Before I Wake by Anne Frasier Page A

agents, liked to gossip and exaggerate, but he was afraid everything people had been saying about her was true.
    After two hours in the emergency room, a CT scan, and tetanus shot, Arden was diagnosed with an extremely mild concussion, given something for the pain, and told to go home and rest.
    “No stitches?” she asked the young ER doctor.
    “I think you’ll be okay without them.” He left the exam room to put together a prescription and home-care information.
    Arden remained where she was, her legs dangling over the end of the padded exam table.
    Fury stood across the room.
    He hadn’t bothered to remove his soaked and wrinkled coat, which was unbuttoned and hanging limply. His short hair was rumpled. He stared out the window of the old brick building at rain that was falling harder than ever, his back to her, hands in his pockets.
    “I don’t mind rain,” he surprised her by saying. “It’s kind of peaceful…”
    Earlier, while the doctor had been examining her head, Arden had remembered what she’d forgotten. “I saw a body,” she now blurted out.
    Fury slowly turned to look at her. “What?” He glanced around the room, as if expecting to find a corpse nearby.
    “A body.”
    “Where?”
    “Cottage 25. In one of the float tanks.”
    He recoiled, then seemed to collect himself.
    She could see him thinking things over, weighing her mental stability and injury. Organizing, reorganizing. Dismissing. “You’ve had a concussion. The doctor said you might be a little confused for a while.”
    “I saw a body in one of the float tanks.”
    Her voice sounded certain. She knew from experience that you had to sound certain, if you wanted results. Even if you weren’t certain you had to fake it. And Fury wasn’t telling her anything new. In fact, she was afraid her mental state was worse than he could possibly guess.
    “Dead?” Fury asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Fury pulled out a cell phone, punched in a number, and lifted the phone to his ear. “I need somebody to check the basement of Cottage 25. The float tank room,” he told the person on the other end. “I have someone here who claims to have seen something, maybe a person, in one of the tanks. Check it out and get back to me.”
    He pocketed the phone. “What were you doing in Cottage 25?”
    Something stupid . “Hanging out with the cool kids.”
    He gave her a pained look.
    “I don’t know. What am I doing in Madeline? What am I doing here, talking to you? Does everything have to have a reason?”
    “It was a simple question.”
    “Your patronizing attitude is annoying.”
    “I don’t mean to be patronizing.” His expression was blank, his voice calm. FBI. He was so good at that. She used to be good at that, too.
    Things changed.
    “We were trying to find Noah,” she told him. “He’d gotten lost inside Cottage 25. Typical kids’ stuff. I went along to keep an eye on them.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out very well.”
    Fury’s phone rang.
    He answered it.
    A brief conversation, followed by, “Thanks.” He disconnected and gave Arden a satisfied look. “All three tanks are empty.”
    Of course they were— now .
    “It was probably Noah in the tank,” Fury said. “The whole thing was a prank meant to scare the hell out of his girlfriend. You found him instead.”
    He could be right.
    “Talk to Noah,” Fury said. “Maybe you can get him to come clean.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    Paper crinkled as she slipped off the exam table and stood up. A wave of dizziness hit her, and she had to wait a moment for it to fade.
    Nothing seemed real. She felt like a bystander in her own life. Someone watching the show. But then, life was a series of parts. Some you played better than others. “Maybe I should look at the tanks myself.”
    She didn’t want to. The thought of going back there made her feel queasy all over again. She wasn’t sure she could do it, and she found herself hoping Fury would talk her out of it.
    “Arden.