Spencer’s voice halted her descent. She swallowed and sat straighter. When this was over and she returned to work, she wanted everyone to acknowledge that she had handled this like a badass. “Yes, because I’m going to get my vision back so I can see this motherfucker’s face when the judge sentences him to death.”

“I’m going to catch this guy, Jordan.” There was no false bravado. Just a brutal determination that almost brought her to tears.

“Cops should never make promises like that,” Jordan said. “Didn’t you learn that at the police academy?”

“In this case, I’m making an exception.”

“And what if you don’t catch this guy? What if he vanishes into the mist?” What if her sight never came back?

“He’s not getting away from me.”

Eyes. Panicked, desperate eyes encased in a film of plastic stared back at Jordan. Their watery blue depths pleaded with her for salvation. Jordan reached out to the woman, anxious to help her and free her from the shroud cutting off her oxygen.

“Hang in there,” she said. “I’ll get you free.”

Jordan’s fingertips were only inches from the woman’s face, which was growing paler and bluer by the moment. However, the gap between them grew with each beat of her heart.

Help me! Help me!

The woman’s plea etched deep into her features. Casey.

Jordan strained her muscles, trying to close the distance separating Casey from her. But each time she pressed her fingertips a fraction closer, the woman slipped out of range.

Heart pounding, head thundering, Jordan struggled to breach the divide, and just as she brushed Casey’s hand, the woman vanished from sight.

Jordan’s eyes opened to a darkened room, her pulse wild in her throat, her head hurting. She had had a dream. Just a dream. She fumbled around for her cell, hoping to figure out the time and date. But her cell was not on her nightstand, where she always left it. She was in bed. Not her own. Where was her own bed?

This had happened before. Always after she had worked several days in a row on a case. So tired, she would fall into bed only to wake disoriented and off her game.

“This happens,” she whispered.

But the headache and the darkness were not right. There was always a light on in her house. And where was the ticking clock on the mantel in her den? Avery hated the clock because it made so much noise, but Jordan needed the sound to ground her during nights like this.

No ticktock. No light.

Her fingertips brushed well-bleached sheets and then skimmed a metal handrail. In the distance she heard a machine beep.

Hospital. She was in the hospital. Casey and her own desperation had been real. It had been not a nightmare but a memory. The woman had been taken. She remained lost or, worse, dead.