or why. He doesn’t either. Like I said. He couldn’t talk. For years afterwards.”
“And he doesn’t even know what—”
“No.” The guy cut him off, curtly. “He does not know diddly shit.”
“So his name…his identity, it’s only…?”
“Yeah. Made up. It’s only eighteen years old,” Bruno finished crisply. “His previous identity is unknown.”
There was a pause. “Ah…that’s incredible. Were inquiries made? I mean, to the police, private investigators?”
“At the time, my uncle didn’t want to go looking for the guys that fucked him up,” Bruno retorted. “I mean, look at him.”
“Well, yes, of course,” the other man muttered. “Terrible.”
Kev opened his eyes. Light sliced in, an agonizing red-hot blade straight into his brain. Pain, white. Bright lights, beeping machines.
Immobilized. In a rigor of burning agony. Fear built, as he hydroplaned through inner space, toward a memory that held a lethal charge. People touching him, making him flinch. Patting his cheek.
“…hear me? Kev? Can you hear us?”
“Hey, Kev!” Bruno, again. “Wake up, man, it’s me! You awake?”
Kev squinted up into the light. The babble of excited voices was hellishly loud, battering his head. The light hurt, it hurt…
Pat, pat, pat, on his cheek. The gentle, persistent slap made his head reverberate with sickening pain. He opened his eyes.
Young, good looking. Dark curly hair, close-set eyes, peering down at him. White lab coat. Smiling, pleased with himself. Pat, pat, pat.
Mad eyes, lit with hellfire. Wet red mouth, crazy smile, muscling inside his brain. Shoving, wrenching him. He cowered away from that shit-eating troll. Better to hide in a hole, to wither and die there, than to crawl out and be mind-raped again—by…by—
“Ost…er…man.” He forced the syllables out. Osterman.
Yes. Osterman would never hurt him again. Never.
“What’s that?” Osterman’s fanged mouth dripped blood, his hot breath sulphurous. “Did you say something? Try again! We’re listening.”
Kev exploded out of the bed with a scream of rage, ripping out tubes, IVs, leaping at the guy. He bore Osterman to the floor.
Screaming. Grabbing. Punching. Cold tile against his cheek. Hands held him, pulling him from his prey, and—oh, shit. The sting of a needle.
Back down into that hole, fast. Only place to hide, inside his own head, in the deepest, darkest place. Lights out. Shut down.
Shovelfuls of earth rained heavily down on top of his mental hiding place, until the blackness was absolute.
CHAPTER
2
Edie Parrish scanned the entrance of the restaurant and the twilit street outside as she sipped her red wine. No sign of Dad’s upright figure striding, coat flapping around his legs. She deliberately released the tension in her chest, her face, her hands. Squeeze, release. Breathe, slow. In, out. This dinner would be fine. Dad himself had asked for her to meet him. She would take that as a gesture of peace. She had to.
Because she wanted to see Ronnie, desperately. She ached for it. Dad held the keys to that tower. It was his most effective instrument for controlling his uncontrollable daughter, and he used it mercilessly, punishing her for all perceived misbehaviors by keeping her away from her little sister. The strategy was brilliant in its simplicity.
God knows, if not for Ronnie, she’d have run away years ago.
She swallowed down the bitter gall of old anger. Maybe tonight she’d have some stroke of brilliance to persuade him. Maybe Dad would have a change of heart. She had to hope.
She sank down into her chair, glanced around to make sure she was unobserved, and gave into the guilty impulse, flipping through the pages of her smallest sketchbook until she found one with some space to fill. She shook hair over her face, for discretion’s sake, and resumed people watching. Her eyes softened, absorbing infinitesimal details that her conscious mind didn’t perceive as important enough to notice. This would get her into trouble for sure, but she couldn’t resist. When she watched people, her fingers itched for the pen, the pencil. She knew she’d pay for it, but there was a part of her that just didn’t care. And that part always, always won.
An obsession, her parents had called it. And so? What if it was?
Her eyes seized on the death-of-a-salesman type across the room, the stringy comb-over, the reddened nose, the eye bags. He was consuming his prime rib and baked potato with glum ferocity. Edie rendered him with a few swift pen strokes, and then tried again, trying to capture the set of his shoulders, the defeated look.
The weirdness started to happen, like it always did. Her brain kicked into a new gear. It felt like an eye, opening up deep inside her, seeing everything more deeply, more brightly. The world outside the focus of her eyes blurred. Her perception widened, deepened, softened. Her pen went by itself. Time ceased to move. God, she freaking loved it.
The sounds of the restaurant disappeared as she caught the dull anger in the broken veins across his nose, the aggression in his down-turned mouth, the heavy sadness of his hanging jowls.
He was avoiding home. Using work as an excuse to stay as far away as he could from the grandson he and his wife were raising. The child was violent, hyperactive, with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder. His wife was exhausted, desperate, at her wit’s end. So angry at him for abandoning her to deal with it all alone. Again.
He fled that situation every day, just as he’d fled similar problems with the boy’s mother, his promiscuous, drugaddled daughter. He felt like shit about it, but he could not change. He didn’t have the strength.
Oh, God, how sad, how awful. Edie dragged her eyes away from the unlucky guy and stared out at the lights on the street, trying to get the taste of the man’s guilt and sour self-loathing out of her mind.
When she went into that place in her mind, she started picking up stuff from the airwaves. Whatever people were projecting. And there was no shutting it out. Not if she tried.
She looked around, for someone else to tune in to. Someone more upbeat, more hopeful. Like that cute couple across the aisle from her.
Yes, they looked promising. He was handsome, in a stiff, prosperous looking way. She looked sweet. Edie sketched her, smearing ink with her finger, trying to catch that glow, the shadows and curves, that unfocused, blurred look of shifting possibilities…oh, God.
Pregnant. That girl was pregnant. Just a few weeks along. It was still secret. Her dinner partner didn’t know. She was planning on telling him. Tonight. Nervous about it. Smiling until her mouth ached from it, but her guy was not responding to her smile. He looked preoccupied.
Edie drew the stern line of his Roman nose, his sealed, thin-lipped mouth. His eyes, deep-set, sharp, pinched looking.
