She considered doing that. She desperately wanted the lights to come back on. But after what had happened in this very house last winter, she was too scared to abandon the meager safety of remaining behind locked doors. Although she’d been pretending the incident with Bishop hadn’t affected her, it had set her back, made it more difficult to cope with all the fear she carried around. Ever since that attack, she couldn’t abide total darkness, just as she hadn’t been able to abide it for three or four years after that first incident with Jasper. As much as Amarok had helped her heal sexually, the recent trauma with Lyman Bishop had sent her reeling in other ways; it made her jump at every shadow, fear every noise, constantly glance over her shoulder. There were even times she felt as though she was being watched when she knew it couldn’t be true.
Go turn on the generator. Getting the light to come back on in the hallway would be worth suiting up for the weather. But she couldn’t make herself crawl out from under the covers, not even to go into the living room to put more wood on the fire. She felt paralyzed beneath the thick, heavy blankets, could hear her heart thumping in her ears as her imagination began to kick into overdrive—showing her a face at the window or making her hear the creak of footsteps in the hall.
Why are you allowing this? She’d been doing so well! She’d thought she could cope with everything she’d been through, had been coping. But she hadn’t faced a night like this. Thinking about the woman who’d gone missing made her remember what it had been like when she’d gone missing herself—for three days.
Stop! If she didn’t get hold of herself, she’d fall into a full-blown panic attack. She was cold and clammy and beginning to tremble. And the fear, rising to ever greater heights inside her, seemed to be squeezing off her windpipe. With Amarok gone, she didn’t possess her usual coping skills.
She closed her eyes, opened them and closed them again. Total blackness either way. Just like the night Jasper had tied a bandana around her head so she couldn’t see what he was going to do to her next. He liked how that frightened her, relished making her quake and beg as he led her to believe this was the moment he was going to kill her.
What he’d done instead had been demeaning, revolting, excruciating. Mercifully, her brain had blocked out the worst of it.
But certain sights, smells or sounds could trigger an emotional memory even if her brain refused to fill in all the blanks. In those moments, she felt sick.
“I won’t let you win. You will not beat me,” she told him through gritted teeth. She couldn’t allow him to imprison her mind as he’d once imprisoned her body. Being Evelyn Talbot meant breaking out of that shack again and again and again—almost every day—but she had to do it, had no other choice.
Curling into a tight ball, she struggled to dig deep, find calm. She hadn’t had an episode quite this bad in years, which only went to prove she probably needed counseling again. Recently, she’d been able to sense that she was slipping into the anxiety and fear that always hung on the fringes of her psyche. Her parents had warned her this would happen if she continued to study violent behavior and the men responsible for it, especially in such an up close and personal way. But because of Amarok and the happiness he brought her, she’d been able to move forward, hold herself together. The long days of spring and summer, which were filled with beauty and sunshine here in Alaska, had helped, too—helped her ignore and even cloak the damage Bishop had caused.
But now summer was gone and so was Amarok, and she was alone in the cold darkness, without phone service and power in a place that felt vast and lonely. And she couldn’t go to counseling, couldn’t seek that kind of help. If her boss at the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the other mental health professionals on her team learned she was struggling, they could lose confidence in her. Perception was everything; she couldn’t undermine her own credibility, or she could be stripped of everything she’d worked so hard to create. Then how would she solve the mysteries of the psychopathic mind and arm would-be victims with knowledge and power?
“Hang on. Amarok will be home. He’ll be here soon. Just wait for Amarok.”
As she struggled to regulate her breathing, various sensory impressions assailed her like arrows. The grittiness of the dirt floor in the shack where Jasper had kept her. The acrid scent of the fire Jasper had set after he’d slit her throat and left her for dead. The confusion and pain as she’d dragged her broken body through the woods. The blaring of the car horn when she’d finally stumbled into the road and was nearly hit by the man who’d eventually stopped to help her. The pavement scraping her heels as a masked man dragged her from her vehicle only two years ago. And Lyman Bishop’s high, almost effeminate voice as he told her she’d asked for what he was about to do when he stood over her outside the front door of this very house.
Tears were streaming down her face when she heard the noise outside her bedroom window. That wasn’t just the storm. She heard purposeful movement.
Makita agreed. Although Amarok’s dog had followed her when she went to bed—he typically slept at their feet—he jumped up, raced to the front door and began to bark like crazy.
Someone was out there.
Who?
The face of Jasper and the many other psychopaths she’d dealt with over the years passed before her mind’s eye. She was about to scream when the hum of the generator rose above the wind and the lights snapped on.
Amarok. He was home. He had to be home. Who else would take the time to turn on the generator? Or even know it was there?
Gasping for breath, she quickly wiped her face, sat up and hugged her knees to her chest as she waited.
Sure enough, she heard the front door open and Amarok’s voice as he quieted his dog.
He was home. He was safe. And so was she.
Falling back onto the pillows, she tried to gather her composure before he could realize how badly off she’d been, how close she’d come to really freaking out.
Fortunately, he was so preoccupied or tired he didn’t seem to notice she was awake when he came in and quietly pulled off his boots.
She waited until he was completely undressed and crawling under the covers to speak to him. By then, she could talk without a wobble in her voice. “Did you find her?”
“No.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know. But let’s not talk about that right now. Go back to sleep. We’ll discuss it in the morning.”
She didn’t tell him she hadn’t slept a wink so far. “But you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He was concerned about the situation. She could tell. And he’d be concerned about her, too, if he knew she’d fallen into such a distressed state.
Which was why she wasn’t going to tell him.
“But … what do you think happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, “but I’m not going to jump to any conclusions.” He pulled her into his arms. “Come here. I need to feel you against me,” he said, and she was only too happy to oblige.
The warmth of his body, the solid muscles that moved beneath his smooth skin as he anchored her back to his chest with one arm, quieted her mind and slowed her pulse. Sex was the last thing she should be thinking about. After the night he’d had she couldn’t imagine he’d be interested, but she hoped he was, because she needed to feel him inside her.
She turned to kiss him, to test his response, and felt his hand slide into her hair as his tongue met hers. Maybe he needed to blot out the negative emotions he’d experienced, too—reassure himself of the love she offered—because he rolled her onto her back almost as soon as she reached down to make sure he had an erection.
*
It was quiet when Jasper woke up several hours later. He wasn’t sure what had disturbed him. The wind seemed to have died down, so it was quieter than before. But then he heard voices, raised in alarm, right outside his room.
“Leland, no! You can’t go back up there.”
“I have to! I should never have let him talk me into leaving. Sierra’s there somewhere. She could need me!”
For a moment Jasper thought he had to be dreaming. He’d never met anyone called Leland. The only place he’d ever heard that name was on the lips of the woman he’d strangled earlier, at the cabin.
But, surely, this wasn’t the man she’d been crying for—was it?