“It was the single most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen and I was like born in a creepy lab where a doctor conducted experiments on us,” Tucker was saying. “But that had nothing on the way that kid squirmed and managed to get poo everywhere. I think I have PTSD, Doc.”

Steph glanced around Kai Ferguson’s office. It was a Zen paradise complete with a soothing waterfall on one wall. She felt pretty safe ignoring Tucker since she wasn’t the doc in question.

“You do realize you weren’t actually born in that lab,” Kai said, his deep voice curious. “You were born somewhere else. We assume you had a human mother and father and were a lot like young Nate here at one point.”

Tucker shrugged one shoulder. “All I can remember is the white light and being told I should meet my brothers, none of whom were babies. Everything else is foggy. You know one memory I’ll never get rid of? What that baby did with all his poo.”

“See, this is why I have dogs,” Kori Ferguson said as she walked in with a tray of tea in one hand. Kori was Kai’s wife and she ran his office. She was a lovely woman with a halo of brown and gold hair and a smile on her face that told Steph she didn’t take the world too seriously. “You open the door and they happily go poo in the yard.”

“Could we do that with the baby?” Tucker asked. “Because I think free range is the way for that kid to go. I did not know there would be baby changing duty when I signed up for this sucker.”

“It wasn’t bad,” Brody said, the deep rumble of his voice sending a thrill up her spine.

And reminding her of every single dirty, nasty, glorious thing he’d done to her the night before. Just hearing his voice sent a tug deep inside her core and she knew it wouldn’t take much more than the touch of his hand for her to get warm and ready for him again.

What the hell was wrong with her?

“He’s a cutie,” Kori agreed, smiling at Nate, who seemed perfectly happy in his father’s arms. “But I’m happy with my French bulldog.”

Kai frowned. “The asshole dog who pees in my shoes?”

She gave him a brilliant smile. “It means he loves you, babe.”

The psychologist gave his wife a quick nod. “Excellent. I now know how to prove I love you. I thought you had said it was a hard limit, but we both know how much you need love and affection.”

Kori’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you stop right there, buddy. Hard limit.” She winked his way. “And I’ll keep Gideon out of your closet, I promise. I left the paper on the coffee table for later. Call if you need me. I’ll be out here with the hot bodyguards. Hey, Riley knows your brother.”

“Has he talked to him lately?” Kai asked, a frown crossing his face. “Because Jared isn’t returning my calls.”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Kori promised.

She walked out the door and Stephanie sat down on the couch. She could use a cup of tea. And a couple of the cookies Kori had put on the plate. After a few days of being too sick to her stomach to think about eating, her appetite was back. She’d woken up this morning and eaten everything Brody had put in front of her.

She’d woken up alone in bed and for a moment she’d wondered if the night before had been a dream. And then she’d wondered if she’d been a complete moron once again because she’d slept with the man and he’d snuck out—again. Only this time, she’d been left with a baby to deal with. Except Nate’s crib had been empty and she’d found her baby boy cuddled up against his father’s chest while Brody managed to flip a pancake with a spatula.

“I’m not making my son some kind of free-range child, Tucker. It was my bloody first time changing a nappy. I think I did a good job. Oh, we both needed a shower afterward, but we managed.” Brody looked down at Nate. “Now this morning we should talk about because it’s not funny to hit your old man in the eye with your bodily fluids.”

Tucker laughed. “No, that part was hysterical.”

“You have to be fast,” Steph said quietly. She wasn’t sure what was going on. Nate didn’t mind other people holding him for brief periods of time, but he always cried for his mama after a few minutes. She’d been shocked to wake up to sunshine, as Nate had never once slept through the night. He woke up screaming for her, but not this time. Nate seemed to have a never-ending fascination with his father, though. It was mutual because Brody had barely put Nate down once all day. When she offered to take their baby, Brody would shake his head and tell her to get some rest.

