CHAPTER 1
A muffled scream awoke Roz. It had been her own. Once again, her sweat-drenched sheets clung to her body. Knowing an intake of oxygen would naturally calm her pounding heart, she inhaled through her nose to a count of five, held it for five seconds, and released it slowly through her mouth. Repeating four times helped shake off the horrifying sensation of powerful arms restraining her, tying her to a tree, and a thousand angry blue butterflies fluttering in her face; their wings slicing her skin like tiny razor blades.
Accustomed to bad dreams, as they happened from time to time throughout her life, this particular one had become a nightly occurrence for Roz during the past two weeks.
She knew why.
Her phone read 6:40 a.m., twenty minutes before her alarm was set to ring. Realizing there was no sense in trying to sleep anymore, she pushed herself to her feet, stretched out her lanky body, reached her arms high in the air, and released a long groan.
In the bathroom, she scooped up her shoulder-length, blonde hair into an oversized clip and examined her face in the mirror. Her admired, creamy white complexion, the one she had always been proud of through high school and college, now tarnished.
Roz gently washed her tender skin with tepid water. The evidence was almost gone. The skin busy repairing and regenerating itself, resulting in only a slight redness, which could mostly be masked by foundation.
The only place Roz had been since the incident was the doctor’s office. His 3-fold treatment plan: Avoid permanent tissue damage and scarring from the chemicals by staying out of the sunlight. Don’t let the areas get infected. Absolutely do not touch or pop the blisters. The touching had been the hardest. Despite the aloe vera gel, as the burns on her cheeks, neck, and arms healed, the itching became unbearable to the point where she found herself in tears more than a few times. The scabs covering the cuts on her wrists and ankles, now gone, left behind only smooth white scars as poignant reminders.
As she carefully smeared beige makeup to hide everything, Roz’s phone rang. It must be Teeny, her good friend, the only person who ever called so early, except for the irritating spam callers that recently began at 7:00 in the morning.
She let the call go to voicemail. Teeny had already left several messages, and she’d been getting rather forceful in her demands to meet. Her friend didn’t like Roz’s seclusion and remained totally convinced something bad happened during Roz’s most recent assignment.
It had.
A half minute later, a text came. Roz didn’t want to deal with Teeny at that moment, yet she needed to respond; otherwise, Roz might end up with an unscheduled visitor on her doorstep.
She texted back. “Sorry. Can’t talk now. Will call in a bit.”
A reply came, “You’d better. You keep promising. I’m worried about you.”
Roz sent a heart emoji, then went to get dressed, not looking forward to her upcoming appointment. Maybe she had lost her ability to help. She had been working hard on this: understanding she couldn’t help everyone or give her time and money to every worthy cause in the world, she would choose to help one person at a time. That had always been her way—up until recently, when doubt had made its stand.