Free The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner Page B

on those lifeless bodies. Her own head topped shattered torsos and bloodied limbs.
    And sometimes she had nightmares where she saw her own death, except she never woke up the moment before dying, the way sane people did. No, she dreamt it all the way through, feeling her body plummet over the cliff and smash into the rocks below. Feeling her head slam through the windshield of the shattered car.
    And never once in her dreams did she scream. She only thought,
finally.
    She couldn’t breathe. More black dots danced in front of her vision. She grabbed another tree limb, and hung on tight. How had the air gotten this hot? What had happened to all the oxygen?
    And then, in the last sane corner of her mind, it came to her. She was having an anxiety attack. Her body had officially bottomed out, and now she was having an anxiety attack, her first in six years.
    She staggered deeper into the woods. She needed to cool down. She needed to draw a breath. She had suffered this kind of episode before. She could survive it again.
    She careened through the underbrush, unmindful of the small twigs scratching her cheeks or the tree limbs snatching at her hair. She searched desperately for cooler shade.
    Breathe deep, count to ten. Focus on your hands, and making them steady. You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re well trained.
    Breathe, Kimberly. Come on, honey, just breathe.
    She staggered into a clearing, stuck her head between her knees and worked on sucking air, until with a final, heaving gasp, her lungs opened up and the air whooshed gratefully into her chest. Inhale. Exhale. That’s it, breathe . . .
    Kimberly looked down at her hands. They were quieter now, pressed against the hollow plane of her stomach. She forced them away from her body, and inspected her splayed fingers for signs of trembling.
    Better. Soon she would be cool again. Then she would resume jogging. And then, because she was very good at this by now, no one would ever know a thing.
    Kimberly straightened up. She took one last deep breath, then turned back in the direction of the PT course . . . and realized for the first time that she was not alone.
    Five feet in front of her was a well-worn dirt path. Wide and very smooth, probably used by the Marines for their training. And right smack in the middle of that path sprawled the body of a young girl in civilian clothes. Blond hair, black sandals, and splayed tanned limbs. She wore a simple white cotton shirt and a very short, blue-flowered skirt.
    Kimberly took one step forward. Then she saw the girl’s face, and then she knew.
    The goose bumps rippled down her arms again. A shiver snaked up her spine. And in the middle of the hot, still woods, Kimberly began to frantically look around, even as her hand flew to the inside of her leg and found her knife.
    First rule of procedure, always secure the crime scene.
    Second rule, call for backup.
    Third rule, try hard not to think of what it means when young women aren’t safe even at the Academy. For this girl was quite dead, and by all appearances, it had happened recently.

CHAPTER 7
    Quantico, Virginia

10:03 A . M .

Temperature: 86 degrees

    “ ONE MORE TIME, Kimberly. How did you end up off the PT course?”
    “I got a stitch in my side, I went off the course. I was trying to walk it out, and . . . I don’t think I realized how far I had wandered.”
    “And you saw the body?”
    “I saw something up ahead,” Kimberly said without blinking. “I headed toward it, and then . . . Well, you know the rest.”
    Her class supervisor, Mark Watson, scowled at her, but finally leaned back. She was sitting across from him in his bright, expansive office. Mid-morning sun poured through the bank of windows. An orange monarch butterfly fluttered just outside the glass. It was such a beautiful day to be talking about death.
    At Kimberly’s cry, two of her classmates had come running. She’d leaned forward and taken the girl’s pulse by then. Nothing, of course, but then