Touching Evil

It was cold
.

She could feel the wind tugging at her hair, hear it whining around the eaves and rattling what sounded like a loose piece of tin somewhere. The cold, moistureladen air left her skin clammy and chilled her all the way to her bones.

She supposed she was in shock. It was an odd sensation, shock. A curious sort of limbo where nothing disturbed her very much.

So it must have been instinct rather than concern that prompted her to move, to pull herself forward despite the pain. The unevenness of the floor was both a help and a torture, providing fingerholds even as it cruelly scraped her skin and gouged her body.

She felt one of her fingernails tear painfully and was conscious of dirt and crusted blood underneath the
 
few
 
that
 
were
 
left
 
undamaged.
 
I'm probably
corrupting evidence or something. Probably really screwing things up.

But that didn't seem important either. She focused on what was. Just keep reaching out, one hand at a time. Hold on to something, no matter how much it hurts. Pull yourself forward, no matter how much it
hurts.

It became automatic, mechanical. Reach. Grab. Pull. Reach. Grab. Pull. There went another fingernail. Damn. Reach. Grab. Pull.

When her reaching fingers abruptly encountered thin air, it took her several minutes of fumbling exploration to realize she was at the top of the stairs. Stairs.

Just the thought of her aching body bumping down rough step after rough step made her shudder, and she heard a thin sound of dread hardly louder than a whimper escape her swollen lips. It was going to hurt like hell. It did.

Somewhere near the bottom, her strength gave out, and she slid over the last few steps in an agonizing rush that left her sprawled, limp and sobbing quietly, on the ancient tile floor that smelled of dirt and cooked cabbage and urine.

She might have slept a while, or maybe just lay unconscious, because her body refused to go on. But eventually the same instinct that had driven her this far insisted she begin moving again.
I have to. I have to. Yes. You have to.

That was peculiar, that other, alien voice in her head. She thought about it for a while, curling into a fetal position on her side even though the position
was more painful. It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
Broken rib, probably.

Three broken ribs. And a punctured lung. Listen to me, Hollis. You have to keep moving. Someone will be passing by in just a few minutes. If you aren't outside by then, you won't be found until tomorrow.

How strange. The voice knew her name.

Tomorrow will be too late, Hollis.

Yeah, she thought it probably would be too late.

Do you want to live?

Did she? She thought she did. Not that it would be the life she'd had before. In fact, it might not be much of a life at all. But . . . dammit . . . she wanted it. If only to live long enough for . . .

Vengeance?

Justice.

Hollis turned painfully back onto her belly and began the methodical effort of inching forward once again. She thought she was making progress, at least until she encountered a wall.

Damn.

Listening, she thought she could hear faint traffic sounds; that was her only clue to the whereabouts of a door that would allow her to escape the building. She began to feel her way along the wall toward the sounds.

It was getting colder. The wind that had whistled through the building during her entire agonizing journey downstairs was blowing in her face now. She guessed the building had long ago lost most of its windows and doors, so the wind found easy passage, stirring the dust and mold of many long years of neglect even as it cut into her shivering body.

Just a little farther now, Hollis.

She wondered why the voice didn't just call 911 but thought that was probably too much to ask of a figment of her imagination.

There's the doorway. Feel it?

She felt the threshold under her sore fingers, ancient weather stripping or something that was mostly rust. Beyond it was the broken concrete of a stoop or walkway. Hollis prayed there weren't any more steps.

Grimly, she pulled herself across the threshold and out of the building, shivering as the full force of the cold wind out there cut into her. There was one painful step down, then a walkway that seemed to be more rocks and gravel than concrete. It hurt like hell to pull herself across that jagged surface; the only saving grace was that it continued to guide her toward the street.

She hoped.

Not long now, Hollis. You're almost there.

Almost where? she wondered. Out in the street so a car could run over her?

He's near. He'll see you any minute now.

Before Hollis could wonder who was supposed to see her, she heard a male voice utter a shocked exclamation, then hurried footsteps coming toward her.

"Please," Hollis heard herself say in an unfamiliar, thickened voice. "Please help . . ."

"It's all right." The man's voice, near now, sounded nearly as thickened as her own had been. And shocked and horrified and compassionate. He touched her shoulder gently with a warm hand, then said, "I don't want to move you until EMS gets here, but I'm going to cover you with my coat, okay?"

She
 
felt the
 
blessed warmth
 
and
 
murmured
 
a
thanks, allowing her weary head to fall so that it rested on her forearm. She was very tired. Very tired.

Sleep now, Hollis.

She thought that was a good idea.

