It’s the predicament of every author. No aspect of life is immune from being picked over for a plot point, a character quirk, a description, the seed of a scene. Pain is material. You become a voyeur on suffering and make a living by re-creating it for others.

And you cannot help but feel when you do that. You cannot help but identify with the pain the characters experience.

Now, as Timothy was thinking of Emily’s suffering, he looked across the faces of the people in attendance and saw Miranda Walsh, the young graduate student who’d disappeared six months ago on the night of his last book signing.

No. It can’t be.

But there she stood—her blonde hair curling down and landing so gently on her shoulders, her clear innocent eyes, her gentle-shy smile. She was—

She’s gone!

Yet there she was.

The woman he had cared about.

The woman he had loved.

And as she opened her mouth, her eyes rolled back and turned ghostly white. And then the dark blood began to seep from her slit throat, oozing down across her lemon-colored dress, leaving behind deep and terrifying stains that would never come out. The crimson evidence of a terrible death at the hands of a terrible man.

There she was.

And then she wasn’t.

He blinked and blinked and she didn’t return.

You’re seeing things again, Timothy! You’re losing it!

He tried to pretend that he hadn’t just seen what he had, tried to pretend that everything was fine and he was still in control control control.

He scratched at the wretched bugs skittering underneath the turtleneck and across his arm.

Rebekah stood, enthusiastically thanked him for reading, and then announced that it was time for the Q and A.

“Anyone have any questions?” she asked brightly. “It’s not every night you get to ask a world-famous novelist about his stories or how he comes up with them.”

++++

“Was there something in my water?” Sasha said to Blake, pretending that she was still feeling woozy. “The water that guy in the car gave me?”

“Just something to help you relax.”

“You drugged me?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Oh really? Then tell me what’s going on here.”

“When someone lies, certain physiological changes come over her. I just gave you something that enhances those, that makes it easier for me to tell if you’re holding something back from me. If you’re not being honest.”

Of course, as a DEA agent, she knew about drugs like that—ones that heighten pupil dilation, ectodermal response, heart rate, respiration. But as an escort, she needed to pretend that she wasn’t familiar with what he was talking about.

“Why would you think I’m going to lie?”

“I have to be careful who I trust. There are consequences for betrayals. And the more intimate the betrayal, the more severe those consequences must inevitably be.”