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front at first, but inside, a part of her had died. She had been kidnapped, tortured, beaten and brutally raped. Mrs. Dupassie, a petite old chocolate-colored woman who swore like a sailor, had helped them in their investigation, and she’d given Karen a lot of support afterward. Mrs. Dupassie had put her in touch with a psychiatrist, whom she still saw—Dr. Roderick Kincaid. These days, she saw him once or twice a month, but at first, she’d been in his home office four or five times a week. He had been very understanding—far more understanding than any typical psychiatrist would have been. He was not typical at all... just as Mrs. Dupassie was not typical....
    Along with endangering their lives, it had changed the way they looked at the world. It had changed them. Both were well educated and, before that investigation, they had been in solid mental health. As Karen sometimes put it, “I drop something now and then, but I have most of my shit together.” But after that first investigation for Burgess, their beliefs, their outlooks, and their sanity had been shaken. Especially Karen’s. Afterward, she had not slept as well—she still didn’t. Gavin had been surprised to discover that he had a new fear of the dark. After conquering their initial fears of encountering anything as deadly or horrific as the things they’d faced in that first job, they’d worked on two more cases for Burgess. Neither investigation had turned out to be much of anything, which had been a tremendous relief to both Karen and Gavin.
    It had been a difficult decision to go back to work for Burgess. Karen could not get the memories of her torture and rape at the hands of those... creatures... out of her mind, and she knew she never would. The risk of going through something like that again seemed great at first. But she began to realize that the chances of that were small. On top of that, Burgess had sweetened the pot with a bigger fee, and she’d been unable to turn it down. “It was a fluke,” Gavin had told her, and she knew he was probably right.
    But they still didn’t talk about that first case. They’d tried a couple of times, but she had been unable to discuss it without stammering, without trembling and being unable to meet Gavin’s eyes. The experience had a great impact on them both, but it had scarred Karen. Daylight wasn’t so bad. But the nights were still tough at times, even after the passage of time. She’d come from a stoic family of people who kept their emotions locked up tight, so she seldom showed to anyone the damage that had been done. But it was there.
    More than anything, the things they had discovered and faced during that investigation for Burgess had damaged the firm hold they each had on reality. After looking into the predatory eyes of creatures that were not supposed to exist, Karen and Gavin had come to wonder what else might be out there in the world... what other boogeymen they’d previously dismissed as fantasy were lurking in the shadows of hard, cold reality.
    “That first time Burgess called,” Gavin said, “I was genuinely baffled. He wouldn’t tell me anything on the phone, wouldn’t say why he specifically wanted to see me. I offered to send someone from my firm, but he refused.”
    “Yeah, same here. After he called, I dug up all the information I could find on him just out of curiosity.”
    Gavin chuckled. “So did I.”
    “That first time we met in the hotel, I figured it had something to do with his wife Denise. With her being so much younger, I figured he didn’t trust her. I thought maybe he wanted us to follow her around, see if she was cheating, or something.” After a pause, Karen said, “She finally left him, you know.”
    “Well, I’m not surprised after—”
    The air between them became thick. They both stared straight ahead at the road, silent, a little stiff.
    Before they’d met him, Burgess had left Sheila, his wife of nearly twenty years, to marry Denise Sykes,