Don't Say a Word. Rita Herron

closed, grabbed his badge and weapon and strapped it onto his shoulder holster. Fifteen minutes later, he parked and headed through a dense stretch of the swamp. The scent of murk floated from the marshy water as the mud sucked at his feet. The voices and faint beams of flashlights ahead served as his guide through the knot of trees, and when he reached the crime-scene tape, he identified himself to the officer in charge.

      Through the shadows, he spotted Antwaun and strode toward him. His brother’s forehead was furrowed with worry, the intense anger in his dark eyes warning Damon that this was not an everyday crime scene. Something personal had entered into it.

      “What’s going on, Antwaun?” he asked quietly.

      Two uniforms frowned and muttered curses at his arrival, already the thread of territorial rights adding tension to an anxiety-ridden situation.

      Antwaun leaned in close, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Hell, Damon. I think I know the victim.”

      Damon’s gaze shot to his brother’s, his pulse racing. “How do you know her?”

      “I can’t be sure, but…” His gruff voice cracked. “But if it is who I think it is, we dated.”

      The heat thickened, causing a cold clamminess to bead on Damon’s skin. “You recognize her or what?”

      Antwaun scrubbed a hand over the back of his scraggly hair, his face as pale as buttermilk. “Like I said, we only found part of her.”

      Damon sucked in a sharp breath, then followed Antwaun over to the edge of the swamp. The murk chewed at Damon’s shoes, the stench of blood and a decaying animal hitting him. Somewhere nearby the hiss of gators warned him that hungry creatures lurked at the edges of the rivers. Yellow eyes pierced the inky darkness, scaly predators hiding beneath the water’s surface, taking stock of their prey. Biding their time. Waiting to strike.

      Then he saw her. At least the part that was visible.

      Her hand.

      Just a single hand sticking up through the quicksand.

      Brittle, yellowed bones poked through skin that had been gnawed away. The fingertips were half-gone. Blood dotted the remnants of mangled flesh, revealing exposed veins that had been sawed away by the jagged teeth of animals now watching nearby in silent reverie.

      “How…” He had to clear his throat, push away the mounting fury and choking bile. No woman deserved to end up like this.

      Had she been dead or alive when the gators got her?

      “If this is all they found, what makes you think you know her?”

      Antwaun’s hand shook as he pointed to what was left of her third finger. “That ring…”

      “Yeah?” Damon squinted, moved closer, knelt and caught the thin thread of silver glinting through the mud and debris. Amazingly, the simple silver band still clung to the bone.

      “I gave it to her,” Antwaun said in a low, tortured voice. “Right before she went missing.”

      SHE LIVED IN THE DARKNESS. Had known nothing but pain for months.

      And all that time, she had been missing, but no one had come looking for her. Why?

      Clutching the sheets of her hospital bed between bandaged fingers, she begged for relief from the agony of her tormenting thoughts. Time bled and flowed together, sometimes nonexistent, sometimes lipping through the hourglass in slow motion. Sometimes chunks and days, even weeks gone by without notice.

      Isolated, starved for human contact, she lay waiting for the doctor’s visit.

      The bleep-bleep of hospital machinery became her music. His voice, her salvation.

      Gruff. Soothing. Coaxing her to sit up. Eat. Fight for her life. Heal.

      His touch offered comfort, compassion. It murmured promises that she might recover one day. Be human. Even beautiful.

      His miracle.

      Yet as much as his manner evoked concern and care for her, even growing feelings, the scent of medicine and hospital permeated his clothing, reminding her that he was her doctor, she his patient.

      She was only one of many he had helped. But she’d heard the rumors. The hushed voices. And she had yet to see her reflection because he had stripped the hospital rehab facility of mirrors.

      She was the woman without a face. A human monster.

      He had repaired what he could. Endless, countless surgeries over the past few months. Bandages and medication, hours and hours of mind-control techniques to keep from going crazy. Sometimes she feared she walked a tightrope to insanity.

      And when he left her room for the night, another man came. A monster like her who whispered in the shadows. The man with the scalelike skin.

      Her one and only friend here. Lex Van Wormer.

      He seemed to sense when she was teetering on the edge, and reeled her back in, sewing the tethered strands of her mind together with some fanciful story. Silly dreams of a future she had to look forward to.

      One he dreamed about as well, but one that eluded them both. Instead they had become prisoners of the darkness.

      A gentle knock sounded at the door, and the heavy wooden structure squeaked open. A sliver of light from the hall sliced the black interior, causing her to blink. Slowly over the past months of her imprisonment, her vision had adjusted and returned to near normal, though she still preferred the shadows. Whether this was to shield herself from having to face others and see the disgust or pity in their eyes, or because she’d begun to view the darkness as her best friend, she wasn’t certain.

      Her breath lodged in a momentary panic in her throat as she listened to the approaching footsteps. One of the nurses with another round of injections? Dr. Pace with his soothing voice and promises that she would get better? Or Lex, somehow sensing that she had suffered another nightmare?

      Nightmares or memories—she could no longer distinguish the difference. She only knew that night after endless night, some fathomless, sightless, black-hearted devil chased her. That he waited around every corner, watching, stalking, breathing down her neck. That she had to escape. That he wanted her dead and would stop at nothing until he achieved his purpose.

      The door closed, blanketing the room once again in the gray fog that offered her safety.

      It was always twilight in her room.

      “Crystal?”

      “Lex.” She exhaled a sigh of heartfelt relief. Still, the name felt foreign. The first time he’d seen her, he’d commented that her eyes reminded him of sparkling crystal cut glass, so he’d called her Crystal, and the nurses had latched on to it.

      That she’d been blind at first and hadn’t been able to see him hadn’t mattered. She’d relished his company.

      Then, finally, on a pain-filled admission to prove to her that she wasn’t alone in her world of shadows, he’d allowed her to touch his hand. She’d felt the scaly dry patches of leatherlike skin and had understood his reason for withdrawing from the world.

      The condition, caused by exposure to an unknown chemical he’d been exposed to in the war, had disfigured him and eaten away at his body like battery acid. For a brief time before the bandages from her eyes had been removed, she’d feared she would react to his impairment.

      But she had grown accustomed to the sound of his voice as he read her poetry at night, to the cadence of his laugh as he fabricated stories of journeys he’d taken, and his looks hadn’t mattered. In fact, she hadn’t even cringed when she’d finally rested her eyes upon him.

      Apparently, he had adjusted to seeing her without a face, and covered in bandages as well. Who else would be so accepting?

      He dragged the straight chair against the wall near her bed, then reached for her hand. A light squeeze, and her breathing steadied.