“For what?”
“For everything. For being so kind and so patient with me.”
“Me? Patient? You’ll have to put that in writing so I can show it to my unit.”
A tiny, very tiny laugh. Not just the lottery. The Powerball lottery.
“Chayton?”
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
“I feel so useless.”
“You? Never.”
She sighed. “I am a trained clinician. I am supposed to know how to deal with such a thing as this.”
“And you have been dealing with it. You handled those telephone calls you got in Texas. And that asshole yesterday… You were great.” He gave it a few seconds. If he could get a little information now, why not get it? “What was his name? That guy at Cuppa Joe’s.”
“Noah.”
“Noah what?”
“Collins? Clinton.” She sighed. “I can look in my… Why? Surely you don’t think—”
“What I think,” Chay said, clasping her face between his hands, “is that anything is possible in this world. That’s Life Lesson Number One.”
“Noah clearly has problems, but his personality is not that of a man who would—who would invade a woman’s space in such a personal way.”
Bullshit, Chay thought, but this wasn’t the time to tell her that.
“Honey. We’re going to order in some food. And coffee. We can discuss this later. Tonight. Or tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t know what we’ll discuss. I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone who would do these things.”
“Still, someone did. And we’re going to find out who.”
“How?”
They were heading into a conversation he wanted to avoid until she was stronger.
“You have access to your files on your laptop? Patient records? Whatever notes you’ve taken about the participants in your study?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Excellent. We’ll go through all of it.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I can’t open my files to you. To anyone. It would be unethical.”
Shit. “Bianca,” he said calmly, “the odds are good we’ll find the answers we need in those files.”
Bianca stepped back. Her chin lifted.
“What I have is privileged information between clinician and patient. As for the study—I promised all who participated anonymity.”