Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,20

a woman who was lost way before outside help arrived.

Eventually, my nightmares faded. I worried less about the family that had gifted me with faulty DNA and worked harder to gain my adoptive father’s praise. And in turn, my father began excusing the weekend staff, helping me himself with school projects and, in time, even sitting up with me the nights I couldn’t sleep, offering the quiet reassurance of his solid, contemplative company.

He loved me. Despite his academic’s heart, despite my flawed wiring, we became a family.

Then he died, and my nightmares returned with a vengeance.

First night, all alone after my father’s funeral. Having consumed too much port. Finally closing my eyes . . .

And seeing the closet door suddenly swing open. Recalling the thin glow cast by a bare bulb across the tiny, cluttered bedroom. Seeing my toddler sister in the center of the room, clutching a threadbare brown teddy, as my father’s gaze cast from her to me to her.

Hearing my mother say, “Please, Harry, not the baby,” before I was plunged once more into the gloom.

Pain is not what you see and not what you feel. Pain is what you can only hear, alone in the dark.

• • •

I WOKE FOR THE FIRST TIME shortly after eleven. I’d been asleep for approximately ten minutes, and yet my heart was pounding uncontrollably, my face covered in sweat. I stared at the tray ceiling of my bedroom. Practiced the deep-breathing exercises I’d been taught so many years ago.

The noise machine in the corner of my bedroom. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Of course.

I got out of bed, hit the large button of the Brookstone unit and was rewarded with the soothing sound of crashing ocean waves and crying seagulls. Back to bed. I assumed the position, on my back, lying coffin straight, arms by my sides. I closed my eyes, focused on the sound of some exotic, salty shore.

Eight minutes, to judge by the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock. Then I bolted upright, fisting the sheets while swallowing the scream and staring intently into the shadows of my expansive bedroom. Three night-lights. Oval LED plug-ins that offered pools of soft, green glow. I counted the lights five times, waiting for my heart to decelerate, my breathing to slow. Then I gave up and snapped on my bedside light.

I have a beautiful master bedroom. Expensive. Carpeted in the softest wool. Designed using only the richest silks, including custom bedding and hand-stitched window dressings, all fashioned in shades of soft blue, rich cream and sage green.

A soothing oasis of look and feel. A reminder of my adoptive father’s generosity and my own continued success.

But tonight, it wouldn’t work for me. And I knew by eleven thirty what I would do next.

Because even though I was the product of some of the finest intellectual upbringing, both a person and a case study, a doctor and a patient, I was still a member of the human race. And humanity is a messy business, where knowing what is right doesn’t necessarily preclude you from doing what is wrong.

I showered. Donned a tight black pencil skirt, knee-high black leather boots and, without even thinking about it, my sister’s preferred fuchsia top. I made my face up, left my brown hair down and added a simple gold band to my left ring finger. I’d learned years ago that was the key to success; to appear as married as they were. It reduced their fear of future entanglements while adding to their sense of mutual culpability. You were no better than them, hence a desirable target.

Ten minutes till midnight. I grabbed the plastic kit I kept hidden away in the back of the lower bathroom drawer. Tucked it in my gray bag. Then I was out the door, driving toward Boston’s Logan Airport and my destination of choice, the Hyatt Boston Harbor.

• • •

AFTER MIDNIGHT ON A MONDAY NIGHT, most bars, even in a major city, were quieting down. But airport hotels exist in a timeless vacuum. People getting up, people going to bed, on so many different schedules, the actual hour ceases to have meaning. You can always find people drinking at an airport hotel’s bar.

I took a table near the windows overlooking the Hyatt’s fabled view of Boston’s skyline. Dark harbor waters below, glittering city lights above. I ordered a Cosmopolitan, alcoholically aggressive, while still being appropriately feminine. Then I went to work.

I counted eight other occupants in the bar. One couple,