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CHAPTER ONE
Veronica fought desperately, determined not to give up. She wasn’t going to die here. Not like this. Not today.
It was hard to move, even a little bit. Whoever did this to her had made sure of that. It started with her hands, bound behind her back so tightly that she was losing feeling in her fingers. Her ankles, too, were bound, preventing her from doing much more than shuffle around on the tiny platform she had been placed on. The gag in her mouth prevented her from crying out, from calling for help. Even if she could, she doubted very much that anyone would be able to hear her.
She had no idea where she was. She had never been anywhere like this before. It looked like an abandoned warehouse, with a few broken windows letting in light that danced through the dust. That was the only thing that allowed her to see. Besides that, the room was dim, so dark that she couldn't see to the far sides. She was sure the person who had put her here was gone, but it was so dark there could be anything out there in the shadows. It had taken her eyes a long time to adjust to the darkness, to show her the immediate surroundings and the danger she was really in.
Not that she had been under any impression she was safe. The ropes and the gag, they would have been a dead giveaway. But even if they hadn't, the third rope, the one that was around her neck, would have given her the clue.
Her last memory was simply walking to her car at home before she'd woken up here hours ago and found herself hauled to her feet. Before she could even react, before she had enough awareness of what was going on to begin to struggle, the rope was around her neck, a noose tightened until it was resting against the place where her skull met her spine. She could still feel it now, brushing against her hair every single time she moved, making her terrified gasps for breath shorter and shorter.
She knew exactly how many hours it had been that she had stood here, trying to fight the ropes, trying desperately to figure out a way out of this. She knew exactly how long, because the ticking clock around her neck told her.
That was one of the first things she had made out, as her eyes adjusted. It had been terrifying, the feeling of something clunking against her chest, not knowing what it was. She thought it might be a bomb. But that would have been unnecessary because the noose was threat enough. Instead, there was only the clock.
It was digital, more of a timer than a traditional clock. When she had finally been able to read it, moving her head and tossing the clock against her own chest until it turned the right way, she saw that eleven hours and fifty minutes had passed. Out of a total of twelve, she supposed.
She had spent over eleven hours trying to free herself.
She was finding it hard to breathe now, not because the rope was getting tighter but simply because she was so afraid for her life. There was nothing around her but the small and fragile-seeming wooden platform on which she stood. It was flimsy enough to bounce slightly when she tried to move around, and more than once she had almost stepped off the edge with her shuffling feet only to scramble backwards in horror. She knew the rope was tight enough around her neck that she would not simply slip through if she fell.
She would hang.
She would die.
There were only ten minutes left. No one had spoken to her, no one had told her what would happen when the timer was over. But Veronica wasn't stupid. She could work this out herself. The platform, it was going to drop. She was sure of that. She had been sure of it since the moment she had turned around enough, taking tiny shuffling steps and trying not to strangle herself on the rope, to see that it was hinged at one end.
It was going to drop, and she couldn't get out of the ropes.
She breathed raggedly, through sobs, barely able to see anymore. She could not reach up to wipe the dust and tears and the sweat out of her eyes. She had tried for so long to get out of the ropes that it felt like her shoulder was dislocated, her arms strained, the skin on her wrists and thumbs and fingertips red raw. There was nothing around her she could use. No sharp hooks, no nails sticking out of the wood, not even a splinter. The rope was tight enough that she could not even walk all the way to the far edge of the platform, try to hook the rope around the hinge and use that somehow. Even if she could, she wouldn't dare. She could end up triggering the mechanism that way, hanging herself before the timer even went off.
When she had had twelve hours left to go, it had seemed like she might manage it. But now she had nine minutes, and it was beginning to feel more and more like she had nothing else to risk.
She was desperate. She had to get out of here. She couldn't die, not like this. Not today. She had so much to live for: her friends, her family, her boyfriend. Her job, which she loved. There were people who relied on her. She wasn’t going to give up.
She’d been afraid. This whole time, she’d been terrified. Of falling. Of the rope around her neck getting tighter. Of so many things. But there was on fear in her mind now and one only: the fear of not getting off here before the platform dropped.
And all her other fears came secondary to that. Even the fear of great pain. Of mutilation. There were eight minutes to go. This was survival. This was it. She had to do this now.
She cried out through the gag, screaming with the force it took to push her shoulders apart one more time. She counted seconds in her head, keeping track of the time she had left. Trying to push herself to strive for longer. It felt like every muscle, every bone in her upper torso was going to pop, to sn
ap open. And her skin - the skin on her wrists - it felt like it was tearing, coming off, ripping away from her. Seven minutes. She had to keep going. It didn't matter about the pain anymore. It didn't matter about what happened to her hands. She could lose a hand. She could do this. She could lose a hand instead of her life.
