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I’d arranged to meet up with Mallory for coffee prior to my doctor’s appointment, but now I was regretting it. I’d awoken to the sharp staccato of my heartbeat at seven a.m., two hours before my meeting with my former colleague. I forced myself to lie there, determined to seize any respite from reality. But the reality was I wanted to race straight to the clinic, leap onto the examining table, spread my legs wide in stirrups, and expel the thing inside me, which had begun to feel as though it were taking over my body.
It had been nearly four months since I’d escaped Andrea’s clutches, and she was still at large. The clock had been ticking from the moment I’d entered Mount Sinai under FBI supervision, and I’d checked myself out yesterday out of necessity, heading back to the tiny, fami