Somehow, she’d thought he would try to talk to her about what had happened the night before. She’d woken up and once she’d realized he was still there, she’d started getting her arguments ready.

She wasn’t going to have a relationship with him because he’d been right all along. They were opposites.

She certainly wasn’t going to get serious with him simply because they’d had a baby. That seemed like a terrible idea that would lead to heartache for all of them, Nate included. It was best that they began as they meant to go—friendly co-parents.

“Should you drink that?” Brody asked, standing over her.

She looked down at the cup she’d poured for herself and realized what he was talking about. Tea could be a stimulant and she was about to begin a therapy session that required relaxation. She looked up to Kai. “Is this black tea?”

“It’s a tea specifically formulated to help with relieving stress.” Kai looked very professorial in his white button down and khaki slacks. He did not look like a man some had called a sadist, and yet she’d heard the rumors. In his normal life he was kind and caring, giving his time to his patients, many of whom could not pay him.

At night he let his other half out to play.

When she thought about it, it was actually pretty healthy. Could she view the previous night as nothing more than her sexual side needing a release? There wasn’t anything wrong with indulging that side as long as she was doing it for the right reasons.

She took a sip. She had lots of stress right now.

“Why don’t we clear the room?” Kai asked. “I think this is going to be much more effective the fewer people we’re surrounded by.”

“I’d like to stay,” Brody said.

She shook her head. She had no idea what would come out of her mouth. She’d never been put under before and she didn’t want Brody learning all her secrets. “Someone has to stay with Nate.”

“Kori can watch him,” Brody assured her.

“I want you to do it,” she insisted. “Also, it’s not fair to assume that Kori will watch the baby simply because she’s female. Don’t you think that’s a bit sexist?”

Kai’s eyes lit up and he looked to Brody. “Yes, I would love to hear your answer to this as well.”

Brody clutched Nate like he would protect him. “I wasn’t being sexist. I wasn’t going to hand him off to Kori because she’s female. I was handing him off to her because she’s the most competent person here. Should I give our boy to Tucker?”

Tucker shook his head. “I’m not competent at anything. Damon says I’m like a Labrador retriever, constantly distracted by squirrels. I like squirrels. They’re fun to watch, but I’m far more distracted by women. A good-looking woman walks by and I’ll probably try to trade your baby for sex… You know, I actually could probably handle him for a little while. I mean, you changed him already, right?”

Brody’s head shook. “This is what I put up with and thanks for making my point for me. Come on then. We’ll sneak over to the club. I need to make a few calls anyway. Riley and Shane are posted around the building and there are two other bodyguards next door guarding the king and queen of Loa Mali. We should be relatively safe, but if you feel even slightly uncomfortable, call and I’ll be here.”

She nodded his way.

He leaned over and before she could protest, he’d brushed his lips against hers, the move so sweet and affectionate it hurt her heart.

“Be good, luv,” he said before turning. “Come on, Tuck. Let’s go and see if you can annoy royalty. I think you can.”

They strode out and the door closed behind them, but not before she had a glimpse of Shane Landon’s broad back, reminding her that she had two bodyguards with her at all times. The door closed and she was left with Kai and his peaceful oasis.

“I wasn’t aware you two were together.” Kai sat down on the couch across from her. Though there was a big desk in the room, he’d explained he preferred a more casual setting when it came to actual therapy.

“We’re not,” she replied, her eyes still on the door. “I think he misunderstood something that happened last night.”

“Like sleeping together?”

He was going to try to put her in a corner. She’d been to enough damn therapy sessions to know where this was going. “We both had a long, trying day. Our emotional states led us to reach out to each other for physical comfort, and I’m worried that he’s translating that into something it’s not.”

“Or you’re deflecting.”

“I’m not here to talk about my relationships, Dr. Ferguson.”

“Avery thinks you need to.” If Kai cared about her short tone, he didn’t show it. His words were calm and measured. “She called me yesterday morning to set up a few sessions for you. You know she still sees someone. Not me. She prefers a female therapist, but she still has monthly sessions. Just to talk and make sure she’s all right.”

