ZANDER
Any threats to the client will be dealt with quickly and severely. All legal ramifications will be the burden of The Firm.
The waiting room at 304 Pinewood Circle is the same it’s been since the first time I set foot here, in this strip of professional offices. White walls. Black, modern furniture. All of it’s comfortable, sturdy, and nonthreatening. No art in frames, just a blue accent wall in the back. I asked Harrison about it at my first session. He said that one of his clients once had a reaction to a watercolor painting, so he stopped displaying art after that.
It takes great effort not to tap my foot against the floor. Moments like this are good for practicing patience. You can’t allow the nervous responses to get in the way when you’re on a job, and almost no one starts out with enough patience to be that way in high-pressure circumstances.
The soft click brings my attention forwardas Harrison opens the door to his office. “Zander. How are you?”
“Good,” I answer as I rise, exhaling and preparing myself. “How are you?” I follow him in, nodding at his polite answer. The office is a smaller version of the waiting room, except the furniture is larger and sturdier. I take my seat in a black armchair, and Harrison takes his seat in a gray wingback. Like always, he appears unflustered and calm. Clean-shaven. Dark, closely cropped hair above a neat white shirt and equally neat tie.
“What brings you in today?”
The words I’ve been planning to say stick in my throat. Harrison is a patient man. He’s one of those obnoxiously tolerant people who will outwait you no matter how long it takes. It’s one of the things Damon told me about him when he recommended I see him—he knows how to shut his mouth and wait, a quality I appreciate in people more than most other things. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
Harrison tilts his head to the side and continues waiting. The clock on the back wall is nearly silent. But there’s still a steady ticking sound in the room. Punctuated by my heavy exhales.
No matter how much practice I have at being patient, he is better. And part of me wants to crack. It’s not that I want him to know the details. The urge to keep this secret is strong. It doesn’t seem to matter that I decided to talk to Harrison about this—now that it’s time, some protective instinct rears up and tries to keep me from saying a damn word. But it’s misguided. This conversation is about Ella’s welfare. Her well-being is the most important thing.
“We’ve got a new job. It’s different from our typical clients.”
“How so?”
“She’s a custodial client,” I explain. “Released from a mental health facility into our care. For a case like this, the involvement is significant. Around-the-clock presence in her home.”
“And this is outside the bounds of what you’ve done in the past?”
“Well outside. Normally we’re dealing with high-profile security and physical threats. For this client—” I almost said her name. I almost said Ella to Harrison. It wouldn’t have been a disaster for him to hear it. Everything I say in this room is confidential.
But if I say her name to him …
If she becomes part of my sessions as a person in my life and not a client …
That changes things.
I clear my throat. “For this client, the focus is mental health recovery. She was institutionalized for a number of months. This is the stepdown from the Rockford Center.”
His left eyebrow raises a fraction of an inch. Harrison isn’t the kind of man who’s shocked often. Or if he is, he doesn’t show it. Could be a trick of the trade, but it could also be his personality. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know him before Damon put his foot down and made me schedule an appointment with him years ago. “That type of transfer is unusual, from what I know of the system.”
“Highly unusual.” There’s a strange tightness in my throat, thinking about her standing in that courtroom. “The client herself is unusual, and I think she’ll need an unusual approach. If I take that route, I want to make sure I don’t cross any boundaries. That I’m seeing the right things.”
I’m met with a thoughtful nod.
“And her mental well-being?”
“From what I gather, depressed. Given her medication, suffering with trauma. But very aware, opinionated and independent. She is … working through her pain, but struggling.”
“Is she of sound mind?”
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation and feel a heat tingling at the back of my neck. There is no indication from my interactions with her, nor from Damon’s notes that she is anything other than a strong woman in the middle of a difficult moment. A moment I could hold her hand through. One of the aspects of her case was the consultant verifying that she was of sound mind enough to leave the center … but still …
“What is it you want to see? Something from her?”
“It’s not about what I want to see from her.” This is harder than I thought it would be. Words are slippery things, and they keep rearranging themselves before I can get them the hell out of my mouth. “It’s that I need to look beyond what I want.”
“Can you elaborate on that? I don’t want to make any assumptions.” Harrison doesn’t reach for the notepad on the table by his chair. He doesn’t so much as look at it. Clasping his hands and resting them on his lap, he waits for me to give him details. He knows better than to write a damn thing down. I don’t want any records made of our sessions together. I never have, and I can’t allow him to start now.
This is the part I’m going to have to muscle through. Brute force. Rail against. A voice in the back of my head shrieks that this is dangerous, that admitting it is dangerous, that leaning into it is dangerous.