“All quiet. Flann’s two are doing fine.” Glenn pushed out a rolling chair and Harper sat. “I hear we’re due for a shake-up.”

Harper rubbed her face. “Seems like it.”

“Any details?”

“Not yet.”

Glenn scanned the telemetry monitors as she spoke. “Doesn’t feel right, somehow. Who are these folks?”

“Not sure yet.” She pictured Presley and a myriad of impressions flashed into her mind. Presley’s face—elegant, composed, remote; a quick flash of sharp wit when jousting with Flann; a hard glint of steel when discussing business. Attractive and intriguing. Harper sighed. “We’ll know soon, I think.”

She talked with Glenn a few more moments. Everyone was resting comfortably. No one needed her attention. Finally she gave in and went home. At eleven, she was still restless and wide-awake. Too many things running through her head—change was on the horizon, and change almost always meant losing something. She sat in the rocker on her front porch trying to pick out the constellations in the clear, star-filled night sky. She’d never been very good at it. Kate had been the one to see shapes in the clouds and stars. Harper usually had to be content with finding the Big Dipper and the North Star. There were so many stars up there, scattered it seemed in random, endless patterns, dwarfing the world below. Tonight, though, a face kept forming as her lids lowered and her vision drifted. Presley Worth. Who was she?

The question wouldn’t give her peace. Eventually, she retrieved her laptop and settled back on the porch to search for answers.

*

Presley woke to unnatural quiet, a faint breeze cooling the bare skin of her shoulders. Sunlight slanted through the open window across from her bed. Absent were the rumble of traffic, the humming of mechanicals within the walls and beneath the floors, the distant wail of sirens, the shouts of trash collectors and all-night revelers. Life in the city was all about noise. Now she was surrounded by silence. Not absolute, she realized as she lay thinking about the day to come. The wind made its own humming tune. Birds trilled and chirped and cooed. Beyond that, though, the world was terrifyingly still. Ordinarily when she woke, her first sensation was of energy charging through her—the challenge of a new day, the opportunity to test herself—a fire in her blood. The calm peacefulness of this morning felt as unnatural as if she had suddenly been required to breathe underwater. She was out of sync with this place. Off balance and feeling more alone than she had in a long time.

She’d always been solitary, despite being a twin. She and Preston were not like those stories of twins Hollywood liked to make movies about. They had never been close. Their parents, internationally renowned financiers, had barely enough time in their busy schedule for one child, let alone two at once, and the needs of their offspring had been left to a series of nannies and tutors. Presley had quickly learned that the only way to gain a little bit of notice was to excel at the things her parents valued—academics, athletics, business—all while traveling in the proper social circles. Her greatest competitor for their attention was Preston. Now that her father was divesting himself of the responsibility of the day-to-day running of the corporation, she was in the biggest battle of her life. Sometimes it seemed she had been fighting forever for something just out of reach.

She threw back the covers and swung her legs to the floor. Self-analysis was a waste of time. She was in charge of her life, her future. What mattered was what she did. Actions produced results, and results were all that counted at the end of the day. With a wave of anticipation, she reminded herself that at the end of this day, Carrie would be here, they’d have the beginnings of their team in place, and she could get started on wrapping up this assignment. Preston was very wrong if he thought he could bury her somewhere while he moved a step closer to taking their father’s seat at the table.

She took a quick shower and, since she wasn’t due to meet Harper Rivers until eight and it was barely five thirty, pulled on loose workout pants and a T-shirt and shuffled down to the kitchen. Lila had left the coffeepot plugged in ready to go and, according to the thoughtful note next to the coffeemaker, all she had to do was push the button. Even more thoughtful was the small wicker basket with three fat blueberry corn muffins nestled under a hand-embroidered cotton napkin in the middle of the table. She chose a golden muffin and put it on a ceramic saucer she found in the glass-fronted cabinet above the sink. Within a matter of minutes she had a cup of coffee and the muffin and, after grabbing her iPad, was headed out to the back porch to have breakfast in the astonishingly cool morning air. Sitting down on the top step, she balanced her iPad on her knees, sipped her coffee, and absently broke off pieces of the muffin and popped them into her mouth as she scanned the morning news.

After a few minutes, she felt the prickly sensation on the back of her neck she often got when someone was watching her. She checked the time on her tablet—Lila was due soon but she hadn’t heard a car drive in. Who in the world would be walking around out here at this time of day? Slowly, she searched the expanse of the backyard down to where the drive curved around to the barn and saw no one. Of course she saw no one. There was no one there. She went back to reading and then she heard it. An ear-splitting screech that ended abruptly on a choking rattle. Gripping her tablet, she raised her eyes, prepared to jump up and run for the house.