“What does Avery have to be anxious about? She’s got the perfect life.”

“And she’s had something like it before. You know there’s nothing even close to perfection, and you know that it can all go away in an instant.”

There they were—those tears that seemed to be at the edge of her consciousness all the time now. She was being a selfish bitch. “Of course. I’m glad she’s seeing someone. She deserves every bit of happiness she can find. I love her very much. I’m not myself right now.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe you are,” Kai pointed out. “There’s nothing wrong with being jealous of someone like Avery. I wish I had half her faith in the world around us. I envy her that every day. I have no idea how I would handle the things the two of you went through.”

“She went through it. I caused it. There’s a difference.”

He pointed her way. “Ah, there it is. That’s what she’s afraid of, you know. That you can smile and still hold such self-hate inside you. Tell me something—when this latest incident happened, what was the first thing that ran through your mind?”

She hated shrinks. “Well, he pointed a gun at my face and my first thought was I hope he doesn’t murder me.”

“Is that really what you thought?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember a lot about it. I was terrified. For me and for my people, and definitely for my baby. But I got through it.”

“All right. We’ll see if we can recover that memory as well,” he said. “Are you ready to start? We could talk more. I worry this is going to be a dark place we go to. If you want to relax and have some more tea, we can talk about other things.”

Shrink things. Talking to a man like Kai in a setting like this would never be as simple as discussing the weather or what TV shows she liked to watch. He would be probing and trying to find all her vulnerabilities. “I think I’d rather move on. I want this mystery solved.”

“All right.” He stood up and moved to the wall on the left side of the office. He closed the blinds, the natural light blinking out and leaving them in a twilight dim. He grabbed a candle and matches, lighting the flame and then dousing all other lights with a flick of the switch.

She watched him move in the gloom of the office, knowing that it was brilliant daylight outside. In here there was one light source—that candle that he placed on the table between them.

“This is your focal point.” He shifted back and seemed to move into shadows, his face disappearing as she stared at the candle. “I want you to stop thinking about anything at all except the sound of my voice and the light from the candle. It’s warm and inviting.”

It could burn her. If she did this, how did she know she only went back to what happened last week? How could she be sure he wouldn’t take her further, back to when she’d truly discovered who she was.

“I need you to relax, Stephanie. You’re in control of this.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the candle. Something about it called her in. Like a moth to the flame. “I don’t feel in control.”

But last night she had. It was perverse that giving up control had made her feel strong. She’d decided on her path and then followed it, trusting Brody to catch her if she fell. She’d fallen, but it was the most magnificent fall ever.

“That’s better. You’re thinking of something that makes you calmer. Can you tell me what it is?”

She thought about lying, but she needed this to work. “Sex.”

“Ah,” he said, a chuckle to his voice. “Sex is as good as anything else. It can be a safe place when the partner is right. You’re warm and safe and in his arms. I want you to keep that thought in your head. If the memory is too much, you come back to this place where you’re wrapped up in him. He’s there with you, even while you’re in the memory. He’s waiting for you.”

Brody. Brody would be there. She stared at the flame, but she could feel his big hands on her. “All right. What do I do next?”

“You listen to my voice and let your mind open. Let all the other sounds fall away. You can select them out like turning off lights. Turn off the switch that allows you to hear the hum of the air conditioner.”

In her mind’s eye, she flipped the switch and the sound faded. She did it again with the sound of trickling water from the fountain, bringing down the distractions one by one until only his voice was audible.

An odd sense of peace settled in her limbs. Her muscles felt relaxed, her whole body soft.

“I want you to open a door for me,” Kai said quietly. “We’re going to walk down a corridor and when we get to the end, we’ll open the door and you’ll be back in Africa, back at your clinic. We’ll walk out into the day that the soldiers came.”

