You allowed yourself to be submissive and vulnerable in his arms, and it gave you pleasure, not fear. It was a gift ... you could become a new person ...
“Talk to me, Angie,” he whispered, touching her lip, her scar, tracing the line of it across her mouth. “Tell me where you’ve been—what’s happened.”
“How’s the case?” she replied instead, suddenly a little nervous of actually voicing it all to him, making it more real. “It’s been killing me to be locked out of it. I’ve seen nothing in the media.”
“Stalled,” he said, his hand moving to her breast, tracing her nipple, so that it puckered and tingled all over again. She shivered slightly. He drew the blanket up over them both. “And you’re stalling with me. What happened? What changed?”
She took a deep breath and said finally, “I went to see someone. Sort of unofficially. Dr.Alex Strauss. I was a psych major before I decided to go into law enforcement—Alex was my academic advisor, and he became a friend.”
She explained to him all that had transpired with Alex and then with her father.
Maddocks listened, playing gently with her hair, an intensity in his eyes.
“So, I guess if Miriam Pallorino is not my biological mother,” she said, “then I can’t have inherited her genetic predisposition toward schizophrenia. I suppose that’s something. Alex also offered to try further hypnosis sessions to see if I can remember more.”
“How does all this make you feel?”
A wave of emotion surged through her, and she paused a moment to corral it. She turned her head away to look down at Jack-O, who was curled into a ball on his little sheepskin bed on the floor. The sight of the animal warmed her. “Determined,” she said softly. “To search for my birth parents. To find out where I came from, who I am, what happened to me, how I got to be the Angel’s Cradle baby. How I seem to know some Polish.” She turned back to face him. “I think ... something terrible was done to my birth mother—or to us both—which is why I could have suppressed all recollection of that period of my life.”
Concern entered his features. And it gave her a sense of foreboding, because she wanted back on the drowned girls case. And Maddocks was the gatekeeper—she needed him to believe she was going to be all right now.
“Tell me about the case,” she said in an effort to swing things back on course. “What did Leo and Holgersen say about my absence, and about your nose?”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
The foreboding deepened—there was something in his eyes, something he was not telling her. “Why?”
“Have you seen thetime, Angie? We sleep now.”
“I want to return to work tomorrow, Maddocks—Ineedto. I’ve been off two full days. Any longer and there will be serious questions.”
“What about that psych eval?” he said quietly.
Her stomach tightened. “I’ll make it happen. I’ll make an appointment—I’m going to be okay now.”
“And the fact you could experience another flashback episode?”
“I won’t. It’s ... it’s like I’ve been under pressure my whole life, like this molten lava has been seething and boiling beneath the cool crust of my consciousness, which has been struggling to keep it in and hidden, and now that crust has been exploded open wide, and all that pressure is being relieved as that lava rushes out.”
He regarded her for a moment in heavy silence.
“Maddocks,” she said quietly. “I’m going to be fine. Youhaveto believe me.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow.” He kissed her gently and clicked off the light.
But as Angie finally drifted off to sleep in his arms, naked and warm in the rocking boat, Jack-O snoring, the old propane heater clunking every time the thermostat registered that the cabin had grown too cold, a nursery-rhyme tune whispered into her mind. Then came tinny music. It grew louder and louder ...
Two little kittens ... Two little kittens ... All children, even the bad ones, are already asleep, only you are not ...
A deep and unspecified fear started to unfurl inside Angie at the sound of the music. With it came a cold, mental blackness. And she wasn’t at all certain shewouldmake it all work out fine.
CHAPTER 65
SUNDAY, DECEMBER17
Angie entered the galley wearing her clothes from yesterday, her hair tied back into a neat ponytail. She was desperate for a hot shower, but more anxious to talk.
Maddocks had set the little galley table for two. His back was to her. He was flipping an omelet and had a pot of steaming coffee on the brew. Jack-O was crunching his biscuits in a bowl at his feet.
