Incarnate Read online

  “It’s a rule for a reason. The insurance company won’t—”

  But Kim interrupted, “Did the insurance company go to med school? Has the insurance company seen hypnosis save people’s lives? Does the insurance company care about Scarlett?”

  “Well, I guess it’s sweet that you have so much faith in your patient that you’d break hospital policy again for her, but guess what? Now she’s missing.”

  “Missing?” Shit. “So police think Scarlett may be involved?” Kim asked.

  But Kyle was far too incensed to focus on Scarlett. “Do you even remember why you’re here in Jarvis? San Diego Psych is a money machine. They can wash a multimillion-dollar settlement when you have a meltdown and break all the rules to satisfy your manic id. We can’t. If the board found out—”

  “I took an oath,” Kim blurted, unable to stop herself, even more agitated because she knew he was right. “To help people. Not kowtow to insurance companies.”

  “You can’t help people if they take away your medical license, Kim. It’s that simple.”

  “I came here because you liked my approach to psychiatry,” Kim reminded him. “You said I was ‘inspired.’ ‘Nonconformist.’ ‘Unconventional.’ Your words . . . Or did you hire me because I was easy?”

  “Oh, trust me, you’re anything but easy,” he shot back angrily.

  For a moment they stared at each other. Finally, Kim set down the glass and crossed her arms over her chest. “Good one.”

  “Look,” Kyle said, taking a breath. “I thought we were . . . I thought we were in this together.”

  He stepped away, turning his back on her, and Kim realized he wasn’t just talking about the job. She grimaced, furious with herself for letting things go this far when she’d known he was the kind of man who couldn’t tolerate this sort of ambiguity. A sensitive empath . . . the one kind of man Kim should know better than to come anywhere near. But instead of learning from her past mistakes, she’d jumped right in, as always. Ready to get hurt, and to hurt anyone else who got too close.

  She followed him into the living room, putting her hand on his arm. He yanked it away. “Come on,” she pleaded.

  He spun around. “What?”

  “Listen to me for just one minute. We both . . . need to cool down. We need to remember that we want the same thing. To help people.”

  “The way I help people, Kim, is to practice medicine the way I learned over a decade of working my ass off. To cooperate with my colleagues to get the best outcome I can for every patient. Not to run off half-cocked on my own every time I get a hunch—”

  “It wasn’t a hunch,” Kim snapped. “I’m not practicing voodoo or something, the way you seem to think I am. I was using a tested therapeutic method—”

  “—which has not been adopted by Jarvis Hospital, and isn’t going to be anytime soon. Kim, we can go round and round on this all day. It’s not going to change the way I feel.”

  He glared at her, his eyes intense, and Kim was reminded of the first time she’d met him, at the medical conference at UC San Francisco. How she’d gone after him verbally in front of a crowd of health professionals during a Q&A on psychoactive medication, and how she’d gone after him physically in the back of the hotel bar later that night. A year later, he’d given her an out when her residency at San Diego had blown up. It was the power of his convictions that had initially attracted her, the same resolute energy that was now being directed against her.

  Kyle Berman was a good man. A brilliant one, too. If only she could make him see . . .

  “Kyle,” she began, caught between her frustration and her desperate need to make him understand. “I’m not trying to change you. I just want . . . I want . . .”

  She was standing close enough to see the angry glint in his eyes, to watch his chest rise and fall as he battled his temper. His lips were parted, his thick, dark hair slightly mussed. His monogrammed shirt cuffs, usually perfectly pressed, had been carelessly pushed up his arms.

  His anger sparked dangerously between them, blending with her own, threatening to ignite. Kim reached for him, pulling his face down to hers, tasting him hungrily. For a moment he was frozen, but soon he was kissing her back, his hands in her hair. He allowed her to push him onto the couch, where she straddled him and wrapped her arms around him only for a moment before he growled and flipped her over. The delicious weight of him on top of her allowed her to forget some of the anxiety about Scarlett that had held her in its grip.

