What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (8 page)

“Really?
 
How so?”
 
Lilah pulled her hair
out of its topknot and redid it, carefully gathering the strands before
twisting them and replacing the hair tie.
 

The gash across her forehead was still there,
but it must have been
restitched
or fixed, because
the
zig
zag
stiches were gone, replaced with a
bandaid
that covered everything.
 
This, too, did nothing to take away from
her attractiveness, and instead just made it seem like she needed to be whisked
away and laid down on a feather bed to recover, like a heroine from a Victorian
novel.
 
 

“I just found it interesting that a girl who
claimed to have killed her boyfriend because he was making her do things she
was uncomfortable with sexually would pitch a fit because he didn’t want to
have anal sex with her.”

She didn’t reply or react to my statement in
any way.

Instead, she just stared at me.

She didn’t ask for her journal back.

She didn’t yell at me for reading it.

She didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was
basically calling her a liar, or at least seriously calling her story into
question.

It was unnerving.

She leaned her head against the wall, a small
smile playing on her rosebud lips, her blue eyes faraway, like she was
remembering an especially good memory.

Then she straightened back up and looked at
me.
 

On the sides of her head, around her ears, were
tiny tendrils of hair, almost like duck fluff, the wispy strands too short for
her to pull back into a ponytail.
 
She gripped one of them and yanked, pulling the hair out of her head and
letting it fall to the floor.

She grabbed another strand and did it again.

It was horrible to watch, but I kept my eyes on
hers.

I wasn’t sure why – she was obviously
disturbed, and yet something inside of me told me she was testing me, daring me
to look away, or tell her to stop.

She wrapped her fingers around another tendril
of hair, this one larger than the last, pausing for a moment before she yanked,
her eyebrows slightly raised as if to say,
“I can do this all day, can you?”

The hair floated to the floor in a lazy back
and forth pattern.

She grabbed another strand, and I bit the side
of my mouth to keep her from telling her to stop.

A nurse was the one to finally put an end to
the stalemate.

She stepped out of the room across from us, a
look of exasperation coming over her face when she saw Lilah standing there.

“Lilah,” she said, putting her hands on Lilah’s
shoulders and guiding Lilah gently back into her room.
 
“Come on now, honey, you need to get
dressed, you’re going to be released soon.”

The door closed behind them and I heard them
speaking in muted tones through the walls before the nurse came out of the room
by herself, shutting the door softly behind her.

I checked my phone.

It was five-thirty.

There was no way we were going to be able to
drop Lilah back off at Loft 37 and get all the way up to Harlem by six.

I typed a quick text to John, telling him I
would be late.

His reply came a few minutes later.

One word.

‘Lameuix.’

Lameuix?
 
What the hell did that mean?
 
Was it some kind of typo or autocorrect?
 
I waited a moment, giving him a chance
to send another text letting me know that the first one was a mistake, but he
didn’t.

So I typed a quick line of question marks to
him.

I was still waiting for his reply when Noah
reappeared a couple of minutes later, walking from the other end of the
hallway, his footfalls echoing through the stillness.

He looked perturbed – not annoyed
exactly, or anxious, but more like he was on high alert.

“So?” I said, standing up.
 
“What did the doctor say?”

“Where’s Lilah?” he demanded.
 
“They said she would be ready.”

“She’s in there.”
 
I pointed at the closed door.
 
“I think she’s getting dressed.”

He nodded, then began to pace.

“Noah,” I said.
 
“What did the doctor say?”

But the door to Lilah’s room opened and she
appeared.
  
Her hair was loosed
around her shoulders now, and she wore a grey Henley shirt and a pair of
jeans.
 

“Are you ready?” Noah asked her shortly.

She nodded.

The car ride back to Loft 37 was silent, the
tension in the car almost palpable.
 

When we pulled up in front of the hotel, the
sun was starting to set, and the fading light reflected off the front of the
building, blinding me if I looked at it straight on.
 

“You have your things?” Noah asked Lilah,
looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t have any things,” Lilah said.

I tensed, wondering if she was going to bring
up the fact that I had her journal, but she didn’t.
 

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” she asked.
 

“Clementine will bring you back to your room,”
Noah said.
 
“And you and I will
discuss this tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Lilah said.
 
She opened the door and stepped out onto
the curb.
 
She got out of the car
but then dipped her head back in.
 
“Mr. Cutler?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”
 
She slammed the door before she could
wait for his reply and then ran to the lobby, where I saw Clementine waiting to
usher her inside.
 

“How do we know she’s not just going to run
away again?” I asked.

“Clementine will make sure of it.”

Great.
 
Now Clementine was back on the payroll.

“What address are we going to, Charlotte?” Noah
asked as he pulled the car back onto the street.

I rattled off the address that John had given
me, watching as Noah’s jaw set into a hard line as he was reminded just how far
away the address was, how far into Harlem.

