The First to Lie by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Author:Hank Phillippi Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 34

ELLIE

“I … don’t feel well. I need to stop for a minute.” Ellie pointed Gabe toward the Kenmore off-ramp. “Take that exit. Can you?” She tried to gulp away the rise in her stomach, the sick regret that made her dizzy and seemed to cloud her vision. She buzzed down the Jeep’s window, hoping a blast of spiky cold air would shock her brain into clarity.

Gabe turned, then pulled into a metered parking space on the fringe of Kenmore Square. College students jostled by each other on the sidewalk, in jeans and brazenly coatless, lugging massive backpacks and glued to their screens. A halfhearted snow sifted from darkening clouds, melting as it hit the windshield.

“Are you okay? Should I take you to a—”

“I’m fine, just need a second.” Ellie rested her forehead against the cold glass of the passenger window. Closing her eyes, she tried to reimagine her visit to Dr. McGinty’s office. But she couldn’t tune Gabe out, leaving him baffled and attempting to decipher her actions.

She took a deep breath and turned to face him, hoping she’d settled a nonparanoid expression on her face. “Kaitlyn Armistead. I met her, the day before her accident, in the doctor’s office. McGinty. I was there as Nora the sales rep, but Kaitlyn didn’t know that. And I was sort of pretending with her, commiserating. Hoping she assumed I was a patient. Allowing her to think so. Encouraging it.”

“Okay.” Gabe turned off the ignition and shifted his body to look at her, one arm draped over the steering wheel. “As part of your TV investigation.”

“Exactly.” Ellie nodded. “We talked about both having red hair, and books we loved as kids, and she finally confessed her husband was pressuring her about her difficulty getting pregnant. Judging her. She was so unhappy. It was way too much information, but it’s a doctor’s office, so people—women—feel as if they already have common ground. Which they do. Kind of a sisterhood of confidentiality. A circle of trust.”

Ellie closed her eyes again, briefly, recalling her deep and honest sympathy for the woman. “So I thought, great. I was focused on my story. Saw everything through my own filter. I felt lucky. Maybe I’d happened on a potential source. I felt brave. Like an enterprising reporter.”

Gabe nodded. “You thought she might be the person you needed.”

“Yeah. And she seemed eager to talk, so I tried to draw her out. I was calculating, planning my next move. I thought—Jackpot. A victim.”

In the side mirror, Ellie saw a blue-uniformed traffic enforcement cop strolling up the sidewalk toward them. “We’re going to have to pay or move, I bet,” she said. “He’s a block away, but here comes the parking goon.”

“We can deal with that. I have quarters. So. Kaitlyn Armistead.”

“Almost everything I said to her was a lie, or using truths to tell lies. And that’s bad enough. But maybe someone was watching us. Seeing me, Nora, talking with her. And…” She didn’t want to talk about this, but needed to face it.

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