She was in New York once for a conference and it had been winter. The steps to the Metropolitan Museum of Art were coated with fresh snow and she could remember being wrapped up in her thick wool coat with that long gray scarf whipping about her in the wind. Her hands were cold, but it felt good and she turned her face into the wind as it began to snow.
Flakes caught in her hair.
"Dani?" She turned and didn't smile.
"What do you want, Jack?"
"A coffee. You want one?"
"Nope."
"Too bad."
_____________
They were smothering her with hands and boots and horrible darkness, with tasteless numbness that coated her tongue and lips, and stabbed into her mind. Too close. She was too close. Far too damned close. There was blood on her hands, her stomach was on fire, they were digging into her and she cried out.
Click.
Reese woke sharply, reaching for a gun that wasn't there.
She made an annoyed sound under her breath and rose, moving down the corridor to the bathroom. Cold water helped, but she was left with the lingering image of blood on her hands.
_____________
"Crews!"
He was ignoring her again, probably stuck somewhere inside his own damned head. Normally, she just might have let him go and do his Crews thing but he was getting soaked in the rain.
"Crews, are you even there?"
"Reese, there's a body here, you know," he said. She rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, it's called a homicide for a reason. You coming in out of the rain or are you gonna be one with the universe?" She was getting wet, too, and it was annoying her.
Crews just smiled and she almost slapped him upside the head.
_____________
Six years old. Always running off to explore, to look, to touch, to figure shit out. She had clever hands that were good at buttons, good at figuring out puzzles. She stared at things for hours, at people and places, and her father, too. She stared at him when he came home from the bar smelling of stale smoke and piss beer. She stared at him when he hit her mother and watched his big fucking hand come down.
There was red for a moment. Her father in red, snarling face, black moustache, cold eyes. He hit her so hard he popped a translucent brown button off his cuff and she watched it fly as she hit the wall. It spun against the wood floor, dancing. She lay watching it, shaking away the blur of pain, as her mother knelt by her and screamed at her father.
She tasted blood and her fingers ached, dull, sharp, dull. She was six years old and the button made a scrabbling dash for freedom and fell through the cracks. Jack Reese turned on his heel and opened another beer bottle.