Sam Lewis checked her pulse just to make sure, then took a couple of steps away from her and spoke urgently into his cell phone. "For God's sake,
hurry!
She's—she's in bad shape. She's lost a lot of blood." His gaze followed the startlingly bright smeared trail of blood that marked her progress across broken concrete all the way back to the gaping doorway of the long-abandoned old house.

He tried to listen to the professionally detached voice in his ear, but finally cut off the 911 operator's questions by saying sharply, "I don't know what happened to her, but she's bruised and cut up and bleeding—and naked. Maybe she was raped, I don't know, but—but something else happened to her. She's . . . Her eyes are gone. No, dammit, not
injured.
Gone. Somebody's cut her eyes out."

CHAPTER ONE

THURSDAY,
  
NOVEMBER
 
1,
  
2001

She's not going to like this." Andy Brenner's voice
was more unhappy than worried.

John Garrett stepped past him into the small, bare room. "I'll take the flak," he said, his gaze already fixed on the large two-way mirror that dominated the far wall and offered them a secret view into another small room.

This mostly bare room contained a scarred wooden table and several chairs. Three women sat at the table, the two facing the mirror sitting close together in a posture that suggested they were clinging to each other even though they weren't touching. The younger of the two wore very dark, heavy-rimmed sunglasses and sat rigidly in her chair, while the older woman watched her worriedly.

Sitting at right angles to them at the table, her back to the mirror, was the third woman, her face hidden
from the watching men. It was impossible to guess her shape, since she wore a bulky flannel shirt and faded jeans, but a rather wild cloud of long, dark red hair made her appear slight.

Andy sighed. "It's not flak I'm worried about. The chief likes to pretend Maggie works for us on our terms, but the rank and file know better; what Maggie wants, Maggie gets—and she wants total privacy when she's interviewing a victim."

"She'll never know we're here."

"I keep trying to tell you, John—she'll know."

"How? I push this button, and we can hear what's going on in the room but they won't hear us, right? We see in, they don't see out. So how will she know we're here?"

"Beats the hell out of me, but she will." Andy watched the other man move closer to the window and stifled another sigh. Anybody else and he would have stuck to his guns, but John Garrett was a hard man to say no to. Andy tried to think of an argument he hadn't used yet, but before he could come up with anything, John pushed the right button, and a quiet, curiously pleasing voice reached them clearly and without any of the tinny, hollow characteristics that were usual with an intercom.

"... how difficult this is for you, Ellen. If I could, I'd far rather wait and give you more time to—"

"Heal?" The woman wearing the sunglasses laughed, a brittle sound holding no amusement. "My husband is sleeping in the guest room, Miss Barnes. My little boy is afraid of me. I can't find my way through my own house without knocking over furniture and bumping into walls, and my sister has to cook for my family and help me dress every morning."

"Ellen, you know I'm happy to help," her sister protested, her soft voice half pleading and half weary. "And Owen wouldn't be sleeping in the guest room if it wasn't what you wanted, you know that."

"I know he can't bear to touch me, Lindsay." Ellen's voice was tight, a bare note away from shrill. Her hands were clasped together on the table, and her long, pale fingers writhed. "And I don't blame him for that. I can't blame him. Why would he want to touch me after—"

Maggie Barnes reached across the table and covered Ellen's hands with one of her own. "Listen to me, Ellen." Her voice remained quiet, but there was a new note in it now, an oddly soothing, almost hypnotic rhythm. "What that animal did to you can never be undone, but you can't allow it to destroy you. Do you hear me? Don't give him that power over you. Don't allow him to win."

Listening, John unconsciously tilted his head to one side, trying to focus on the strangely compelling undercurrent he heard in her voice. It was almost... it was as if he knew that sound, as if it was something he only half remembered, like a song from his childhood or the last faint notes of music from a dream chased away by morning. Haunting.

Ellen didn't attempt to free her hands, and her rigid posture seemed to ease a bit, just a bit. "I don't want to remember," she said, low, almost whispering. "Don't ask me to remember."

"I have to." The regret in Maggie's voice was achingly genuine. "I need your memories, need every scrap of information you can give me. I need you to remember everything you can, Ellen. Every sound, every scent, every touch."

Ellen's shudder was visible. "He touched ... I can't bear to think about how he touched me. Please don't make me . . ."

"Don't make her." Lindsay's face twisted, and she put a hesitant hand on her sister's arm.

"I don't have a choice," Maggie said. "The police can't catch this animal without some idea who he is, what he looks like. We can't even warn other women to watch out for him. Ellen, some detail you remember may help me put a face on him. I—"