  But as the kiss deepened, a faint voice inside her shrieked that she was out of her mind, that she was jeopardizing her most important patient. Before Scarlett, it didn’t matter. Before Scarlett, it was only Kim who could be hurt. But she couldn’t lose this job now. Sure, she realized this was her last chance to prove herself, to hang on to the career she’d worked so hard for. Sure, without it, she would lose her ability to help others—and without that, who would she even be? But now there was Scarlett.

  It was all getting away from her again, as it had too often in the past. But here, now, in this moment, she had Kyle. A good man, a healer . . . but also a solid presence that she could rely on.

  “This is not why I came over,” Kyle said warningly, pulling away.

  “I don’t care.” She hooked her hand around his neck and pulled him down to her again. And this time, they had no more use for words.

  FIFTEEN

  Kyle’s visit had ended well, but as soon as he left, Kim had gone right back to worrying about Scarlett, who was now apparently a suspect in an investigation and a missing person. She tried calling the Hascalls’ home line, but nobody was picking up.

  Finally, she was desperate enough that she was willing to deal with Detective Zack Trainor. He clearly didn’t want to talk to her, however; it was obvious he’d told his staff not to put her through. It took her the entire length of her drive to the hospital just to get someone at the station to connect her to Zack’s line. Now she was on hold, waiting for him to pick up, as she stalked through the halls of the hospital. Reaching her office door, she was already fumbling for her keys before she realized it was unlocked—and someone was inside.

  Just as Zack answered his phone, Kim pushed her door open—and saw Scarlett herself, sitting in Kim’s desk chair.

  “Hello? Dr. Patterson? Are you still there?” Zack’s voice was openly hostile.

  “Sorry, Zack, I’ll have to call you back,” Kim said distractedly, and stabbed at the button on her phone to end the call as she stared at the figure in front of her. “Scarlett?”

  Kim closed the door behind her and was about to ask for an explanation, when a glint of metal in Scarlett’s hand caught her eye.

  A scalpel.

  Kim froze, and then, moving very cautiously, approached Scarlett. She was sitting very still, staring into space, seemingly not even aware that Kim had entered the room.

  “Scarlett, listen to me, I know you’re scared, but—”

  “My mom was right. She always said I was kissed by the devil. Nothing I could do about it.” Her voice was monotone, emotionless. She didn’t look at Kim. “If I did kill that girl, I should be punished.”

  Her hand closed more tightly around the scalpel. The blade sunk into the soft skin of her palm. Blood dripped onto her jeans.

  “Scarlett—you didn’t kill anyone,” Kim said, trying to keep her voice calm.

  Scarlett’s eyes flashed. “How do you know? Were you there? You don’t even know me.”

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Kim said, thinking fast, trying to come up with a bridge to reach the troubled girl. “But I know me. And I know that for years, I punished myself for things . . . things that weren’t my fault.”

  She was playing a dangerous game, but if she didn’t get through to Scarlett here and now, it might all be over for the girl. “Do you want to compare scars?”

  Finally, Scarlett’s eyes flicked to attention. She looked at Kim with a mixture of mistrust and curiosity. “Is this some kind of bullshit trust e
xercise?”

  “No. I promise. I’ve lost people. People who put their trust in me . . . a long time ago.”

  “Who? Who did you lose?”

  Kim took a breath. She’d spent her adult life deflecting questions about her past. When she’d been in school, she made up elaborate stories, lies about her childhood that began to seem almost real the more she embellished them, until she could almost believe them herself.

  “I . . . lost my parents. In a carjacking. They never found the guys who did it.” The words sounded strange on her lips, words she had never said out loud before. “I was in the car.”

  “Oh no,” Scarlett said softly, her anger draining away instantly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I was just a kid.” Kim closed her eyes, knowing that she couldn’t let the balance between her and Scarlett be completely upended by the confession. “I was lucky; I was adopted by a great couple who are now my mom and dad.” The truth. “I, uh, had a pretty normal childhood.” A lie. “All things considered.”