“Yes.” Somehow the candle flame became a long corridor. She walked down it. The first door she came to pulsed with life and beckoned her. Her safe room, the one where Brody made love to her again and again. She could come back here and find respite.

She touched the door but didn’t open it. Stephanie forced herself to move, walking past other doors. Some she knew she would never open again. They were best locked and barricaded. But there was one at the end of the hall. Light came from under the door, streaming in enough to show her the way.

“Have you found it?” Kai’s voice seemed to come from far away at first.

“Yes. I think this is the one.” She touched the door. It was warm and there was a white flower on the floor in front of it. They grew all over in the woods outside the clinic.

She was here.

“Open the door and step through. It’s all right. This is only memory and nothing on the other side of that door can hurt you now. You’re not inside this memory. You’re on the outside and you’re looking in.”

She knew what he was doing, trying to give her a bit of psychic distance. It was exactly what the hypnosis was supposed to do, allow her to relive the memory without feeling all the pain, allow her to be objective.

She didn’t want to go. She glanced back down the hall and wanted to run back to the room where Brody was.

She had to be stronger. Braver.

There was nothing inside that could hurt her. Not now.

She opened the door.

White-hot heat blasted against her.

“What do you see?” Kai asked and he was suddenly beside her, as though her mind couldn’t quite stand the idea of some voice talking to her like a heavenly overlord. He was standing there in his khakis and button down looking completely out of place in the Sierra Leone heat.

She looked around. They were standing in the courtyard. “I’m in the clinic. At least I should be at this time of day.”

“You are wherever you were. This is a movie that’s going to play out the way it happened. You’re merely an observer.”

“Then I know what happens next.” As if on cue she heard the squeal of tires and the rumble of a huge engine. “They pulled into the courtyard. I was standing inside with both my nurses. Anya and Keniyah. We heard the sound of a Humvee. Two, actually. We looked out the window.”

She glanced over and sure enough, the thin curtains pulled back and she could see her own face staring out. Her eyes widened in pure fear and then another odd look came over her.

She shivered even in the heat of day because she remembered what she’d thought.

“What happened next?”

She suddenly found herself inside the clinic, the scene shifting with the ease of a movie.

“Keniyah, get the children out,” she was saying in a firm voice.

The nurse nodded and hauled the child they’d recently vaccinated up into her arms.

The back door opened and a handsome man strode in. He was roughly six foot two and had a broad build and sandy blond hair. There was normally a wide, expressive grin on his face, as though he found the world continually amusing, but today he frowned.

“What’s going on, Doc?” Alfi Dauterre asked, glancing out the window. “Shit. Those aren’t locals.” He squared his shoulders. He was dressed for the bush, intending to go out hunting later in the day. He pulled his Tilley down over his head and made sure his shoulder holster was secure as the door burst open.

There he was, the “boss.”

“Hey there, mate.” Alfi stepped in front of them. Keniyah had gone out the back and Steph remembered praying they were already making their way to the road that led through the woods and to the village. “What’s the problem?”

The “boss” was dressed in fatigues, his face scarred, but he looked perfectly clean. His uniform appeared to have been pressed and his beard was neat and trimmed. “I hear there’s a doctor works out of this clinic. Got a man down. Need to see him.”

“I’m Dauterre, Alfred Dauterre,” Alfi said. “And you are?”

The man ignored Alfi’s outstretched hand, preferring to pull a gun on him. “I’m the man who will murder you if you don’t present the doctor. Did you call yourself the doctor? I can barely understand you Australians.”

“I’m the doctor,” she said, stepping forward.

She turned to the Kai in her head. “I introduced myself.”

“You didn’t think about pretending you are a nurse, or maybe be a patient?” Kai asked.

She could see herself talking to the big man with the gun. He was telling her about a patient. A man. “No. He came in pointing a gun Alfi’s way. I couldn’t let him shoot someone. At the time, I thought the patient might be his son or someone close to him. He seemed desperate though cold. Some people have that reaction. They detach themselves so they don’t have to feel too deeply. I thought that was what was happening, but I quickly learned something different.”

