The Seventh Victim (Texas Rangers 1)

They spent the next twenty minutes talking. He tried every angle he could consider, hoping for a new scrap of information, but nothing new surfaced.

Finally when the doctor brought her out of her trance, her gaze fluttered open, and she looked at him. “Did anything new come up?”

“Some memories. None that seemed to relate to the case.”

“I’m sorry. I want to help.”

“You gave it your best.”

She sighed. ?

?I can try again.”

Dr. Granger nodded. “I can see you tomorrow or Thursday.”

“Thursday would be best.” She rose and moved to leave.

“We’ll work out the details.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Beck said.

She stiffened slightly, glanced toward Santos, who had risen and now stood stone-faced. “That’s not necessary.”

“Exercise will do me good.” He came up beside her. “After you.”

They moved to the elevators and he punched the down button.

“I was hoping this time would be different.”

“We all were.”

The doors opened, and they stepped onto a crowded car of officers. Some glanced at her with curious interest; some checked her out. He hovered close, careful to put his body between her and the other men on the car. When they arrived at the first floor, he followed her past security to her truck. She unlocked it, but he opened the door for her.

“I’m sorry.” She tucked a loose stand of hair behind her ear.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Then why do I feel like such a failure?”

Tension dulled her eyes. “Carry no shame, Ms. Church. You never did anything wrong. Ever.”

“I should remember.”

He offered a smile that he hoped appeared warm. “Keep seeing the doc. It will jog loose.”

“I wish I could believe that.” She started the engine.

“Take care of yourself. Keep your eyes open.”

“I’ll be fine.”

It pained him to see her drive off. She wasn’t safe, but until they got a break in this case or she remembered, there wasn’t much he could do about that.

By ten in the evening Lara was exhausted. She’d been replaying the events of Seattle over and over in her head. She knew there were critical details buried deep, but they remained veiled in shadows.

She climbed into her bed and Lincoln hopped up and settled at the bottom near his blanket. He curled in a ball and released a sigh. She lay back against the pillows, watching the play of shadows on the ceiling.

Outside the wind blew. A familiar branch scraped against the window.

Since she was emotionally drained, it felt good to lie between the sheets and let her mind drift. She wanted to shut out the day and just escape.

He reached for the buttons of her silk blouse and slowly unfastened each. His hands trembled, his touch feather soft. “White will suit you better than black. White makes you look like a goddess.”

A cool breeze brushed her shoulders as he pushed the blouse from her shoulders. “So pretty,” he whispered. “So pretty.”

Her lids felt leaden, and as much as she wanted to open her eyes and look at him she couldn’t manage the task. Her darkness kept tugging at her, beckoning her deeper into unconsciousness. She imagined she was at the bottom of a deep pool glancing up through the water. A man stood above her, his image obscured by the ripples and distortion of the pool’s water.

When a smooth hand cupped her naked breast she moaned, not from pleasure but the horror of knowing what was happening.

“You like that, don’t you?” he said. “I knew you would. I knew you would.”

He pinched her nipple hard and the pain reached into the darkness and pulled her closer to the surface. His fuzzy, wavy features came closer to focus and for an instant she thought the image would clear, but it didn’t.

His hand slid from her breast over her flat belly and then below the waistband of her panties. “I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time, Lara. After tonight you will be a part of me forever.”

She felt the weight of his naked body and erection pressing against her body. As much as she wanted to claw and scratch and scream for him to get off of her, her limbs would not move. Her voice was silent.

Her alarm blared, shattering the image and jerking her up in her bed. She shoved trembling hands through her hair and wildly searched the room for signs of an intruder. Lincoln remained at the base of her bed, one eye open as he stared sleepily at her.

Her heart racing, she smacked her hand on the alarm and shut it off. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed she let the coolness from the wood floor rise up through her body and clear her mind. She glanced at the clock. Four AM.

“No one was here. It was a dream. Just a dream.”

It was a dream she’d never had before. Never. And it left her with a tangible sense of filth and violation.

Lara pushed the sheets off and hurried to the bathroom. She turned on the water and pulled off the oversized T-shirt that doubled as a nightgown. She took a long hot shower, hoping the hot water and soap would wash away the lingering fears, but she couldn’t shake the sense that the dream had been more than a dream.

Could it be a memory? Had today’s session wrestled free something deep from the shadows of her mind?

Lara closed her eyes leaning into the spray and suddenly a memory fluttered forward.

