Rowan stepped onto the river rocks and froze. Her brother lay on his back, his feet in the river. Slowly moving closer, she saw his eyes were gone.
Rowan shot up out of bed, her heart pounding, terror shooting through her limbs. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, trying to catch her breath. Thor pressed against her leg, and her hand sank into his fur.
It’s a fucking dream.
That never happened.
Or did it?
She strode out of her bedroom and into the kitchen, blindly grabbed a bottled water from the fridge, and drank. She wasn’t thirsty. She needed the shock of the cold. Rowan wiped her mouth, took several deep breaths, and ordered her heart to slow down.
“I shouldn’t have used a sleeping pill,” she muttered. After getting home from the party, she’d taken the pill because in the past she’d struggled to sleep the night of Malcolm’s birthday. It’d seemed like a good solution, but combined with alcohol from last night, the pill had created a very vivid dream. Clearly influenced by the dead body she’d found in the river the day before.
Her subconscious had combined the dead woman with the memories of her brother.
But it seemed so real.
She flexed her fingers, still feeling as if she had dirt under her nails.
Am I blocking something?
Rowan had met with therapists for years, working through the trauma Jerry Chiavo had forced on her and her brother. She’d been home for months before she told a therapist about the games Jerry had made them play. Sibling against sibling. Pain. Punishment. Guilt.
So many horrific memories.
Some she’d waited years to share. Rowan couldn’t recall if she hadn’t wanted to talk about them or if she had suppressed them. The therapist had always claimed they were suppressed, but Rowan remembered the guilt she’d felt because she’d been hesitant to share.
Which could mean I remembered . . . I just didn’t want to talk about it.
It was 4:30 a.m., and she didn’t see the point in trying to sleep anymore. Rowan sighed and started her coffee maker, knowing what she needed to do. Her favorite therapist had taught her how to work through bad dreams, pick them apart, study each piece from a distance.
It took away the fear and broke them into manageable pieces.
Thor sat by his bowl, his black eyes locked on her every movement.
food
“It’s too early, Thor. You’ll pester me for dinner at two o’clock.”
food
“How about a snack instead?” She got his canister of snacks out of a cupboard. The rapid wag of his tail told her he approved.
Thor never refused snacks.
He gently took the dried meat from her hand and trotted away to chew it in the dog bed near her sofa.
Rowan watched the coffee stream into the glass carafe. “I can’t wait.” She pulled out the pot and stuck her mug under the stream. Her cup full, she slid out a chair at the table in her kitchen nook and caught her reflection in the windows, her yard impossible to see in the black night.
I look like I haven’t slept.
I don’t think I did.
As she sipped her potent coffee, she let her mind carefully wander through what she could recall of the dream. Running through the trees. Searching for Malcolm. Jerry threatening to hurt them.
Her hand tightened on the mug as she remembered throwing the rocks aside, simply doing as Jerry said, knowing it was pointless.
I can still feel the rocks.
“Jesus Christ.” She took a big gulp of coffee and welcomed the startling burn in her mouth and down her throat. Her brain had cooked up quite the dream, combining elements from her past and her present. “No more sleeping pills.”
She allowed the image of her brother at the creek to skim across her mind. It had never happened. Malcolm had been alive the last time she’d seen him. The creek image was from the day before. She made herself remember the woman, replacing the image of Malcolm with the right one.
It’s still horrible to see.
Rowan had seen many dead people in her lifetime; it came with SAR. Each one was branded into her memory.
14
Evan was in his office early the next morning. He’d gotten little sleep the night before, his mind bouncing between Ken Steward’s case and those of the three murdered women. He had a list of follow-up items from all the cases, and the earlier he started, the better.
Who needs sleep?
Today’s schedule was busy with the autopsy of the river woman later this morning and a meeting with the forensic anthropologist in the afternoon. He didn’t like calling the victim “the river woman.” It felt impersonal; he wanted her name. She was a human, not a location. He knew the medical examiner would have assigned her a moniker consisting of “Jane Doe” and a number, and he pledged to replace that impersonal identifier too.