Alpha Kill - 03 by Tim Stevens

Paul was laid back, naturally calm, whereas Venn gave the constant impression of being tightly coiled even when he was at rest. (“Like a car with an accelerator that’s pressed down, and that’s only stationary because you’ve got your other foot down hard on the brake pedal,” suggested Paul. And he was right. That encapsulated Venn precisely.) But Paul was far from boring. He was highly opinionated, sometimes maddeningly so. His passion for movies and books and music was infectious. Nor was he a geek, playing as he did a mean and surprisingly aggressive game of tennis.
    She put down her wineglass on the coffee table and snuggled against him, speaking in a languid murmur about the cases she’d seen that day, and that week. Paul had been in Milwaukee since last Tuesday for an American Psychiatric Association congress, and while they’d spoken briefly on the phone in the meantime, they hadn’t had a proper chance to catch up.
    All the while, Beth wondered whether she should tell Paul about the other stuff. About Olivia Collins, and her abnormal stats. She wondered, too, why she had such a resistance to telling him.
    Was it because she’d then have to tell him she’d approached Venn for help? But that wasn’t quite it. Even before she’d decided to involve Venn, she’d felt reluctant to share her concerns with Paul. And it didn’t make sense to her. He was the most approachable, most non-judgmental listener she’d ever met. Even if he thought she was nuts, that her less-than-rock-steady mental state was causing her to overinterpret things, he’d find a way of conveying his opinion diplomatically.
    Beth decided not to dwell on it. As a physician, she was a problem-solver by nature. She hated uncertainty, needed to find answers as soon as questions presented themselves. If there was one thing she’d learned from being with Paul, though, it was that sometimes you had to let go of things you didn’t understand. Sometimes the answer would present itself to you if you just allowed it in, passively, without busting a gut searching for it.
    *
    I t was only hours later, as Paul lay asleep beside her, that Beth remembered she hadn’t yet emailed Venn the information he’d asked for, the screenshots of the patients’ names.
    Beth slipped out of bed as quietly as she could. She tiptoed out of the bedroom and back into the living room, where her laptop lay on a table. Opening it, she called up the files.
    She hesitated with her fingers over the keyboard. What she was about to do was share confidential patient information with a third party. Granted, Venn was a serving police officer. But he wasn’t officially assigned to the case - there was no case - and he had no legal right to access the information. She could lose her job, her license to practice medicine. She might even face criminal prosecution.
    But she was right. She knew it. Something was up, and Venn sensed it too. It was why he’d agreed to help her out.
    She attached the files to an empty email addressed to him, and hit send .
    Though she had no idea if he was still willing to help her.
    Beth returned to bed and a restless sleep, from which she awoke only once, whimpering, the sheets wadded in her fists, and Paul’s comforting presence wrapped tight around her, his voice murmuring in her ear.

Chapter 11
    ––––––––
    V enn woke at six a.m., the time his internal clock had become programmed to rouse him. He sat up, his head still groggy. He’d taken a long while to fall asleep, and he felt the pull of his bed, tempting him into one more hour.
    No. He was nothing if not disciplined.
    Venn rose and pulled on a tracksuit. He fixed himself a cup of instant coffee and blended a mix of oatmeal, banana, strawberries, blueberries and two raw eggs,. The concoction tasted as disgusting as it sounded, but it seemed to give him a boost in the mornings.
    He stepped out into the cold, dank morning and headed for Owl’s Head Park, where he ran for thirty