Novels 11 Adam Read online

  Lori was dressed in jeans and boots, a blue halter top covered in part by a cropped cotton jacket. Shoulder-length blonde hair tucked behind the ears revealed silver hoops.

  Heather took her hand and looked at Daniel, who looked a bit distracted. Even worried.

  “Hello, Daniel. So nice of you to bring your friend.” He wore a gray beanie to cover the wound on his head. Ten years younger and he might look like Justin Timberlake.

  He smiled sheepishly and nodded. “Hey, Heather. You good?”

  She released Lori’s hand and stepped back, refusing to acknowledge such a dumb question. Fantastic, Daniel, particularly now that I’ve met your sweet girl pal.

  “Come in.”

  They walked in, and Daniel gave her a peck on the cheek. One of his sweet habits she normally loved. At the moment she couldn’t help wondering where else those lips had been. The jealousy was completely cold considering what Daniel had been through in the last two days, but she couldn’t shake it off.

  Heather led them into the living room and watched them take seats on the sofa. She considered offering them the cookies and coffee but decided getting straight to the point would serve them all better.

  “You okay, Daniel?”

  “A bit banged up, but all things considered . . .”

  “Frankly, he’s a mess,” Lori said. “Lucky but not well. All things considered.”

  She didn’t sound cheeky. Just a cut-to-the-chase kind of girl. Daniel’s type.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lori deferred. Heather looked at the man whom she’d sworn to love till death and felt her heart tighten with empathy. The confidence he typically wore so nonchalantly was gone. He looked gray and haggard now, with bags under his eyes.

  Now with more force, “What’s wrong, Daniel?”

  “Well, I did die, didn’t I? I can’t remember dying, or the events surrounding my death, but they tell me I saw Eve. It turns out that when your mind thinks it’s dead, it sends out electrical signals and chemicals that wreak a bit of havoc. Except for a couple of scalp wounds, my body is fine. But my mind doesn’t seem to know it yet. That about sums it up.”

  “What Daniel’s trying to say is that he’s having nightmares. Sometimes while awake.”

  “I wouldn’t classify them as nightmares,” Daniel said. “Unexplained paranoia.”

  His blond hair curled out of the beanie. Beneath those gentle curls, a mind that was rarely shaken. Until now. Daniel looked at her with sad blue eyes. He didn’t have a lot of facial hair, but if she wasn’t mistaken, he hadn’t shaved today.

  “What kind of nightmares?” Heather asked.

  “Just . . . fear. Like a hammer to the head.”

  “Which would make sense, right? You were shot in the head.” Heather sat back and crossed her legs. “You’re alive, that’s what’s important. They told me you were dead.”

  He cleared his throat. “You mean before I was resuscitated?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Understanding crossed his face. “I can’t . . . Brit?”

  She nodded. Tried to push those few terrible hours from her mind.

  “You’re right, I’m alive. That’s what counts.”

  They exchanged a few more polite remarks, mostly about the good doctor’s new assignment as the forensic pathologist on the Eve case. Daniel had been asked to take a leave, which he would do. But only formally.

  Short of a straightjacket, they would never keep him off the case.

  It wasn’t until Heather finally decided to serve them the coffee that Daniel pressed the issue that hung over their heads.

  “So, you wanted to talk about Eve.”

  Here it was. The strange phone call that had forced her to abandon her hearing to one of the other attorneys felt distant and foolish now. Daniel was suffering the side effects of a shot to the head, and she was running scared from a prank call.

  She’d intended to show him the room. Maybe even run through a few ideas she’d been working on. They were just wild theories, but they all knew that wild theories eventually distilled into those that proved true.

  Looking at Lori, she knew she didn’t dare show him the room.

  “It’s probably nothing, but . . .” Not true, Heather. Just spit it out.

  “Heather, I know you better than that. Something’s scaring you. Please, just tell me.”

