as it came up beside her, smelled her soothing, little girl scent.
“There’s something wrong. Talk to me.”
Liza hesitated, but it always helped to talk it through with Mady, so she told her about finding the dead body of the hospital director, about what had been done to his eyes, about the horror that was still coursing through her.
“The eyes,” Mady said softly. “Why would someone do that?”
“Reed says it means something to the killer,” she murmured, recalling his words. “I agree. It . . . symbolizes something to him.” But what? What kind of person was capable of something like that? She’d asked Reed the question earlier to get his take as a detective, but what did she think? If she was going to do a psychological assessment, what would it say?
“That’s right,” Mady murmured. “Step away. Break it down. Make it clinical. It always helps, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Liza said, but why didn’t she sound convinced, even to herself?
“So,” Mady went on, a teasing note in her voice, “what else did Reed say?”
Liza blew out a breath.
Reed, Reed, Reed.
“I can’t think about him,” she said.
“You can’t, and yet you are.”
Ah, but nothing got past Mady.
“You’ve never thought about a man like you’ve thought about him. You always seem glad to be done with them.”
Yes . . . and why? What was different about him? Other than . . . well, that. But that wasn’t the whole of it. She couldn’t put her finger on it. All she knew was that ever since that night two weeks ago, she’d felt empty and restless. Caged.
The opposite of what she’d set out to feel in the aftermath.
Liza sighed, standing, and walking to her kitchen counter where she’d tossed her mail for the last week or so, without even glancing through it. She looked through it now, mindlessly, tossing the junk aside, and placing bills in front of her so she could take them to her small home office where she’d pay them online this weekend.
She halted in her sorting, frowning at an official-looking letter from the State of Ohio. A tremble moved through her as she ripped it open, scanning the lines and then dropping it to the counter. It hit the edge and fell off, drifting to her feet.
“They’re considering letting him out.”
“What? How?” Mady asked. “He wasn’t supposed to be out for another five years.”
Liza swallowed. “Parole.” Oh God, they might give him parole. Her brother, who’d turned out to be as evil as the man who fathered them. Liza smelled smoke, felt the heat, her blistering skin. She clenched her eyes shut as though that would shut out the memory. Her hand went unconsciously to her throat. No blood, just her pearl choker. She ran a finger over one of the beads, the smooth texture grounding her. “They won’t let him out.”
For a moment there was only silence, and then Mady voiced what she didn’t want to. “I’m not so sure about that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Liza cleared her throat, giving Simon Mullner a smile, tilting her head in an effort to get the young man to meet her eyes.
His shoulders curled forward and he continued to chew at his thumbnail.
“How are you doing, Simon?”
He shrugged. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. She’d asked Dr. Headley to lower his medication, and he had for a while, but then Simon had had a couple of outbursts where he’d banged his head into the wall repeatedly until an orderly had restrained him, and so his dosage was raised again.
Was this better than an outburst? It was certainly easier for them, but Liza had to believe that where there was an outburst, there were emotions that were accessible. And how could she help him, if she couldn’t access his emotions?
She saw it, the flicker of pain that moved through his eyes. She not only saw it, she felt it inside, recognized it for what it was. There were ghosts in there, ghosts that would begin clanking their chains the moment the medication wore off.
“I want to help you if you’ll let me. Talk to me, Simon.”
He looked at her, his mouth forming a grim line. “Talk, talk, talk, that’s all you want to do,” he said, his words slow, slightly slurred.
Liza leaned back in her chair. “I . . . yes, for now. I can’t know how to help you unless you confide in me.”
“Why should I? You can’t understand what it feels like to be me.” His eyes moved down her crossed legs to her heels