Isobel Sørensen chained her bike, unclipped her helmet, pulled the heavy doors open, and hurried up the old marble stairs. Wiping sweat off her forehead she opened the door with the brass sign that read MEDPAX. In the reception area, with its dark mahogany furniture, framed prizes, and twenty-year-old magazine clippings on the walls, she was greeted by two oil paintings in golden frames: one of Isobel’s mother, the other of her grandfather, the founders of Medpax.

A door at the back opened, and Leila Dibah, the general secretary of the foundation, stuck her head out.

“Sorry I’m late,” Isobel said, lifting her hand in a greeting. “Work was chaos.”

“You’re not late,” Leila said with that slight accent that betrayed her Persian origins. Fifty-two-year old Leila was a clinical psychologist, and Isobel had always thought that she had the perfect eyes for her profession. Focused, unreadable, unwavering. Leila opened the door to Medpax’s only conference room. “Let’s sit here,” she said, and let Isobel in. They sat at the table, Leila in front of stacks of papers and binders. Isobel reached for a decanter with water and a glass. She hadn’t drunk anything since lunch.

“How’s work?” asked Leila as Isobel poured a second glass of water.

“At the clinic?” Isobel shrugged and downed the water. She’d seen twenty-two patients today. That was nothing. When she was out in the field she could treat over a hundred patients a day. Malnourished, wounded, dying patients. Nobody starved to death before her eyes at the clinic. No one died from simple treatable diseases or infections. Nothing unbearable happened. “It’s hectic but okay,” she said.

Leila searched her face. “You work too much,” she stated.

“No, I don’t.” Isobel worked at the clinic, and here at Medpax when she had time, and she was a fully committed field doctor for Doctors Without Borders. But life wasn’t supposed to be easy; she just did what she had to do to pull her weight.

Leila sighed. “I just got a phone call. Sven can’t go to Chad.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

During its golden years, Medpax, a small but renowned humanitarian aid organization, had run three pediatric hospitals in Africa. One in Chad, one in the Congo, and one in Cameroon. As the years went by, two of the hospitals were taken over by the authorities in their respective countries, and now they had only the hospital in Chad left. Day to day, it was run by medical personnel from Chad, assorted volunteers, and field-workers from other aid organizations, but Medpax was the driving force behind it. Sven was a surgeon and had been scheduled to go there at the end of the month.

“But why?” Isobel asked. No one from Medpax had been in Chad since the previous fall; the plan was for Sven to head down there, assess what changes needed to be implemented in the future, and create a formal course of action. This was a huge setback. Someone from Medpax had to go there. Sven would have been perfect.

“His wife doesn’t want him to,” Leila said.

“You’re kidding.”

“She gave him an ultimatum. Sven says he has got to give his marriage priority.”

“I see.” The cynical side of Isobel wondered why Sven—infamous for having slept with virtually every female nurse he’d ever met—suddenly thought he needed to give his marriage priority, but she said nothing. Going out into the field had to be an individual’s own choice.

Leila nodded. “But it was actually because of something else I asked you here.” She took out one of the binders, opened it, and placed it in front of Isobel. “I wanted to show you this. We have a problem with one of our donors. A serious financial problem.”

Isobel looked at the neat rows, trying to decipher them. “It seems to be a foundation of some kind,” she said after a while.

Leila bowed her head affirmatively. “They’ve given loads of money in the past, but the donations suddenly stopped.”

Medpax lived off its donors.

“But are we really so dependent on them? One single donor?” Isobel asked.

“We are now. We lost quite a few of our donors before I started, as you know.”

Isobel nodded. It was an understatement. They had bled.

“And since then, several of our applications have been rejected, and we haven’t managed to make up the shortfall yet.”

Leila had joined Medpax a couple of years ago. Medpax finances had been in bad shape at that time. With the force of a Persian conqueror she had managed to salvage what she could when she joined the organization, but the fact was that her predecessor, Blanche Sørensen, had become increasingly less successful at maintaining the important relationships with the organization’s donors.

Isobel knew, of course, that none of this was her fault, but she still squirmed at Leila’s words. Blanche was, after all, her mother.

“We can’t afford to lose them. I don’t really know why the donations have stopped. No one at the foundation has bothered to return my calls, though I’ve left several messages.”

Isobel studied the documents. The name of the foundation told her nothing, but the address was one of Stockholm’s most exclusive streets, so maybe the trustees simply didn’t think it was worth their while to return calls from anyone at a tiny humanitarian organization.

“When exactly did they stop?” Isobel asked, still trying to understand the figures.

“Just before Christmas.”

Isobel had been in Liberia then. She’d gone there with Doctors Without Borders to fight an Ebola outbreak. Seen more dead bodies, ravaged communities, and traumatized medical staff than she could bear to think about. She had worked in refugee camps, war zones, and the aftermath of natural disasters since she was in her teens. Her first summer job had been as a volunteer. She had seen it all. But still. Liberia … It had been weeks before she managed to get past the worst of the nightmares.

