“Never mind, I really don’t give a shit,” he said, waving off my failed attempt at an excuse. “While you were off gallivanting around, Reed made contact.”
Dread washed over me as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over my head, and my hearing went fuzzy as I swayed on my feet. The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention again, and I wondered if Samson had seen Holbrook and me pawing at each other like horny teenagers in the bathroom. The thought made me want to puke.
“W-what happened?” I asked, swallowing the fear rising in the back of my throat.
“I came back from getting coffee and found evidence that Reed had been in my room,” Holbrook said, the stiffness in his posture and the clipped edge to his voice making me wary.
“What evidence?”
“We believe it’s an animal carcass.”
“Believe it’s…you mean you don’t know? How can you not know?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch as hysteria crept in around the edges of my frayed nerves.
“It’s not fully intact,” he hedged.
“Meaning?” I pushed, an unsettling idea niggling at the back of my mind, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Holbrook sighed, obviously frustrated at my inability to leave the subject alone and just accept their terse explanation.
“It looks like the partial remains of a deer,” he answered, confirming my suspicions.
My hand hovered in front of my mouth, my breath whistling in my ears as the room blurred again and a buzzing noise in my ears threatened to drown out all other sound.
“It’s mine,” I said, crackles of static hovering at the edges of my vision.
“What?” the agents chimed in unison, directing matching looks of confusion and disgust at me.
“The deer. It’s my kill. He was…oh god, he was there, watching me in the woods. He watched me hunt and feed. Watched me…Jesus. He watched me sleep,” I said, my voice quavering as I fought off the feeling of dizziness that signaled I was close to fainting. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” I whispered, swallowing the flood of saliva in my mouth.
Reaching a hand out to the edge of the dresser to steady myself, I hung my head, closing my eyes as I took several slow breaths. Somehow I managed to keep the contents of my stomach from spilling on the floor through sheer force of will alone, but it was a damned close call.
“We think he got your rooms mixed up and left it in Agent Holbrook’s room instead of yours by mistake,” Johnson was saying, his voice sounding like it was coming from somewhere far away. I nodded numbly in agreement, but I was pretty sure it was meant to be a warning to Holbrook as much as me.
Samson didn’t make mistakes.
“It’ll be okay, Riley. We’ll catch him,” Holbrook tried to reassure me as if he sensed that I was close to passing out or running away again.
“For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together, woman,” Johnson said, evidently at the end of his patience.
“Fine…I’m fine,” I forced myself to say, hoping that if I could convince the agents maybe I’d be able to convince myself too. Swallowing hard, I pushed my hair back from my face and straightened. My knees were like Jell-O, but I was sure that I could at least make it a few more minutes without puking or fainting like a scared little girl. “Just give me a minute, okay?”
“We are not your servants, Ms. Cray. You are on our clock, and if you want to have any chance of surviving this shit storm, you need to pull your shit together,” Johnson said, his anger flaring like a match put to kerosene.
The anger he directed at me, while understandable, triggered a similar response of my own. Fury warmed my belly and lent stiffness to my spine.
“What the hell is your problem?”
“You’re my problem,” he said, stepping close enough for me to see each pore on his nose.
I was always a pretty private person. Even before Samson’s attack I had preferred my own company to that of others, and afterwards I had just retreated further into my little world. I wasn’t fond of unfamiliar people, and I sure as hell didn’t like people getting in my face.
“Hey, I’m not the one who called in the fucking circus!”
Stepping back to a more comfortable distance, I waved a hand at the horde of reporters on the other side of the door. Their demands for an interview had been a constant hum in the background, but now as I focused on them for a second, I was able to pick out individual voices clamoring for attention. Gritting my teeth, I blocked out the noise, and turned my attention back to the agent glaring daggers at me. From the all-too-male gleam in his eye, I knew I was giving him quite the view as my wild gestures flapped the tails of Holbrook’s shirt around my bare thighs, but I just didn’t have the energy to care.
At that moment the door swung open, a gust of cold wind billowing into the room, lifting the front of my shirt to flash my now not-so-private parts to the multitude of cameras. Squinting at the flood of lights I was just able to make out the shape of Chrismer through the white spots dancing across my vision.