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“Shorter than Hayes. Five-eleven or so. Two hundred twenty, maybe. Sloppy with it. He had a gut.” But he’d been brawny enough to wrestle her with little effort.

For an instant, she thought of what would have happened if he’d managed to get her into that empty building he’d parked behind.

A shudder of revulsion racked her. “Thinning brown hair. Receding hairline. Brown eyes…maybe. I guess I can’t be sure.

Hard to say about his nose. But his lips were wide, stretched out. Like a fish.”

“Fish lips.” The man jotted it down. “Paints a picture. Tell me again everything you remember him saying to you.”

“There wasn’t much. But…” Reese replayed it in her mind, repeating everything she recalled.

“Something changed after I fought back in the parking lot. He seemed to get a thrill from it. I don’t know what he’d planned before that, but it changed.

He said, ‘I like the feisty ones.’” It was more than his words.

Something else that cemented her certainty.

“I think…there was a reason he wanted to get me alone. You may discover he’s hurt women before. Perhaps raped them.”

She saw Hayes tense, but shook her head at him. Then stifled a groan when the movement ratcheted up the hammering there. He reached down and picked up an item from the stand next to the bed.

“This is the shard of plastic she used on the guy.” At some point, he’d taken it from her, placed it in an evidence bag, and neatly labeled it. “The other bags hold her clothes. Maybe you can get some of his DNA.”

Jennings reached for the clear receptacle with the shard and brought it close to study it. “Looks like some blood on it. Hopefully, it’s his. Tell me again where you got this.”

Reese was fading fast. But she tried to rally because she wouldn’t put it past Hayes to stick her here overnight.

She repeated the part about kicking out the taillight and trying to wave out of the opening when the vehicle paused.

“I have another couple of pieces of plastic in my pants pocket in the container there. He didn’t touch them.

But maybe you can use all of the bits to match to the vehicle, if you find it. ”

“Which taillight did you break?”

“Left. I heard horns,” she concluded. “But I couldn’t be sure anyone noticed.”

“Oh, they noticed.” The detective took a marker from the case, and wrote something on each of the bags.

“Nine-one-one took calls from a couple different motorists this morning around the time you described, both on the same street. So we’ve got a description of the car and a partial plate.

I made some six-packs of possible owners of vehicles that would match. You feel up to looking at them?”

“Yes.”

He put the evidence bags in the box, and withdrew a file folder from it. Removing a sheet, he handed it to Reese. She scanned it, and then returned to look more carefully. “None of these.”

Jennings exchanged the page for another. She studied the images for a minute, feeling a sinking sense of disappointment. “No.” They repeated the process on eight more sheets, and with each, Reese got a bit more deflated.

She took the next page and skimmed it, passing over each picture before her attention bounced back to one. Reese stared harder. “Here.” She tapped the fifth image. “This is him. I can’t be sure of the nose. But those are his eyes.” Brown, after all. “His forehead. And the creepy ass mouth.”

The detective and Hayes traded glances. “Okay, good. I’ll track him down and let you know when I’ve got him.”

“Thank you,” Hayes murmured.

“You kept a sharp eye out,” Jennings told Reese, placing the sheet back in the file. He placed it in the case and snapped the lid shut. “His injuries will make it even easier to spot him. Get some rest, Ms. Decody. I’ll be in touch.” He pushed aside the curtain around the cubicle and left the area.

She fell back against the pillow, feeling weaker than she’d like to admit. Because her fingers held a slight shake, she curled them into fists.

“Adrenaline crash.” When Reese glanced at Hayes, he moved closer to her bedside. “Weakness and fatigue are symptoms. So are dizziness, headache, nausea. But those would also be indicative of a concussion.”

“My CT results were clear,” she muttered.

“Which means your hard head didn’t suffer a fracture, and there’s no swelling, or hematomas.

But the doctor also said CTs aren’t conclusive for concussions.

” Hayes bent down, tilted her head toward him, and peered into her eyes.

“Your pupils look better.” Straightening, he added, “And the fact that you insist you never lost consciousness makes it likely that you aren’t concussed. But we’ll still monitor it.”

He went quiet, but the silence strummed with expectation. “What made you think your attacker was a possible rapist? You told Jennings that something about him changed when you fought back.”

She stilled. “I don’t know. He was violent from the first. Then, after we struggled, there was something else in his voice.”

“His voice? Or in his mind?”

Everything inside her violently dismissed what he was alluding to. “The sense didn’t come from his thoughts. Just a woman’s instincts. Man-on-woman violent assaults do often precede rapes. And he had every intention of getting me into that old building.”

He studied her, and she knew what was going on behind that enigmatic gray gaze.

“It’s not like before,” she insisted. “My ability…or whatever it was…is gone. I just drew some logical conclusions, that’s all.

” The only positive thing that had come out of the trauma with Thorne was that her “gift” had been extinguished.

But a niggling thought wouldn’t be banished. If her attacker felt no guilt, she wouldn’t have picked up on his thoughts, anyway.

Hayes looked unconvinced, but a nurse came in then with dismissal papers. Reese sat up with relief, swinging her legs over the bed. “Ready to head home?” the woman chirped brightly.

“More than.” She signed the pages requiring her signature and half listened to the lengthy list of dos and don’ts. The RN departed, and Hayes sprang to Reese’s side when she slipped from the bed. Swayed. “I want a shower. And then maybe a ten-hour nap.”

He slipped an arm around her waist, steadying her. “Both will have to wait. First you’re going to call your ophthalmologist, explain your injuries, and see if he wants to examine you.”

“What?” She almost wept at the idea of another delay. “No. That can wait.”

“Not given your history. Head trauma can have serious consequences for patients who have undergone a corneal transplant. If he tells you to, we’ll go there next.” He took her cell out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. Pulled out his own. “Go ahead.”

But she sat motionless, watching as he scrolled through images on his phone. “What are those?”

“I took them at the scene outside the diner. I’m sending them to Jennings.

Might come in handy if they get the guy and need to build a case.

” He held his phone out, and a wave of queasiness flooded through her as she saw again the scene where she’d been knocked to the ground, her belongings scattered around, blood—hers—on the fender of the next car.

An eerie testament to what had happened there.

“That’s where you found my hat.”

He scrolled rapidly, slowed to show her the image. “There’s blood on it.”

She hadn’t given it a thought until she saw it in a bag in the back seat of his car.

The detective had taken it, along with the rest of her clothes.

Reese reached out a hand that still had a slight shake.

Rested it lightly on his wrist. She’d realized early on that the man who assaulted her couldn’t be Thorne.

But Hayes wouldn’t have known that. And he’d have thought the worst. “I know what you must have experienced when you came upon that. I’m sorry for putting you through it. ”

His gaze fixed on her hand momentarily, then rose to meet hers. “You shaved a few years off my life.” His light tone sounded forced. “But if you mean that, you can repay me by following instructions exactly from now on. No excuses. You go nowhere without me.”

Hayes’s skin seemed to warm beneath her touch. She withdrew her hand self-consciously when her fingers wanted to linger. “You don’t have to worry about that. Right now, I’d be glad to just get home and enjoy the isolation.”

“Glad to hear it. Because I’m running out of options. If the only way I can keep you safe is to handcuff you to my side, I won’t hesitate.”