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  The driver retrieved his cell phone and started to place a call. As he punched in the numbers, he said, “Whatever Gus is doing, he’s on his own. There’s no way the department can protect him now.”

  Chapter 17 Wednesday, 3:42 p.m.

  Jodi sat in her cubicle, scribbling on a yellow legal pad. Voting machines. Get real, she thought. Who in the world really cared about all that. Granted, she was raised in a home where her dad always watched the presidential election night returns. She even found herself engaged on some levels, especially as she and her dad discussed the obvious biases of the reporters on the various news channels.

  But to think updating voting machines was an issue readers were itching to know about was bogus—at least that was her take. Besides, the next election was almost a year away. There was plenty of time to do a piece on that as it got closer. Still, Joey was the boss, and she would do her best to find out what she could.

  Then again, Joey hadn’t given her a deadline. He just said to start on it, which she had. She called the League of Women Voters for a statement and almost fell asleep taking notes. She called a manufacturer of the current machines hoping to find someone who could tell her if future modifications were planned, but she gave up after being stuck in their voice mail system for what felt like half the day.

  What really kept her going was to picture Stan at the Total Choice Medi-Center. How bizarre to be on the inside. When she threw out the idea last night, she never expected things would move this fast. She was dying to hear from him and couldn’t imagine what he was experiencing.

  All afternoon she had fought the temptation to call him. She even went so far as to look up the phone number in the yellow pages. She was about to dial but stopped, unsure if employees would be allowed to take personal calls. The last thing she wanted to do was create a problem for Stan on his first day.

  She started to doodle. She drew a voter’s punch card and then covered it with hanging chads. She scribbled “VOID” across the face of the card.

  When the phone in her purse rang, she just about jumped out of her skin. She managed to grab it on the third ring.

  “Hello?” She didn’t recognize the number appearing in her caller I.D. window.

  “Jodi, I’m freaking out over here,” Stan said, apparently cupping his mouth with his hand.

  “Stan!” She looked up, unsure if she had spoken too loudly. Nobody was looking in her direction. “What’s going on?”

  “Got a sec?” Stan said just above a whisper.

  “Are you kidding? I’m dying for details here. Did you meet him? Did you meet Dr. Graham?”

  Stan chuckled. “That guy is one unhappy cockroach.”

  She felt her heart thumping. “You actually met him?”

  “I did way more than that, Jodi. And there’s so much to tell you,” Stan said. “But not now. Like our buddy said, ‘There are eyes everywhere’ . . . if you know who I mean.”

  “Gus?”

  “Yeah.” Stan covered the mouthpiece for a second. She heard muff led sounds in the background and pressed the phone harder against her ear.

  “Okay, be right there,” she heard Stan say. He started to talk to her again. “Listen, what time do you get off work?”

  Jodi glanced at the clock on the wall. “About an hour.”

  “So do I. Meet me at Johnny Angel’s, say, like, 5:15-ish?”

  “You’re on. Oh, my gosh, Stan, this is so unreal—”

  “Hate to cut you off, but they’re calling me.”

  “I’ll be there—5:15.”

  “Oh, one more thing. Got a pencil?”

  “Shoot.” She f lipped to a fresh page in her tablet.

  Stan paused. She could hear him rustling a sheet of paper. “Okay, see if you can dig up anything on the Quest Institute of Medicine.”

  Jodi wrote as fast as her pen would move. “Got it.”

  “Looks like they give a certificate or whatever for completing a course called ‘Practical Nursing.’”

  Jodi’s mind raced. “Let me guess—you want to find out what it takes to get that certificate, right?”

  “Yes, Mom, I’ll be home for dinner. I love you,” Stan said, a sudden change in his voice.

  Jodi heard a click as the connection went dead.

  Chapter 18 Wednesday, 4:12 p.m.

  With a push, Stan stuffed another batch of files into the seemingly insatiable paper shredder. He had spent at least fifteen minutes feeding “expiries”—Jenna’s word—into its hungry jaws. Jenna had explained that, by law, the clinic was required to keep the confidential client records for two years.