“Where was Nate?”

A shiver went through her. “He was asleep. He naps for long periods of time during the day. I’d just fed him and I had a baby monitor on him. I thought at the time that Keniyah had gotten him out, but I realized later she hadn’t. I think because he wasn’t in the clinic she either forgot about him or couldn’t make her way around to get him out. I don’t blame her.”

“You’re not angry?”

She shook her head. “I gave her a lot to do. Likely she thought I would get him out.”

“When did you realize he wasn’t safe?”

The scene shifted and suddenly she was in her operating room. She and Anya were working on the man. Anya sucked away much of the blood and Steph could see the wound more clearly.

“I was working on the patient and I heard Nate through the monitor. I had my hand inside the man, trying to get the bullet free, and I heard my son wake up.”

She watched herself falter, the horror of what was happening dawning on her face.

“Don’t you stop, Doctor.” The boss was standing right outside the room, looking inside. “I’ll take care of the child. It’s a good trade-off, you see. You take care of this man, ensure he doesn’t die, and I’ll do the same for the child.” He turned back and shouted. “Find the baby.”

“That must have been a horrible moment,” Kai said.

One of many. “He’d already explained to me that he would kill me and my nurse if we didn’t save the patient. That’s not what he called him. No.” Her mind was working. He’d called the man something else. Something weird. “Verse…something.”

“Go back to that moment. This isn’t the real world. This is your movie and you can fast forward or slow it down. You can select the scene. Go back to when you first spoke to the boss. Run through the scene again. Concentrate on that moment.”

He’d called the man something else. Not a name, but a word. It had been all jumbled up in her head, but now she thought it was important. He’d spoken in English most of the time. But this once, the word seemed to fail him and he’d spat out something in his own language.

What language was it?

“I’ll write it down and we’ll figure it out. Stop trying to force it. Let it slip and flow,” Kai ordered, his voice as calm as the world around her was chaotic.

Because Alfi was trying to step in front of her, putting a hand up as the boss got in her face. She could still feel the tension of the moment, waiting for the small room to explode in gunfire.

“Step back, mate,” Alfi was saying. “This doesn’t have to get violent.”

“If I have to kill you, I will. Do you understand me?” The boss’s face had turned a florid red, and now she was surrounded.

“They were all around me,” Steph told Kai. “They flanked us like they were setting us up for slaughter. I was strangely calm about it. I knew he wanted me to save someone, but Alfi was being overprotective.”

“It sounds like Alfi was being properly protective,” Kai said. “How often do you get armed men threatening you?”

“In that part of Sierra Leone? Almost never,” she admitted. “I set up the clinic there as a base camp of sorts. I did it because it’s stable. So I knew I would have somewhere to go back to. The problems are to the east and south, mainly. We do have issues with emergent diseases. We had an Ebola epidemic, but we don’t have mercenaries normally.”

“Yet you had a plan in place for how to deal with them. You didn’t wait to send your second nurse off with the children,” Kai pointed out.

“I’ve been in much darker places. I’ve learned to be prepared.” She watched as Alfi finally put his hands up and let her take over. It was obvious Alfi had run out of options besides being horribly murdered, and the man loved his own face far too much to allow that to happen. “This is where the boss threatens me. He’s good at the intimidation thing.”

The boss was looming over her, his accent thick as he spoke. “I need this man alive. Can you understand that, Doctor? If you can’t save him, no one will be able to save you.”

He turned and walked away.

Steph looked to what appeared to be the second in command. “Is this his son? Someone close to him?”

The man shook his head. “Verslaggever. Don’t know the word in the English. You need to know the word alive. He will kill you. We must to keep this verslaggever living.”

“Excellent,” Kai said. “I’ve got it. We’ll run it through a translator after we’re done here. What happened after the surgery?”

