Corpses don’t breathe. Dead hearts don’t beat.
Other sensations intruded. Hardness below me. Burning on the right side of my face.
I raised my head.
Bitter bile flooded my mouth.
I shifted my hips to relieve pressure on my twisted neck.
Pain exploded up my left leg.
A groan shattered the stillness.
Instinctively, my body went fetal. The pounding gained volume.
I lay curled, listening to the rhythm of my fear.
Then, recognition. The sound had come from my own throat.
I feel pain. I react. I am alive.
But where?
Spitting bile, I tried reaching out. Felt resistance. Realized my wrists were bound.
I flexed a knee toward my chest, testing. My feet rose as one. My wrists dropped.
I tried a second time, harder. Neurons again fired up my leg.
Stifling another cry, I struggled to force order onto my addled thinking.
I’d been bound, hands to feet, and abandoned. Where? When? By whom? Why?
A memory search for recent events came up empty. No. The void in recollection was longer than that.
I remembered picnicking with my daughter, Katy. But that was summer. The frigid temperature now suggested that it must be winter.
Sadness. A last farewell to Andrew Ryan. That was October. Had I seen him again?
A bright red sweater at Christmas. This Christmas? I had no idea.
Disoriented, I groped for any detail from the past few days. Nothing stayed in focus.
Vague impressions lacking rational form or sequence appeared and faded. A figure emerging from shadow. Man or woman? Anger. Shouting. About what? At whom?
Melting snow. Light winking off glass. The dark maw of a cracked door.
Dilated vessels pounded inside my skull. Hard as I tried, I could not evoke recollection from my semiconscious mind.
Had I been drugged? Suffered a blow to the head?
How bad was my leg? If I managed to free myself, could I walk? Crawl?
My hands were numb, my fingers useless. I tried tugging my wrists outward. Felt no give in my bindings.
Tears of frustration burned the backs of my lids.
No crying!
Clamping my jaw, I rolled to my back, raised my feet, and jerked my ankles apart. Flames roared up my left lower limb.
Then I knew nothing.
I awoke. Moments later? Hours? No way to tell. My mouth felt drier, my lips more parched. The pain in my leg had receded to a dull ache.
Though I gave my pupils time, they took in nothing. How could they adjust? The dense blackness offered not a sliver of light.
The same questions flooded back. Where? Why? Who?
Clearly, I’d been abducted. To be the victim in some sick game? To be removed as a threat?
The thought triggered my first clear memory. An autopsy photo. A corpse, charred and twisted, jaws agape in a final agonal scream.
Then a kaleidoscope sequence, image chasing image. Two morgues. Two autopsy rooms. Name plaques marking two labs. Temperance Brennan, Forensic Anthropologist. Temperance Brennan, Anthropologue Judiciaire.
Was I in Charlotte? Montreal? Far too cold for North Carolina. Even in winter. Was it winter? Was I in Quebec?
Had I been grabbed at home? On the street? In my car? Outside the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome? Inside the lab?