  The way he said it reminded her of a time during their short engagement when he demanded to meet Bill, a local prosecutor who’d made some off-color, potentially threatening comments to her during a trial. Daniel confronted the man at a bar, and although he refused to tell her what was said, the attorney had given her a wide berth ever since.

  She set her coffee cup down. “Okay.” She told him about the call she received the night of his death. They both watched her with increasing interest. Or incredulity, she wasn’t quite sure which.

  When she finished, Daniel was staring, wide-eyed.

  “That’s it?” He stood and paced. “This was before or after I was killed?”

  “During. Or just after.”

  “So he didn’t know. He was making idle threats. And we know it couldn’t have been Eve.”

  “The point is, he knew the sixteenth Eve had been found. How many people knew that? And he made it clear you would die if you didn’t back off.”

  Daniel crossed his arms.

  “Unless he’s not working alone,” Lori said. “It’s not a new theory.”

  “No, but we’ve never run into anything so definite.” Daniel crossed the room toward the kitchen phone. The purposeful look on his face could hardly be associated with a trip to the refrigerator.

  Heather stood. “What are you doing? You can’t call this in.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We have to find the driver, the car. We need resources.”

  “We already ran the plates. They don’t exist,” Heather said, standing. “He’s not that stupid and that’s not the point!”

  Daniel turned back, receiver in hand. “And what is the point, Heather?”

  “You. You’re the point!”

  The tone of her voice stalled him. She pushed while she had the advantage.

  “Listen to me! Whoever this guy is, he knows it all. For all you know he’s with the bureau. The moment you push this, he knows you’re doing exactly what he insisted you not do.”

  “That’s a risk we have to take.”

  “That’s not a risk I’m willing to take!” she snapped. “I’m not ready to lose you.”

  Thinking she was showing too much, she eased back into the chair and set her hands on her knees.

  “He called again,” she said.

  Daniel set the phone back in the cradle. He came back into the living room, glanced at his watch, and sat down.

  “And said what?”

  “The same thing.”

  “You’re sure it was him?”

  “Not completely, no. He was whispering, and his voice sounded like it was coming through a box. Distant.”

  “Tell me what he said.”

  “I told you, pretty much the same thing.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Tell me exactly what—”

  Daniel stiffened and inhaled sharply. For a second, maybe two, he looked like he’d been electrocuted. Then he sagged and exhaled.

  Lori stood and put her hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  His voice came out ragged. “That’s something you don’t get used to.”

  “That was what you were talking about?” Heather asked, alarmed. “A panic attack?”

  He didn’t respond. The fierce color had gone out of his eyes. They sat in silence for several beats. He was in more emotional pain than he let on, she realized, then chided herself for not showing the concern that gnawed at her. She should be reaching out to him, comforting him. Under his show of strength he was hardly more than a wounded child, desperate for relief. And she knew how to give it to him. A gentle touch to his cheek, a soft word of enc
ouragement, a promise of solidarity.

  Instead she’d been frozen by the unexpected intrusion named Dr. Lori Ames. Part of her knew she should express her love for Daniel; part of her wanted to slap the lug for being so insensitive.

  The latter part was winning. The same part that had brought them to a divorce in the first place. Honestly, she didn’t know if her choices had been noble or plain selfish.

  Daniel was staring at her. “Tell me what he said. Exactly as you remember it.”

  “That if I didn’t keep my promise you were going to die.”

  “Use his words. As you remember them.”

  She’d played the words through her mind a hundred times, but she wasn’t sure if her current version was precise. The voice had asked if she loved Daniel. She decided the detail wasn’t pertinent to the FBI’s investigation.

  “He asked if—”

  “No, use his words.”

  “I am!” She glared at him. “I asked who it was and he said, ‘I’m your Jesus. Your worst nightmare. Lucifer. It depends on who you want me to be. On what you do.’ Something close to that. Meaning if I can’t stop you, you’re going to die.”

  “What makes you think that?” Daniel asked.

