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I rested my hand on the cold, plastic receiver and slowly brought it to my ear.

“Hello?” It took conscious effort to keep my voice soft when everything inside of me wanted to scream and cry. Still, my chest gave a rattling heave as I waited for the person on the other end of the line to respond.

“Beau?” a tinny voice screamed.

I recognized the high-pitched, terrified voice. I recognized it intimately. It was…mine.

I tried to remember a time when I’d sounded so scared, but the fog in my mind refused to dissipate. Instead, I got partial images, flickers that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“Beau…” my trembling voice said again on the phone before the line went dead, static filling the retriever. I stared at it for a long moment, my heart hammering, before slamming it down and squeezing my eyelids shut.

Memories clawed at me, demanding my attention, but when I tried to reach and hold on to them, they scurried away. I released a frustrated growl, resisting the urge to slam my fist against the wall.

I had the distinct feeling that this moment was monumental. That I was supposed to remember. That the second I did, the rest of the pieces would fall into place.

Think, Bianaca. Think!

My body shook in an effort to regain control of my tenuous emotions. I was on a tightrope, and one wrong move would send me barreling over the edge into an abyss of unknown horrors. I snapped my eyes open and peered around the dark hallway.

Think. Think. Think. Thin—

My eyes snagged on a picture resting opposite me. A cold chill that had nothing to do with the air washed over me. I was nearly positive I’d never seen that picture before in my life. Steve the Asshole preferred landscape pictures, almost as if by having a dozen of them, it made him a classy man.

You could never make a drug dealer like him “classy.”

The picture showed two figures in the midst of a fight. All I could see was a fist thrown back as if he’d intended to throw it into the other man’s face.

Wait…

The blond hair, the broad shoulders, those soulful blue eyes. That was Beau!

And the man underneath him…

Dylan.

What the fuck…?

As soon as I had that final, damning thought, the world fell away from underneath me. And then I was falling, falling, falling, pinwheeling through the air, my stomach somersaulting rapidly. I didn’t even have the chance to scream before I was thrust in a vision.

Bruises coveredmy face and arms as I forced myself to take another step.

Just one more…

I repeated that in my head as a sob ripped its way free. Everything hurt, though I knew no number of painkillers could abate the hurt in my very soul.

One more step.

And another.

My body seemed to be constructed of lead, heavier than a thousand bowling balls. It almost felt as if I had weights tied around each ankle and wrist.

One more step.

One more.

One more.

I’d had plans to meet Beau tonight, but he couldn’t see me like this. No, he would freak out. Demand answers.