She let the scene shift to the small room where she and Anya had taken turns watching over the patient. “He was still critical, but for several hours we had him stabilized. Once the boss saw that all the monitors were functioning and he had one of his men confirm that it seemed like the patient would live, he gave Nate back to me.”

Steph stood outside the room, Nate swept up in her arms. She was talking to Anya, though tears were running down her face. Yes, she remembered that moment. Once she’d had Nate in her arms again, she hadn’t been able to stop crying.

“He’s awake?” Anya was asking, her voice hushed.

Steph looked around as though trying to make sure they were alone. “Briefly, but his pain was intense and I had to give him something. He wasn’t speaking English. I think he speaks the same language these guys do. I tried to talk to him, but his blood pressure spiked. He needs rest.”

“The boss has already been in here demanding to speak to him,” Anya explained. “I had to tell him that if he tried to wake him up too soon there could be dire consequences. I don’t think he cared. The only thing that stopped him was one of his own men. I wish I knew what he’d said. I don’t speak Dutch.”

Dutch. Anya had believed it was Dutch they had been speaking.

“Very good, Stephanie.” Kai’s voice encouraged her. “That’s important information. Do you have any recollection of speaking directly to the patient?”

“Only the once before I gave him pain meds, and I couldn’t tell you what he said. Shortly after that Anya and I talked, and then I fell asleep with Nate. I woke up to Alfi telling me the patient had died and we needed to run before the boss found out.”

The scene shifted to a small room in the back of the clinic. She hadn’t been allowed to go back to her cabin. The soldiers had told her they needed to keep an eye on her. She was fairly certain the soldiers had taken her bed and the one she’d had brought in for Brody. That was where the boss had disappeared. She hated the fact that he was sleeping in Brody’s bed.

She watched as Alfi entered the room, Nate’s diaper bag already in his hand.

“Stephanie, wake up,” he said, not bothering to turn on the light. “You gotta wake up. We have to get the hell out of here. He’s dead.”

Steph sat up, trying not to disturb Nate. “What?”

Anya walked in behind him. “It’s true. I think he threw a clot. I tried to save him, but he’s gone and any minute now the guard will walk back by. I have to be there to tell him everything is fine. He’s an idiot. He won’t notice. Come on, you have to go.”

“At the time the words didn’t make sense to me,” Steph explained to Kai. “I was very tired. I understood that the patient was dead, but now I remember that Anya knew I was leaving. It happened quickly. Alfi hustled me out to the car and we left then and there. I think Anya believed the guard would do what he’d done all night. He’d been checking in and then doing a long perimeter sweep so he could smoke. She could have snuck off then, but she was trying to give us some cover.”

And she’d probably died for it. She’d gone from being a brave young nurse with an infectious smile to being a dead body in a doorway.

What had happened to her before she’d died? What horrors had she gone through?

“Stay with me, Stephanie.” Kai’s voice soothed her and she forced herself to focus.

“The only people who were alone with the patient were me and Anya,” she said.

“What about Alfi?”

She stopped. How could she have forgotten about Alfi? “Yes. He sat with the man for a little while. But he didn’t say anything about the patient talking.”

“All right. I think we’re in a good place but I need you to do one more thing for me,” Kai said. “Go back. Go back to that first moment when the boss strode in.”

She let the scene shift and flow back and she was standing in the lobby of the clinic again, in that moment right before the day had gone to hell. She was talking and laughing. She watched herself look up, see the problem coming, and go into action. “I’m there. What am I looking for?”

“I want you to think about that moment when you realized this was serious,” Kai explained. “That moment when the boss strode in and you knew he could kill you.”

What was Kai looking for? She let the moment happen, running up to the second that the boss had looked at her with cold, dead eyes. She watched as a blank look came over her own face. “I’m there.”

“Tell me what your first thought was.”

Without thinking, she spoke. “I thought I’d been waiting for this moment since I was sixteen years old. I thought finally, I get what I deserve.”

