Beneath the Skin

PROLOGUE LIKE MOLTEN GLASS

SEATTLE, WA

March 24–25

“ARE THESE THE PEOPLE who broke into your house, sweetie?”

Brisia Rodriguez didn’t look up from her cup of hot cocoa. She studied the white swirls of whipped cream melting into the chocolate instead of the pictures Mr. Díon slid across the polished wood table.

Interview station, her dad would’ve called the small, pale green-painted room with its table and two chairs. But this wasn’t a police station or the FBI field office. She knew because she and her fifth-grade class had visited both with her dad on a career-day field trip last month.

“Is my dad okay?” she asked.

“He’s in the hospital,” Mr. Díon said. “But your mom and sisters are with him right now. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll drive you over there, okay?”

Brisia curled her fingers tighter around the warm mug. “Will he be … all right?” She prayed she wouldn’t have to ask the other thing, the horrible thing she never, ever wanted to say aloud. She was scared if she did, it’d come true like a reverse wish.

Nononono. Don’t even think it!

She drew in a shuddering breath laced with the thick scent of creamy, hot milk and dark chocolate. Her stomach knotted.

“Brisia.” Mr. Díon’s low, soothing voice felt like a hand to her chin, gently tugging her gaze up from the depths of her hot cocoa. “You’re the only one who can help us find the people who hurt your dad.”

She looked at Mr. Díon. His purple eyes reminded her of sunlit violets. “I told the police everything,” she said. “They wrote it all down.”

“Yes, but the police don’t know who they’re looking for. But I believe we do,” Mr. Díon said, his voice as soft and warm as his eyes. “All you have to do is look at the pictures, okay?”

“Okay,” Brisia said. She lowered her gaze to the trio of photographs lined up neatly on the table between her and Mr. Díon. The first one showed a man with curly blond hair, a smile curving his lips. Laugh crinkles V-ed out from beside each green eye. He reminded her of that actor, Matthew McConaughey.

Standing in the hall inside her house, Matthew McConaughey Guy smiles, all warm and friendly, almost slike he’s supposed to be there, even with the gun in his hand. But when his gaze flicks over to Brisia, his eyes are like ice.

“He was there,” Brisia said. “He had a gun too.”

“Alexander Lyons. Good job, Brisia. What about the next photo?”

Brisia shifted her attention to the middle picture and recognized the pretty red-haired woman. Only a hint of a smile touched the woman’s lips, but her blue-eyed gaze was open and direct. Brisia remembered the hushed urgency in the woman’s voice as she’d hurried Brisia to the front door after Matthew McConaughey Guy had sauntered from the room.

I want you to run to a neighbor’s house and have them call 911, okay?

Do you need help too?

Don’t worry about me. Just go.

“Heather Wallace,” Mr. Díon said. “Why did you think she needed help too?”

Brisia glanced at Mr. Díon. Had she spoken aloud? “Well … I could tell she didn’t like this guy,” she said, touching a fingertip against the first photo. “And she asked me to call 911. I don’t think she would’ve done that if she was one of the bad guys.”

Mr. Díon nodded. “Good observation. I’ll bet your dad’s proud of you,” he said, his violet eyes full of light. “Are you planning to be an FBI agent like your dad?”

“Yeah,” Brisia said, even though up until that moment all she’d ever wanted to be was a veterinarian. Helping and healing dogs and cats and guinea pigs. She wasn’t sure if that was a new truth revealing itself to her or if she was just saying it as a bargain-promise to God. “Are you an FBI agent too? Do you work with my dad?”

“I’m FBI, yes. But I haven’t had the pleasure of working with your dad.”

Brisia wanted to believe Mr. Díon. She really did. Dad had told her the FBI was a part of their family—a family that stretched all across the country and around the world. You trusted family, went to them when trouble knocked on your door.

But he’d said he was Mr. Díon, not Special Agent Díon.

She lifted her mug and swallowed her doubt with a sip of cocoa and whipped cream, sweet and warm. She carefully set the mug back on the table, trying to slide it back inside the little ring of chocolate it’d made on the polished wood surface.

You trusted family.

“I’ve never been here before,” Brisia said, looking around the room. It still smelled faintly of paint. “Is this a new office? I don’t see a two-way mirror. There’s not even a camera up in the corner.”

Mr. Díon laughed, his voice as soothing as the cocoa in her mug. “You’ll make a good agent, sweetie. This is a special room we use to interview FBI agents and their families when … tragedy … strikes, so we don’t need to monitor anyone. It’s a safe place from the bad guys.” Leaning forward, he rested his clasped hands on the table. “One more photo, then you’re done.”