  “But you did things,” Scarlett said, her eyes flicking down. “I saw. On your arms.”

  Of course she would have noticed. It takes one to know one, and at some point Scarlett had seen the faint lines tracing the underside of Kim’s forearms, so faded now as to be nearly invisible, and known the truth.

  “I did,” Kim agreed. “I never could shake the feeling that somehow I was responsible for my parents’ deaths. That I let them down. That I failed them.”

  Scarlett looked at the scalpel in her hands as though she couldn’t remember how it got there. After a few seconds, it went slack in her fingers.

  Kim’s door opened. Kyle stood at the threshold. He took in the scene with a shocked expression, the two women sitting close together, one of them with a scalpel in her hand. Before Kim could say anything, he made a quick motion to the side—the red button, installed just outside door, the one the staff was strictly forbidden from calling the “panic button” even though everyone knew that “assistance call button” meant exactly that.

  “Kyle—no. You don’t understand,” she said, jumping up. “Call security, tell them you made a mistake—”

  “You can’t be serious,” Kyle said. He grabbed her arm and dragged her against him.

  Scarlett watched, her face changing from open to impassive.

  Kim struggled to get out of his grip, but he was too strong. She had only seconds before security responded, and she knew how it would look.

  “I’ll help you, Scarlett,” she said, keeping her voice as even and calm as she could, even as Kyle’s arms wrapped more tightly around her torso. She could feel his labored breath against her neck. “I promise. We’ll get through this. Together.”

  Scarlett blinked and opened her mouth as if to speak, but before Kim could manage to break free, the door was flung all the way open and a security guard rushed in, his gun in his hands. Kim bit back a yell as he pointed it at Scarlett.

  “Drop it!” he ordered. “Hands in the air!”

  “Stop it!” Kim pleaded. “Put the gun down! She’s not dangerous, I promise!” She made one final effort to twist free of Kyle, using her elbow to jab his arms free. At last, he let go, and Kim threw herself in front of Scarlett, blocking her. Kyle cursed and practically tackled her in an effort to push her out of Scarlett’s reach, but Kim put all her weight into resisting him, grunting with the effort.

  In the confusion, Scarlett slipped off the chair and shrank against the wall, the scalpel firmly in her grip once more. She stared at it, then raised it slowly until the sharp blade was resting against her own neck. “This . . . this is the best way,” she said.

  “No!” Kim screamed. The guard pointed his gun at her, at Scarlett, and back, clearly having no idea what was going on. But if Kim didn’t do something fast, Scarlett was going to try to kill herself right here in her office.

  An idea flashed into her mind, as risky and unorthodox as anything she’d ever been accused of doing. But there was no choice, no other options. She raised her hand and slammed her palm flat against the wall, as hard as she could. The impact made the books jump on the shelves, getting Scarlett’s attention.

  “Help me! Oh my God, help me!” Kim screamed.

  They were the words that had triggered Scarlett once before, when the sounds of a scuffle in the hospital corridor had interrupted her therapy session in Kyle’s office. Last time, the words had triggered an altered state; Kim was desperately hoping that the same thing might happen again, at least long enough for Scarlett to let down her guard.

  In the seconds after Kim’s words rang in the air, the girl went stock-still. Her pupils dilated, and her hands went rigid. Her mouth twitched, and she looked around the room, her gaze falling on the guard, who was still crouched in front of her with his gun leveled directly at her.

  Scarlett threw herself toward the door, sidestepping Kyle as he tried to grab her arm. A split second later she was running down the hallway. The guard cursed, shoving Kyle out of the way, but Kim nimbly stepped in front of him.

  “Scarlett! Wait!” But the girl didn’t turn around. She was almost to the emergency exit stairs. “Isabel!” Kim tried. “Please!”

  The girl paused, her hand on the door to the stairwell. She turned around and locked gazes with Kim for a second, before pulling open the door and disappearing.

  Kyle grabbed Kim’s arm and spun her to face him, furious. “Do you have any idea what you—”

  Kim shook her head angrily, too frustrated and scared to deal with him, even though she could almost hear the remnants of her career tearing in half.