  After that, the expiries were reduced to confetti.

  That made sense. What else could the clinic do with the mountains of old files? Tossing them in the Dumpster wasn’t an option. Jenna claimed antichoice activists would use the information to hound women who thought their decision had been private.

  Jenna also ruled out Stan’s suggestion of sending the paperwork back to the former patient. She said that would be rude. Stan figured it would remind them of an event they probably were still trying to forget.

  Or hide.

  From the clinic’s perspective, shredding the paperwork was the way to go. Aside from being a bore and a hassle to do, shredding was legal. It was practical.

  It was also irreversible.

  Curious, Stan stopped the machine. He wanted to see if he could read anything in the wastebasket below. As he sifted through the ultrathin strips of paper with his fingers, a new idea came to him. He remembered how Faith had said the clinic denied she was ever a patient. Maybe someone standing in this very spot had shredded Faith’s file.

  No file, no record of her visit.

  Maybe that’s what happened.

  Stan froze.

  What if he had destroyed her file during the last fifteen minutes?

  He kicked himself for being so preoccupied by the events of the day that he hadn’t paid attention to what he was shredding. The sudden urge to shut and barricade the door came over him. He needed time to give the seven remaining boxes a careful inspection. If Faith’s file was in the stack, he’d have indisputable evidence she could use to sue these jokers.

  He stole a glance over his shoulder at the door. He f lipped the idea over for a long second. What excuse could he give Jenna for closing and locking the door if she came back to check on him? None came to mind, and he was too mentally wiped out to think straight.

  He settled on the idea of paying closer attention to the papers as he worked. He picked up a stack about an inch thick and then scanned through the reports.

  Each page told a story. A girl’s name, address, and phone number. Her age. Weight. The date of her visit. The estimated age of the fetus. Her vital signs. A series of meaningless codes. And a set of initials from the person who performed the procedure at the bottom of the sheet.

  Stan stopped. His forehead wrinkled into a knot. Something wasn’t right. He f lipped through the information again. Jenna had said they were required to hold the files for two years.

  Then it dawned on him.

  While most were several years old, he guessed at least a third were dated as recently as a few days ago.

  What’s with that? he thought.

  He also noticed that the space where the vital signs—blood pressure, pulse, and temperature—were supposed to be printed had been left blank on many of the forms, both expiries and, especially, the more recent ones.

  In a way, it wasn’t a surprise. He saw how fast Dr. Graham and Andrea had plowed through the patients all afternoon. Maybe they didn’t bother to take the time to fill in the vitals. Maybe it was just an oversight on the part of the medical assistants.

  Then again, maybe they never took the vitals in the first place. Stan had no way of knowing for sure. More than ever, he felt like a fish out of water. He wasn’t trained in the medical field. He had no idea why vital signs were omitted but instinctively knew that wasn’t a good thing.

  At the very leas
t, he figured he shouldn’t be shredding files that were less than two years old. He’d point the problems out to Jenna.

  Without thinking through all the details, a plan emerged. He grabbed a handful of reports and then separated them into two piles. In the first, he stacked files at least two years old. In the second, he put anything that wasn’t old enough to be legally destroyed.

  He then plucked three reports out of the second pile, each dated as recently as last week. He looked over his shoulder as he folded the three pages and tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans. He faced the wall and began to shred the expiries.

  “Here’s another box for you,” Jenna said.

  Stan spun around. His heart thumped against his chest at her sudden entry. Jenna walked through the door holding a brown, two-foot by-two-foot cardboard container. She placed it on the counter to Stan’s right and then rested a hand on top of the box.

  “Any questions?” Jenna was professionally dressed, wore white sneakers, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was the nicest person Stan had met on the staff. Unlike Dr. Graham, Jenna oozed sincerity. She seemed to really care about the women who came to the Total Choice Medi-Center.

  Stan swallowed.

