Maybe it would have been easier if their brief fling had blown up in a huge, dramatic fight. At least there would have been passion, tears and the chance to get good and mad. But watching him walk away, knowing with every cell in her body that he felt the same connection between them that she did, had been a sort of quiet, relentless torture she hadn’t yet escaped.
She pushed back her desk chair and crossed to the filing cabinet on the pretense that there was something in the office she hadn’t filed in the week since she returned home. But the cabinet was immaculately organized, thanks to her desperate attempt to keep her mind off Riley for the past seven days.
Admitting defeat, she slammed the drawer shut and turned around to look at the empty office.
The phone rang, an unexpected reprieve. She hurried to answer it. “Cooper Cove Properties.”
“Hey, Skipper, it’s me.” It was her brother Aaron, using her much-hated childhood nickname because he liked to hear her growl. But this time, her heart wasn’t in it.
“Hey, what’s up besides the crime rate?”
“You’re funny,” he retorted. “It’s down, for your information.”
“In spite of you?” she teased, knowing how much he prided himself on his job as a Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Deputy.
“Because of me, naturally.” He took the teasing with good humor. He was the youngest, except for her, which had often made them natural allies over the years. “But that’s not why I called. Have you talked to Mom yet?”
From the excited tone in his voice, she guessed it wasn’t bad news. “No-what’s going on?”
“Sam’s moving back home.”
“Officially?” She grinned. “When?”
“He got the job he wanted in the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office.”
Some of her excitement faded. “But Birmingham’s an hour away. We won’t ever get to see Maddy.”
“The job is an hour away, but he’s going to commute. He’s already got his eye on a house on Mission Road in town. Nice place-I swung by to take a look for him. Nice big yard, easy drive to the lake. It’s perfect.”
“Tell him to take it!” The more brothers to distract her from her miserable life, the better.
“I plan to.” Aaron’s voice softened. “So, how are you really doing?”
The concern in his voice made tears prick her eyes. She blinked them back. “I’m good. The concussion was nearly two weeks ago.”
“I’m not talking about the concussion. It had to be unnerving to be on a serial killer’s hit list.”
“It was, but I’m home now, safe and sound, and if there’s any justice, the cops in Wyoming will have him behind bars any day now.”
“They haven’t got him yet.”
She frowned at the phone. “And you’d know that how?”
“I might have given the Teton County sheriff a call this morning,” he admitted.
She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t called Riley instead. “But they’re still on it, right?”
“Absolutely. And the sheriff thinks you should be perfectly safe now that you’re home.”
“Good to hear.” The office door opened and Mariah entered, waggling her fingers at Hannah. “Listen, Mariah just got here, and you need to get back to work. Great news about Sam. Now if we could just get Luke home, I’d have all my ducks in a row.”
She winced a little, mentally, at her choice of words. Riley had said something very like that to her, at a time that now felt like a lifetime ago. She ruthlessly shoved the memory out of her mind and rang off. “That was Aaron,” she told Mariah.
“He told you about your brother coming home, no?” Mariah laid her backpack on her desk and smiled at Hannah. “Jake told me the news. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“That’s right, you haven’t met him or Luke yet.” Mariah and Hannah’s brother Jake had met less than a year earlier, and eloped to Gatlinburg a couple of months after that. At the time, Hannah had secretly questioned whether a marriage based on two months’ acquaintance was a good idea, but after almost eight months, they seemed to be working out well.
And after Wyoming, she didn’t have much room to talk.
Mariah smiled at Hannah again, but as always, the smile didn’t quite overcome the sadness always present in her coffee-colored eyes. She’d been a widow with a small child when she met Hannah’s brother Jake, and it seemed even her obvious love for her new husband hadn’t quite erased that sense of loss. “It’s odd to have such a large family. Back in Texas, there were only my parents and me.”
“Having seven kids is pretty odd these days, no matter where you’re from.” Hannah grinned.
Mariah settled behind her desk and pushed papers around the blotter, no doubt looking for something constructive to do. Hannah was about to tell her to use her time doing homework or reading ahead for her next class when Mariah looked up shyly, a faint blush staining her olive skin.
“I’ve been thinking about something you told me. About the case in Wyoming.” Her lightly accented English had a musical quality that Hannah always found soothing. “You said you saw a psychiatrist in Wyoming-a hypnotherapist?”
“Right-when we tried to set the trap for the guy, the cover story was that I was seeing a hypnotherapist to recover missing memories.” Hannah smiled. “It reminded me of you and your hypnosis tricks.”
Mariah’s smile was tinged with thoughtfulness. “It is not so much a trick, actually. It is a way to let your mind relax and open. Perhaps you really should try it.”
The thought still gave her the willies. She took such pride in her self-control that losing it, even a little, was frightening. But courage was about doing the right thing, even in the face of fear, wasn’t it?
She didn’t want to think of herself as a coward.
“What do you need to do it?” she asked aloud. “Can we do it right here and now?”
Mariah’s eyebrows notched upwards, but she gave a quick nod. “I think I can find something-” She dug through her desk drawer until she emerged with a yellow pencil. “This will work. Come, let’s go to the conference room.”
Hannah followed Mariah to the small sitting room that served as the booking office’s conference room. Mariah motioned for her to sit in the cozy armchair, while she took a seat on the sofa across from her.
“The main thing I want you to do is breathe. In and out, slow and steady.” As she spoke, Mariah tapped the eraser end of the pencil rhythmically on the coffee table.
Dr. Pendleton had done something very similar when Hannah was talking to her in her office, she remembered. Had it been an attempt to ease Hannah’s obvious tension?
“Close your eyes, clear your mind and concentrate on breathing in tempo with my taps,” Mariah said.
Hannah did as Mariah asked, focusing on the slow, steady intake and exhale of air in rhythm with the tapping pencil. After a few moments, her limbs began to feel heavy.
“You are relaxed and open. You are aware of everything around you. There is nothing you have seen or heard that you cannot access. Do you believe me when I say that?”
She did, Hannah realized. “Yes.”
“Good. Because all we’re doing here is answering questions. Answer them as well as you can. No pressure at all. Now, I want you to remember the day you were attacked. Was it a sunny day?”
“Yes, but it was late afternoon. The sun was dropping behind the mountains and there were shadows all around me.” She saw the road spreading out in front of her, the endless wilderness on either side of the highway.
“When did you notice the car?”
“I checked my rearview mirror and there he was.”
“What did the car look like?”
“It was big. A sedan. I think it might have been dark blue. I really only noticed the blue light on the roof.”
“Did you see the man inside the car?”
“No. The windshield was darkened.” Had she told the police in Wyoming about the tinted windows? She felt herself begin to tense up.
“Breathe, Hannah. When we are done, you can ask yourself the questions that make you anxious, but for now, the anxiety is gone. Breathe it away.”
Hannah did as Mariah told her, and soon the tension passed.
