Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(62)

“What about my surprise?” I hear myself ask.

“It’s not Monday,” he says, leading me toward the sofa.

“Two days. Close enough.”

“Impatient?” He slants me a look. It is both flirtatious and dangerous. There are shadows in his eyes. Why have I never noticed that before? His blue eyes, once so clear, are now as dark as midnight. The phantom, I think. The phantom just won’t leave me the f*ck alone.

Then I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to know.

He pulls me to the sofa, where minutes before my son slumped in a semi-catatonic state. Except now I’m the one bending over the arm of the sofa, while male hands raise my skirt, palm my ass, and lower a zipper behind me.

I smell the August sun radiating from his skin. It takes me to another place, where I’m still young and my husband still loves me and we’re walking hand in hand in Mexico, watching the sun set and thinking this is only the beginning of the best days of our lives.

Another man’s fingers working against me, stretching me, preparing me. My own back arching instinctively against him.

Then he’s inside me. The first hard thrust. His grunt of satisfaction.

“You will do exactly as I say,” he orders.

I close my eyes and give myself away.





| CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE





DANIELLE


“What are you doing here?”

“Working. What does it look like?” I shoved my bag in the locker.

“You’re not on the schedule,” Karen, my boss, persisted.

“Last-second change,” I said neutrally. “Genn wanted to attend some cookout with her kids, so I agreed to take her shift.”

Karen adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. She crossed her arms over her chest, letting me know I was in for a fight.

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” she demanded. “Because if you have, I think we can both agree why you won’t be working tonight.”

I returned her stare, chin up, shoulders square. I could be stubborn, too. Especially tonight.

I fell asleep on the sofa after my visit with Dr. Frank. I dreamed of my father again, except this time he wasn’t standing in the doorway. This time, he was in my room. Dr. Frank was right: There were things I’d never dealt with, events I’d never disclosed. I held them at bay, stuffed into a small closet in the back of my mind, where I kept the door locked tight. Except once a year, they managed to escape. They crept under the door, wiggled through the lock, then stalked through the dark corridors of my memory.

“Danny girl. It’s happy time….”

As a professional, I understood that the unconscious mind had a will of its own. As a person, however, I wondered if this is how it felt to go insane. My heart raced even when I was sitting still. My hands fought a tremor even in the August heat.

I couldn’t go home tonight. I just couldn’t, and this place was as close to family as I had left.

“I’ll be okay,” I tried now, but Karen wasn’t buying it.

“First off,” she stated crisply, “you were involved in not one but two major incidents with the same patient.”

I looked at her blankly. Maybe I had gone crazy, because I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Lucy,” she supplied, reading my face. “She escaped yesterday. In fifteen years I’ve never had a child disappear. The hospital is demanding a formal investigation, as well they should. It’s unconscionable that a child can slip through two sets of locked doors and have not a single nurse or milieu counselor notice. For heaven’s sake, we’re lucky nothing worse happened.”

“But I found her!” I protested. “I’m the one who figured out where she went and got her back.”

“You were the one who should’ve been watching her in the first place.”

I hung my head, suitably shamed.

“Then, last night, I understand you and Lucy went a few rounds in the ring. To look at your face, you didn’t win.”

“I dealt with the situation—”

“You weren’t even on the clock, Danielle. You were supposed to be on your way home, not rushing down the hall to tend a child!”

“Lucy started screaming hysterically. What was I supposed to do, sit around and watch? We needed to calm her and I had the best chance of getting it done.”

“Danielle, a child physically attacked you! Your face is covered with scratches; you have bruises on your neck. I’m not worried about Lucy—you did calm her. But it was at a huge price to yourself. We need to debrief as a unit. You need physical and emotional support as an individual. Instead, you’re pretending it’s business as usual. That’s not healthy.”

“I’m fine—”

“You look like hell.”

“It’s been twenty-five f*cking years. Of course I look like hell!” Too late I caught the slip, tried to rein myself in. But I was breathing hard and my heart was racing. I wanted to run.

“Have you been drinking?” Karen asked me.

“No.” Not yet.

“Good. For your sake, I’m happy to hear it. But you still can’t work tonight.”

“I have to work tonight. I can contain it. I can be professional. We both know I’m good at my job.”