She was furious with herself for showing such inexcusable weakness and felt deeply ashamed. What would her men think of her? Glancing at the open pages of her diary, she blushed; if anyone were to read it and work out her true physical and psychological state, the damage would be irreparable. She was relieved when she realized that the page it was open to held only a few hurried notes on the case.

She ran her hands over her face with a sigh, and noticed her cheeks were damp. She realized with a jolt that she’d been crying. Remembering the nightmare that had woken her up, she felt a wave of nausea and the onset of fresh tears.

“Oh God . . .” she murmured, exhausted.

Her hands moved to her belly, heeding that primal pull that had never really faded and still pleaded with her to remember.

And how could she forget?

In her dream, she had felt her baby’s delicate movements inside her womb; he had responded to her touch and curled up against her warmth. It had been a tangible sensation, as if somebody had really been there. She would have given anything for it to be true.

But the dream had turned into a nightmare when she’d sensed someone wanted to take her baby away from her. That was when she’d woken up screaming.

Teresa stood up. The pain was still too raw to allow her to breathe properly. She dried her tears with the palm of her hand and took a couple of deep breaths to try and steady herself. This was not the time to allow her past, and the memory of the tragedy that cursed it, to overcome her.

She noticed then that there was some sort of commotion going on in the corridor outside—a tense exchange followed by the sound of someone crying—that swept away the last scraps of sleep from Teresa’s eyes.

She knew whose voice it was, made hoarse by despair: the mother of the abducted child.

Teresa rested her forehead against the wall and closed her eyes. Every one of those wails tore into her heart and left her defenseless; they were exactly the same as the ones she had emitted in her nightmare.

Only then did she realize that there was a bandage around one of her hands. She looked at it in disbelief. She had no idea how she’d been injured, and that blindness made her blood run cold.

There was a knock. The door opened slowly, and Marini’s head appeared. He seemed relieved when he saw that she was awake.

“The deputy public prosecutor is here, Superintendent.”

-54-

-54-

“Lucas Ebran’s profile is a perfect match for the killer’s,” said Deputy Prosecutor Gardini as he skimmed Teresa’s report. He’d come down to Travenì as soon as he’d heard about the arrest and the kidnapped baby.