The gunshot cracked, sharp and final, but the echo went on forever.
Sobs followed. Small and broken.
Wait…
They weren’t hers.
The concrete burned colder. The air thinned. Laughter surrounded her, as did the sense of pure evil. But she wasn’t alone in this body. She was trapped inside someone else’s terror.
Erica jerked upright in bed, a scream tearing out of her before she could stop it.
For a moment, she didn’t recognize the room. The dark felt too open, too quiet, distinctly wrong. The smell was still in her nose. Her hands still registered the hard, cold floor. She pressed her palms into the mattress, needing the give, the warmth, the softness that had no place in the world she’d just come from.
The sheets were twisted beneath her, damp with sweat. Real. Hers.
Her cheek throbbed. She lifted trembling fingers to it, ready for heat, swelling, something to confirm what she’d felt. There was nothing. No welt. No blood. Only the lingering sting.
Her throat was scratchy and raw when she swallowed. Her pulse hammered in her ears, chasing the echo of the gunshot.
“Coop,” she whispered. She had to tell him. Had to get help for Cheyenne before time ran out.
The clock on her nightstand glowed 2:57 a.m.
She threw the covers off and reached for her phone. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking, but she managed to pull up his number.
It rang too long. Enough for doubt to creep in. Enough for her to almost hang up.
A click. The rustle of sheets. Then his voice came, thick with sleep and edged with irritation. “Cooper. This better be important.”
She closed her eyes briefly, steadying herself.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” she said, breath still uneven. “I wouldn’t call at this hour if it wasn’t important.”
“Erica?” A beat of silence followed. “It’s three in the morning.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
Her voice wavered, despite her effort to control it. “She was in my dreams again,” she whispered. “Cheyenne.”
She could hear the shift in his breathing. He was awake now.
“Start from the beginning.”
“She’s in a warehouse.” Erica pressed her fingers to her temple, trying to hold the vision steady. “I heard a forklift running somewhere and smelled diesel. There were shipping crates everywhere.”
“Was anyone with her? Did you see anything you could identify?”
“There was a van covered in dust,” she paused, remembering the bread she smelled. “Grain dust, maybe. That would explain the sneezing. The name on the side wasLone Star—something. She could only see part of it.”
She heard rustling on his end and pictured him sitting up at the side of his bed. His fingers furrowing in his hair as he brushed it back, both tired and frustrated.
“Unfortunately,Lone Staris slapped on half the businesses in this state.” It wasn’t unkind, simply Coop being Coop, stripping it down to what was useful. “What else can you give me?”
She closed her eyes, bringing up the image. “The logo. With only half, I could still tell it was a Texas star with a field of wheat at the bottom.”
Reaching in, past the sounds and the smells, and Cheyenne’s rising sense of hopelessness, she looked for something she might have missed.
