them. I knew I had to fight the urge. Someone could be out there, watching me, deciding on a course of action.
Another mistake, I reminded myself, as my eyelids drifted toward each other, would be to just rest here a second.
My mind went into random scan. George Burns appeared again and said, “I’m always interested in the future. I plan to spend the rest of my life there.”
I sat up smartly and dropped my hands to my lap. The stab of pain helped clear my mind. I didn’t throw up. Progress.
“If you’re going to have a future, you’d better get your ass out of here, Brennan.”
My voice sounded heavy in the closed space, but it, too, helped orient me to the present reality. I started the engine, and the digits on the console clock glowed green: 2:15 A.M. When had I set out?
Still shivering, I flicked the heat to high, though I wasn’t sure it would help. The chill I was feeling was only partly due to the wind and the night air. There was a deeper cold in my soul that would not be warmed by a mechanical heater. I pulled away without a backward glance.
I slid the soap over my breasts, circling each again and again, willing the sweet-smelling lather to cleanse me of the night’s events. I raised my face to the spray that was pounding my head and coursing over my body. The water would grow cold soon. I’d been showering for twenty minutes, trying to drive out the cold and silence the voices in my head.
The heat and the steam and the scent of jasmine should have relaxed me, loosened the tension in my muscles and carried away the soreness. They hadn’t. The whole time I was listening for a sound outside my rectangle of steam. I was waiting for the phone to ring. Fearful I’d miss Ryan’s call, I had brought the handset into the bathroom.
I’d called the station immediately on reaching home, even before stripping off my wet clothes. The dispatcher had been skeptical, reluctant to disturb a detective in the middle of the night. She’d been adamant in her refusal to give me Ryan’s home number, and I’d left his card at work. Standing in my living room, shivering, my head still pounding and my stomach regrouping for another attack, I’d been in no mood for discussion. My words, as well as my tone, persuaded her. I would apologize tomorrow.
That had been half an hour ago. I felt the back of my head. The lump was still there. Under my wet hair it felt like a hard-boiled egg, and was tender to the touch. Before getting into the shower I’d gone through the instructions I’d been given following previous thumps on the head. I checked my pupils, rotated my head hard right and hard left, and pricked my hands and feet to test for feeling. All parts seemed to be in their proper places and in working order. If I’d suffered a concussion, it was a mild one.
I turned off the water and stepped from the shower. The phone lay where I’d left it, mute and disinterested.
Damn. Where is he?
I dried myself, slipped into my ratty old terry cloth robe, and wrapped a towel around my hair. I checked the answering machine to be sure I hadn’t missed a call. No red light. Damn. Retrieving the handset, I clicked it on to see if it was working. Dial tone. Of course it was working. I was just agitated.
I lay down on the couch and placed the phone on the coffee table. Surely he’d call soon. No point going to bed. I closed my eyes, planning to rest a few minutes before making something to eat. But the cold and the stress and the fatigue and the jolt to my brain melded into a tidal wave of exhaustion that rose up and crashed over me, plunging me into a deep but troubled sleep. I didn’t drift off, I passed out.
I was outside a fence, watching someone dig with an enormous shovel. Each time the blade came out of the ground it seethed with rats. When I looked down, there were rats everywhere. I had to keep kicking at them to keep them off my feet. The figure wielding the shovel was shadowy, but when it turned I could see it was Pete. He pointed at me and said something, but I couldn’t make out the words. He started to shout and beckon to