  “Because he said it! He said, ‘He’s forgetting his promise. He’s going to die if you can’t stop him.’”

  The skin around Daniel’s eyes twitched. “He used those words?”

  “Yes. Or something very close. Then he said something about his daddy and a priest . . . I don’t remember exactly. My mind was on what he’d just said. About you.”

  “What daddy? What priest?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember. He said no one can stop him.”

  “Speaking of himself? Those were his words?”

  “I’m not one of your witnesses, and I’m sure not one of your patients. His words were him. No one can stop him, meaning someone else, whoever him is. Eve.”

  “Did he say—”

  “No, he didn’t say Eve. I’m just assuming. Who else would him be?”

  Daniel stared at her, mind working. She’d seen the look a thousand times, lost in speculation, measuring, always measuring. It was one of the things she loved about him, this wild pursuit of truth. Just not when it supplanted his interest in her.

  Lori Ames broke her silence. “He mentioned his father and a priest. Paternal care and religion.”

  Daniel stood and crossed to the fireplace, seemingly ignorant of the portrait of him and Heather hanging above the mantel.

  “Reference to predominate informative factors in his life,” he said, turning. “For all we know Eve was abused by both.”

  His jaw muscles bunched up with frustration. If there was one thing Daniel was known for in the field of behavioral science, it was his outspoken stand against ideologies that bred hatred for others and justified acting on it, subservience to some supernatural deity being the standout culprit.

  It was one of many arguments he made with outstanding clarity in his books and lectures, Heather thought. Whatever his shortcomings, Daniel lacked nothing in the intelligence department.

  “This scares me, Daniel.”

  “Don’t let it.”

  “Eve’s killed sixteen women. How can you stand there and tell me not to be afraid of him?”

  “He’s after me. I’m closing in, and he knows it. Something I’ve done is ticking him off, and he’s trying to scare me. You’re honestly suggesting I walk away now?”

  “Yes.” She stared him down. “Because I believe him.”

  “She has a point, Daniel,” Lori said. “You’re officially off the case. That’s a start. Maybe it has more benefit than we realized.”

  Daniel settled. Now that his little doctor friend had suggested the same thing Heather had, he was actually listening. She didn’t care. At the moment she only wanted him to drop the case.

  “Back off Eve,” she said. “Take another case. Any case. I don’t care how much of your time it takes.” A slight pause. “I want you to come home.”

  Her words struck him broadside—she could see it in his face. He stared, silenced.

  Then she clarified, to be sure he understood. “Just drop Eve. Please.”

  Looking into Daniel’s blank blue eyes, she couldn’t possibly know what was on his mind. Other than recurring terror.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  FOURTEEN

  TEN O’CLOCK

  THE APARTMENT DANIEL had taken two years earlier had two bedrooms, one of which he’d converted into a fully equipped office. The other contained a king-size bed without a headboard, one nightstand with a large brown ceramic lamp, and one built-in closet.

  The living room had a green sofa and love seat he’d found at Rent-to-Own and a glass coffee table Heather had let him take. Two floor lamps with black shades.

  A square, glass-topped kitchenette set rounded out the apartment. He hadn’t expected to stay more than a few months when he’d set the apartment up, and he’d been too busy to flesh out the place after it became apparent that he might be here longer than anticipated.

  Two weeks earlier he’d purchased and hung two large paintings that reminded him of the mountains near Helena, Montana, where he’d spent his first eighteen years before heading to UCLA and starting a new life destined for the FBI.

  His mother, Claire, would have approved of the paintings but not much else if she were still alive. His father wouldn’t have cared as long as Daniel was ladder climbing at the FBI. Rudolph Clark’s only son had done him proud.

  In all honesty, Daniel couldn’t tell if Lori approved or not. She walked into the apartment, took one look around, and said, “Is it sparse or just plain neat?”

  “Both,” he said. The apartment was immaculate, a reflection of Daniel’s own mind, Heather would say, though she’d never seen the place. “I haven’t had time to do much with it. Where do you want this?”

