Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(46)

I’m not crazy. I’m the only one who knows what’s really going on.

“Yeah? I don’t think you do know what’s going on.”

“Is this a joke?” The words came from the other side of the two-way mirror. “Your guy is talking to his damned self.”

Should have known there’d be an interruption. Xander turned in his seat to face the mirror. “No talking, or I’m walking. And you can waste hundreds of man-hours trying to get the answers I can provide in five minutes. Choice is yours.”

“How can he hear—” A scuffling sound on the other side of the mirror, then the sound of something that sounded suspiciously like a body thudding into the wall. “I was just asking—” A door in the observation room opened and then closed, and Xander heard the guy panting in the hallway like a greyhound after a race.

“All clear. No more interruptions,” Kent said from the other side of the mirror.

“Thanks, man.” As soon as the words left Xander’s mouth, he realized they’d probably just had the friendliest exchange of their lives. He turned back to Simon Smith. “How do you know Queen?”

“She the one I took down?” Simon’s voice sounded as rough as his appearance. His beard was such a thick mat that Xander couldn’t see the guy’s lips moving. It was like conversing with a mangy mannequin. She was a brunette. Wasn’t such a pretty doe when I got done with her.

“You took down”—the guy spoke as if the woman he killed was a game animal to be shot and field dressed and hung on the wall—“Courtney Miller. I’m not asking about her. I’m asking about Queen. How do you know her?”

“She a brunette?” All the brunettes act like they’re queens. They’re all bad. I can’t tolerate their sound.

It was off the Queen topic, but Xander couldn’t stop the question from popping out of his mouth. “What do you mean ‘their sound’?”

The guy remained life-sized-dummy still, but Xander heard his heart rate speed up and the intake of his breathing go quick and shallow. So Simon Smith didn’t worry about being caught or accused; he worried about the way a brunette sounded?

Their high-pitch sound makes me hard. They do it to torture me. But I’m not letting them get away with it anymore. I’m going to take them all down.

Xander scribbled on his notepad the essence of what the guy just thought, then sat back in his seat. When he had said Queen’s name, the guy’s mind would’ve automatically locked on to something concerning her if he’d actually known the woman.

There was one more route to explore.

“You know anything about two women being held hostage in a trailer?”

“They brunettes?” I hope they—

“You know anyone named Isleen Walker?” At least Isleen wasn’t a brunette.

She a brunette?

“This is getting old. You ever been out on County Road 103?”

Where’s that?

The guy knew nothing about Isleen, Queen, or even the road the trailer was on. Xander shoved back from the table and headed for the door. “Good luck in prison. The brunettes are going to love you.”

*

The awful whiteness surrounded Isleen—oppressive and claustrophobic. She turned in a circle looking for an escape. Nothing but infinite white. Panic frosted the edges of her mind, but she wasn’t going to let it take hold. This time she was going to be logical instead of scared out of her wits.

White like this wasn’t a place. No, the world and everything in it didn’t just turn white. Something else was going on. A thought flared across her brain. Dissociation. The white and those moments where she was stuck inside her body—maybe she was dissociating. Could she be severing the connection between her mind and her body? It was possible. Gran had tried to teach her how to do that, how to find a safe place inside her head while Queen did terrible things to Isleen’s body. But Isleen had never found such a place. Until now, it seemed.

The brightness shimmered, dappled, turned muddy and then dark and darker, until the environment was completely colored in shades of pewter and onyx. Her eyes adjusted slowly, the images in front of them gaining distinction by degree.

It was nighttime and she stood at Gran’s bedside. Gran’s gaze was fixed out the window on the lawn and shadowy woods beyond. Where was Alex? Where was the nurse? Someone should be with her. Gran looked so alone, so absolutely alone, that Isleen’s heart cracked.

“Gran, I’m here.” Only the words didn’t come out—just bounced around inside her head. “Gran.” She tried again. No sound.

Doom crawled over her skin like the hairy feet of a thousand roaches. She’d lost control of her body and was stuck inside her mind, looking out the window of her eyes, helpless to speak, to blink, to move.

She heard the quiet tread of footsteps on the wooden floor, but couldn’t turn her head to see their source.

Sinister energy wavered in the air; she could practically taste evil on her tongue. Something terrible was about to happen. To Gran.

Isleen’s heart tightened into a hard lump, bracing for a blow, then banged around her chest, beating, pounding, searching for escape—a way to save Gran.

No, no, no. The words pounded through her blood. She wanted to fight, tried to fight, but couldn’t move. Her body was no longer under her command, and all her words and thoughts and feelings were less than useless.