The Skin She's In by Margo Collins (online e book reader .txt) 📕

I smiled but shook my head. “I actually didn’t come in to talk about any of that.”

“Not even the Kavanaugh case?”

“No. I wanted to see if you had heard anything else from Moreland about that weird recording.” What I didn’t say was that something about it was bothering me, but I couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. I suppose I could have brought up an intuition—Gloria wouldn’t have seen anything particularly odd in that—but out of long habit, I kept quiet about anything that might be attributable to my unusual nature.

“Not as of this morning, but I haven’t checked my messages lately.” Her voice trailed off as she tapped at her phone. Then she shook her head. “No. Nothing. I’ll see if I can reach him.”

I checked my own phone while she was occupied, though I suspected Kade was at home asleep between his hospital shifts, and Moreland would let Gloria know of any breaks in that case.

Eduardo, though, had sent a text. It had only a time—10 p.m.—and coordinates. I assumed I was supposed to track down the coordinates and meet him there at the designated time.

I huffed a sigh, and Gloria raised an eyebrow in my direction, but I shook off the implied question.

The week before I had found my Shield mentor’s spy vs. spy missions mildly amusing.

Today, I was simply irritated.

Again.

At least he left me enough time to go visit Marta and the baby.

I wondered if the baby had been given a name.

Marta had never intended to keep the child—but we had never discussed who would name it, either.

As with everything else, we had all assumed we had months left.

Oh, hell. Was I supposed to name the baby?

My eyes flew wide open, and I must have jumped, because Gloria said, “Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine. I just remembered that I have a client due in about ten minutes and I haven’t looked over his file. A parent made the appointment for depression, if I’m remembering right, so it’s probably something I can refer to a private practitioner.” Not a lie, exactly. It simply wasn’t the real reason I had flinched. At Gloria’s nod, I hauled myself up out of her chair and headed back to my office to prepare to deal with adolescent angst.

Thirty minutes later, I had finally ushered Orlando’s tightly wound parents into the waiting room so I could talk to the thirteen-year-old alone. I found that working my way through the standard questionnaire without parental influence could be invaluable when making an initial assessment. Much as I might have wanted to, I couldn’t simply say that living with those two people would turn me into a depressive, too.

“So you say that sometimes you think about hurting yourself?” Honestly, I didn’t think this was fair to ask as a yes-or-no question. Luckily, there was a follow-up.

“Do you have a plan for it?” We sat in matching wing-back chairs across from one another, just far enough that I could lean in and out of his space as necessary to help develop rapport.

Orlando nodded, his shifty-eyed glance flicking up toward the ceiling.

“Would you be willing to tell me about that plan?”

“Right here in my backpack,” he said, his hand twitching down toward the floor.

Without even consciously thinking that he might be reaching for a weapon, I moved shifter-fast to intervene in between him and the bag, crouching protectively over it on the floor so that his questing fingers brushed against my shoulder blades before he jerked his hand away. When I glanced up, his brown eyes had grown huge and round.

“You’re really quick,” he said in tones of awe.

“Why don’t you tell me about the plan for now?” I suggested. “Maybe you can show me later.”

“Okay. Sure.”

When I moved back into my seat, I dragged the backpack toward me, keeping one hand on the fabric loop at the top.

“So what’s your plan?” I asked again.

Orlando’s face scrunched up and he hunched his shoulders up around his neck. “I’ve got this hot dog.”

He paused, and I blinked several times. “A hot dog?”

“Yeah. You know. Like a wiener?”

“Okay.” I drew the word out, trying not to sound too incredulous.

“It’s in a baggie, in my backpack, somewhere down at the bottom.”

I fell back on the repetition technique of counseling. “A hot dog wiener in a baggie in your backpack.”

“I took it from the school cafeteria a couple of weeks ago. I had it wrapped in a napkin, but it was getting all squashed, so I got a baggie from home.” He paused. “You want to see it?”

Not until I figure out how it connects to your death-plan, kiddo. “Not yet. Just keep telling me about this hot dog.”

“So. I figure, once it’s been in my backpack for long enough, it’ll go bad, right?”

Oh, no. I was beginning to see where this was heading. I was going to have to draw on every serious counseling face I had ever made.

Poker-face time.

“And then, when I’m ready, I will eat it and it will poison me,” he finished triumphantly.

“Mmmhmm,” I managed to murmur noncommittally, jotting a few incoherent notes down on the legal pad in my lap.

“The thing is,” Orlando added, tapping at one gangly arm with a forefinger, “I’m not sure it’s going bad enough. I think maybe it has too many preservatives or something.” He pointed at the backpack. “You want to see it now?”

“No, thank you.” I managed to keep my tone serious, quashing laughter in part by blowing out a sad-sounding sigh. “Unfortunately, because you have what is called suicidal ideation and a definite”—if not precisely effective—“plan of action, I’m afraid I’m going to have to confiscate your...” Here I ran out of words momentarily. Normally, I would say weapon, but that wasn’t quite right. And I wasn’t about to say wiener. “...Baggie,” I finally managed. “And I’m going to suggest your parents take you to a specific psychiatrist I know.”

Orlando slumped back in the chair, but he didn’t look surprised. After all, I had opened the session by