  He wondered if his face appeared as guilty as he felt. The three pages tucked in his back pocket seemed to burn a hole through his pants. He was positive she could hear the mad pounding of his heart. For a quick second, he studied her expression but, thankfully, didn’t detect any suspicion.

  “Actually, yes,” Stan said, his mind now racing faster than his heart. He gazed at Jenna’s name tag, stalling for time as he labored to frame the right question. Where was Jodi when he needed her?

  “Yes?” Jenna’s face, like the Mona Lisa, was pleasant. And yet Stan could somehow tell she didn’t have much time.

  Stan punted. He decided to take the indirect approach. “Look, um, Jenna, I’m just curious. How did you decide to work at a . . . a clinic like this?”

  Her lips eased into a warm smile. “You know, Stan, that’s a great question. I guess I’ve always been interested in women’s rights and all that. Back in high school, I knew one day I would get involved in women’s issues, maybe as a counselor. As it turned out, I landed here.”

  Stan fed another file into Mr. Shreds, trying to appear busy. He nodded. He hoped the pages in his back pocket didn’t decide to leap out and point a finger at him.

  Jenna rested a hip against the edge of the table. “I see what we do as an opportunity to help girls . . . and women of all ages . . . make it through what is a tough time in their lives. We really do get them through their personal crises. I like that about my job.”

  Stan pictured Faith lying in a hospital bed, her face pale. Talk about a crisis. He wondered what Jenna would say about helping Faith through the loss of their home and her inability to have kids in the future, all because she had come to this place.

  “Uh, well, I do have, like, a question about these,” Stan said. He reached for the second stack of reports and then handed them to Jenna.

  Jenna held them but didn’t look at them for more than two seconds. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Well,” Stan said, keeping his tone even, “I happened to notice these, um, files aren’t at least two years old. I wasn’t sure if I should be shredding them.”

  Jenna’s face reddened. She leafed through the pages, looked up, and, as her body stiffened, handed them back. “You read these?”

  He shrugged. “The dates, mostly.”

  “Stan, frankly, what’s in these files is none of your business. They’re confidential—or were.”

  Stan was taken aback by her sudden coolness.

  “If Dr. Graham said they’re ready for disposal, then it’s not my place—or yours—to question him.”

  Up until a minute ago, he didn’t think she was the type that would swat a f ly. Now he wasn’t so sure. So much for her Mona Lisa smile.

  “Jenna, I’m sorry. I wasn’t, like, questioning the doctor. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t an honest mistake, um, seeing how busy we all are.” He offered a smile.

  Jenna softened. “I appreciate that, Stan. Just stick to the job and trust Dr. Graham’s judgment.” She returned Stan’s smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She turned and left the room.

  Stan stared at the files in his hand for a long minute.

  Fine. Whatever.

  He dumped them through the shredder, reached for another handful, stuffed them into the machine. He’d do his job, but trust Dr. Graham’s judgment? Trust a man who didn’t even want his patients to know his name? Trust a guy who injured Faith and then denied any wrongdoing?

  Right, Stan thought, finishing off the last of the two stacks. He was boiling mad as he retrieved the box Jenna had just delivered. He removed the lid and grabbed another handful.

  Stan was about to shove the first few pages into the shredder when he stopped dead in his tracks. Something on the top of the first file screamed for attention. With a squint, he focused on the personal data section. He felt his lungs almost collapse as he read the patient’s name.

  Faith Morton.

  For Jodi, any hope of working on the voting-machine story flew out the window with Stan’s call. A hundred questions, no, double that, poured into her mind, not the least of which was: How in the world did he manage to get the job?

  True, Stan was a charmer when he wanted to be, as anyone at school could atest. But Stan had a better chance of being struck by lightning than landing a position in a clinic—at least that had been Jodi’s view before his call.

  To think Stan actually met Dr. Graham. How unreal.

  What did he look like? Talk like? Act like?

  Was Gus right about Dr. Graham? Did he really race with another “doctor” to see who could do the most procedures? Had he surrounded himself with inexperienced workers, handpicked and personally trained? Come to think of it, Stan didn’t have any qualifications, so what had he been doing all day?

