Kay Hooper - Sleeping With Fear

Looks like? Jesus. Why don't I remember this?

It would have been easy to panic.

Very easy.

She sat down and tapped a key to take the computer out of sleep mode. When the dark screen brightened, the first thing she did was check the time and date, just to confirm that this was indeed very early on Wednesday. And it was.

She'd lost more than twelve hours.

But there was lost…and then there was lost .

From the looks of things, she'd been functional, even working. In one window was an FBI report on recent occult activities in the U.S., while another window contained the beginning of a report apparently written by her.

"Huh," she murmured. "Since when do I write-Oh."

The first line explained the otherwise inexplicable: Since I have no idea what the long-term effects of my current situation might be, I've decided to keep this written journal/report for the remainder of the investigation.

Current situation? That was worded so ambiguously she must have feared someone else might read it. Maybe Ash, for instance, since he apparently spent most nights here.

In any case, the rest of the entry was pretty bare-bones, detailing only the previous morning's visit to the sheriff's department, the autopsy results on their murder victim, and her visits with the sheriff to the arson sites. Not a word about her stroll up the beach and meeting/conversation with Steve and Jenny.

Then again, maybe she'd imagined all that. Or dreamed it.

Like the Black Mass, where Jenny had served as the altar. Maybe Riley had dreamed that? It had certainly seemed unreal, at least in a sense. Blood. Blood played no part in a Black Mass, despite popular belief; it was supposed to be a ceremony all about mocking traditional Christian beliefs and ceremonies, twisting and corrupting them. Blasphemous, certainly, from any conventional point of view, but neither dangerous nor inherently evil, and it didn't involve blood or actual sacrifice.

At least, it wasn't supposed to.

Riley looked around the quiet, peaceful space, listened to the surf pounding out on the beach, and wondered what was real. What she could trust. What she could believe in.

Had she actually witnessed that ceremony?

Had she dreamed it?

A touch on the nape of her neck found the burns left by a Taser. That was real. The man sleeping in her bed was certainly real.

Though the presence of both in her life was baffling.

She didn't sleep with men she barely knew, most especially during an ongoing investigation. And her training and experience made it highly unlikely that anyone could sneak up and blindside her with a Taser attack. Particularly in a situation where all her instincts and senses would have been on alert.

Unless…unless whoever had attacked her had been with her all along. That was possible, she supposed. Maybe more than possible. Someone she had trusted could have been close enough to surprise her, to catch her off her guard.

Nice little theory, that. The problem was proving it, identifying who that someone might be, and accomplishing both objectives without giving away her own ignorance on the subject.

No one so far had volunteered any information about where she had been or who she might have been with on Sunday night. At least not that she remembered, dammit.

All I really know is that I was Tasered. That I was covered in some of the same blood found in our victim's stomach-

Damn. Was he identified in the last twelve hours? That was the priority, to I.D. him. Though surely I would have made a note in this damn report of mine. And what about that other probable victim? Has he-or she-even been discovered yet?

She didn't know. Couldn't remember.

All she knew was that another twelve hours of her life were gone, and she didn't have the faintest idea what she had been doing all that time.

She put her head in her hands and slowly rubbed her face.

"Riley?"

She looked up to see Ash approaching her and hoped her face didn't show the growing panic she was all too aware of feeling.

"It's not even dawn," she told him, outwardly calm. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"I'm getting used to these predawn urges of yours to work." He bent down to kiss her briefly, adding, "They seem to come most often after a restless night. You tossed and turned a bit."

"Sorry."

"Didn't disturb me. Much, anyway." He smiled. "I gather you're up for the day? I'll grab a shower and shave, then fix breakfast."

Somewhat involuntarily, she said, "You're almost too good to be true, know that, pal?"

"I keep trying to tell you. If you're not careful, somebody else is going to steal me away from you." He kissed her again, then headed off for his shower.

Riley sat there at the table, her computer humming quietly, and gazed after him. Right now, in this moment, she felt safe with Ash-but what did that mean? That she trusted him? That she felt no threat from him? Or simply that she was thinking and feeling with a part of her anatomy quite a bit south of her brain?

Could she even trust her feelings-any of them-when her senses and memory were, to say the least, unreliable? When she could lose more than twelve hours without warning and apparently without some external cause?

There's a reason, a trigger. There has to be. I just have to figure it out.

Easily said. Not so easily done.

Riley finished the PowerBar and juice, hoping the calories would help clear the fog in her brain but not very surprised when it didn't happen. She couldn't seem to think except to ask herself questions for which there were no answers.

Yet, at least.

I've been functioning. Normally-or surely Ash would have commented. But I don't remember what I've said or done. And lost hours and a restless night culminating in a dream-or memory-of some kind of Black Mass can't possibly mean anything good.

The panic was crawling inside her now, cold and sharp and no longer something she could deny to herself. This was out of control, she was out of control, and she had no business whatsoever being part of a murder investigation. The right thing to do, the safe and sane thing to do, would be to return to Quantico.

Today. Now.

Something on the TV broke through the panic to catch her attention just then, and she lunged for the remote to turn on the sound.

Bishop. He hardly ever made the news, went out of his way to avoid being photographed or videoed, and always kept a low profile during investigations. So what the hell was he involved in that was making the national news?

"…the agent in charge refuses to comment on the ongoing investigation, but sources within the Boston police confirmed only minutes ago that the latest victim of the serial killer terrorizing the city these last weeks was indeed twenty-one-year-old Annie LeMott, daughter of Senator Abe LeMott. The senator and his wife are in seclusion with family, as police and FBI agents continue to work around the clock to catch their daughter's killer."

The CNN anchor went on to the next subject, her voice turning perky as she reported on something less tragic.

Riley hit the MUTE button on the remote and returned to her laptop. It didn't require either memory of recent events or senses to tell her what to do next; within two minutes, she was reading a more detailed FBI report of the Boston serial killer. And the report explained a lot.

Bishop was hip-deep in his own investigation, all right. In fact, he was tracking a particularly vicious killer with, so far, at least a dozen notches on his belt. Twelve known victims in just under twenty-one days, all young women, all murdered with bloody abandon.

No wonder Boston was going nuts. No wonder this particular series of murders was making national news.