She cupped the glass between her palms, resting it on her lap. “Not like that. Never like that.”
He waited.
Panic suddenly tightened, along with an urge to flee. She glanced toward the exit.
Youhaveto face this ...
“I’ve been having hallucinations, I think,” she said finally. She described to him in detail the little girl in pink, where and when she’d appeared, what the child seemed to be saying and in what language. She told him about her mother’s illness and that the onset of her mom’s symptoms started around the same age Angie was now.
She took a sip and gave a soft snort. “I’m going crazy. There, I said it. It’s my lot in life to wind up sitting in an old rocker staring at my own reflection in the locked wards of the Mount Saint Agnes Mental Health Treatment Facility, watched over by white-coated orderlies.”
“So that’s who you went to visit there?”
Angie nodded. Now it was out. She’d relinquished control of the information. That was the thing about secrets—you didn’t tell one if you truly wanted it to be kept secret. The idea of “sharing” a secret was, to her, a joke.
He weighed her in silence, just the sound of the wind and water outside.
“It is possible that you’re developing schizophrenia,” he said quietly.
“Well, thanks.”
He removed her drink from her grip and set both glasses on the small table in front of them. He gathered her hands in his. Gently, his thumb stroked her skin, and it sent soft strands of desire tingling to her nipples. Suddenly she ached to just fold herself into him, like a child, in a fetal position, to be held. Loved. This need to put herself into someone’s care was an emotion Angie had not experienced since she was a child.
Jack-O finished his meal and came to lie at Maddocks’s feet, his nose pointing toward Angie’s socked feet.
“Or it could also be PTSD, Angie. That, to me, is more likely, given what you went through with Hash and that toddler—she’s come back to haunt you.”
“How much do you know about that incident with Hash?”
“I read the file.”
“Why?”
He gave a half shrug.
“You were worried about me being your partner? Is that what you were really driving at, outside Jon Jacques’s penthouse? You question my judgment because you think I could have done something to save Hash from being killed.”
“On the contrary. I was intrigued about the woman who tied me to the bed at the Foxy Motel.” He smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, and it made him wince.
“If you’re trying for a joke, it’s not funny.”
He nodded slowly, features sobering.
“And what about the strange language, then?”
“Hmm. Have you considered that it might be related to memory, possibly buried?”
She looked away, chewing this over, running the past days over in her mind.
“Maybe the incident with Hash, PTSD, is surfacing something deeper, Angie.”
“I don’t know. I do think I might be remembering more of the car accident that happened when I was four. I was badly injured. Almost died.”
“The scar on your mouth?”
She nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
