Never Lie (33)

“Do you think you’ll be able to do it?” I ask.

“I can’t see why not.”

My shoulders relax slightly. “And can you install the camera to overlook the front door? So I could see who’s there from my phone?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Perfect.”

He pulls out a small plastic bag of screws and squints at them through his glasses. “Do you have any objections to me putting a couple of tiny holes in your wall?”

“Do what you need to do.”

He glances up at me. “Don’t feel like you have to stand there watching me. This won’t be quick. Why don’t you do some work or something and I’ll let you know when I’m done?”

Truthfully, I would not have minded watching him. I find this sort of thing fascinating. And while I hate to admit it, I’m finding Luke more attractive as I watch him rummaging through his toolkit. As a rule, I don’t date. I rarely find a man who seems worth the effort. I always felt like I was immune to the urges most women have.

But as I watch Luke, I wonder if that’s true.

I cough, pushing away unwelcome thoughts. “I’ll be working over there, in the room where I see patients. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

I spend the next ninety minutes answering emails in my office. I’m dying to go out there and check up on how Luke is faring with the setup, but I don’t want to hover over him. So I wait patiently for him to come to me. With every minute, my guilt escalates at how long he’s spending helping me.

Finally, when I’m contemplating getting up to check on him, a fist raps on the door to my office. “Adrienne?”

“Just a moment!”

I quickly finish up the email I’m working on, then get back on my feet. When I come out of my office, Luke is near the door, standing by my bookcase. He’s holding one of my books, and it takes a second to realize it’s my newest one—soon to hit bookstores all over the nation. The Anatomy of Fear.

“Oh, hey.” His cheeks color. “Sorry, didn’t mean to snoop. I saw the book with your name on it and I got curious.”

“It’s just a proof copy.”

“It looks really interesting.” Again, that sheepish smile. “I read your other one. It was great. Intelligent, but down to earth. The sort of thing that would appeal to anyone.”

“Thank you.”

“You probably hear that all the time though.”

“Not that much.” I look down at the copy in his hands. “This one is coming out in a few months. I’m really proud of it.”

“It’s about… fear?”

I nod, eager to talk about it. When the book releases, there will be book tours and interviews and perhaps television appearances. But as of now, there’s been nothing. And I’m dying to talk about my book. “Basically, it’s about people who have survived terrifying situations and how they have coped in the aftermath.”

“Heavy stuff.”

“The most striking case study is a patient PL I’ve been seeing for a few years now,” I say. “She was staying at a cabin for the weekend with her fiancé and two of her best friends. Out in the wilderness, no cell phone service, yada yada yada.”

He smiles crookedly. “Oh, you mean like here?”

“Nothing like here.” I shoot him a look. “Anyway, they were drinking quite a lot and smoking pot, so their guard was down when a crazy man with a butcher knife burst into the cabin.” I lick my lips, recalling the description I wrote in the book. “He slashed their tires so they couldn’t get away. Then he stabbed all four of them, leaving them for dead. My patient survived by pretending to be unconscious—after the assailant left the cabin, she stumbled through the woods until she came across the main road and flagged down a car for help.”

“Jesus,” Luke breathes. “That’s… awful.”

I pull the book out of his hands, flipping through the pages of my own words, recounting the story my patient told me of the horrors she had endured. “The worst part is they never caught the guy who did it. He’s still out there somewhere.”

“Oh, wow.” He shakes his head. “They never found him? Do they know why he did it?”

“Does anyone know why somebody would try to murder four random people in the woods?”

Luke doesn’t have an answer for that.

“For a year, she woke up screaming every night.” I can still picture that girl’s bloodshot eyes with the dark circles underneath. “She had nightmares about the man being outside her window. It tortured her that he was still out there. It took a lot of counseling to get her better. Counseling and time.”

“I’m sure your help was a large part of that.”

“I’d like to think I helped her. It’s hard to get over that kind of trauma.”

“On that note…” He jerks his head in the direction of the living room. “Let me introduce you to your new security system.”

For the next half hour, Luke shows me all the hard work he put in to secure my home. There are sensors mounted on all the first floor windows. The control panel is right inside the front door, and he turns away to allow me to punch in my six-digit passcode. It’s my late mother’s birthday.