A shiver rips through me, and my eyes fly open. I stare up into my mother's concerned face. "There was a woman. Tall and thin and dressed all in red. And she had a mask."
"A carnival mask, yes," my mother says. "Like she was dressed for an old-fashioned masquerade."
I nod and lick my lips. "It was like...before." My mother must hear the shaking in my voice because she takes my hand and squeezes it tight as I look up at her. "It was her, wasn't it? The Woman? Was she the one who attacked me?"
Tears spill down my mother's cheeks, but she doesn't let go of my hand to wipe them away. "I don't know. Probably. Dallas thinks so. But there was a party that night. A masquerade at the natural history museum. It could have been a mugging. Or someone who doesn't like--"
"The fact that I'm sleeping with my brother?"
She winces. Just barely. And then she nods.
"Do you believe that?"
"I don't know, sweetie. I don't know what to think. Do you remember anything? Anything that might help us find whoever did this to you?"
I try to think, to pull some sort of key fact from my foggy memory, but there's nothing much there. "I know she had a Taser. I was walking, and I heard footsteps. Then when I turned around, it got me. Knocked me to the ground."
"Anything else?"
I nod, the movement making my head throb. "She had a stick--a club, I guess. The kind that extends. And she...she..."
I can't say it, but my hand goes to my face, and my mother gasps a little bit.
"Baby, oh, sweetheart."
My cheeks are wet, and I realize that I'm crying. "That's it," I say. "That's all I remember. The next thing I know, I was here." I swallow. "Do you know what happened to me?"
"Some. Dallas called us, of course. It's--it's horrible." She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, as if whatever she is thinking is just too much.
"Mom?"
"They sent a picture of you to Dallas. On the sidewalk, I mean, and--oh, oh god."
"A picture?" I hear myself say the word, but I can't wrap my mind around what she means.
"A text message. From your phone. And he tracked your phone and went to you, but you weren't there." She sniffles and reaches for a tissue. "I just--if something worse had happened to you..."
I reach out my hand for her. "I'm okay, Mom. I'm going to be fine."
She squeezes my fingers and nods, visibly gathering herself. "Somehow you ended up here and they admitted you as a Jane Doe. Dallas had Liam and Quince helping from the moment he knew you'd been attacked, and when they found you'd been admitted, he rushed here and called me and Daddy on the way."
I nod. I know that Dallas would have told our parents I'd been attacked, but he wouldn't have told them about Deliverance. But they know that Liam is in security and Dallas's old boarding school roommate Quince is part of MI6, so my mom wouldn't find their help odd.
"Dallas." His name is soft on my lips, full of longing. I know he is just beyond those doors, so close I could walk to him, and yet at the same time he seems farther from me than he has ever been.
I still don't understand why I'm feeling that distance. I only know that it's there, hidden in my still-shadowed memory.
And then the door opens, and I watch as he enters, his long, purposeful strides underscoring the urgency of his movements. He is as tall and gorgeous as always, but today his caramel colored hair is wild and unkempt, as if he's spent hours unconsciously worrying it with his fingers. The angles of his sculpted face are more pronounced, the lines drawn from exhaustion, and it's clear he hasn't slept.
Remnants of fear cling to him like palpable things, but there is joy, too. And when he whispers my name, it's like a lifeline pulling us back together, making me whole. Making us whole.
I watch as a tentative smile touches his lips, as relief fills those vibrant green eyes. I could drown in the depths of emotion I see there, and I hold out a hand, needing to touch him. Needing to know that he's real.
He hurries to me, his throat moving as he swallows, and a tear snakes its way down his cheek as he clasps my hand in his.
It is as if his touch is an elixir, a magic potion that opens the doors of my memory, and I flinch. My heart pounds painfully in my chest, and I yank my hand free as memory floods through me, overwhelming me.
He opens his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it. "Colin."