He smiled, tipped over the vase, and poured the water onto the floor. “Of course, sweetheart.”
Then he watched in amusement as I greedily lapped up every drop I could.
“By the way, I had to shoot Max this morning. Most everyone thinks you’re dead, but he just wouldn’t give up.”
I didn’t have any trouble finding Amanda’s phone. Christian had placed it next to the vase of roses on her nightstand. I’d never let my memories go beyond that day. Months of torture had passed until he finally decided to string me up, paint my body, and cut me open. The doctors had gone on and on about how lucky I was that I hadn’t been raped. Unfortunately, the damage done by the knife had been too extensive to repair. I would never be able to conceive a child. The deadness inside had protected me from feeling anything when I’d heard those words. The dark corridors of my mind were still protecting me, but I could feel the barriers cracking and hear the whispers. I have a child. Salyer took her. The memories threatened to pull me back into the darkness. I’m going to find her. I won’t let him destroy her the way he destroyed me.
“Find anything?” Browne asked from the doorway.
His voice pulled me back from the edges of insanity. Salyer had kept me for over a year, and my memories were flawed. I’d tried to convince myself that the memory wasn’t real. There was no baby, no tiny fingers, soft and warm, curled around mine. No sweet and loving Christian during moments of sanity.
“Amanda’s phone. I didn’t have gloves or an evidence bag, so I haven’t touched it. You should take the vase of roses too. It’s one of Salyer’s signature marks.”
I could feel his eyes on me. The silence in the room allowed me to hear his soft intake and expulsions of breath. If I listened hard enough, I could probably hear his heartbeat.
His clothes rustled as he approached, picked up the phone, and dropped it in a bag. “We’re almost finished here except for forensics. Why don’t you go downstairs and join Max? I’ll be with you in a minute.”
The softness of his voice told me he’d seen more than I wanted him to. It wasn’t often I let someone close enough to feel the pain that was slowly drawing me into the darkness. Gabriel was different. He had pain inside him that flowed outward, mixing with mine and drawing me closer. “He brought me roses the day he shot Max.” I touched one of the petals. “Soft, like the skin of a newborn baby. Strange how something so beautiful could cause so much pain.” I turned and raised my eyes to his. “Don’t you think?” My body moved of its own volition and stepped closer to him. “Do you want to kiss me, Gabriel?”
The golden highlights in his eyes flickered for a moment before darkening. “No.” Grabbing both my arms, he shook me hard. “I want you to snap the hell out of it, Dakota.”
9
Gabriel poured a glass of whiskey and downed it quickly. “Do you want to kiss me, Gabriel?” The drive back had been nerve-wracking torture. She’d sat staring straight ahead, obediently answering when asked a question. Max had kept giving him dirty looks after he’d explained what happened. “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”
He glanced at the psychological file still sitting on his coffee table. Nothing in there had prepared him for what happened that night. She’d looked vulnerable on the creek bank, but that went beyond vulnerability. Insane?
It was possible with everything she’d endured. The doctors had even stated that though she’d recovered physically, she would never recover mentally. Doctors were wrong. He’d gone there himself for weeks after Colleen’s death. He poured another whiskey and drank it then snorted. Weeks? Who am I trying to fool? I was a raving lunatic for over a year. If Karen hadn’t pulled me back from the brink, I would have killed myself.
“I need to talk to Karen.” Gabriel glanced at his watch and poured another glass of whiskey as he flipped through the rolodex on his counter. Nine o’clock in Savannah was also nine o’clock in New York. Hopefully, she would be in and awake. He patted his pockets for the cell phone he’d been issued by the department. He refused to use the thing ninety percent of the time because he didn’t like being that accessible, and with all the tracking equipment available, it was downright dangerous to carry the things around with you. He finally located it in an inside pocket of his jacket and dialed the number.
“Hello.” Her voice sounded sleepy and just a little sexy, the way he’d remembered it.
“Hello, Karen.” He could almost visualize her closing her book and sitting up in bed.
“Gabriel Browne. I heard you moved to some little town in Georgia. How are you doing? Or is that a bad question?”
Gabriel laughed. He’d spent the first three sessions saying “bad question” every time she asked him something. “I’m fine, but if you’ve got a pen and notepad handy, I’d like to run a situation by you and get your opinion.”
The sound of bedding being tossed came over the line. A chair was pulled out, and a pen scribbled something. “Fire away.”
Gabriel filled her in on Dakota’s background, physical injuries, and psychological profile.
“Whoa! Are you talking about Dakota Dale?”
He frowned. Gabriel hadn’t given her a name, and the world wasn’t that small. “How the hell would you know that?”
“Her sergeant is an old friend of my father’s. When that jackass Rivers released her to go back to work, Morgan asked me to take a look at the file. In honesty, I told him I felt she was still a danger to herself. Especially after her father’s death. How do you know her?”
The silence stretched for over a minute.
“Gabriel?”
“The guy who kidnapped and tortured her is the same man who killed Colleen.”
“I see.”
He doubted she really did. “You said she was still a danger to herself. What about others?”
“I don’t believe so, but remember I only reviewed her file. I never actually met or counseled her. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on now?”
He brought her up to date on Angelina Clark’s murder and ended with the events earlier that evening.
A heavy sigh sounded in his ear. “The fact that Christian Salyer is still alive is disturbing. He’s criminally insane and a serial killer. I never believed the dribble written about Dakota. In my professional opinion, you’re dealing with dissociative identity disorder or what was once called multiple personalities. With what she endured, that wouldn’t be at all surprising.”
“So what you’re telling me is she’s nuts.”
Karen sighed. “Not at all. When pain or trauma becomes too much for the mind to comprehend, the psyche will sometimes fracture, building a wall between the painful memories and protecting the core personality. She’s fairly emotionless most of the time, right? And when you shook her, she did everything you asked her to afterward?”
“Pretty much. She doesn’t laugh, cry, or get angry. I have seen compassion and fear. And yeah, after I shook her, she was like some kind of damn robot.”
“Then she wanted you to kiss her.”
Gabriel ran a hand over his face. “No, that was before I shook her, and she didn’t want me to kiss her. She asked if I wanted to kiss her. She was going on about the rose petals being as soft as a newborn baby and wasn’t it strange that something so beautiful caused so much pain.”