Chapter 11: The Fifth Floor

"Come to the clinic at seven," he said. "After the last patient. Use the garage entrance, fourth level. I'll be at the door."

"Why not now?"

"Because I want it printed, signed and in your hands, and I want a witness who isn't me."

He was waiting at the steel door on the fourth level of the garage, in shirtsleeves, no tie.

He looked at my face first.

Then he looked down at my wrist and went very still.

Four red marks were coming up purple on the inside of it.

He didn't touch them.

He held out his hand, palm up, and waited until I put my wrist in it myself.

His thumb moved once over the back of my hand, nowhere near the bruise.

"He did this in a parking lot," he said.

"Annabeth put him on his knees in the same parking lot."

"I'll send her flowers."

"She works at a flower shop."

"I'll send her a car," he said, and almost smiled, and didn't let go of my hand until we reached the elevator.

The fifth floor was quiet and cold, with a long hall of glass walls and blue light.

A woman in her forties in a hair cover and blue scrubs met us outside the lab.

"This is our embryologist," August said. "She's been here since we opened."

"Mrs. Radford." She shook my hand firmly. "I've heard. I'm sorry. Come look."

At a counter outside the lab she'd laid out three sheets of paper in a row.

The first was the Ballantyne report I already knew. AMH 0.2.

The second was a Queen City lab record. A sample received May fourteenth from a Ballantyne practice, under my name and date of birth.

AMH: 3.1.

"Your real number from May," the embryologist said. "Normal. We sent it back to him the same afternoon."

"And he typed a different one."

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