Without Consent by Kathryn Fox

when Dan ventured, “Any word about your sister?”
    For some reason, Anya didn’t recoil from the question. “After all the publicity last year, a psychic contacted Dad, saying he knew where Miriam was buried, but it was another crank. After thirty years, we don’t really expect to ever find out what happened to her, but you still live in some sort of hope. You can’t help it, I suppose.”
    “Losing my mother to breast cancer was bad enough,” Dan said. “Not knowing what happened to an abducted child is, I can only imagine, inconsolable grief.”
    Anya was unsure whether he had meant to speak out loud or not.
    Brody checked his watch. “I’d better be going. Walk you back?”
    Drizzle fell and they wandered back in silence, sharing the umbrella. Anya wondered what was bothering Brody. He seemed agitated, not his usual confident, obnoxious self.
    “Before lunch, you mentioned a sensitive matter.”
    “Oh, nothing that can’t wait,” he said as they approached his chambers. Outside, Veronica Slater paced beneath cover. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting five minutes!”
    “Sorry, I had a conference.” Brody turned to Anya. “Have you met the newest addition to our chambers, Veronica Slater?”
    “Yes, I have.” Anya forced a smile. She didn’t know that Veronica had wormed her way into Brody’s chambers. Maybe that explained the high heels. Without them she wouldn’t even make it to Dan’s chest.
    Veronica put her arm in Brody’s and held the umbrella handle with the other hand. “I’m starving. Let’s go celebrate my latest win.”
    Like a lapdog, the oversized barrister obliged. “Thanks for the advice on that case,” he said, and wandered off for his second lunch.
    Anya stepped out into the rain, trying to hide her disappointment.
    “Celebrating” meant the verdict in the drug-rape trial was in. She shuddered and hoped that Naomi and her family could accept the news. She didn’t know what annoyed her more—Veronica gloating after humiliating a victim or the sight of Veronica’s talons in a colleague like Dan Brody.
    As she stepped around a puddle, she thought about putting victims through even more detailed forensic examinations. Somehow, it didn’t seem worth it when all that offenders suffered was an over-inflated bill for a high-heeled lawyer.
    For the first time, Anya felt glad she didn’t have a daughter. She loathed the Veronicas of this world—people intent on beating the system at any cost. They ensured rapists and murderers walked free—to rape and kill again—for nothing but ego and money.
    With bile rising in her throat, Anya wondered how she could continue to work for and support a system she was fast losing faith in.

10
     
    Anya arrived at the Department of Health Quality Assurance Committee with just enough time to check her make-up before entering. Not in the habit of wearing foundation, she needed the extra war paint to cope with the bureaucracy and empire-building administrators at the meeting. Most people thought of working in sexual-assault units as providing an essential service, others saw it as a career-making prospect and were prepared to cut down any threats to their ascendancy.
    In the third-floor bathroom, the most aggressive in the pack, Dr. Lyndsay Gatlow, applied the finishing touches to blood-red lips. Coordinator of the northern regional SA unit, she was not known for subtlety of any kind, and the canary-yellow suit was testament to that fact.
    “Should be an interesting meeting.” She smirked at herself in the mirror. “The department’s putting more pressure on to replace us with nurse practitioners. If we don’t act quickly, some of us could find ourselves redundant by the end of the year.”
    Anya washed her hands to remove the remnants of the greasy make-up. “It’s been a budgetary disaster in the UK. Three nurses doing eight-hour shifts cost more than a doctor on call for twenty-four hours, seven days a week. When you factor in