  More important, she wondered what Stan was feeling. He had been such a mess last night. And, given what he had said about Faith being in the hospital, he had to be struggling to keep himself together emotionally.

  She knew the answers would have to wait until she and Stan touched base at Johnny Angel’s. She checked her watch. Time seemed to inch forward slower than a snail’s pace in winter. At least she, scouring the Web, had managed to dig up some very interesting background on the Quest Institute of Medicine.

  She was itching to tell Stan that, for starters, the “institute” only offered correspondence courses over the Internet. She noticed a disclaimer in very fine print, which stated the institute was both “unaccredited by and unaffiliated with the National Medical Board Association.”

  Big surprise there, she thought. Not to mention that the syllabus describing the “Practical Nursing” class looked like a total f luff course, on par with basket weaving for beginners.

  But the most telling detail was the address of the Quest Institute. Jodi’s first suspicions were aroused when she noticed the institute was located in Pennsylvania. On a hunch, she used the MapQuest feature on the Web and typed in the street info.

  Voilà! It was what she had guessed.

  The location of the Quest Institute of Medicine shared the parking lot with the Total Choice Medi-Center. How convenient for Dr. Graham.

  Of course, she didn’t have any proof that the two were somehow connected—at least not yet. She was working on that angle when her cell rang.

  “Hi, it’s Jodi.”

  “Hey, Mom?”

  Jodi’s face broke into a wide smile. “What’s up, Stan?”

  “Listen, Mom, I’m gonna be a little late for dinner, okay?”

  “Stan, what in the world—”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s probably more like seven.”

  That Stan wasn’t able to talk was clear. Why? Again, she’d have to wait even longer to find out. She felt silly but decided to play along. “Yes, dear, s
even will be fine.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love—” Jodi stopped herself. She raised half an eyebrow and lowered her voice. “Stan, is this one of your tricks to get me to say, ‘I love you’?”

  She heard him laugh and then say, “Big kisses, too.”

  Boy, he’s really milking this, she thought. Still, an image of she and Stan sharing a dance under very unusual circumstances several weeks ago came to mind.

  She didn’t have feelings for him . . . did she?

  She’d never considered Stan an option before he got saved. She was well aware of the places in the Bible that warned against becoming joined together with someone who didn’t share a faith in Jesus. Now that Stan was a believer, everything had changed. Right?

  Jodi swallowed.

  Feeling slightly lightheaded, her face suddenly f lushed with warmth. She toyed with the implications of this new thought. If—and it was a big if—she and Stan started to date, she’d have to face the fact that such a move would doom her relationship with her best friend, Heather.

  Heather, after all, thought Stan hung the moon.

  Jodi twirled several strands of hair. What kind of a crazy idea was this? As if Stan “da Man” and she would ever be an item. She put the cell phone back into her purse, paused, and then retrieved her compact to check her makeup.

  You just never know, she thought.

  Chapter 19 Wednesday, 5:33 p.m.

  The sixty-five-foot Viking Sport Cruiser towered a proud fourteen feet above the water line. Its sleek profile projected the sensation of speeding through the water even though it remained tethered at Pete’s Marina. The yacht, gassed with 960 gallons of fuel, could easily cruise the Delaware River, out into the Atlantic Ocean, and be dockside by eleven o’clock without breaking a sweat.

  On the main deck Dr. Graham and Joey Stephano sat in the captain’s chairs at the two-person helm, beverages in hand. Dr. Graham had just finished giving Joey the grand tour, and he knew, by the wide informedconsent eyed look still plastered on Joey’s face, that the man was impressed.

  Joey had seemed like a kid on Christmas morning when Dr. Graham demonstrated the set of remote-controlled panels that concealed two garages under the port and starboard sunpads. An unused, brand-new, high-performance Jet Ski was parked in bay one. The other bay was home to an inflatable dinghy pleasure craft with outboard motor.