Karin Slaughter - A Faint Cold Fear

In the last year, Lena’s life had been one long series of fuck-ups, from losing her job to sliding on her ass down the riverbed. No wonder Jeffrey had pushed her off the force. He was right; she was unreliable. He could not trust her because time and time again Lena had proved she did not deserve it. This time she might have cost him the man who’d stabbed Tessa Linton.

“Keep up, Adams,” Chuck tossed over his shoulder. He was a couple of feet in front of her, and she stared at his wide back, willing all her hatred into him.

“Come on, Adams,” Chuck said. “Walk it off.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, slowing down. He gave her a wet smile. “So . . . guess the chief don’t want you back anytime soon.”

“You either,” she reminded him.

Chuck snorted, as if she’d made a joke instead of pointed out the truth. Lena had never met anyone who was so good at ignoring the obvious.

Chuck said, “He just don’t like me because I dated his girlfriend back in high school.”

“You dated Sara Linton?” Lena asked, thinking that was about as likely as Chuck’s dating the queen of England.

Chuck shrugged casually. “Long time ago. You friends with her or something?”

“Yeah,” Lena lied. Sara was far from a close friend. “She never mentioned it.”

“Sore spot for her,” Chuck covered. “I left her for another girl.”

“Right,” Lena said, thinking this was typical Chuck. He thought that everything that came out of his mouth was believed, and he labored under the false impression that he was well respected on campus, even though it was common knowledge that the only reason Chuck had gotten his job was his daddy had made a phone call to Kevin Blake, the dean of Grant Tech. Albert Gaines, president of the Grant Trust and Loan, had a lot of pull in town, especially with the college. When Chuck had moved back home after eight years in the army, he walked right into the job as director of campus security with no questions asked.

Answering to a man like Chuck was a bitter pill Lena had to swallow every day. She had not been presented with a lot of choices after resigning her badge. At thirty-four, Lena didn’t know anything other than being a cop. She’d entered the academy right out of high school and never looked back. The only things she was qualified for were flipping burgers or cleaning houses, neither of which appealed.

In the days after Lena left the force, she’d considered going somewhere far away, maybe visiting Mexico and finding her grandmother’s people or volunteering somewhere overseas, but then reality caught up with her, and she realized that the bank did not care if Lena needed a change of scenery—they still expected her mortgage and car payments every month. Even with the paltry disability payments she received from the police department and what little money she’d managed to make from selling her house, things were tight.

The college job offered free campus housing and health benefits in lieu of a living wage. Granted, the housing sucked and the health insurance had a deductible so high Lena panicked if she so much as sneezed, but it was a steady job and meant she did not have to move in with her uncle Hank. Moving back to Reece, where Hank had raised Lena and Sibyl, her twin sister, would have been too easy. It would’ve been too easy to take up space at the bar Hank owned and drink away her nightmares. It would have been too easy to hide from the rest of the world, until thirty years had passed and she was still holding down a barstool, the scars on her hands the only reminder of why she’d started drinking in the first place.

Lena had been raped a little over a year ago; not just raped but kidnapped, held in her abductor’s home for days. Her memories from that time were scattered because she was drugged during most of the attack, her mind sent to a safer place while her body was brutalized. Scars on her hands and feet served as a permanent reminder that she’d been nailed spread-eagle to the floor to keep her open to her attacker at all times. Her hands still ached on cold days, but the pain could not match the fear she’d experienced watching the long nails being hammered into her flesh.

Before setting his sights on Lena, this same animal had killed Sibyl, Lena’s sister, and the fact that he was gone now offered no comfort. He still showed up in Lena’s dreams, giving her such vivid nightmares that she sometimes woke in a cold sweat, clutching the covers, feeling his presence in the room. Worse still were the dreams that were not nightmares, when he touched her so softly that her skin tingled, and she woke disoriented and aroused, her body shaking in response to the erotic images her sleeping mind had conjured. She knew the drugs she had been given during the attack had tricked her body into responding, but Lena still could not forgive herself. Sometimes the memory of his touch on her body would cover her like the fine silk of a spiderweb, and she would find herself shaking so hard that only a scalding-hot shower could make her skin feel like her own again.

Lena didn’t know if it was desperation or stupidity that had made her call the college’s counseling center a month ago. Whatever had compelled her, the three and a half sessions she’d managed to attend were a huge mistake. Talking to a stranger about what had happened—not that Lena had actually gotten around to that part of it—was too much. There were some things that were too private to discuss. Ten minutes into a particularly painful fourth session, Lena had gotten up and left the clinic, never to return. At least not until now, when she would have to tell that same doctor that her son was dead.

“Adams,” Chuck said, glancing over his shoulder, “you know this chick?”

Women were always chicks or bitches to Chuck, depending on whether or not he thought they would fuck him. Lena hoped to God he knew she was a bitch, but sometimes she got the feeling that Chuck thought it was just a matter of time before she threw herself at his feet.

She told him, “I’ve never met her.” Then, just in case, she added, “I’ve seen her around campus.”

He looked back at her again, but Chuck was as good at reading people as he was at making friends.

“Rosen,” Chuck said. “That sound Jewish to you?”

Lena shrugged; she’d never given it much thought. Grant Tech was fairly well integrated, and except for one or two assholes who had recently decided to take up spray-painting racial slurs on anything that wasn’t moving, there was an easy balance on campus.

“Hope she’s not—” Chuck made a whistling noise, whirling his finger near his temple. Of course Chuck would assume that anyone working in a mental-health clinic was nuts.

Lena did not give him the satisfaction of a response. She was trying to think whether anyone at the clinic would recognize her. The clinic closed at two on Sundays, but Rosen had agreed to see Lena after hours, probably because of the notoriety attached to Lena’s case. Anyone who could read a newspaper knew the lurid details of Lena’s kidnapping and rape. Rosen had probably been overjoyed to hear Lena’s voice on the line.

“Here go,” Chuck said, opening the door to the counseling center.

Lena caught the door before it closed in her face and followed Chuck into the crowded waiting room.

Like most colleges, Grant Tech was seriously underfunded in the mental-health department. Especially in Georgia, where the lottery-backed Hope Scholarship pretty much ensured that anybody who could pencil in a circle got into a state university, more and more kids were coming to college who could not handle the emotional stress of being away from home or having to work. As a technical college, Grant tended toward math nerds and overachievers anyway. These type-A personalities did not take failure well, and the counseling center was practically bulging at the seams from the influx of new students. If their insurance plans were anything like Lena’s, the students had no choice but to turn to the college.