Rewriting the Apocalypse novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Warm Voice

Dr. Imogen Faulk got out of the sedan with a paper bag in one hand and the other held out to Jo.

"I'm sorry to ambush you," she said. "Your phone said you were here. I should have asked first, but you'd given us location access on the intake form."

Jo had checked that box without reading it.

She had been in a hurry to be paid.

"I'm not a morning person either," Faulk went on. She opened the bag. "Cinnamon rolls. I brought one for your friends."

The green door of the clinic swung open behind Jo.

Bess Mulligan stood on the step in her cardigan and scrubs, gray curls flattened on one side, a mug in her hand.

"Jo Hetzel, you are not on my schedule," Bess said. Then she saw the woman at the curb, and her whole face lit. "Dr. Faulk! You came yourself."

"I try to meet every grant partner in person."

"This woman paid for our new autoclave," Bess told Jo. "And the freezer. Corwin gave us forty thousand dollars last spring. I couldn't have kept the doors open."

Jo's throat closed.

She had not known that.

She had never wondered who paid for the machine that sterilized the clinic's instruments.

"And Jo's one of ours," Faulk said, with a warm smile for Bess. "She's about to join our sleep study. I only wanted to chat before tomorrow."

"A chat." Jo kept her voice light. "About what?"

"The schedule. Your medical history. Whether you'd like a cot or a bed." Faulk touched her arm.

Jo felt the touch through her sleeve, and the power woke in her palm.

She did not use it.

She only let it listen.

Faulk's nerves were steady and slow, the signal of a woman with nothing at all to fear.

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