Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 14

Mia’s eyes opened with a start, her heart already pounding in her ears as she awoke from a nightmare into something far worse. She looked around the barren, windowless room, and except for the bed she lay on and the tray of food on the floor, there was nothing to offer any indication of where she was. The heavy brass knobs were polished to a high sheen, while the key mechanism for a dead bolt looked average and recently installed. There was a single lamp in the corner, its forty-watt bulb casting heavy shadows in the small, confined space. The room was not more than ten foot square, and she couldn’t imagine its function beyond a jail cell.

She rose from the bed, her shoulder sore, her head throbbing, and reached for the brass doorknob, although she knew what she would find as she turned and tugged on the thick, heavy door. She laid her ear against the white oak and gently shook the door, listening to its hollow reverberation on the other side. There was no reaction, no approaching footsteps, just the soft echo of the knob turning to and fro and, in the distance, the faint sounds of the city.

Mia turned and looked at the tray of food on the floor. There was a sealed bottle of water. A loaf of bread, cheese, fruit, and a wedge of sausage, like a welcoming tray from some fine hotel. And although she felt hungry-starving, actually-the hollow pit in her stomach, the mix of fear and anger, was too overwhelming to allow her even to think of eating.

Mia had always been able to master her emotions, contain her fear, her pain, her disappointment. Her stepfather had instilled in her that the display of emotions was for the weak, the unintelligent, a sign of our animal heritage. The display of emotions-be it by man or woman-would only serve to fog the mind and impede one from clear thought.

Whether is was the disappointment she felt at being cut from the swim team in eleventh grade after dedicating so many years to the sport or being thrown from her horse at the age of fifteen, her father admonished her tears, scolded her for not burying the pain deep down, never to be spoken of again. She had learned it so well that she was thought of by many as cold and distant. But her face to the world was so contrary to the swirl of emotions she felt within, emotions she didn’t display until she met Jack and he cracked the hard shell she had developed over the years. But those lessons her stepfather forced upon her, while not suitable for a child, had come in handy in her line of work. She was unreadable when she chose to be, masking her feelings with an expertise only seen through by her husband.

But as she thought of Jack, it all came pouring forth in her mind: the rainy bridge, the white Tahoe, the gunshot, her husband’s eyes as he looked pleadingly at her as the car tumbled over into the churning river below.

Despite all of her mastery of her emotions, despite the desperate need to find a means of escape, Mia wrapped herself in her grief.

For the second time, the most important man in Mia’s life had been murdered, violently taken from her as she was forced to bear witness.

And as all strength left her, she collapsed to the floor, her body wracked with sobs.