With Open Eyes Read Online Free Page B

away again. “I want to sing. I always sing.”
    “And you’re a really good singer. And you can keep singing, but I want you to do something else.”
    She turned and walked across her small studio. It was a carpeted, octagonal-shaped room with a whiteboard, a piano, several colorful music-themed posters, and a large mirrored panel at the far end. “Come here, I want to show you something.”
    Jimmy hesitated.
    She smiled luminously at him. “I promise that you’re going to like this, honey. Don’t you trust me?”
    He didn’t answer, then nodded jerkily. “I…trust you.”
    Her heart melted. Another victory.
    “That means a lot to me, Jimmy.” She gripped the corner of a white tarp and pulled it away to reveal a percussion kit.
    His eyes widened. “Drums!”
    “Do you like it?”
    He bit his lip. “Why should I like it? I don’t know how to play drums.”
    “Anybody can play drums. Whether they can play them well, that’s another matter.” She picked up a pair of drumsticks and placed them in Jimmy’s hands, curling the fingers around in a matched grip. She pulled him around to the other side of the drum set. “Now sit down. This will be fun.”
    Jimmy slowly sat, holding the drumsticks in front of him as if they were sticks of unstable dynamite.
    “You don’t have to hold them so tightly. Loosen up, feel the beat like you did last time.”
    He looked at the various surfaces around him. “But what do I do?”
    She strummed the guitar. “Whatever you feel like doing. Whatever sounds and feels good to you.” She played George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set on You,” accenting the song’s strong and clean rhythms.
    Jimmy held the sticks over the snare drum.
    “Anytime.”
    He struck the drum’s surface tentatively.
    “Both sticks, Jimmy…Come on, it’s fun!”
    He used both sticks to accompany her on the snare, striking with a not-entirely-unrhythmic beat.
    “That’s fantastic!”
    He closed his eyes and nodded. He branched out to the tom-tom on his left, accenting his stylings with the lower-pitched drum.
    “Good!” She pointed down the pedal on the floor. “That’s for the bass drum. Want to try it?”
    He pressed the pedal and reacted with a start as the kicker struck the drum surface. He stepped on it again and again, repeating the motion until he found the rhythm she had set.
    He continued on the bass drum as he struck the snare and tom-tom with increased vigor.
    Kendra studied him. Could it be?
    Ever so slightly, a faint smile was pulling at the corners of his mouth.
    Yes.

    KENDRA MICHAELS DIDN’T appear to be the bitch he’d thought she’d be, Adam Lynch thought, as he watched her through the one-way glass in the observation room as she interacted with the child. What he’d heard about her had been far from complimentary, but that could be due to jealousy. Her work had completely overshadowed that of the FBI agents from whom he’d received reports. Evidently, she had not done it diplomatically.
    Yet every move, every expression, was warm and gentle as she taught that troubled boy. A puzzle. If he was going to use her, he had to know which buttons to push to do it. He had no doubt he’d find a way to do it. It was a skill that had earned him both applause and hatred over the years. But it was annoying that he’d been given the wrong information with which to develop a method to do it. He studied her, looking for an answer to the paradox.
    Though she was of middle height and slim, she did not appear fragile at all. When she walked or moved, she had a litheness that spoke of strength and suppleness earned by frequent exercise. Her shoulder-length, pale brown hair was sun-streaked in places. Her face…Strength there, too. A strong chin, well-formed lips that still spoke of control and discipline, large hazel eyes that were set far apart and seemed to hold intelligence as well as humor. Not a pretty face, but for an instant, when she smiled at the boy, he had seen a flash, a