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A shriek escaped her as he picked something up from the tray. But it wasn’t a scalpel lowering to her face. It was a colored plastic bottle. Liquid splashed into her left eye. The instant agony had her back bowing from the table. The screaming started again. A seamless, endless racketing of sound that entwined with the heavy metal music in an excruciating chorus.
“You can’t see inside me,” he chanted. “You’ll never see again. I’m whole. I’m whole, I’m…”
Bang! Bang!
Smoke filled the space. “Stephen Thorne!” The thunderous voice could barely be heard over the ear-splitting racket. “Step away from the table! Get on the floor! Now! Now!”
Reese continued to shriek, a high-pitched wail that threatened to shatter eardrums. Thorne fell to the floor and a swarm of black-clad, foreign-looking figures filled the small cellar. One of them loomed over her in the haze, lips moving soundlessly. The music abruptly halted. Her screams faded away to guttural moans. Voices shouted orders. Thorne screamed protests. The figure above Reese leaned closer. Something cold splashed into her eye. Her head throbbed, the barrage of sound only slightly less disorienting than the music had been.
But a constant calming thread filtered through her misery. Her battered mind seized on the low, soothing voice above her. The words were indistinguishable, but the cadence wasn’t. Reeseclung to it like a lifeline, letting its hypnotic rhythm wrest her from the nightmare’s aftermath.
3
(EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER)
When the light knock sounded at the door, Reese squelched a brief flare of panic. Hyperarousal, her therapist called it—remaining constantly on guard, even in safe situations. Aunt Julia had insisted Reese endure therapy after her ordeal with Thorne. When the doctor had relocated a few months ago, Reese had pronounced herself cured. Julia had maintained a running battle to convince her to find a new doctor.
But her aunt wasn’t here to argue the issue anymore.
The memory had fangs. Reese’s gaze flicked over the full trash bags mounded in one corner of the dining room, with the open boxes stacked neatly across the room as she unfolded herself from her position on the floor. Julia Backworth had been a collector, bringing intriguing items back from her journeys around the globe. Now, there was no one left to recall the memories the collection inspired.
The expected wave of grief swamped her again, and she bowed her head, squeezing her eyes shut. There was another knock, louder this time. Slowly, she rose to make her way to the door and looked out the peephole. The miniature image of the tall man with the black eyepatch had Reese cursing silently.What was Adam Raiker doing at her aunt’s apartment again? And more importantly, how did he get inside the building each time? She knew the man was a bloodhound, but the security here was tight.
The knock came again. “I know you’re in there, Reese. Open up.”
With a sigh, she unlocked the door and pulled it open, regarding him unwelcomingly. “I’m here. The question is, why are you?”
He ducked under the arm she had braced against the doorjamb and entered the room.
Raiker sent a sweeping gaze around and drew the logical conclusion. “I was sorry to hear about your aunt. Are you moving out? Or just sorting through her things?”
His words were fingers pressed against a still painful bruise. After Julia’s funeral, Reese had headed to her aunt’s small cabin in the Albuquerque mountains, avoiding the task she was engaged in now. Avoiding reality. Julia Backworth had logged hundreds of thousands of miles traveling the globe, only to be killed by a hit-and-run driver blocks from her home. The irony was bitter.
“I haven’t decided,” she responded finally, shutting the door and leaving him to find his own place to sit. After the debacle in Mississippi, she’d seen Raiker a handful of times. Twice in the hospital when she underwent procedures meant to save the vision in her left eye. And a couple more appearances here. “What do you want?” She had few friends, and now, no family, aside from Ben. Most people, other than Gordon, didn’t require much encouragement to leave her alone. Reese had no idea what motivated the legendary head of one of the world’s top forensics firms to keep popping in and out of her life. Maybe he was remorseful for not tracking down Thorne before his final murderous rampage.
Adam stood before the array of pictures on the wall, samples of Julia’s work taken from all over the world. “Hers was a rare talent. I have a few of her pieces myself.”
He’d managed to surprise her. “You do?” She mentally kicked herself. She wasn’t up for a long conversation with the man. Once he stated what he’d come to say, he could leave her to the gnawing pit of desolation Julia’s death had elicited.
“I enjoy her urban scenes. Bogata. Amsterdam. Kyiv.” He finally turned to face her. Reese wanted to look away from his laser-blue gaze. It saw too much. Probed too deeply. “I understand that you may have a book in the works. I’m glad.”
It was useless to wonder where he got his information. Raiker’s entirely opaque network of resources would be the envy of any journalist. Although he and Reese’s editor had gotten entirely too chummy. “Gordon thinks it’d be cathartic for me to write about Thorne, culminating in what happened that night.” Entreaties from Keisha Quintin were even harder to ignore. But Reese wasn’t keen on stirring the ashes of the past to reimmerse herself in the trauma she was still endeavoring to forget. The only good thing that had come from that ordeal was the loss of the “gift” that had always afflicted her. She didn’t want to risk bringing it back.
Far better to concentrate on the more pressing issue of her brother’s conservatorship. Someone had to fill that role, now that Julia was gone. And given the copious notes the woman had amassed in Reese’s absence, the task wasn’t without challenges.
“You’re letting your hair grow.” Adam sent her a rare smile. “Am I allowed to observe that it’s more becoming than the pixie style you were sporting last year?”
She avoided meeting his shrewd gaze, focusing instead on the incongruity of his brilliant forensic mind knowing the name of a woman’s hairstyle. Reese raked a hand through the barely tamed waves grazing the bottoms of her earlobes. “Thank Godfor straighteners. The only way to beat the curls is shearing them off or growing them out.”
“Sometimes you have to go back to realize what you left behind.”
His cryptic answer wasn’t altogether true. Despite her delusions otherwise, there had been no bringing Autry back. He’d been dead, they’d told her, long before the MBI team arrived. Reese’s chest squeezed painfully. Belief in his survival had been a coping mechanism that’d helped her continue to fight. But his absence continued to haunt her, especially since she returned to work six months later. And every day since.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
They were entering familiar territory. “Our definitions of the word remain light-years apart.”
“You didn’t invite him on the trip. Would you blame Gordon for sending him?”