“You let him know we would be late?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have your number changed tomorrow,” Noah
said.

“Noah --”

“What?”

“What if…” I licked my bottom lip
nervously.
 
“What if he needs to get
in touch with me again?”

“Then he can have my number.”

“Noah!”

“Charlotte, this is not up for debate.”

I turned it over in my mind, frustrated.
 
How was I supposed to live my life if
everything Noah didn’t like wasn’t up for debate?
 
First the meetings
with Dr. Cartwright and now this.

“So what did the doctor say?” I asked as Noah
sped through the city.
 
He was
driving faster than normal, and we were getting lucky, hitting green lights on
the way.
 

“Charlotte,” Noah said.
 
His voice was soft, which made me
instantly suspicious.

“What?”

“The doctor was only authorized to speak with
me.”

“So?”

“So, Lilah asked that her medical records not
be discussed with anyone else.”

“That only applies to the doctor,” I said.
 
“You’re not a doctor.”

“Yes, but there’s attorney/client privilege.”

“But I’m working on her case,” I said,
confused.
 

“That’s true.
 
But she’s asked that certain things not
be discussed with anyone but me.”

I turned to look at him sharply.
 
“Lilah said that you can’t discuss her
medical records with me?”

“Yes,” he said.
 
“Right now that’s what she’s requested.”

I inhaled, a sharp intake of breath that I held
in my lungs, not trusting myself to speak without screaming.
 
The air burned my chest as I held it as
long as I could, until my head started to feel slightly woozy and I was forced
to blow it slowly out of my nose.

“If she won’t let me know the details of her
case, then she’s basically saying she doesn’t want me on the case.”

Noah didn’t say anything.

I turned and looked out the window, biting back
my tears.
 
I was frustrated and
annoyed, at him and at her.
 
Why
wouldn’t she want me on her case?
 
Was it because she could sense that I didn’t believe her story?
 
Was it because I had questioned her
yesterday while she was still being held in jail?
 

I wanted to scream at Noah, to yell at him, to
tell him to give up the case.
 
But
how could I?
 
It was amazing for his
career, for our firm.
 
Any of his
successes were mine now, too.

The scene through my window began changing
gradually, the shininess of the Upper West Side becoming duller, the buildings
becoming more and more rundown, the sidewalks chipped, the windows broken, the
railings hanging on for dear life or completely non-existent.

“This is it,” Noah said finally, as we pulled
up in front of a fading green duplex, the paint peeling, the stone steps
crooked and sagging, as if the earth had thought about pulling them under but
then had somehow thought better of it.

I pulled my phone out and checked it, frowning
when I saw there was still no reply to my row of question marks.
 

“Charlotte?” Noah asked.
 
“What is it?”

“Nothing.
 
It’s just that when I told him I was going to be late, he replied with
the word ‘Lameuix.”

“Lameuix?” Noah repeated.
 
“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”
 
I shrugged.
 
“I guess we’ll find out.”

Noah sighed and shook his head, opening his
mouth to talk, no doubt to lecture me again about how much of a kook this guy
was.
 
But before he could talk, I
put my hand on the door handle.

“No,” Noah said.
 
“I’ll go first.
 
You wait here until I’ve decided it’s
safe.”

But I was through giving him his way.
 
“Yeah, right,” I said.
 
“You’ll never decide it’s safe.”
 
I got out of the car before he could
lock me in and headed for the porch.

“Charlotte,” he called after me warningly, but
I ignored him.

He caught up to me easily, and for a moment I
was afraid he was going to insist I get back into the car.

But he only stepped in front of me, and he
didn’t protest when I followed him up the stairs.

There were two front doors at the top of the
porch steps, one for number 51 and one for number 52 – John’s address was
52, and the screen door was shut, but the heavier front door behind it was
open.
 
Through the screen I could
see a set of stairs that led up to a landing with another door at the top of
it.

Noah rang the doorbell,
then
walked inside and up the stairs without waiting for an answer.

“Noah!
 
You can’t just walk into someone’s house!”

But he didn’t reply.

There was a strange odor coming from the top of
the stairs, something metallic mixed with the smell of Chinese food and stale
cigarette smoke.

The door at the top of the stairs was open and
through it I could see a tiny kitchen with dingy linoleum counters and a
circular wooden kitchen table with only one chair.
 
The table was covered with papers.

The sound of a TV came from somewhere deep in
the apartment.

“John?” Noah demanded, knocking on the open
door before striding into the apartment.
 
“John, are you home?”

He shook his head and looked around at the seemingly
empty space.

“Asshole isn’t even here,” he said.
 
“He was fucking with you, Charlotte.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
There was
no way John would have done something like that, especially not with the look
I’d seen on his face, the way he was talking about Mikayla.
 
“He must have just run out for a
minute.”