The Halo Effect

50

I’d met all but one of the men described in the book, four of the five people I had thought might have a reason to hurt or abduct Cleo. I might never meet the fifth. The identity of the Healer was still a mystery.

Unless it was Gil himself, I thought.

I was sitting at the bar while he finished talking to a customer.

If Cleo published her book, then Gil would be ruined. He’d have nothing left. Sure he had the building and the bar, but without Cleo supplying the women, what was the place but another restaurant?

I shivered. Had I told Gil too much? Had I revealed anything I shouldn’t have? Was he the fifth man? Had Cleo written about him and given him attributes of all the others to disguise him?

He turned to me. His face was hard. It was late. He had circles under his eyes and deep lines like parentheses around his mouth. It was as if he was seeing my thoughts. No. Ridiculous. He couldn’t.

Was Gil capable of creating this elaborate ruse of introducing me to these men to throw suspicion off himself? If I weighed what everyone had to lose, he was up there with all the other men I’d met here. The club had made him a rich man, given him power and prestige. He would not want a book to threaten that.

Nina was right. Noah was right. I was in over my head. Being a good therapist did not qualify me to figure out if someone was capable of being a kidnapper or, worse, a killer. I was someone who talked to people about their problems, not a mind reader, not a diviner of sick souls.

“Another Glenlivet, please, Gil,” a customer said.

Was Cleo in this building? Was she locked in a room somewhere? Had Gil hidden her away to try to convince her not to write the book? Of course it was him.

Cleo would never have told her clients she was writing a book. And of the two men I knew she had told, Elias had nothing to lose. He didn’t want her to publish it because he was worried for her. But that’s not the kind of concern that would lead him to harm her to stop the publication. But Gil did have something to lose. He had everything to lose. Plus he was jealous of Elias. Of course he knew about him. And he must have been furious that he’d lost his girlfriend to him.

I had to find some kind of proof to take to Noah, to make him believe me, to make sure that he would investigate this.

Before Gil could turn to me, I got up.

“’Night, Gil,” I called out.

“Wait a second, Morgan,” he called back, urgency in his voice.

But I didn’t.

Out on the street, I walked to the corner as fast as the high heels allowed.

What could I do? How could I get someone to believe me? Who would help me figure it out?

And then I knew. The one person who cared about finding Cleo even more than I did. Elias. He’d called earlier when I’d been in session and I hadn’t called him back. I’d been avoiding him since he’d told me about the ransom note. I hadn’t wanted to tell him that I’d alerted the police to the fact that it was a fake. I looked at my watch. It was only ten o’clock.

I dialed his number on my cell phone.