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.The knife wanted to get lodged in the spinal cord at the back of the man’s neck.The larynx punctured, then ripped.It was like cutting through a piece of nylon rope.Flesh tore audibly.Blood was everywhere, sticky on Nick’s hands.The hand on the knife isn’t mine.The disembodied voice echoed through Nick’s head like a clap of thunder, and with it the image abruptly disappeared.Nick hadn’t moved.He was still standing in front of the doors leading into the living room.Now, though, Sara was hanging impaled from the sword in the bronze soldier’s hand.Its razor-sharp blade jutted out from her chest, covered in blood.Her head was slumped forward, her arms dangling lifelessly at her sides.Her feet were suspended over a pool of coagulating blood.Nick shrank from the vision, then fell to his knees, his hands over his eyes, then over his ears, his chest heaving with panic.You killed Sam, Nick.You murdered Jason Hamlin and Ralph Van Gundy.And now you’re going to kill Sara, too.Sara knelt down next to him.Nick was aware of her hands, soft and cold on his forehead and in his hair, gently stroking him on the back.“I’m no good, Sara,” he heard himself say.“I’m a murderer.”“Shhh,” she whispered.“I’m afraid, Sara.I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you, too.”Sara took Nick into her arms.“Let’s go inside,” she said, drawing him to his feet.The crystal champagne flute fell from his hand as he tried to find his balance, shattering into a thousand pieces on the marble floor.“The champagne was a bad idea, darling.Let’s get you into bed.”Nick woke up at the Hamlin estate on San Juan Island.Sara was lying next to him in the double bed that had been made up by the Wheelers, in the third bedroom down the hallway that ran the length of the house.Nick moved to the edge of the mattress, then dropped his feet to the floor.The bed groaned beneath his shifting weight as he stood up.Moving stealthily to the window, he peered through a crack in the heavy curtains, watching the moon slip between two huge storm clouds, then gathered his clothes.He had set his jeans and T-shirt on the back of a chair, and he slipped them on.The floorboards creaked underneath him when he stood on a single foot to slide into the legs of his pants, but Sara didn’t even murmur.As far as Nick could tell, she was sound asleep.He let himself out into the long hallway, then closed the door behind him.The latch snapped into place with a click.The household was asleep.The hum of an old electric clock in the kitchen vibrated throughout the house.Nick stood entirely still for a moment, listening.Then he made his way down the long, wide corridor to the top of the stairs, one slow step after another, the wood plank floor cold on his feet.He crossed the dining room into the kitchen.Sara hasn’t mentioned you to us once since the night of the fund-raiser.Has she, Jillian? The moonlight was dancing on one of the curtains—a single curtain hanging loose over an open window.Nick paused halfway across the kitchen, hypnotized.Then he crossed the rest of the way to the counter, reaching for the drawer just to the left of the sink.The carving knife with the Japanese writing on the blade, Nick.The largest carving knife in the drawer to the left of the sink.Nick grasped the heavy knife.It was perfectly balanced.A beautiful knife with an eight-inch hardened steel blade and a handle made of mahogany.He admired it in the dazzling light of the moon.Slivers of light scintillated like strands of gems in its oily sheen.He measured its weight, twisted it slowly in the air.He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there before he realized that he wasn’t in the kitchen alone.He turned, raising his eyes in surprise.And as he turned, he realized that he wasn’t at the Hamlin house on San Juan Island at all.He was standing instead in the unfamiliar kitchen of the Bellevue estate, with no recollection of how he had come there.Sara was standing next to him, peering at him curiously.A sour taste came to his mouth.He had to think before he recognized the flavor of the champagne.“You were there in the kitchen,” Nick said.“I took the knife.But you were there in the kitchen, too, Sara, the night that Jason Hamlin was killed.”Sara hovered in front of him in the dim light of the room.When a wave of dizziness nearly knocked him from his feet, a smile spread slowly across her impossibly beautiful face.Grimacing, Nick reached for the counter.He managed to remain on his feet for a few seconds longer, then at last took a drunken step away from the counter and tumbled onto the floor.His eyes closed on his way down, and the blur of his shadowy fall melted into peaceful blackness.Nick was lying facedown on the asphalt.Chunks of gravel were stuck to his cheek, and his skin was badly scraped.His head had hit the pavement, and a lump had formed on his forehead, throbbing painfully.When he moved his mouth to speak, sharp blades of pain shot through his jaw.For a moment he was blind, his eyes were burning as though he were staring into the sun.Jackson Ferry was tugging at his feet.When he began to twist around, Ferry plunged one of his bare feet into the small of his back, shoving him down into the asphalt, once again grinding his cheek against the pavement.“You’re just as diseased as I am, you hopeless son of a bitch,” Ferry said.His voice was raspy and guttural, but surprisingly clear.Nick tried one more time to twist around.“You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t,” the homeless man said to him.“I know.It’s the same for me.One minute I’m in the here and now.The next I’m somewhere else.” He stopped moving.“You and I are brothers,” he said.Then he savagely yanked the Nikes from Nick’s feet.His own foot was still resting on the small of Nick’s back, and he shoved him forward again, even more violently.Nick felt the skin peel from his face.Nick turned over when Ferry let him go, but gingerly.He didn’t try to struggle to his feet.His ribs were sore, and he was having difficulty breathing.He raised his head off the ground and watched Ferry sit down between Sam and him and pull his shoes on, his straggly hair covering his face, a few oily strands caught in his purplish, festering lips.The homeless man stood up.“I feel sorry for you,” he said.He looked down at Sam, sneering hatefully.“Him, no.Him, I wanted to kill.I had to kill him, man, to get him out of my head.” He flashed a gruesome toothless smile.“You know what I mean, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes, man.You’re one of his guinea pigs, too.”Nick hunched over his brother’s body, cataloging the damage that Ferry had inflicted upon him.The knife was lying on the ground next to him, its blade sharp beneath Nick’s knee.The homeless man had slashed Sam’s face, and part of his cheek was hanging from the bone.His mouth was a bloody pulp, nearly unrecognizable.His teeth had been kicked into his throat.He was bleeding profusely from the wounds that Ferry had left in his torso.Nick’s hands shook as he reached down toward his brother’s face, thinking to caress him, perhaps to look for a pulse.His fingers were just above his brother’s torn cheek when the cell phone in Sam’s jacket rang
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