I hiccuped a sob. “What do you mean?”

“He retired earlier than we thought he would. I think he felt guilty about using you like that. Whatever the case may be, I’ll talk to him, pumpkin. Don’t you worry.”

The doctor came a while later and argued for a good half hour, but Uncle Bob and I won. They were releasing me on my own recognizance.

“Where are you going?”

I looked up as Dad walked in. Uncle Bob was helping me with a pair of slippers as Cookie retrieved a robe out of the closet.

“Hey, Dad, they’re letting me walk. It’s crazy. They apparently have no idea how dangerous I am.” I realized about mid-crazy that Dad seemed upset. “What’s wrong?” I asked when he frowned at Uncle Bob and me.

Uncle Bob stood. “Leland, she wants to go home.”

“You just keep encouraging her, and now a man is dead and she is in the hospital after having been tortured almost to death, yet again.”

“Now is not the time for this conversation.”

“Now is precisely the time. She refuses to listen to anyone, even her own doctor.” Dad’s aura crackled with anger. “This,” he said, gesturing to the equipment surrounding me as I sat on the side of the bed, fighting the pain throbbing in my arm and leg, “this is what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. The pain leached it out of me as fast as my body could produce it.

Gemma walked in then, her eyes wide with worry, and I realized there was more going on than just Dad’s anger. “I tried to talk him out of this, Charley.”

“Why?” He turned on her, his jaw set in anger. I’d never seen my dad like this. He was always the calm one, the stable one. “So she can end up in the hospital every other week? You want this for her?”

“Dad, I want her to be happy. She likes her job and she’s good at it and it’s not up to us.”

He turned from her as though disgusted. I wondered where Denise was, the stepmother from hell; then I saw her standing down the hall, worry lining her face. She looked up as two officers walked past and stepped into the room. And lo and behold, one was Owen Vaughn, naturally, and I knew this was about to get much, much worse.

“Charlotte Davidson?” the officer that I didn’t know and who had never tried to kill me asked.

“Dad,” Gemma said, “please think about what you’re doing.”

“That’s her,” Vaughn said, as though he hated to do it.

Uncle Bob spoke up then, suspicion thickening in his voice. “What are you doing, Leland?”

“What I should have done a long time ago.”

“Ms. Davidson,” the officer said, “we’re here to place you under arrest for aiding and abetting an escaped convict and obstruction of justice in the apprehension and arrest of said convict.”

My jaw fell to the floor. I looked from them to Dad and back.

“Dad, please,” Gemma said.

“Due to your physical condition, we’re going to ask that you come in voluntarily within the next week to be formally arrested. Your rights and privileges as a licensed private investigator have been suspended until an investigation can determine the extent of your involvement in Reyes Farrow’s escape and continued evasion.”

With the wind knocked completely out of me, I sat in stunned silence as he spoke. My father did this. The one person I could always count on growing up. My rock.

Somewhere between the drips of a leaky water faucet nearby, I slipped into a surreal state of consciousness. I heard Dad and Uncle Bob arguing violently, nurses rush in and out, Gemma and Cookie talking to me in soft, soothing tones. But the world had been dipped in red. My dad. Reyes. Nathan Yost. Earl Walker. It was enough to bring out the anger in a girl.

My sudden spike in annoyance must have summoned Reyes. He was there at once, enshrouded in his undulating robe. He looked from the arguing crowd to me, then back again. And he was not a person I wanted to see. In fact, he was more a person I wanted to punish. Because I saw betrayal. Unconscionable behavior. Murder.

“Rey’aziel,” I whispered under my breath with every intention of sending him back to his body for good, but he was in front of me at once.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, his voice a low growl.

I glowered at him. “You don’t get to order me around.”

He pushed his hood back, his face startlingly beautiful, inches from mine. “So you’re going to punish me? Unbind me when you need me, then bind me again when you don’t?” He leaned so close, I could smell the lightning storm roiling inside him, the earthy dampness of morning dew evaporating under the heat of the sun. “Fuck you, then.”

I shook to my core, the anger sparking within me, catching fire and flooding the area with the energy pouring out of me. In a word, I threw a fit.

“What is that?” I heard someone ask.

I looked up, a curious slant to my gaze as I watched everyone around me grab for furniture, the doorjamb, each other … anything to stabilize themselves. Uncle Bob stumbled, then rushed toward me. He knew. Somehow he knew.

He took my chin into his hand. “Charley…”

The lights flickered overhead. Sparks cascaded around us and screams filtered toward me from the hall.

“Charley, honey, you have to stop.”

Cookie came into my line of sight, her eyes wide with fear as she clutched an equipment cart.

“Charley,” Uncle Bob said again, his voice soft, soothing, and in an instant I blinked back to reality. He was in front of me, and I was back in my body, grounded in flesh and bone. I forced myself to calm, to take deep, cleansing breaths, to control the arcs of energy surging out of me.