I'm almost certain she set me up. No, not her, the friend maybe. Silla isn't that bold, and I doubt she has a deceiving bone in her body. Or maybe that's just my prejudice talking. Without realizing it, I've built up this vision of her in my mind. One of a pure, untouched, and unsullied little beauty who knows nothing of the wiles of the world.I'm not sure why my mind chose to see her that way since she's got a body made for sin, which I now know is even more potent than those ugly clothes she wears had shown. Now I can't get the image of her lying naked in clear water free of bubbles out of my head, as if she wasn't in enough danger already, and I'm not talking about Calhoun, or whoever else was after her.Whatever she'd been up to, she could have no idea of the Pandora's box she'd opened with her little stunt. The feelings I experienced tonight when I thought she was gone were raw, savage, and I'm still fighting that primal need to reassure myself in the only way I know how that she

I'm going to melt right into this seat or combust, whichever comes first. Not because of the question, not even the tone of his voice, but the way he looked at me just then. Like the wink, it was a bit disarming. I happened to catch Chantal's eye, and the glare she gave me was as good as a kick under the table; it loosened my tongue that had tied itself in knots. "I didn't do anything much, just hung around the house."I suck at this. I'm the one who opened the door, but now I have no idea what to do next. My heart felt sick, no, not sick; it was just beating in an odd way. It was my nerves that were making me ill. "Eat your dinner." Why is he whispering everything? It makes it seem like we're the only two people in the room.Any second now, I expect my mouth to hang down to my chin with drool. I realized as I swallowed a piece of an asparagus spear that I really hadn't thought this whole thing through, or someone else hadn't. Now I was the one glaring across the table at Chantal. I'd

The night seemed almost surreal like it wasn't happening to me but to someone else. I felt disoriented and out of my depth, and everything around me seemed to be coming from a distance. Even words sounded like they were passed through an echo chamber before they reached my ears. I couldn't imagine, even with all that I've been through, that days like this really do exist.One minute I was laughing and teasing Chantal while we both cheated at scrabble, and the next, I was standing over my mother in a hospital bed. I'll never get the look of her out of my head, never erase the image of her lying there broken with tubes going in and out of her. Hearing the doctor's words had filled me with cold dread, and I've been numb ever since.I didn't get the shakes until I got back into my room, and everything hit me all at once. I'm alone, for the first time in my life, really alone. I've felt alone before, like I had to one, no escape because the only person who could help was a victim herself. B

Life, as always, is kicking me in the butt. Why can't anything ever go the way I expect or want? There's a budding excitement beating away inside, and keeping pace with it is fear and uncertainty. For as long as I can remember, it's been like that. The joys were always short-lived or interspersed with something horrible. It got so I learned not to be too happy because there was always a threatening cloud hanging over me.Last night had been like that, lying in bed with him, going from one emotion to the next in the space of a few seconds; it's enough to give me whiplash, not to mention his mercurial mood swings. They don't help much. I'd gone to sleep in his arms, and it was better than anything I could've imagined, and when I woke up this morning, I had the pleasure of studying his face in slumber.There's something about seeing a strong man with his defenses down like that, something boyish and innocent, that clutched at my heartstrings. In those first few seconds, I knew the joy of

"Garrett, send a team to the hospital.""On it." He left the room to go take care of that while Lyon and Mancini made some calls of their own. Everyone was in fast mode now that we had more to go on, but one thing tortured me as I tried to keep up. He said he'd found her himself; what does that mean? A cold finger of dread ran down my spine at what those words could mean. I was more worried about that than I was about the man who'd entered her mother's room at the hospital since there didn't seem to be any danger there. All the stranger did was sit and watch her, so I got the feeling that maybe he was a friend, someone she knew. But how did he know she was there? And what, if anything, did he have to do with what was going on with Silla? Who is he? Where did he come from? And why had neither woman ever mentioned him?I watched him leave on the screen, his face still hidden beneath the cap, but with the technology we had to work with, it shouldn't take much to find him with what littl