“Yoo-hoo! Earth to Taylor….”

She jumped a mile. Maddee was shouting and knocking on her door.

She went to the door and pulled it open. Maddee looked genuinely relieved to see her. Goodness, she must have every one in the house and surrounds worried about her. Or Memphis told them she was terribly delicate and needed looking after. Most likely the latter.

“Finally. I’ve been knocking for five minutes. When you didn’t show up downstairs I decided to fetch you myself. That old bat Trixie is off in the kitchens, but she let me in so I could come by. Are you ready?”

Taylor nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go then.”

She let Taylor out the door in front of her, but glanced back over her shoulder. “I’ve stayed in this room before. One of those nights when they had a party and we couldn’t make it home. It’s changed a bit since last time. I don’t remember all the books.”

A gift from Memphis.

Taylor wondered if it was her imagination, but she could have sworn Maddee’s smile grew tight. Hmm. Maybe Dr. James had a bit of a thing for her friend Memphis.

It was understandable. Memphis was handsome, obviously witty and fun, and heir to a massive fortune. He was certainly a catch. But Maddee was married to his best friend, and supposed to be a close friend to Memphis’s dead wife. Perhaps that hadn’t been the case after all.

Taylor made a mental note and let the thought go. Women were strange creatures when it came to attraction, that much she knew. They got territorial, even with their male friends that they had no amorous intentions toward. She didn’t plan to get involved in the dynamics of their relationship any more than she had to.

“Our Memphis was always one for grand gestures. You’d best be careful, he’ll sweep you right off your feet and you won’t want to leave.”

Taylor let that one go. God, if Maddee had any idea of what had transpired in here last night…

She followed Maddee down the stairs. Her long hair was in a bun today, drawn back from her face sharply. It looked uncomfortable, pulled so tight, like a ballerina about to go on stage. Taylor’s omnipresent headache throbbed in camaraderie. She hated wearing her hair down. But she didn’t have a choice; the pressure of her ponytail was too much to take.

The drawing room was set up just as before—the EMDR equipment on the table, a fresh and full tea cart at the ready. Taylor gladly accepted a cup. Her throat was terribly sore and the warmth helped. She wondered how many pounds of tea the estate went through in a year.

“How are you sleeping?” Maddee asked, handing Taylor her laptop to write with. Taylor didn’t know why, but she didn’t want Maddee to know she had her voice back yet, either. She was being foolish, she knew that. The minute Maddee did the hypnosis, she’d be yakking up a storm. It just felt…private, somehow.

Sleeping is okay. Bad dreams, but I’m actually tired. That’s new.

“So the melatonin helped you sleep?”

Helped me GET to sleep, yes.

“That’s wonderful. You can take up to two capsules at night. That will really knock you out. How’s the headache?”

Bad in the evening, but if I take the meds early it simmers down to a dull roar. The Percocet does a good job taking away the worst of the pain. Either that, or I’m getting used to it.

“Any dreams? Good ones, bad ones?”

Some. A couple of bad nightmares. Creepy stuff.

Maddee laughed. “It’s this castle. Plays tricks on the mind. They claim it’s haunted. I think that’s wishful thinking. Drives the tourists in. Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Me either.

Truly, Taylor didn’t believe in ghosts. But she did believe in the power of suggestion to kick-start her imagination. That’s why she hated ghost stories, and horror movies. She’d seen enough bad things in real life. She didn’t need someone else’s overactive imagination horning in on her.

“All right then. Anything else you want me to know?”

Maddee seemed a bit distracted this morning, but Taylor didn’t think it was necessary to point that out.

Maybe just one thing. I… How to put this without sounding completely nutty? I’ve been seeing things. Just flashes, really, of things and people who aren’t there.

Maddee sat back in her chair. She played with an oversize ring on her right hand, heavy gold with an onyx stone. “You know, there are many accounts of people with head trauma who are left with echoes of things that happened before the accident. Seen it a few times myself, too. This is normal, Taylor. It means you’re healing. Your brain is rewiring itself after a severe shock. Even a bad concussion can cause these echoes. It’s perfectly natural to be unnerved by it. Anyone would.”

A sigh escaped Taylor’s lips. That’s what it was, then. She wasn’t being haunted. It was all in her head.

Though the Pretender standing in a doorway wasn’t an echo, or a remembrance. It was a new image, and felt more like a message. A threat.

She didn’t tell Maddee that.

“Anything else I need to know about?”

Taylor shook her head.

“Then let’s get started. Lay back for me now, and think about that warm sunlight hitting your toes. That should be a nice change from the chilly weather we’re having.”

Maddee took five minutes to get Taylor into her relaxed state, watching the blue balloon lift into the sky before asking her to revisit the hour before the shooting. Taylor felt her blood pressure rise immediately. She didn’t really want to go there. But Maddee was insistent, and her voice was so gentle and soft, so comforting, that Taylor allowed herself to be pulled under. Maddee talked for a few more minutes, then dove in.

“We’re going to talk about Sam now. You knew she’d been kidnapped, correct? And answer me aloud, Taylor.”

“Yes.”

“And you knew where the Pretender had taken her, correct?”

“Yes.”

“When did you know that?”

“I’d always known that it would end there. That’s what he wanted. He liked the idea of a show, of continuity. But when we realized Sam was missing, that’s when I knew we were coming to the end.”

“And how long did it take you to get to the house?”

Taylor squirmed. The balloon started to fade.

“Taylor, look at the balloon. Let your arm rise in the air, light and carefree. It’s okay. You’re safe here.”

The balloon reappeared, pale and translucent against a cartoon-blue sky, though it was fighting to float away.

“Good job. Now, tell me. How long did it take you to get to Sam?”

“No more than an hour. I had to find a way into the house. I couldn’t just go bang on the front door.”

“But if you’d called for backup, you could have done that.”

“No. I couldn’t. I had to go myself. I had to finish it.”

“But in that hour, what happened? Isn’t that when the Pretender was torturing Sam? If you had gone straight to the house the moment you knew she was there, could you have saved her baby?”

“I don’t… I—”

“Taylor, think about the moment just before you entered the house. You wanted to kill the Pretender, didn’t you? You wanted to make him go away, to stop hurting you and your friends. That’s good, Taylor. It’s good to want to eradicate evil. That’s what your job is, to find and kill the people who hurt innocents. That’s why you’ve been put on this earth, to eliminate those kinds of people.”

Taylor shook her head. No. No—she wasn’t supposed to kill them. She respected the law, even though it didn’t always work perfectly. This case, the Pretender, that wasn’t how things were. It was a one-time thing. She wasn’t like her father, bending the rules when they didn’t suit him.

Was she?

“It wasn’t like that.”

“You say that now. But when you’re faced with another adversary, another killer who gets in your way, your first inclination will be to kill them. To eliminate them. To assassinate them. To, what did you say, ‘put him down’? That’s what you do. That’s what you’re good at. Look at your record. So many police officers never fire their weapon, yet you’ve killed four people. Tried to make that five. You are a weapon, Taylor. And if you’re honest with yourself, you like it. You like killing. It makes you feel good. You could have saved Sam, and instead, you followed your own path so you could see what it felt like to murder someone.”