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Then blinked.
There was no body, there was no blood. No blood on the walls, no blood on her blankets and sheets as she remembered. Her sheets were wrinkled and tangled, the comforter trailing to the floor.
A whimper left her lips at the pain throbbing in her temples and echoing through her muscles. She hurt so bad. Every bone and muscle in her body screamed in protest as she slid her legs slowly over the bed and forced herself to stand, to check the rest of her suite.
Stumbling, holding on to the furniture to brace herself against the weakness that made her legs feel like jelly, Zoey forced herself to the bathroom. In that far-too-realistic dream she’d thrown up, more than once. If she had, there would be something in the bathroom. Some proof of it, surely.
But there was none.
It was as spotless as it had been the night before. There was nothing out of place; nothing had been moved. The shower door was open as she always left it, her used towel folded in half and hanging on the glass door.
Backing out of the smaller room, her steps halting, tentative, she pushed through the door to the sitting room.
It was similarly neat. Her sketch pad lay where she had placed it the night before, the canvas she was working on carefully covered and sitting on the easel. The plastic wrapper that covered a new paintbrush still lay under the coffee table where she’d forgotten to pick it up. It hadn’t been moved.
Forcing her steps backward again
, Zoey returned to her bedroom and stood in the middle of it, shaking at the knowledge that whatever had happened . . . hadn’t happened?
Fisting her fingers, she fought back the tears that would have fallen and looked down at her sore wrists. They were unmarred, no bruising, no scratches.
Covering her lips with one hand, Zoey bit back the scream tightening her throat. A whimper escaped, though. Low, drawn out, the sound was filled with fear.
Just a nightmare?
Zoey shook her head.
“It wasn’t just a nightmare,” she whispered, to assure herself she could speak. Because in those nightmarish memories, or dreams, she’d been unable to scream.
Something had happened, she just didn’t know what. Or why.
But she knew to the depths of her soul, something bad had happened.
ONE
One year later
Music pulsed in a hard, throbbing beat, filling the exercise room on the ground floor of the small converted warehouse Zoey rented. The ground floor hid a twelve-foot-deep garage at the back that ran the width of the warehouse. A storage area hid the back garage, and then the gym was in front of it with its wall of mirrors, exercise machines, punching bag, and huge matted area she used for sparring with Eli, practicing the martial arts moves he was teaching her, or dancing to the oldies to tighten whatever.
She didn’t get to dance to the oldies much, but the sparring and martial arts practice she managed to get in pretty often.
In front of the gym was the front garage, an area large enough for four full-sized vehicles, though only one was kept there. Her bicycle, moped, and small work area were walled off. The rest of the lower floor, about the full length of the other half of the building, sat empty and closed off from the areas in use. Zoey was still considering the best way to utilize it if the owner ever decided to sell the building to her.
The second-floor apartment with its huge living area, master bedroom, and three guest rooms, all with their private baths, boasted floor-to-ceiling windows spaced perfectly along the walls to let in maximum sunlight. When combined with the unique custom-made clear acrylic skylights set abundantly in the roof, it was like being outside.
Or, with the press of an icon on the computer-controlled program, she could darken every window, or just one. It was the windows and skylights she loved. She could open a whole wall in the room she used for her canvases, and the ceiling as well, and flood it with heat and light. She loved the feeling of painting outdoors while protected by the fact that she was actually indoors.
She wasn’t painting now, though. She hadn’t painted much, period in the past year. She’d been too busy dealing with damned nightmares and fantasies and getting them all mixed up in her head to the point that she felt tortured by both. The best Zoey had managed were several dozen dark, blood-soaked nightmares cloaked as fantasy images of death and betrayal.
They were selling, though. They were selling too well, considering they were born from the terrifying images that stole her voice and her strength in her nightmares.
Slamming her fist into the punching bag, she danced around with slow, rhythmic steps, ignoring the fact that she could no longer feel the jolting pain in her muscles and joints that she felt when she first began. She wasn’t as weak or as vulnerable as she had been a year ago. She still had a long way to go, but she was learning.
She had learned to shoot and managed to purchase two Baby Glocks of her own. She was still learning to throw knives, but the expert at that was her cousin Natches’s wife, Chaya. And Natches was so damned suspicious of everything that she rarely had a chance to convince her cousin-in-law to teach her more.
Thankfully, Chaya and Natches’s daughter was becoming very interested in it, and Natches’s objections had been swiftly vetoed by his wife. So hopefully, soon, there would be regular lessons.
She was learning martial arts, learning how to fight, and toning her muscles to enable her to protect herself in most situations.