“Okay.” Brisia looked at the last photo and she inhaled in sharp surprise at the man captured in the picture. He looked way young, for one thing, younger than she remembered. Black hair, dark chocolate-colored eyes, white skin, a tilted smile on his lips, a black collar strapped around his throat. He looked happy and sure of himself. And what surprised her was that without all the blood on his skin, he was cute, like pin-the-poster-to-your-wall-and-sigh-over-it cute.

He didn’t look like a monster.

But she knew he was.

He appears in front of her in a gust of air smelling of autumn leaves and Halloween apples. Blood smears his white face. She backs up until she bumps into the sofa. She freezes, her heart drumming, frantic and wild. He kneels down on one knee in front of her, leather pants creaking. A smile tugs at his bloodstained lips. He reaches a trembling, blood-smeared hand for her hair and slides a lock between his fingers.

She catches a whiff of something pungent and coppery. She sees blood on his pale fingers, glistening on his shirt, trickling from his nose. So much blood. But he’s not acting like he’s hurt. Maybe it isn’t all his blood.

A thought loops through her mind, numbing her heart and stealing her voice.

Where’s Daddy?

“Did he hurt you?”

Brisia shook her head. She tried to blink away the tears blurring her vision, but she couldn’t blink fast enough. Tears spilled over her lashes and slid hot down her cheeks. No longer ten years old, but a bawling baby. And a baby couldn’t help Dad.

“He was there,” she said, her throat so tight, the words hurt. “He came outta my dad’s office.”

“Dante Prejean. Are you sure he didn’t hurt you? Absolutely sure?”

“He didn’t hurt me.” She remembered the blood glistening on his shirt, smeared on his face, his hands. He didn’t hurt me, but he hurt Daddy. She wiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands and another memory flashed into her mind.

The red-haired woman walks out of the hallway’s darkness and stops beside the office door, a small black gun clenched in her hands. She looks at Brisia and her eyes widen.

“Help me,” Brisia whispers.

The woman, face tight, lifts the gun and aims it at the blood-smeared man kneeling in front of Brisia, stroking her hair and speaking to her in a language she doesn’t know.

But it isn’t anger she sees on the woman’s face, or even horror. It’s sorrow.

Sniffing, Brisia wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

“I don’t see any Kleenex,” Mr. Díon murmured, brushing a hand over his short caramel-brown hair as he glanced around the room.

“A lot of times it’s kept under the interview table or in a drawer,” Brisia said. Shoving her chair back over the low beige carpet, she peeked under the table. No box of Kleenex. Just Mr. Díon’s polished black shoes and gray-trousered legs.

“I think we’re about done, Brisia.”

“So I get to go see my dad now?” she asked, sitting up and scooting her chair back to the table. She lifted her mug and took a swallow of the cooling cocoa.

Mr. Díon stood up and walked around the table. He crouched down beside her chair. Brisia’s fingers clenched around the mug, and for a moment, she thought she smelled copper and Halloween apples, saw blood against white skin. Her stomach rolled, queasy. She set the mug back down on the table.

“Before I take you to the hospital to see your dad,” Mr. Díon said, his voice low and smooth, “I want you to close your eyes and go back to the moment you walked into the house this evening.”

Brisia looked into his eyes. His violet gaze was flecked with gold and burning bright—rimmed with fire like molten glass. She’d learned in art class last year that molten glass could be shaped into anything.

Offering Mr. Díon a smile, Brisia said, “Okay.” She closed her eyes.

You trusted family.

“I’m going to touch your temples, but keep your eyes closed, sweetie.”

Brisia nodded. Fingers brushed aside the hair at either side of Brisia’s head, then settled against her skin. Their heat made her feel drowsy, all floaty, like a balloon.

“Go to the beginning,” Mr. Díon whispered.

A wave of dizziness swirled through her and when she tried to open her eyes, she couldn’t. Fear rippled in, black and cold. “Mr. Díon? I don’t feel good.”

“Shhh. It’ll pass. Just focus on what happened tonight.”

The dizziness vanished, but an icy ball of dread lodged in her tummy. She gripped the sides of her chair to make sure she didn’t fall out of it.

A thought breezed through her mind: Everything’s okay. You’re safe and you’ll be seeing Daddy soon. She relaxed and let the thought curl through her like hot cocoa steam as she shifted her thoughts backward a few hours.

She opens the front door and walks into the empty living room. “Daddy?” she calls. “I forgot my iPod!”

And even as the memory and its sounds and images flowed through her mind, she felt each one being un-threaded and undone, like when her mom unhooked her knitting when she didn’t like how the piece had turned out. Until it was just yarn, waiting to be knitted into something new. Or molten glass waiting to be shaped.

Then even those thoughts unraveled.