She lay on a gurney as the emergency room nurses assembled a rape kit. A female detective stood by Lara and spoke all the right words. It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve this. But the woman’s clipped tone made the words sound wooden, as if read from a script. And despite a nurse’s gentle coaxing, humiliation burned in Lara as she put her feet in stirrups.

And then the moment was gone.

Lara tipped her face up into the water, letting the heat and wet wash over her, hoping her subconscious might whisper its darkest secrets. But it remained silent.

No answers materialized. And her feelings of failure gained strength.

Lara shut off the hot water, toweled off, and within ten minutes had donned clean blue shorts, a simple colored shirt, and sandals. Her blond hair hung around her face, damp but already drying and curling at the edges.

In the kitchen she buttered bread. She glanced at the clock. Nearly 5 AM. Her afternoon class didn’t begin until four, but she’d never reach the spot she’d already visited three times before sunrise. There was always work to be done in the darkroom, but she didn’t want to be in the dark alone. She craved the sunshine and people.

After she ate, she grabbed her purse and called Lincoln. Though it was just around six thirty in the morning, she decided on a visit to Cassidy. She owed her cousin after yesterday’s unannounced Lincoln drop-off.

As she drove farther down the road, the window open and the morning breeze blowing, she saw the dream with a more analytical mind. Of course, the dream may have been her mind’s way of sorting the facts, as she knew them. She had been taken. Raped. Dressed in white. Strangled.

Yet as terrifying as the facts were, they’d never been as emotionally charged as the nightmare. She had the sense of a floodwall cracking and springing its first leak. The more she poked and prodded the dream, the more it receded.

The drive into Austin took thirty minutes. She parked behind Cassidy’s gallery, and she and Lincoln hopped out of the truck and entered through the unlocked back entrance. It was just past seven, but her cousin had been an early riser since her mother’s suicide. “Cassidy?”

“Lara?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you get in?”

“Back door.”

“It was locked.”

Cassidy rounded the corner, frowning. She wore a peasant skirt and blouse, a big chunky silver belt, and brown cowboy boots. Dark hair was swept up into a ponytail that was meant to look casual but had likely taken her an hour. “I thought I locked it last night.” She inspected the undamaged lock. “Shit. That’s not smart of me to leave it unlocked.”

“You’ve got to be careful.”

Cassidy nodded as she tossed one last look at the lock. “Yeah.” Sighing, she rubbed Lincoln on the head. “Hey, Cujo. Come to dump more dog hair in my apartment?”

Lara smiled. “He’s not staying.”

“The hound is growing on me. Reminds me somewhat of Rex.”

“Grandma’s dog?”

Cassidy’s expression softened. “Big old goofy hound.”

Lara smiled at the memory of Rex begging for scraps of table food. It had been impossible to deny him when he looked at her with such doleful eyes. “What happened to Rex?”

The nostalgia vanished. “He ran off right after you left to go back with your mom. I think we were about fourteen. I offered to go looking for him, but Grandma said no.”

Sadness tugged at her. She patted Lincoln on the head and smiled. “I remember asking about him when I called Grandma, but she’d always change the subject.”

Lincoln sat and then settled on the floor as if he now lived here.

Cassidy studied the dog, her expression not so stern. “He’s taking over.”

Lara laughed. “He does that.” The two walked toward the front of the gallery. “So you tell me you had some sales?”

Cassidy waggled her brows. “No, darling, we had four sales. Big sales. Come and see.”

Excitement bubbled inside Lara. It had been a long time since she’d felt the thrill of victory. The last time she’d felt this good she’d been in Seattle, and she’d been offered the buyer’s job. For a flash, worry tempered the excitement, and then she shrugged it off. She followed Cassidy to the front of the studio.

Each time she walked into the gallery and saw her photos on the walls, pride surged. Her life had been in shambles, but she’d rebuilt it.

“So which sold?”

Cassidy crooked her finger. “Come and see the blank space on the wall and the sold sign in place of your picture.” They moved through the gallery past the black-and-white images. The first blank space had belonged to the piece she’d taken in Maine. The waves crashed against the rocky shore, spraying water over the rocks in an almost joyful way. The beautiful rugged coast had been the scene of the double homicide, but to look at the print you’d never know violence had marked the land.

The next to sell was a scene in Virginia. The body of a young woman had been found along the banks of the Potomac River. Again, to the unknowing eye it was the image of the rising sun and sailboats on meandering waters.

“These were the two nice sales, but the big kahuna is the picture you took in Seattle.”

Lara didn’t need to see the picture to imagine it. She had been the victim of this crime. Police had found her along the twisty road that fed into the distant mountains.