Free Hush by Kate White

murder.
    After forcing herself up off the chair, she left a second message for Hayden. Thirty minutes later, as Lake stared at a frozen slab of vegetable lasagna, knowing she had to eat but wondering how she could summon any appetite, Hayden returned the call. Lake outlined the situation to her, and made an urgent pitch for her to come on board as a consultant.
    “I’m totally swamped right now,” Hayden confessed in her Alabama drawl, “but I can’t turn this down. I’ve done damage control on everything from drug companies that sold tainted drugs to a CEO who used company funds to rent a water park for his kid’s birthday—but never a murder . That’s very, very sexy.”
    “So that’s a yes?” Lake said.
    “Yes, but we need to hit the ground running. This is going to be big and move fast—it’ll probably be the plot on Law and Order next week. Can you arrange for me to meet everyone at eight tomorrow morning?”
    Lake assured her it wouldn’t be a problem. Next she phoned Levin.
    “That’s terrific, Lake,” he said. “I’ll let Dr. Sherman know. I think this first meeting should just be the senior team.”
    His tone was almost obsequious; she wondered if he was trying to make up for rudely grabbing the file out of her hand earlier.
    Next she needed to summon the energy to write the kids. She skipped the stories and riddles and scribbled a simple message:
    “I can’t wait to see you both on Saturday and meet your new friends,” she wrote. “I’ll be there right at ten.”
    She wanted to add more but she was already feeling weirdly fraudulent, reminiscent of when Jack was beginning to withdraw and she’d had to act normal in front of the kids. What would she say if she were being totally honest? “Mommy may be implicatedin a grisly murder, so there’s a chance I won’t be able to come after all”?
    As she slipped the paper into the fax machine, she wondered how she was going to handle bumping into Jack at the camp. Prior to her recent conversation with Hotchkiss, she’d hardly relished seeing him there, but now the idea seemed unbearable.
    She nuked the lasagna and pushed it around on a plate as she drained a glass of wine. She tried to calm herself but she kept picturing Hull and McCarty at their precinct desks, searching their notes for clues and combing through evidence reports. The crime-scene people would have lifted her fingerprints but because hers weren’t in the system, there would be no match. Her DNA would be meaningless, too. But if she gave the cops any reason to truly suspect her, they could take her fingerprints and her DNA and then they would know she’d been in Keaton’s bed.
    Closing her eyes, she let her head drop into her hands. In her mind she could see the horrible, oozing gash from one side of Keaton’s neck to the other. Whoever had slashed him must have been overwhelmed with rage. So who had Keaton managed to infuriate? Was it a woman he’d bedded and then dumped? He’d told Lake that he’d bought his place six months ago; he was likely visiting the city even before consulting with the clinic. So this fury could have been building for weeks. It was a fury that would have been directed at her, too, if she hadn’t been safely asleep on the terrace. She let out a moan as she contemplated what her fate would have been.
    Another question gnawed at her. How had the killer gained entry to the apartment? Had he—or she—possessed a key? Or had the person jimmied the lock somehow? Maybe Keaton actually let the person in while Lake was sleeping, perhaps even assuming that Lake had left. But if Keaton had answered the door, he wouldn’t have been stabbed in his bed.
    She considered Hayden’s comment about how big the story would become. Lake had been so preoccupied about her own connection to the murder that she hadn’t even considered the ramifications of just being employed by the clinic. Reporters might start to hound her. She wondered, in fact, whether the nameless