Page 108 of The Edge

Alex looked down, her facial features tight, her body rigid where it had been relaxed and loose while painting. “Why would anyone take that?” she asked, her gaze still averted from him.

“I don’t know. But it would make it impossible to compare anyone’s DNA to it, so there is that.” He waited for her to say something but when she didn’t, he added, “Your sister came up here because I think she had figured out who had attacked you.”

“How...how could she possibly have done that? And after all this time?”

“She used some of her resources at CIA to work the case.”

“What?!”

“She told your mother that she came up here for unfinished business. And she asked you about the attack.”

Alex started to crumple. “But...but she never told me that...that she...knew who—”

Seeing how she was being affected by this revelation he said quickly, “I’m not saying she knew for certain. But I think Jenny might have suspected.”

She looked up at him in a way that made his skin tingle. She seemed wobbly and dazed, and Devine felt like an insensitive idiot for having brought all of this up.

“I just meant that if she really knew who it was and had proof of that, she would have just contacted the authorities. I don’t know what the statute of limitations up here is, but I doubt it goes back fifteen years for what happened to you.”

Alex did not appear to be listening. Then, while Devine was preparing what he would say next, she slumped to the floor.

“Alex!” he cried out, kneeling down next to her. Her eyelids were fluttering and her breathing was erratic. It was like when he had unwittingly brought her to the place where she’d been attacked, only this time was worse.

Devine gripped her hand. “Breathe in and out, nice and slow, in and out. Come on, you can do it.”

Instead, the woman went completely rigid and her eyelids stopped fluttering and closed.

“Get off me,” she screamed.

He let go of her and sprang back, stunned. “Alex, I’m just trying to—”

“Stop it, stop it! Let me go. Let me go. You’re hurting me. I...I don’t want to do this! Stop!” she shrieked.

She started writhing on the ground, punching with her arms and kicking with her legs.

“Alex, I’m not touching you. I’m over—”

“I will kill you. Let me go...stop it, don’t, don’t! Stop...Please!” She screamed again. And then fell silent, her body now still. And then she started to weep, softly, agonizingly, her whole body shuddering with the effort.

“Alex, I’m...” Devine stopped and looked helplessly down at her.

She grew still and the cries stopped. She opened her eyes and looked around in a daze.

When she saw him she said quietly, “What happened?” She looked around and noticed that she was on the floor. She slowly got to her feet, putting a hand on a table to help lever herself up on shaky legs while Devine just stood there, stunned. “Why was I on the floor? I remember talking to you and then...nothing.”

He looked at her closely. “You just sort of passed out, Alex. Do you not feel well? Are you dehydrated?”

“No, I mean I’ve been drinking water and coffee. But I haven’t been feeling all that well lately. And I do get anxious. Maybe fainting is my self-defense mechanism.”

“Do you feel all right now?”

“Yes, I feel fine now.”

Devine didn’t want to upset her unduly, which was why he had not told Alex what she had said while she had been on the floor. He didn’t think she was dehydrated or had fainted from anxiety. She seemed to be reliving what had happened to her when she had been attacked.

Something occurred to Devine as he connected one thing to another. “Alex, has this ever happened to you before? You...you sort of faint and then don’t remember anything?”

“What? No. I mean, not that I remember...But wait, okay, one time I was at Bertie’s studio. I was working on a sketch that I was later going to turn into a painting. She was helping me to get my three-point perspective and vanishing points just right. I was doing a building with people walking in front, but there was tricky trajectory to work out and my 3D boxing skills on the people weren’t all that stellar, especially getting the middle point right. I hadn’t really done something that complicated before.”

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