another long, hard stare. “You knew all about her. Knew her problems. And you screwed her, anyway. What did you think would happen?”

Ryan flashed back to a memory of Annette, naked, breasts pendulous and swaying as he watched her in the mirror. Taking her from behind. Then with her on top. She’d gripped him with her insides, riding him frantically, shouting when she climaxed. A slow trickle of sweat slid down his spine.

“Your wife had a lot of problems. I wasn’t her first doctor. She came to me with a lot of issues, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help her with them.” Ryan swallowed and looked into the man’s eyes. “But it’s not my fault she killed herself. She was no longer in my care at the time and hadn’t been for six months.”

Gerry blinked rapidly without moving away. Ryan pushed gently past him to put distance between them. The man turned to follow him, grabbed at Ryan’s sleeve to stop him.

“She said she was going to leave me for you. Did you know that?”

Ryan had not. He swallowed again, thick saliva against an uprush of bile painting the back of his tongue. “She was delusional. She had transference issues. She’d had them before. You know she did. If you know anything about her at all...”

“I knew everything about her! I knew when she came home stinking of you!” Gerry leaned to sniff dramatically at Ryan’s neck. “Fancy-ass cologne. How much you pay for that?”

“I’m really sorry about your wife, but I can’t talk to you any more about this. My lawyer—”

“Oh, right. Your lawyer. Well, let me tell you something, Dr. Calder. Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to do shit for you. I’m going to take everything you have. I’m going to ruin you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Ryan said without much heat.

Gerry laughed and backed up, finally. His eyes gleamed. He scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “No threat. The truth. You’re going to pay for what you did. I’m going to see to it.”

Gerry took another few steps back, then turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Ryan to stare after him. The sun beat down, suddenly too much. His stomach lurched again. He tossed the uneaten lunch into the trash and headed back to his office.

In the waiting room, neutral beige and hung with paintings of seascapes, Ryan found out just how determined Gerry Somers was. Normally after lunch there were at least three or four patients waiting their turn in the sea-foam green and mauve chairs. Not today. Today Ceci was sobbing quietly behind the glass window while Ryan’s partner Jack Kastabian patted her shoulder. Two cops with notepads turned when Ryan opened the door.

Someone, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who, had spray painted Dr. Ryan Calder Is A in red, dripping letters on the waiting room wall. Across one of the bland seascapes, he’d scrawled Wife Fucker.

Ryan felt his knees wanting to go weak, but he locked them to keep from sinking into one of the chairs. The world went a little gray around the edges of his vision. He heard the roaring of surf that had nothing to do with the ocean.

“Ryan,” said his other partner, Saul Goldman. “We need to talk.”

NINE (#ulink_e0d6e0f2-c0aa-5918-b282-e4b20bf18303)

“HE’S TOTALLY INTO YOU.” Sammy said this so confidently that Kendra had to roll her eyes.

“Sure he is. That’s why he spent the whole study hall talking with Bethany.” Kendra shrugged, swiping the screen of her phone to check for notifications from ZendPix. Sammy had sort of bullied her into sending Logan a selfie, but that had been more than an hour ago. He’d opened it, but hadn’t replied. “That’s why he’s ignoring my ZendPix. Shit, Sammy.”

Kendra wanted to cry. It was bad enough that Logan knew she liked him, but now he knew she knew that he knew...So now it was this big freaking mess. So embarrassing. It had been better when they were just friends. At least then he’d paid attention to her. Ever since Sammy’d told Logan’s best friend, Rob, that Kendra wanted to get with him, he’d been acting weird.

“He likes you. Rob told me he did.” Sammy leaned to grab a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the floor, then tossed one in her mouth. She crunched, still talking, which grossed Kendra out. “And besides, it’s totally obvious.”

“It’s not obvious to me.” Kendra groaned and rolled onto her back to stare at the stick-on plastic stars attached to Sammy’s ceiling. The fan blades whirring around made them seem to pulse and vibrate, which made her head hurt. She closed her eyes.

“My mom said we could order pizza. You want pepperoni and mushroom?” Sammy poked Kendra with her toe.

“I think I’m gonna go home.”

“What? Dude, no!” Sammy frowned and sat up. “Why? Are you mad? Don’t be mad, Kendra, God!”

She wasn’t mad. Well, a little. Still mostly embarrassed. “I’m not. I just don’t feel like having pizza for dinner. My mom’s making chicken parm.”

For a second, Sammy’s face fell, and Kendra felt like shit for rubbing her friend’s nose in the fact that her parents had left her alone again. But then Sammy tossed her hair with a shrug, so they both could pretend she didn’t care, and it was cool between them even though Sammy had kind of ruined Kendra’s life for now.

“He does like you,” she said again in a lower voice when Kendra was leaving. “I’m sorry he’s being a jerk about it.”

“That’s what boys do, right? Be jerks?” Kendra said, like she had tons of experience, when they both knew Sammy’d almost lost her virginity last summer and Kendra, so far, hadn’t even been French-kissed.

Sammy looked wistful. “Yeah. I guess so.” She brightened. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s invite them over!”

“Who?”

“Rob and Logan!” Sammy was already whipping out her phone and scrolling to dial.

Kendra tried to grab it from her hand. “No way!”

She wasn’t fast enough. Squealing, Sammy rolled over the bed to bounce upward, phone triumphantly in hand. “Yes, way!”

“Your mom and dad said—”

Sammy’s face twisted. It was the wrong thing to say. Kendra had lost this battle, for sure.

“Eff them,” Sammy said coldly. “They’re both out screwing other people right now. They think I don’t know. Shit, they each think the other one doesn’t know. So as far as I’m concerned, I can have a few friends over.”

Kendra didn’t know what to say. She knew things with Sammy’s parents were bad, but not like that. Other people? She didn’t even want to think about her parents doing it with each other, much less anyone else.

So that was how she found herself in a dark room, lit only by a few candles, sitting across from Sammy with a Ouija board between them. Rob sat on one side, Logan on the other. The boys had found the liquor cabinet and helped themselves to peach schnapps with dust on the bottle, mixed with some orange juice. Kendra refused it, the smell turning her stomach.

Sammy’d had a whole glass already. Her eyes gleamed. She was acting weird, all jerky and hectic, like she was hopped up on something. It was because of the boys, Kendra thought, watching her. She was showing off.

“Spirit, is there someone in this room right now you have a message for?” Sammy intoned before breaking into a giggle.

YES

“What’s the message,” Logan said.

SAMY, spelled the board. LOVES

Sammy took her hands off the planchette so fast the plastic piece spun around and almost scooted off the edge of the board balanced on their knees. “Not funny, Kendra.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Kendra looked at Rob and Logan. “I didn’t!”