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“It’s nothing,” I heard myself say.

“Are you okay getting home?” Roy asked Corrine.

“I’m good,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

“You did fine,” I said.

She gave me a half-hearted smile, then disappeared down the opposite hallway.

Roy put a light hand on me. He thanked McCallister for including us. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other as we made our way outside.

Daniel Palicki was just a man. A psychopath, perhaps. But I’d faced many like him before. And yet, there was something different about him.

I felt like he knew me.

SEVENTEEN

MINA

Later, the night terrors came. This time, I dreamed I was at the bottom of the lake, trapped in a car. I could see Lock swim toward me but felt paralyzed. Suffocated. He told me I woke up screaming. I couldn’t tell him about the dream. I would have to tell him why I was so stressed, and part of me knew I still needed to keep it to myself.

The dream changed too. The man swimming toward me morphed into Daniel Palicki. Those cold, piercing eyes bore into me. He blew me a kiss. Then he swam up to the car window, smiled at me, and then left me there to drown.

Now, Lock and I sat in the car outside the Lasalle Harbor Medical Building. Our appointment was at 8:00 a.m. Lock pulled a string or two to have the doctor meet us an hour before her office officially opened. This town was far too small and neither of us wanted anyone else in our business.

“Baby, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does though,” I said.

He took my hand and brought it to his lips. “Come on. Dr. Wexler’s probably already in there.”

“We could have done this by phone,” I said. “Or through MyChart.”

Lock waved me off as he got out of the car and came around to my side. He insisted on opening car doors for me, though I’d told him a thousand times it wasn’t necessary. He was a throwback in so many ways.

“I hate MyChart,” he said. “I don’t want some dictated message back from Wexler’s nurse. I want you to be able to ask your questions directly, with her full attention.”

She was waiting for us with a kind smile when we walked in. As Lock requested, none of her staff had clocked in yet.

“Thank you so much for accommodating us,” Lock said, turning on his full charm. He towered over Gloria Wexler. She stood maybe five feet one in shoes.

“I don’t mind,” she said. Dr. Wexler ushered us into her small office and closed the door. She had a thin yellow file folder in the center of her desk.

“Relax,” she said, her smile bright. Since she was Lasalle Harbor’s only reproductive endocrinologist, Lock and I debated whether to choose someone out of town. But even coming from our small town, she was one of the best in the state.

She took two stapled packets of paper out of her folder and handed one to each of us. I saw rows of numbers under both Lock’s and my names. I saw a few for each of us marked in the abnormally high zone.

“Let’s start with you, Lock,” she said. “You’re about as virile a man as I’ve seen. Three hundred and forty-two sperm per milliliter. Nearly eighty percent motility. It means you’ve got a lot of swimmers, and they’re moving around extremely well. So we can check male factors off the list of things to address.”

“So it’s me,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Wexler answered. “Most of your numbers are in great shape too, Mina. The only culprit I see is the ratio between your FSH and LH levels. Your LH is three to one higher than your FSH. We normally want to see that at one to one.”

“What does that mean?” Lock asked before I could.

“On paper, it looks like polycystic ovarian syndrome. You’re probably not ovulating regularly.”

“What do we do for that?” I asked.