“You should have said something. Maybe I could have helped.”

“Asking for help really isn’t my strong suit.”

Isobel snorted at the understatement. “What’s his or her name?”

“Who?”

Isobel nodded at the binder. “Whoever’s behind the foundation?”

“Here,” said Leila, pointing at a name. “A man. Alexander De la Grip.”

The name went through her like a jolt. She sat up. “You’re joking,” she said.

Leila looked up. “You know him?”

Isobel had lost count of how many lists she’d seen Alexander De la Grip’s name on.

Best-Dressed Bachelors in the World.

Richest Swedes under Thirty.

World’s Most Handsome Men.

Or how many gossip rags he had appeared in. Not because she actively looked for his name, but because Alexander De la Grip and his escapades were like an ongoing, everlasting, disgusting serial in the media.

“We’ve met,” she said calmly, but was shocked to her core.

She and Alexander De la Grip had met, by chance, last summer. He had flirted with her, and she had told him to go to hell.

Literally.

Several times.

She wanted to smack her forehead on the table. Every time Alexander De la Grip had ever spoken to her, in that deep aristocratic voice of his, she had been nothing but rude in return. She wasn’t proud of it; she usually was much smoother than that. She was a field doctor, for Christ’s sake—she could take annoying men in stride. But it was as though Alexander’s entire being had irritated her back then. The drunken eyes, the diva-like existence, the way women fawned over him. Was he really that easily insulted, that petty? Stupid question; of course he was. Alexander De la Grip’s ego was probably more fragile than a compromised immune system. She had snubbed him, and in revenge he had cut off the money to Medpax. It was the simplest and therefore most plausible explanation.

Leila studied her with piercing black eyes over the rim of her glasses. “Could we talk to him? Get him to change his mind? Maybe over a lunch?”

Isobel toyed with the papers. “I guess we could try,” she reluctantly replied. There was nothing unusual about meeting potential donors over lunch, dinner, or sometimes even breakfast. She had done it many times before, knew she was good at it and that people were impressed by her and her heritage. That was one of her roles at Medpax. But the thought of sucking up to that spoiled, privileged jet-setter … Well, it was all her own fault. Pride goeth before a fall, and so on.

“Could you take care of it?” Leila asked.

Isobel regained her composure, gave Leila an unruffled look, and simply said, “Sure.”

“Good. Because if we don’t find more money soon, we’re done. We’ll have to close Medpax down before summer.”

“You’re exaggerating.” Leila did have a tendency toward the melodramatic; surely things couldn’t be that bad.

But Leila gestured at the papers before them. “Feel free to double-check, though I’ve already done it. Without money, there won’t be any more aid work. It’s simple math.”

Isobel groaned.

They sat in silence.

“You look tired,” Leila finally said. “How are you sleeping?”

Isobel gave her a dubious look. “I hope you’re not doing a psychological assessment.”

Leila didn’t miss a beat. “Do you need one?”

Isobel looked out the windows. There were smells and images from Liberia she still couldn’t shut out. But she had been back for three months now. It was getting better and life was, on the whole, back to normal.

“I stopped taking the sleeping pills. I bicycle a lot; I’m fine,” she said evasively. It was basically the truth.

“We really need someone down at the pediatric hospital right now—you know that as well as I do,” Leila eventually said.

“I’m not a pediatrician,” she protested, but without too much conviction. It was a ludicrous objection, and they both knew it. With what Isobel could do, the experience she had, there wasn’t a field hospital on earth that wouldn’t benefit from having her on staff. And she had been there before. She knew the hospital, knew the staff. Even knew some of the young patients who turned up over and over. For a moment she pictured solemn, dark eyes in a small, hungry face. Was he still alive?

“I hate to ask. I know you have a lot on your plate, and I know you need to recharge, but could you at least think about it?”

“Okay.”

“And while you’re thinking about Chad, you may as well think about Skåne, too.”

Crap. Isobel had managed to forget all about that spectacle. Medpax was involved in a big charity event somewhere in the southern Swedish countryside. Rich people, business representatives, politicians, and assorted members of the upper class would gather there in a beautiful castle. They would mingle, drink too much wine, eat stupidly expensive food, and with any luck, be convinced to donate lots of money.

“Isn’t it enough that I butter up De la Grip?”

“But everyone likes you, Isobel. Third-generation Medpax, dazzling conscience of the world and all that. Plus, you’re a young woman. That always sells. Just think how much money we can bring in if you go.”

“Isn’t this emotional blackmail?”

“Absolutely,” Leila agreed. She tapped a column of figures with her index finger. “But if you don’t sort things out with Alexander De la Grip, it’ll just be like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound anyway. We need to build up a buffer, bring in regular amounts.”

In other words, she was expected to fawn over one of the world’s most immoral men before she traveled down to Skåne to suck up to even more rich people. Now she really did feel ill.

“Can you handle it, Isobel?”

“Yes.”

She could, because, for the most part, she could manage almost anything. Though it did cross her mind that she might have preferred to stay in Liberia, battling Ebola, after all.