She said the words. And then again louder. Her mother looked at her, nodded, patted her on the head and continued on her way, leaving Jan standing alone in the street, sobbing. Sobbing. So hard…
Desperate crying woke her. Sitting up in bed Jan brushed damp tendrils of hair back from her face and forehead with both hands, holding her head between them.
Oh, God. Would these dreams never end? Almost thirty years she’d been having the nightmares. The situations varied, but the feelings never changed. Devastation. Unanswered cries for help. Loneliness. What did it mean? Why was she tortured like this?
With her head resting against her knees, Jan hugged her legs. She hated the nightmares, the subconscious she couldn’t control, but she didn’t hate herself. She tried hard every day. She did her best.
Slowly, thoughts of the preceding day penetrated her consciousness. The newspaper article describing Hall’s arrest. Her visit to the jail. Lunch with a law-school classmate. A spat between the office manager at the county attorney’s office and a prosecutor who didn’t understand job jurisdiction. Simon. The quick Friday-night phone call to Hailey, confirming their outing the following morning. Nothing uncommon. A good day.
Jan glanced at the clock. 3:00 a.m. She considered lying down again, trying to get some sleep. And shivered as all the horror of her nightmare resurfaced. She couldn’t chance going back there. Not tonight.
Getting up, Jan pulled her hair over one shoulder, giving the sweaty back of her cotton pajamas a chance to dry out as she walked over to the window to peer into the night. At the side of her house, more long than square, the bedroom window allowed only a partial view of the street. Not that she was missing much. Dark houses. Stillness. A couple of dim streetlights that cast more shadow than illumination. But the view straight ahead was a different matter. Light was streaming from Simon Green’s bedroom window, which was opposite hers. She couldn’t see through the pulled curtains—not that she wanted to.
But there was a strange kind of comfort in knowing she wasn’t the only human being awake on the block.
Did he suffer from nightmares, too? Somehow, she doubted it. Smiling tentatively, Jan left her bedroom and went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Simon’s mind probably entertained him with stand-up routines all night. Or maybe he was working late. She’d heard that writers did that. And why not? That freed up his days to do whatever he pleased.
Jan was coming out of the shower several hours later when she heard the front bell ring. Wringing out her hair, she wrapped it in the only towel that would hold it all, an extra-large bath sheet she’d bought for just that purpose, pulled on her violet robe and went to peek out the front window.
A motorcycle was parked in the gravel beneath the low-hanging branches of the aspen tree. She didn’t recognize it. Hesitated, as she stared at it. But really, anyone who meant her harm wouldn’t park out front—especially in the broad light of day.
Reminding herself of the fine line between caution and paranoia, she went to the door and opened it a crack, intending to ask her visitor to wait while she got dressed, then she threw it wide instead.
“Johnny!” She reached up to give her younger brother a hug. “I didn’t know you were back.”
A sales rep for a major publisher of nonfiction and self-help books, Johnny was on the road a lot. And too busy to see her, most of the time, when he was in town.
He shrugged, his off-white shirt opening at the collar, revealing what looked like the edge of a tattoo just beneath his collarbone. “I just got in last night,” he said.
He had a tattoo. Everyone was getting them these days—she knew that. But Johnny? Jan wanted to ask him about it, wanted him to tell her that the mark was only henna.
She invited him in instead. Offered to make some coffee.
“I can’t stay.” Johnny held his shiny black-and-white helmet between his hands as he stepped through the door. “I’m back on the road on Monday and I have a load of things to do before then. I just wanted to talk to you for a second.” He glanced down, almost sheepishly, his longish dark hair falling over his forehead. Jan’s heart melted, as it always did when her brother needed something.
“What’s up?” Johnny’s visits and his requests were few. She’d do anything she could for him.
“I was kind of wired when I got in last night,” he said, and she wondered if he was still in the apartment by the university, where he’d lived the previous summer. Last she’d heard from their mother, he’d been planning to move to a new place out by the Woodlands. “I looked through the week’s papers, catching up, and noticed the article about you and that Hall dude.”
Jan warmed beneath his concerned stare and nodded.
“He sounds dangerous, sis.” Sis. He hardly called her that anymore.
“Which is why he’s safely in custody.”
“I don’t know.” He bowed his head again and then glanced back at her, his dark eyes serious. “I don’t like the idea of you out there digging up stuff on him. He might be locked up, but what if he does have people—and money—on the outside?”
Fear shot through her chest. Jan took a deep breath, quelled the emotion—left over from her bad night, she told herself—and smiled. “I’ve been at this job a long time, little brother,” she reminded him. “And I’m still here.”
“So why chance it? Drop the case, sis. Give it to someone else.”
“I can’t,” she told him, torn between exasperation that the one time he came to see her it was to ask her to do something she couldn’t possibly do and happiness that he still cared. “I’ve been following this guy for years. The history’s convoluted, complicated, and I’m the only one who knows it all. If I don’t argue this, he’s going to get off again, and we’re not safe with him out there.”
Johnny frowned, dropping his arm, his helmet resting against the side of his black jeans. “It says he’s in for identity theft. That’s not a matter of life and death for the citizens of Flagstaff.”
No, but the longtime white supremacist was guilty of more than fraud. She was sure of it. She decided now was not the time, however, to let her worried little brother in on that fact.
“It’s my job, Johnny,” she said instead. “The police arrest them, and we prosecute them. Someone has to, or the entire judicial system goes down the tubes and chaos reigns.”
“Just this once, sis. Can’t you let go of the responsibility just this once? Lighten up. Take a vacation. I’ll spring for it. Hell,” he said, grinning, rubbing his knuckles against the side of her cheek, “I’ll even go with you, if that’ll get you out of town.”
Tears welled at the back of her eyes. They’d been so close when they were younger. He’d been her best friend, in spite of the four-year difference in their ages. How many nights had he come to her room when he’d heard her cry out from a nightmare? How many nights had he sat there with her, telling her stupid jokes, making her smile, until he’d fallen asleep at the end of her bed and she’d covered him with her comforter and fallen back to sleep herself?
“Now, that’s tempting, Johnny,” she said softly, even knowing that she couldn’t run out on her job—not on this case. There was too much at stake. “Where would we go?”
It didn’t hurt to fantasize for a moment.
“Anywhere you want,” he surprised her by saying. “You name the time, the place, and I’ll be there.”
“What about your job?”
“I have vacation coming.”
“Johnny…” She hated to disappoint him.
“Name the time and place, sis,” he