Kay Hooper - Sleeping With Fear

She had never been more wide-awake in her life.

The realization had been slow in coming, but now it took root in her admittedly sluggish mind and began to grow into at least one horrible possibility.

She always slept with her weapon under her pillow. Always. Ever since a very nasty experience with a predawn burglar nearly ten years ago. But very few people knew that.

She had awakened the previous afternoon fully dressed except for her shoes, with her gun under the pillow as always.

There were only two possible routes to that destination, as far as Riley could see. Both of them started with her leaving the house-after telling Ash she wanted time alone-undoubtedly armed, because she certainly would have been. Going to do whatever it was she'd gone to do, and in the process getting surprised or otherwise blindsided by someone with a stun gun. After that…

Either she had, after being stunned for God only knew how long, managed to get herself back home and to her bed, too addled to remove her bloodstained clothing but able to kick off her shoes and remember where her gun should go, or…

Or her attacker had brought her home. Removed her shoes. And put her gun under her pillow, because he'd known she would expect to find it there whenever she woke up.

Shit.

The field of suspects if that turned out to be the case had suddenly gotten very, very small.

Ash knew where she kept her gun at night. So did Gordon. If anyone else here knew, Riley would be very surprised. But maybe someone else did know. Hell, maybe everyone knew.

Oh, God, what else don't I remember?

Her car had been here, the keys in her bag. Had she driven wherever it was she'd gone last night? Could she have driven back here, suffering the aftereffects of near-electrocution? No evidence of blood in her car, but…Three miles to the bridge, assuming she'd gone over to the mainland; surely she hadn't walked?

I'm assuming whatever happened didn't happen here on the island. Why am I assuming that?

Because the altar-if that's what it had been used for-was on the mainland. Because a tortured and murdered man's body had been discovered there. And because she found it almost impossible to believe that a second, totally separate violent event had taken place in this small community on the same night.

Rational. Reasonable. Probably right.

Probably.

"Riley?"

Oh, shit. I can't even fake it anymore?

"Hmmm?" she murmured.

"Why are you still awake?" He nuzzled the back of her neck. "I thought you'd go out like a light."

"Just thinking, I guess."

"About what? The murder?"

"Yeah." It wasn't a lie. Exactly. "Occupational hazard."

Without turning her to face him, Ash gathered her into his arms. "Can I talk you into letting it go until tomorrow, or is this something else I should get used to?"

What could she tell him? How much could she tell him?

How far could she trust him?

Riley was conscious of an unfamiliar desperation, and it was a feeling she did not like. Especially when it caused her to blurt, "I'm different. When there's a case."

"So it's not just about using more energy," he said after a moment.

"No. There's that too, but…I pretty much live the job. I get obsessed." She tried to put a shrug into her voice. "My boss says it's part of what makes me a good investigator. Other people have…indicated that I can be distant or difficult to connect with whenever I'm working on a case."

"Forewarned is forearmed?"

"You have a right to know."

His arms tightened around her. "Riley, I understand how our work can drive us. You know how far mine drove me. All the way back to my childhood home, where being the district attorney is barely a full-time job. You can't allow your job to consume you."

She wished she remembered his story, she really did. She had a feeling it was a vitally important piece of this puzzle she was in. But all she could say was, "A man's dead, Ash. Shouldn't I be bothered by that? Shouldn't you?"

"I'm just saying you won't be any good to the investigation or yourself if you don't get some rest."

"You're right, of course."

His arms tightened around her again, and there was something inexpressibly soothing in his voice when he murmured, "Tomorrow is soon enough to begin to obsess. Go to sleep, Riley."

He hadn't answered her questions, and that bothered her more than she wanted to admit even to herself. At the same time, her body was relaxing against his, for real this time, and she was growing sleepy once again.

Exhaustion, almost certainly. Catching up with her. But it was more than that, and even as her fragmented thoughts began to settle, a last nagging realization followed her into sleep.

Despite everything, even her own doubts, here in this man's arms she felt…safe.

And for a woman who had learned a long, long time ago that safety was, at best, an illusion, that was terrifying.

In an unusually grim tone, Gordon said, "Yeah, I'd say this was from a Taser. And a juiced-up one, at that."

Riley smoothed her short hair over the burns and turned to face him. "I was pretty sure. Just wanted a second opinion."

"Have you reported this to Bishop?"

"Not yet."

"Jesus Christ on a crutch, Riley."

"I know, I know. But I also know what Bishop will say, and I don't want to be recalled. I can't just cut and run, Gordon. Not yet. Look, if whoever attacked me had wanted to kill me, I'd be dead."

"You don't know that. It's more likely he left you for dead and that crazy, messed-up brain of yours kept you alive against the odds."

It was a good point, and more than possible. Like all the psychics on the team, her brain had a higher-than-normal amount of electrical activity going on at any given time, so it very well might not have responded as the attacker had expected to an added jolt.

"Maybe." She hesitated, then confessed, "I had a nightmarish scenario running last night where the guy stunned me and then brought me home and put me to bed thinking I'd wake up and not know anything had happened."

"You mean when you woke up covered with blood you wouldn't think anything had happened?"

"I didn't think about that part until this morning." After about three cups of coffee and a wonderful breakfast courtesy of Ash.

Gordon eyed her consideringly. "You really aren't firing on all cylinders, babe, 'case you didn't know that."

"Why do you men always use car metaphors?" she demanded, even though she'd used the very same one herself in describing her condition to Bishop.

"Don't change the subject."

Riley sighed. "I'll tell Bishop everything when I report in this afternoon. I can't justify keeping any of it to myself, not with a man dead. I'll just have to hope I can convince him to leave me here. But, in the meantime, I'm headed out to the sheriff's department, where I hope there will be statements, photos, and a postmortem report I can take a look at."

"What do you expect to see?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing I couldn't figure out from the crime scene. But maybe I missed something."

Gordon was frowning. "I gather the spooky senses are still AWOL?"

She nodded. "Which makes more sense today than it did yesterday. Now that I at least know what happened to me. Even so, I have a pretty good hunch that Bishop will tell me nobody else on the team has experienced a jolt of electricity straight into the base of the brain. I don't recall reading that in any of the unit's case histories, and I think it would have been there. Highlighted. Underlined. With an asterisk."

"Yeah, I get it. Which means-"

"Which means I'm in unexplored territory here and pretty much on my own. God knows what was scrambled or short-circuited inside my head. And what the aftereffects might be."