  But then something occurred to her, and she straightened, brushing Kyle’s grip off as though he were nothing more than an annoying mosquito.

  “I know where she’s going.”

  The guard holstered his gun and reached for his radio.

  “Wait,” Kim said. “This has all been a huge misunderstanding. And look—no harm done.” She bent to the floor and picked up the scalpel, which Scarlett had dropped before running.

  Kyle snatched it out of her hands. “No harm?” he demanded. “I don’t know how you can possibly say that, Kim, you’ve—”

  “Give me an hour,” she said, “I swear I’ll make this right.” She turned to the security guard. “There’s no need to report this,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster. “As her physician, I can confirm that Scarlett Hascall is not a danger to herself or others. The scalpel she was holding . . . it could have been a pen, or a stick of gum, for all she was aware of its purpose.”

  “Doc, I saw her put it up against her neck.”

  “Role-play,” Kim said, backing out of the office. “Therapeutic exercise. Really nothing to worry about. I’ve got to run, but Dr. Berman here will back me up.”

  As she strode down the hall, she prayed it was true—that whatever shred of affection remained between them after this last episode would prove to be enough for Kyle to give her this last chance.

  Either way, she needed to find a quiet spot to make a call. She ducked into the visiting room, which was stocked with games and puzzles and shelves of books, and curled up in the recliner facing away from the door, knowing that it would hide her from inquisitive glances.

  She dialed the number she’d hung up on less than an hour ago.

  “Detective Trainor, please.”

  SIXTEEN

  Zack got there first, gunning it from the station so that he could establish the scene before Kim Patterson arrived. The Wilcox house was a stately colonial, the shrubbery neatly trimmed, the lawn manicured, the front door flanked by sculpted topiary in porcelain pots. But even from the outside the place had an air of mourning, the drapes pulled tight across the front window, the garage door lowered. Holt arrived right behind him, and Kim appeared seconds later, blocking him in with her ridiculous rust bucket of a car.

  Zack strode to her window before she could get out, and leaned down.

  “Stay here.”

  “I called you,
remember?” she demanded.

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the air. They both looked up, following the sound to an open bedroom window on the second floor.

  Zack dashed to the front door. Holt was already in, his gun drawn. Zack followed suit and entered the house.

  The foyer was thick with the cloying scent of the flower arrangements that sat on every available surface. From somewhere in the bowels of the house, a woman could be heard crying. Holt headed up the stairs, treading surprisingly lightly for a large man. Zack followed close behind.

  As they reached the landing, a flash of movement caught Zack’s attention. A figure came rushing at them from the darkened hall, wielding a baseball bat. Zack automatically ducked out of the way, shoving Holt into the other wall, but Holt was already aiming a short, efficient jab at the attacker’s wrist.

  The bat thudded on the carpet as the man emerged from the shadows. It was Isabel’s father, looking worse for wear since the last time they’d been to the house, shortly after his daughter disappeared. In the space of a few weeks, he seemed to have lost ten pounds and aged twenty years, with deep circles under his eyes and gray stubble lining his face.

  “We’re here to help! Where is she, Mr. Wilcox?” Holt demanded, as Wilcox raised his hands in the air.

  He pointed mutely down the hall to the room at the end. Now that their eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, Zack could make out a hand-painted pastel sign that read IZZI’S ROOM. Behind him, Kim came up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Kim implored. “She’s just a kid.”

  Zack shoved her protectively aside, keeping his gun trained down the hall. “Step back.”

  He followed Holt, who tried the knob and found it locked. Silently, Zack counted off on his fingers, nodding to Holt. One, two . . . on three he kicked in the door, wood splintering, and the two of them entered, working quickly to secure the room.

  But it was empty. Eyelet curtains fluttered against the open window. Purple and yellow pillows were mounded on a neatly made bed. Posters of rock stars popular half a dozen years ago lined the soft yellow walls. Had Scarlett escaped again? Zack felt like screaming in frustration.