It was standing about ten feet in front of her, one foot held up in the air, its head cocked to the left, blinking slowly. Its tail feathers were ragged but brilliantly colored: red and blue and golden brown. Its wings looked just as scruffy as its tail, with a few short feathers poking out at odd angles and looking as if they were about to fall out. It made another sound, a crowing croak, and bobbed its head.

“Go away.” Presley waved a hand. “Shoo.”

It put its foot down gingerly and hobbled a step closer.

“No, not this way.” She pointed in the general direction of the driveway. “Go that way. Go back to…wherever.” It hop-walked several more steps closer.

She drew her legs up onto the stair below where she sat. She didn’t think chickens—or whatever it was, exactly—attacked people, but she wasn’t leaving her bare feet exposed as an enticement. “No, no, no. Go back wherever you came from.”

“Could be that’s one of old Mrs. White’s brood,” Lila said from inside the kitchen door. “I bet they couldn’t catch him, and they just left him behind.”

“Well, he needs to go back to wherever he’s been staying. He’s getting poop all over the lawn.”

Lila chuckled. “Good fertilizer.”

“Not when it’s on the bottom of my shoe.”

“Hmm. Looks like he’s got a bum leg. If you want, I’ll have one of my sons come out and take care of him for you.”

“Good,” Presley said, returning to the news. The crowing resumed, the short caws rising at the end as if he was asking a question. She ignored it and he stopped. After another minute or two of silence, she peeked up. He was three feet in front of her, studying her with a disconcerting stare.

“You’re not very smart, are you?”

“Caw?”

“Lila? What is this thing?”

“A rooster, last time I looked.”

“What’s it good for?”

“Not much, not without the hens. Roosters are handy for protecting the chickens—keeping the predators away. And of course, if you want baby chicks—”

“God forbid.”

“Well then, he doesn’t really have much to do now.”

Presley hesitated. “What do you mean, your son will take care of him?”

“He’s lame. Probably no one’s been feeding him, and he doesn’t have a flock to look after. He doesn’t look too old to make a decent stew, though.”

“Oh.” Presley looked back down at the news and couldn’t find her place. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the rooster peck at the bare ground as if searching for some morsel. She broke off a corner of her muffin and tossed it toward him. His head bobbed as he studied it.

“Go ahead. It’s better than the dirt you’ve been picking up.”

The feathers on his neck gleamed in the sunlight, flashes of iridescent purple and blue as subtle as jewels. The sounds he made changed, the pitch rising as he pecked apart the small bit of corn muffin with obvious enthusiasm.

“Lila.”

Lila peered out the screen door again. “Yes?”

“Don’t bother your sons with him. He’ll probably just go on back to wherever he came from.”

“All right, if you’re sure.”

She wasn’t. “I’m sure.”

She went back to the news with the soft clucks of the busy rooster keeping her company. When she rose to get ready for work, he was still scratching about in the yard. “Lila,” she called as she walked inside, “what do these things like to eat?”

Chapter Seven

Harper parked in the staff lot behind the hospital and let herself in through the employee entrance with her ID card. She hadn’t slept much and had decided to start rounds early. At six thirty, a half hour before shift change, the halls were still quiet. She’d always loved the hospital at night, when a hushed stillness fell over the dimly lit halls, a serene quiet that seemed to promise hope for those who saw the new day and peace for those who did not.

Walking to the stairwell, she ran the list of patients in her head. Plenty of time to see them all before meeting Presley. She’d learned a few things about Presley Worth the night before. At least what Presley Worth chose to show the world. Thirty years old, only daughter of Yolanda and Martin Worth, twin of Preston. MBA from Wharton at twenty-three. VP of Operations at SunView at twenty-six. Brother Preston’s title was loftier—Chief Financial Officer—but organizationally apparently equivalent to Presley’s. Twins, still. Father was CEO, mother COO. High-powered, influential family. Presley had never married, supported humanitarian causes, and appeared to have no personal life beyond attending the obligatory charitable and business functions. What she did have was a record of successfully spearheading much of the expansion of SunView Health Systems from a regional Southwest healthcare network into a transcontinental consortium of hospitals, short-and long-term-care facilities, and allied enterprises. Harper hadn’t been able to find out much more than that, but she wasn’t done digging yet. If SunView was to be her new employer, she wanted to know who—or, more accurately, what—it was all about.