Asylum (Asylum, #1)(18)

Abby covered her mouth to hide a smile and watched the guy slink back to the cash register. “Aww, he’s just being nice.” She poked the cookie around on its little plate.

“If you say so.” Dan crossed his arms and leaned back in the booth. He didn’t want to pursue the email conversation anymore; he knew he shouldn’t have brought it up.

But Abby wasn’t done. “We were talking about your ghostwriter,” she said, encouragingly. “Was it a love note?”

“No.” It came out a little hot, a little testy. “It was . . .”

It was burned in his mind: “RE: Your inquiry regarding patient 361.”

“Go on, I’m ready this time. I won’t tease. Scout’s honor.”

Dan went back and forth, trying to decide how much to reveal. If he told her about the Sculptor, then she’d really stop laughing. But he was regretting having said so much already. “It was medical. About a doctor’s report or something,” he finally said. He pulled out his cell phone to look at his Sent folder, just in case the email had miraculously reappeared. It hadn’t.

When he looked back at Abby, he saw that fleeting look of fear on her face again.

“Dan . . .” Her lower lip quavered, something he would’ve found insanely hot under any other circumstances. “What if . . . what if . . .” Abby lowered her voice to a whisper, her eyes wide. He felt his pulse speed up. Did she sense it, too? That this really was no accident, no hallucination, but part of something much more sinister?

“What if . . .” He almost couldn’t hear her, as a tremor of fear worked its way into her voice. She was leaning in closer and Dan felt himself doing it too, unconsciously drawn toward her. Abby’s voice came out in one rush.

“What if you’re in a Scooby-Doo mystery?”

“Oh, screw you.” Dan rolled his eyes, leaning back hard against the cushioned booth. He should have followed his first instinct—not to talk about it at all. He was actually really hurt by Abby’s reaction, especially after she had promised not to tease him, but he didn’t want to show it. So he joined her laughter and asked about her studio classes.

And as talk turned from classes to favorite movies to what life was like as a teenager in New York, Dan felt less and less concerned about the email and the visions and the photos in the basement. This is why he’d come to NHCP. This moment, right here.

Then his phone vibrated on the table. He’d forgotten he’d even left it there. He picked it up, meaning to turn it off, but noticed that it was buzzing with an unread email in his in-box. A nervous tingle shot up his back. He pressed his thumb over the new mail icon. The white background flashed up at him, and a subject line reading “RE: Patient 361—question about Thursday’s session” popped up for a second before it was suddenly replaced by the buzzing of a text message.

Dan jumped in his seat, nearly dropping his cell.

But it was just a text from Felix.

Hello, Dan. Hope evening with Abby is going well. I have plans in town and will be out late if you wish to use our room. Should return around ten.



Damn his timing. When Dan went back to his in-box, the email had vanished, just like the other one. Even before he checked the Trash folder, he knew it wouldn’t be there. He was right.

“Hello? Dan? Earth to Daniel?” Abby waved her hand in front of his face. “Is it from Jordan?”

“Hey, hi, yes, sorry.” He put the phone away. “I mean no, not Jordan. Just Felix.” Dan tried to shrug it off, but it felt like his skin was on too tight. Any second now he would sweat through his shirt. But he couldn’t tell Abby. She looked so happy; this sort-of-date was actually going well. He didn’t want to spoil the mood. More to the point, he didn’t want her to laugh at him again.

“So,” he said, drumming up a smile. “Care to share that ill-gotten cookie of yours?”





All in all, with Abby sipping that take-away espresso at his side and the stars just beginning to twinkle overhead, Dan was feeling pretty damn all right. They meandered back to campus at a leisurely pace while Abby told him the latest news from home—her parents had patched things up for now, her dad agreeing to work on a more creative personal project, even going so far as to ask Abby to design artwork for an online fund-raiser to cover the recording costs.

“That’s good news,” he said, walking her up the path leading to Brookline. He was beginning to wonder if he should kiss her goodnight.

No, no, slow, remember? . . . Mess this up and you lose her as a friend, too.

Of course, if she offered, then all bets were off. They ambled through the entrance hall and over to the main staircase.

“You should link me to that fund-raiser when it goes up. I’d love to contribute.”

“Yeah, right.” Abby nudged him with her hip. “You don’t even know what his stuff sounds like.”

“So? I’d love to buy something you did. And it obviously means a lot to you.” She stopped at the landing to her floor and turned to look him full in the face. That meant tipping her head back a little to adjust for their height difference. “That’s really . . . really . . . Thank you, Dan.”

“No problem.”

They turned the corner and found the hallway empty except for Jordan. Abby whispered, “Oh, crap.”