Read Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) for Free Online Page B

Privacy form, which might have worked if I had actually read it, but seeing as how it was a contract of sorts, I’d just skimmed and signed, as usual. I remembered a lot of worthless stuff about the people the doctor could leave messages with and verbose passages about signed releases, but I didn’t recall that shouting had been covered. But it had to be in there somewhere, didn’t it?
    Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe what I really had was syphilis and it had gone to my brain. I sat there stunned until I heard him yell my name again and something about having sex with my son.
    I shot off the table and yanked on my thong and capris. I shoved my feet into my sandals and ran to the door. I cracked it open a sliver and peeked through just in time to hear a woman on the waiting room side of the open glass window say, “I think it’s so professional that the doctor is using the name Jane Doe so that none of us knows who that poor woman with herpes is.” She squinted at the door I was shielding my body with, as though she had X-ray vision.
    “Oh, no,” said the helpful receptionist. “Her name really is Jane Dough, but that’s D-O-U-G-H. You probably read about her in the paper. She writes those sexy romances under the name Janie Jansen.”
    For God’s sake! Had no one read that privacy act? The buzz of excited conversation from the waiting room competed with the loud ringing in my ears. For two seconds the word lawsuit flashed through my mind—before it was knocked out by the words reporters and herpes. I snapped myself out of my daze and concluded there was no way I was walking out past those women.
    I grabbed my purse and ran to the window, the only other way out of the room. I could jump from the second story if I had to. I’d done it lots of times as a kid. It was one of those stupid things I did to prove I wasn’t afraid of heights, though I definitely was. My knees were paying the price now, and they’d probably break when I did it this time, at this age, but I didn’t care.
    I flipped open the vertical blinds and almost fainted with relief. I was at the front of the building; the overhang of the porte cochère was directly below.
    I slid open the window, straddled the sill, and paused while I asked myself if I really wanted to do this. Hell, yes! was the answer. They might have heard my name, but they didn’t have a face to put with it—yet. What were the chances that most of those women in the waiting room had cellphone cameras? Pretty good, I was thinking, and those cellphones were probably pointed at the door in eager anticipation now. If my picture was in the morning paper with the word herpes in the headlines, I would probably have to kill myself.
    I gulped in some air and chanted aloud, “In ten minutes this will all be over. In ten minutes this will all be over.”
    I dropped about a foot onto the overhang and scrambled, half sliding, half tumbling down the sloping roof to the closest point to the ground. Crouching there, I peered over the edge to make sure no one was directly beneath me, and my body went so weak I almost fell over, head first. It was only about eight feet or so, but my brain didn’t seem to get it.
    I pitched my bag to the ground, rolled over into a prone position, and slid my legs over the edge. I heard something rip, but I kept going, scooting farther and farther, fearing the moment that I would be so far over that I’d have to drop and hang by my arms. I didn’t think I could actually hang by my arms since I hadn’t worked out in ten years—okay, never—but I had no choice. Any minute I’d be forced to switch my weight to my arms. My muscles would fail, and I would fall. It occurred to me that I should have looked for a place where there was grass beneath me instead of concrete. Crap.
    I heard a shout that sounded like, “Catch her!” I couldn’t tell where it came from but my bet was the open window. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure it would leap out of my