  Lori glanced at the white box containing the small sample of DMT she had taken from the lab for testing purposes. “You sure you don’t want to give this more thought? It’ll keep in the fridge.”

  He set the box on the coffee table. “I’ve given it thought.”

  His thoughts were twofold. One, he needed relief from the bouts of fear that persisted every thirty to forty-five minutes. If there was any chance that giving his mind a chemical shock would interrupt the cycle, he would willingly accept the risk of failure.

  But second, and more important, he simply could not pass up the opportunity to jar his memory by taking a chemically induced trip approximating the one that had wiped Eve from his mind in the first place.

  The dark form that had stood at the end of his hospital bed had a face. Eve’s face. The urge to reach out and pull that face from the night of his mind was overpowering.

  “How do we do this?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” She shrugged off her coat and draped it over a chair. “Do you have a belt? Or some rope?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t want to take any chances. The dose I’m going to give you isn’t much, but DMT isn’t predictable. We don’t know how much the mind actually releases at the moment of death.”

  “I’m not following. What does dose have to do with a belt?”

  She stepped out of her shoes and crossed to the sofa. “I need to restrain you.” She looked up, brown eyes soft.

  “I thought you said we’d start with a small dose.”

  “I did.”

  Daniel waved her off. “Fine, restrain me. I’ll get a belt.”

  “Three belts.”

  “Three belts.”

  He knew she was only taking every precaution in the event he became violent. They’d discussed the negligible risk of addiction with controlled use as well as the typical side effects: increased heart rate and blood pressure, dilated pupils, dissociated hallucinations. Potentially violent reactions that could result in him swinging his fists unawares. She was evidently concerned that he might smash th
e coffee table, cut his wrist, something along those lines.

  Daniel slipped off his shoes and returned to the living room with three belts.

  She’d laid out a white cloth from the morgue on the glass coffee table. A syringe rested next to a length of surgical tubing and a small bottle containing half an inch of the cloudy liquid.

  DMT.

  Daniel handed her the belts and stepped back. “I need a drink of water. You want one?”

  “Thanks.” Her eyes followed him to the kitchen.

  Surreal, this covert bit of drug use. Daniel had never even considered injecting his body with an illegal narcotic, never mind that this one was endogenous, created by the body itself. He found the prospect of doing so now distasteful.

  Subverting FBI protocol was slightly less distasteful—he’d been forced to give the red tape a wide berth before. But this . . . this shooting up to see Eve’s face was nothing short of lunacy.

  The fear crashed through his mind as he reached for two bottles of mineral water, forcing him to still for a moment until it passed. Which it did, leaving him with a slight tremble in his outstretched hand.

  He was getting better at coping physically with the onslaughts, but his mind fared no better. Terror was terror, and every time it visited him, it scraped his nerves raw.

  Lori was still watching him when he crossed to her with the bottles in hand. He didn’t want to discuss the fear—they’d beat the subject to death a dozen times already. So he rehearsed a more familiar script.

  “I was thinking we should take a trip to Phoenix,” he said.

  She just looked at him.

  “We have to assume the investigation of the victim’s abduction will turn up something. Never give up hope. There’s always a chance.”

  “Of course.”

  “Someone who saw something. The victim being picked up, pulled into a van, talking to a stranger, anything.”

  “Just like the other fifteen victims,” she said.

  They both knew that he was stalling, trying to buffer his mind against that needle on the glass table. But neither seemed interested in hurrying the process now that the needle was before them.

  “Come on, Daniel. We both know there won’t be any witnesses.” She spoke in a soft, soothing voice. “Like you said, Eve knows their habits too well to take them anywhere they can be seen. Natalie Cabricci was on foot when she was taken. The route she normally took to the store crossed two parks and three parking lots. The local uniforms have already canvassed the area. Never give up hope, but a trip to Phoenix isn’t going to open up this case.”