Isabel’s eyes opened wide. When she’d arrived she’d been a massive wreck. “Really?”

Lauren looked up, studied her face. “You didn’t know? We knew the week you moved in that something big was going on with Joe.”

“He didn’t make a move. He didn’t say anything to me. Most guys—” She stopped for a second because she didn’t want to sound boastful. But then Lauren was a beautiful woman. She’d have been hit on a billion times in her life. No one hit on Lauren now, not with big, bad Jacko glowering by her side, but before Jacko they must have, surely. She knew what that was like. Guys who were attracted usually weren’t shy about saying so or doing something about it.

“He was in very bad shape,” Lauren said, her voice gentle. “You might not have noticed because he did his best to hide it, but Joe wasn’t anywhere close to recovery when you moved in. He’d only just begun putting himself back together. Jacko told me Joe said he didn’t have anything to offer a woman until he was in better shape. He had a good job right here at ASI but he fought them hard because he thought he didn’t deserve the job and the salary until he could work as hard as everyone else. Jacko says Joe didn’t dare make a move on you. But surely you noticed that your garden was in fabulous shape, he’d drive you anywhere if so much as a drop of rain fell and that your house was in a great state of repair.”

“Yes, but—” Isabel’s head whirled. And she felt ashamed. Joe hadn’t wanted to make a play for her until he had more to offer? “Didn’t he see what shape I was in?” She met Lauren’s eyes, brimming with sympathy. “You have no idea what I was like. My head would spin for no reason and I had to sit down if I didn’t want to faint. I spooked at loud noises, I didn’t sleep at night but then sleepwalked my way through the day. I was constantly exhausted.”

“You had and probably still have PTSD,” Lauren said gently. “No one better than a soldier to understand that. They all saw horrible things in the war. And frankly, I don’t think Joe cared that you were a mess. I think all he saw was that you’re beautiful and fascinating.” Lauren patted her hand.

Isabel felt like hanging her head. The first month or two she hadn’t noticed much about Joe Harris other than the fact that he was an amazingly helpful neighbor and that she could count on him for just about anything. She’d been in a fog of grief and sadness. But Joe had had his own wounds that hadn’t stopped him from helping her every way he could.

And while he had worked hard to put himself together, she’d just mourned and baked cookies.

“I want to be better,” she said to Lauren. “I want to get myself together physically and mentally. I don’t want Joe to consider me a basket case. I need to move on if we’re to have a hope of being a couple.”

Lauren straightened and held a draftsman’s pencil over the paper. “I think we can make a good start if we can nail this face you see in your nightmares. That would be a really good first step.”

It would.

Isabel struggled at first. She couldn’t pin down the features. And when she did, a wave of dread washed over her. He was a creature of her nightmares but the horror bled into the daytime. She had to fight not to wipe him out of her mind.

Lauren walked her through it. “Shape of face?”

Just thinking of that shadowy form with darkness for eyes made her shiver. “What?”

“What was the shape of his face?”

Lauren’s hand flew over the paper. Twelve face shapes appeared. “So, these are the basic shapes, barring major deformities. Which one?”

Without thinking, Isabel put a finger on one. “This shape.” Long, narrow at the chin, broad in the temples. But she couldn’t have described it. The face still danced just out of reach of her consciousness.

“Okay.” Lauren lifted the sheet away and drew on a new one. “These are some shapes of a mouth.” Full lips, thin lips, top lip fuller, bottom lip fuller, wide, narrow...

“Like that!” Isabel felt a pulse course through her system, because those thin, narrow lips were exactly like those of the man in her nightmares. Again, she couldn’t have verbalized it, but she recognized it.

On another sheet of paper, Lauren drew hair, once Isabel said that the man’s hair was cropped short in an expensive cut and was salt-and-pepper. More salt than pepper.

Lauren fit the hair over the shape of the face Isabel had chosen and added the mouth. A prickle ran up her spine. They were getting there. And the man looked...she cocked her head. He looked somehow familiar.

Up to now she just thought the monster in her nightmares was some kind of composite representing the evil that had carried out the Massacre. Was the monster real?

“Nose,” Lauren said, but before she could start drawing sample noses Isabel surprised herself.

“Long, narrow at the bridge, finely cut nostrils.” Lauren looked up at her then her hands added...exactly the right nose.

Isabel couldn’t breathe.

“Eyes?”

Isabel never saw the eyes in her nightmares but the answer came welling up from a dark place inside her.

“Deep-set, slightly uptilted.” Though Lauren was drawing in black-and-white, she added, “Chocolate brown.”

Because she knew who this was.

Something was cracking inside her, some carapace that had enveloped her since the Massacre. The cracking open hurt. Faster than she could follow, her brain was making connections, filling in the dots. Filling in the holes that had plagued her since that terrible day.

There was a connection between the monster in her nightmares and the monsters that had taken away her life. All these months, her nightmares had been trying to talk to her and she’d been too scared to listen. She’d tucked them away in the back of her mind until they broke out of the walls.

Lauren’s hand stopped moving and she turned her head this way and that, frowning at what her hand had created. “Doesn’t he look...” She glanced up at Isabel. “Doesn’t he look familiar?”

The walls had collapsed and the floods came. Isabel was frozen to the spot, head whirling. She felt dizzy and sick.

“Isabel?”

Lauren’s voice was sharp with worry. She reached out to Isabel but Isabel stood up, swaying. The band around her chest grew tighter.

“Isabel, what’s wrong?” Lauren put a hand on Isabel’s shoulder.

“Hector Blake.” Isabel’s voice was low and raw. The words hurt.

“What?” Lauren glanced down at the drawing she’d made and blinked. “Oh. Yes. Wow. I’ve seen him on TV. It does look like him, doesn’t it?”

But Isabel could barely hear Lauren above the buzzing in her head, so when she spoke, her voice was loud. The group huddled around Felicity’s computer lifted their heads and looked at her.

“Hector Blake!” she shouted. “Uncle Hector.”

Her head felt like it was splitting open.

Joe was right beside her. She hadn’t even seen him cross the room. He opened his arms and she huddled against him because right now her skin wasn’t enough to keep her together. She was shaking so hard she was going to fly apart in a million pieces.

Uncle Hector.

He’d always just...been there. Her parents had been social animals with hundreds of friends and she’d grown up surrounded by people, Uncle Hector included. He wasn’t actually her blood uncle, but their families had been friends for generations and he’d grown up with her father.

She didn’t really like him, never had. He’d always seemed so pompous and self-important, but then she didn’t always like her parents’ friends. She didn’t have to. There were plenty of other people around to like.

She wasn’t even too sure her dad liked him. Her mom certainly hadn’t.

Hector Blake, Uncle Hector.

She was choking, shaking, trying to drag in air. Everyone was standing around her. Lauren and Felicity. Metal and Jacko and one of the two bosses. They were watching her as she fell apart.