You’re safe. We’re safe. Everything is fine. She repeated those words again and again and again in her mind.

What she wanted was to have her husband’s arms around her, so strong, so warm, and to have his voice whispering those words to her as he held her and rocked her. But Vince had gone back to the sheriff’s office for a meeting with the detectives. She hadn’t even gotten to feed him. He had ordered pizza for the guys.

She looked at the clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t quite ten thirty. Not late. Vince would be home soon—if he wasn’t already. He never disturbed her if she was already sleeping when he came home—specifically so as not to frighten her.

Even though Vince hadn’t been there, Anne and Haley had the cozy evening she had thought of earlier in the day. After bath time, with Haley in her Rainbow Brite pajamas, they had snuggled together under the covers of Haley’s bed and listened to the rain while Anne read to her.

After Haley was asleep, Anne had done some reading of her own, searching her psychology books for anything she could find on children as witnesses to violent crime—she found nothing—and children and traumatic memories—she found practically nothing. She had finally turned out her reading light and fallen asleep with the books spread around her on her side of the double bed.

She got up now, plucking at her sweat-damp T-shirt. The rush of adrenaline had ebbed, leaving her with the familiar and hated feeling of weakness. Leaving the bedroom door open, she went across the hall to change.

Vince was on their bed in gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt, propped up reading. He looked up from his book, his glasses perched on his nose. The television was mumbling to itself in the armoire that housed it.

Anne went into her closet and put on a fresh FBI T-shirt, then went to the bed and crawled up beside him, tucking her head into his shoulder and wrapping an arm across his broad chest.

“Hey, precious,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

He set his book aside and wrapped his arms around her. Anne knew he could feel the residual tremors going through her as the adrenaline ebbed out of her system.

“Did you have a bad dream?” he asked quietly.

Anne nodded. “I’m okay. I’m okay now.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

Tears stung her eyes. “I hate it.”

“I know, baby.”

“It never goes away.”

He didn’t tell her that it would eventually, because he knew it wouldn’t, and she knew it wouldn’t. The best she could hope for was that the incidents would lessen over time. She wanted to wish her nightmares on Peter Crane, locked in a cell in the county jail. The irony was that her nightmares would be his wet dreams.