Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [12]
Now they had Hogan’s Alley, where they practiced elaborate scenarios and only the actors actually knew what was going to happen next. Kimberly’s traditional anxiety dreams—leaving the house naked, suddenly being in a classroom taking a pop quiz—had once been in black and white. Since Hogan’s Alley, they had taken on vivid, violent color. Hot-pink classrooms, mustard-yellow streets. Pop quizzes splashed with purple and green paint. Herself running, running, running down long endless tunnels of exploding orange, pink, purple, blue, yellow, black, and green.
She awoke some nights biting back weary screams. Other nights, she simply lay there and felt her right shoulder throb. Sometimes, she could tell that Lucy was awake, too. They didn’t talk those nights. They just lay in the dark, and gave each other the space to hurt.
Then at six A.M. they both got up and went through it all over again.
Nine weeks down, seven to go. Show no weakness. Give no quarter. Endure.
Kimberly wanted so desperately to make it. She was strong Kimberly, with cool blue eyes just like her father’s. She was smart Kimberly, with her B.A. in psychology at twenty-one and her master’s in criminology at twenty-two. She was driven Kimberly, determined to get on with her life even after what happened to her mother and sister.
She was infamous Kimberly, the youngest member of her class and the one everyone whispered about in the halls. You know who her father is, don’t you? What a shame about her family. I heard the killer nearly got her, too. She gunned him down in cold blood . . .
Kimberly’s classmates took lots of notes in their eagerly awaited profiling class. Kimberly took none at all.
She arrived downstairs. Up ahead in the hall, she could see a cluster of green shirts chatting and laughing—National Academy students, done for the day and no doubt heading to the Boardroom for cold beer. Then came the cluster of blue shirts, talking up a storm. Fellow new-agent trainees, also done for the day, and now off to grab a quick bite in the cafeteria before hitting the books, or the PT course, or the gym. Maybe they were mentoring each other, swapping a former lawyer’s legal expertise for a former Marine’s firearms training. New agents were always willing to help one another. If you let them.
Kimberly pushed her way through the outside doors. The heat slammed into her like a blow. She made a beeline for the relative shade of the Academy’s wooded PT course and started running.
Pain, Agony, Hurt, the signs read on the trees next to the path. Suck it in. Love it!
“I do, I do,” Kimberly gasped.
Her aching body protested. Her chest tightened with pain. She kept on running. When all else failed, keep moving. One foot in front of another. New pain layering on top of the old.
Kimberly knew this lesson well. She had learned it six years ago, when her sister was dead, her mother was murdered and she stood in a Portland, Oregon, hotel room with the barrel of a gun pressed against her forehead like a lover’s kiss.
CHAPTER 3
Fredericksburg, Virginia
6:45 P.M.
Temperature: 92 degrees
TWENTY-YEAR-OLD TINA KRAHN had just stepped out the front door of her stifling hot apartment when the phone rang. Tina sighed, doubled back into the kitchen and answered with an impatient hello while using her other hand to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck. God, this heat was unbearable. The humidity level had picked up on Sunday, and hadn’t done a thing to improve since. Now, fresh out of the shower, Tina’s thin green sundress was already plastered to her body, while she could feel fresh dewdrops of moisture trickle stickily down between her breasts.
She and her roommate Betsy had agreed half an hour ago to go anyplace with air-conditioning. Betsy had made it to the car. Tina had made it to the door, and now this.
Her mother was on the other end of the line. Tina promptly