Six minutes to go. She pushed, straining, her eyes squeezed tightly closed against the pain and the dust in the air and the tears that streamed from them, still screaming raw and horse, her throat scrubbed until it was a mess of broken glass. Something was happening. Something was moving. She could almost...
She gasped for breath, panting, having to stop the exertion for a moment. Five minutes. She didn't have time for this. There was no time to regain her strength. She could feel something hot and wet on her hand, dripping from the edge of her finger, just at the edge of where her sensation still remained. Blood. She knew it was blood. It didn't matter. Only one thing mattered.
She had to get off this platform. Four and a half minutes. She took a breath and pushed again, leveraging one arm down and then the other one up, trying with all her might to just squeeze one hand out. Just one hand was all she needed. The ropes could remain on the other hand, and it wouldn't matter. She could use it still to rip the noose from her neck, to lunge for the end of the platform, to scramble over the hinge and out of the line of danger.
Four minutes. She pulled, screaming, feeling more pain than she'd ever felt in her life. All the exertion of the previous hours had taken it out of her, all the pushing, all the raw edges of her skin. All the attempts to twist her fingers so that she could untie the ropes, searching for a loose end. All the attempts to force the ropes apart, both with her hands and with her feet. The attempts to duck her head, to push back so that the noose just slipped right over her head, which had only tightened it. They had all led to this moment. Three minutes to go.
She was so weak, so tired. She couldn't bear the idea of carrying on. But she couldn't stop. She couldn't give up. This was it, the moment that her life hinged on. It was now or nothing. She pushed, squeezing and crying through the pain, a raw scream ripping its way from her throat when she thought she'd had no sound left to give.
And her wrist came free.
Her eyes flew open, gasping for breath and panic, the pain now beginning to set in even more. She couldn't look at her hand. She didn't dare. She kept it behind her back, ducking her head to look at the clock -
No. No, she had miscounted! She had been weak, almost delirious with the pain, unable to hold on -
Seconds remained, only seconds, and she had to get off, she had to reach out and yank the noose from her neck -
Her hands were still on it when the platform fell, and all she could do was to scramble helplessly, one hand bloodied and useless, the other not strong enough even if it had a partner. She scrambled, trying to dig her fingers under the rope to relieve the pressure crushing her windpipe, but she was not strong enough. She felt her legs kicking in the air, a terrible pressure in her head, the edges of her vision turning black as she groped desperately for a breath.
The black filled everything, and Veronica stopped kicking, her hands falling limply at her sides for the final time.
CHAPTER TWO
Laura didn’t stop moving until she reached Nate’s front door. She stood in front of his neat little house – the kind of house she could have been living in, if it wasn’t for the whole messy divorce and the alcohol and all the rest of the last few years of spiraling – and hesitated for the first time.
She literally froze with her hand up in the air, about to knock on the door but not quite getting there. For a brief and ridiculous moment, she felt a bit like a cartoon character, a larger-than-life movie moment that didn't seem real. Imagine, getting all the way here and then losing your nerve.
But that’s what was happening. She had been fueled during the whole drive from her apartment to here by a fierce determination that had pushed her onwards. She had decided she was going to tell him everything. He was her partner, after all, and he deserved to know the truth. If he didn't, things were never going to be the same between them again. He had already figured out that she was lying to him, and there was no way she could brush it off any longer.
Nathaniel Lavoie was a great FBI agent, and he wasn't going to be fooled by any more excuses she could give him.
The only option she had was to come clean, if she wanted to keep him as her partner. And she did. Getting back partial custody of her daughter, coming off another brutal case, knowing that staying on the wagon had the power to bring her back to the life she really wanted - all of that put together was showing her the things that she really cared about. The things that really mattered. Lacey, her daughter. Her job. And her personal relationships with the people she cared about.
Nate was one of them, and even though she had been scared for such a very long time about admitting to anyone that she had psychic abilities, Laura recognized that it was now or never.
Except...
Well, it would be a lot easier for her if it was never.
There were so many arguments for telling him, and so many arguments against it. When she'd been sitting at home, she had realized beyond any shadow of a doubt that she had to tell him right now. But here, standing right in front of his door, those arguments seemed to disappear into the void. She could barely even remember what they were. Instead, all she could picture was the way he would look at her. That way he might reject her.