The memory fell apart and she was back in the present, staring at a flame. Her heart seemed to seize as she acknowledged the truth.

Kai touched a button and daylight started to stream in.

Why had she told him that? “I don’t really feel like that. It was a momentary lapse.”

Kai turned to her, his intelligent eyes narrowing. “Oh, I doubt that very much. I think that was the most honest you’ve been with me and yourself in a long time. This is what your friends are worried about.”

She knew it was what Avery was worried about. “I’m fine, Doc. I might have those feelings from time to time, but I’m not punishing myself anymore.”

“You used to?”

“I was behind the wheel in an accident that killed two people and left one without the use of her legs for years. And I barely had a scratch on me. Yes, I punished myself. When I was younger I did it all, Dr. Ferguson. I used hardcore drugs, drank anything I could get my hands on, and I don’t remember all the times I used sex to try to obliterate myself.”

“And now you’re involved with a man who enjoys a particular lifestyle.”

She wasn’t going there with him. “Oh, don’t you even judge him for that. It’s not the same thing. Not even close. I’ve hurt myself in an attempt to kill whole parts of my soul, and that is not what happens between me and Brody. It’s not about pain or hurting myself. It’s about connecting and the fact that only that one man in the world can give me relief, can make me feel safe enough that I can let go. I’ve been out of control before and I know what it feels like. It’s nothing like being with Brody. When I’m with him, I can hand over control knowing he won’t use it against me and I’m safe. I’m surprised that you would even think that way. I thought you were in the lifestyle.”

A smile spread over his handsome face and she realized she’d been perfectly manipulated. “I am, and you explained it quite properly to me. You’re cleared for play at Sanctum if it comes up. Now let’s look up that lovely word of yours. Dutch, you said?”

She stopped, confused at his turnaround. “I didn’t expect you to say that. I thought we would have to have more sessions.”

His eyes came up from the tablet in his hands. “You know what your problem is. You admit you made a mistake. I can’t force you to forgive yourself. You know what you have to do. You have to find the meaning in what seems meaningless. I personally would say you’ve done that. You’ve worked tirelessly to save people who wouldn’t have been saved if your life had taken the path it would have without the accident. But I don’t think you’re at peace with it. You can’t be if that was your first thought when confronted with a monster. It wasn’t that you would save your son. It was that you had been waiting for this, deserved this.”

She felt tears gather. “I love my son.”

“I believe you, but Stephanie, how will you teach him to love himself if you can’t do the same? Forgiving oneself is something you have to decide to do. I’m here if you want to talk, but I otherwise think you’re doing fairly well at handling things. When you find the true meaning in what happened to you, that’s the moment you’ll forgive yourself.”

Meaning. There was no meaning in what had happened. There had been only death and pain and long years of misery. Avery thought saving people in Africa made up for the horror of that night, but it wasn’t true.

It wasn’t a calling. It was penance.

Did she intend to force Nate to live in her version of Purgatory? She’d stayed away from the States because she could pretend to be someone else when she wasn’t here. She could separate Stephanie, the idiot teenage girl, from the selfless doctor, but something had changed when she’d met Brody. She’d wanted, really wanted something for herself. For the first time, she’d wanted to be free of the cage she’d put herself in.

Avery had opened the door years before. The cage was no longer locked because Avery’s kindness had busted it open.

But Steph was still inside. She might always stay inside. Could she keep Nate in there with her?

“Ah, there it is.” Kai turned the tablet her way. “Journalist. Verslaggever is Dutch for journalist or reporter. Now that’s interesting.”

It was, but her mind was somewhere else. She tried to shove all the dark thoughts back and concentrate on the problem at hand.

“Can we call Adam Miles and see if he can run a search to see if anyone’s missing a Dutch journalist?” Steph asked.

“I’m on it.” Kai smiled like this was going to be a fun afternoon.

She wasn’t sure about fun, but she’d learned a lot. Not all of it welcome. She turned to the job at hand, trying not to think about the future…or the past.