Lind sat awake on the couch. He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t closed his eyes. Thing was, he barely felt tired.
He kept replaying the Las Vegas assignment in his head. The whole disastrous day. He kept seeing the target, his face, his wide eyes. Heard his desperate voice and his panicked gasps for air. Saw the gun pressed to the target’s temple. Then . . . nothing.
Something had happened in that Bellagio suite. It was like he’d come out of the blackness for a moment—like, even through the panic, things were suddenly clear. Now, though, Lind couldn’t remember. It was like chasing a dream. Every time he thought about what had happened in that suite, the truth seemed to slip further and further away.
He remembered breaking into the target’s room. Remembered standing in the shadows and waiting. Remembered walking out of the casino afterward, dumping the gun in the lake. Anything in between, though, and his head hurt. He couldn’t think for too long or he’d feel like he wanted to jump out a window.
The man had called him again, after he’d arrived home. Given new instructions. “Don’t leave the apartment,” he’d said. “Don’t talk to anyone. Wait for my orders.”
Something was wrong. Lind knew it somewhere deep inside. It had come to the surface during that botched assignment, a sick realization that he’d done terrible things. That he did them because the man told him he had to.
That was why he’d walked away. Because, beneath the panic and the awful fear, he’d recognized for a moment that something wasn’t right. He’d failed the man. He hadn’t completed the assignment. But the assignment was wrong. He’d known it, briefly.
Caity Sherman’s phone number sat on his coffee table. Lind had been staring at it all morning. There was something about her that felt different from the man and the assignment and the visions. There was something that made him realize he was wrong.
Except he couldn’t think, not clearly. Every time he tried to think about Caity Sherman he felt the panic start to rise in him again. Felt his head start to pound like there was a demon inside. He couldn’t think about Caity, and he couldn’t think about Las Vegas. He couldn’t think about anything for long.
Lind shook his head. He picked up Caity’s phone number and walked to his phone. Pushed the panic as far down as he could and dialed the number. Waited as the phone rang. Then she picked up. “Hello?”
The blackness lurched up inside him again. Overwhelming. Lind reeled and steadied himself on his kitchen counter. Tried to keep his eyes open. Caity cleared her throat. “Hello? Who is this?”
Lind gritted his teeth. “I did something,” he told her. “Something bad.”