After That Night

AFTER THAT NIGHT Karin Slaughter Copyright HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2023 Copyright © Karin Slaughter 2023 Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023 Cover photograph © Natasza Fiedotjew/Trevillion Images Karin Slaughter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008499396 Ebook Edition © June 2023 ISBN: 9780008499419 Version: 2023-05-11 Dedication For Liz Contents Cover Epigraph Prologue Three Years Later Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Fifteen Years Ago Chapter 4 Chapter 5 The Downlow Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Outside the Windsong Apartments—Midtown Atlanta Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 One Week Later Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Karin Slaughter About the Publisher Epigraph Remember to speak from the scar, not the wound. Anonymous Good morning Dani I really enjoyed the other night … not often I get to be with someone who’s smart as well as beautiful … rare combination. ??? I’ve got the contact info for the Stanhope campaign if you’re still interested in volunteering? Who is this? Funny! I know they are looking for canvassers are you still interested in helping? I could pick you up on my way to campaign HQ if you want? I’m sorry I think you have the wrong person You’re on Juniper in the Beauxarts bldg right? No I moved in with my boyfriend I love your sense of humor, Dani Really want to spend more time with you I know you love taking in the view of the park from your corner bedroom Maybe you can introduce me to Lord Pantaloons How do you know about my cat? I know everything about you. Srsly did Jen put you up to this? Yr creeping me out I keep thinking about that mole on your leg and how I want to kiss it … again … Who the fuck is this? Do you really want to know? This isn’t funny. Tell me who the fuck you are. There’s a pen and paper In the drawer beside your bed Make a list of everything that terrifies you That’s me PROLOGUE Sara Linton held the phone to her ear as she watched an intern assess a patient with an open gash on the back of his right arm. The newly minted Dr. Eldin Franklin was not having his best day. He was two hours into his emergency department shift and he’d already had his life threatened by a drug-altered MMA fighter and performed a rectal exam on a homeless woman that had gone very, very wrong. “Can you believe he said that to me?” Tessa’s outrage crackled through the phone, but Sara knew her sister didn’t require encouragement to complain about her new husband. Instead, she kept her eye on Eldin, wincing as he pulled Lidocaine into a syringe like he was Jonas Salk testing the first polio vaccine. He was paying more attention to the vial than he was to his patient. “I mean,” Tessa continued. “He’s unbelievable.” Sara made conciliatory noises as she switched the phone to her other ear. She found her tablet and pulled up the chart for Eldin’s patient. The gash was a secondary concern. The triage nurse had noted the thirty-one-year-old man was tachycardic with a temperature of 101, and experiencing severe, acute agitation, confusion, and insomnia. She looked up from her tablet. The patient kept scratching his chest and neck as if something was crawling on his skin. His left foot was shaking so hard that the bed shook along with it. To say that the man was in full-on alcohol withdrawal was to say that the sun was going to rise in the east. Eldin was picking up on none of the signs—which was not completely unexpected. Medical school was by design a system that didn’t prepare you for the real world. You spent your first year learning how the systems of the body work. Year two was devoted to understanding how those systems could go wrong. By year three, you were allowed to see patients, but only under strict and often needlessly sadistic supervision. Your fourth year brought about the matching system, which was like the worst beauty pageant ever, where you waited to see if your residency was going to be served at a prestigious, major institution or the equivalent of a veterinary clinic in rural East Jesus. Eldin had managed to match at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s only public hospital and one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in the country. He was called an intern because he was still in the first year of his residency. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from believing that he had seen it all. Sara could tell his brain had already checked out as he leaned over the patient’s arm and began numbing the area. Eldin was likely thinking about dinner or a girl he was going to call or maybe compounding the interest on his many student loans, which roughly equaled the cost of a house. Sara caught the head nurse’s eye. Johna was watching Eldin, too, but