I want to respond, but feel as if there are two hands around my throat, squeezing my larynx, and I can’t get any words out. I glance at the screen, and see yet another twisted scenario playing out in terrible black and white. I feel Tomasetti’s gaze on me, but I don’t look at him. I don’t want him to see what I know is in my eyes.

This case isn’t about me, but it hits home in ways I never expected, and with a force that leaves me gasping for breath. Tomasetti knows what happened to me seventeen years ago, but he doesn’t know all of it. He doesn’t know the deepest, darkest secret of all.

“Kate.” He says my name gently, like a horse trainer trying to calm a frightened colt. “You don’t have to watch this.” He starts to close the laptop.

But I stop him. “Yes, I do.” The words are little more than croaks, but I force them out. I can feel my emotions winding up. I know if I don’t get a grip they’re going to spiral out of control. My brain chants Danger, danger, danger! But I don’t stop. “She was in love with him,” I grind out. “She wanted to marry him. Have his child. Spend her life with him. She was willing to leave everything she’d ever know. And he did this to her.”

The muscles in Tomasetti’s jaw flex, and he looks away. “He got what was coming to him.”

“That’s not justice.”

“Maybe not. But it’s about as happy an ending as you’re going to get with a case like this.”

It’s a hard, cynical view. But then John Tomasetti can be a hard, cynical man. At this moment, staring at the cruel realities playing out on that laptop, the world feels like a hard and cynical place.

I don’t want to look at that awful screen, but my eyes are drawn to it. Another unspeakable scene stares back at me. I see the glazed eyes of an innocent girl. A young woman full of goodness and life. I see evil in its most insidious form. He raped her body, her mind, her heart. He committed upon her the ultimate betrayal.

I stand so abruptly, my chair nearly falls over backward. Tomasetti looks uneasily at me. “Kate . . .”

“Can you get this stuff to the lab?” I hear myself say.

“Sure . . .”