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I reveal the truth of my feelings but have altered the names of the players in my tale. There is much about me he can never know.
    “Annie,” he says now, “why are we back here?”
    I rub my eyes, hard, as though I can wipe all the tension away. “Because I feel him.”
    I look up at him and he has kind, warm eyes on me. I like how he looks, even without the brown sweater, an older man with white-gray hair and a face so tan and wrinkled it looks like an old catcher’s mitt…but not in a bad way. He wears chinos and a chambray shirt, canvas sandals. Not very shrinklike, more like your favorite uncle or a nice neighbor you enjoy chatting with at the mailbox.
    “You
don’t
feel him, Annie,” he says softly but firmly. “You think you do, but you don’t. You have to be careful of the language you use with yourself. Call this what it is. An episode, a panic attack, whatever. Don’t imagine you have some psychic feeling that a dead man has returned for you.”
    I nod my head. I know he’s right.
    “Why is it so hard?” I say. “It feels so real. So much worse than ever before.”
    “What’s the date today?” he asks. I think about it and tell him. I realize then what he’s getting at, and I shake my head.
    “That’s not it.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I don’t say anything then, because of course I’m not
sure
of that or really anything. Maybe he’s right. “But I don’t remember.”
    “Part of you remembers. Though your conscious mind refuses to recall certain events, the memory lives in you. It wants to be recognized, embraced, and released. It will use any opportunity to surface. When you’re strong enough to face them, I think all the memories will return. You’re stronger than you’ve been since I’ve known you, Annie. Maybe it’s time to face down some of these demons. Maybe that’s why these feelings are so intense this time.”
    Looking at him, I almost believe I can do it, peer into those murky spaces within myself, face and defeat whatever lives there.
    “He’s dead, Annie. But as long as you haven’t dealt with the memories of the things he has done to you, he’ll live on. We’ll always have to face these times when you think he’s returned for you. You’ll never be free.”
    It is a vague echo of my father’s words, and Gray’s words. And intellectually I know they’re all right. But my heart and my blood know something different, like the gazelle on the Serengeti, the mouse on the forest floor. I am the prey. I know my place in the food chain and must be ever vigilant to scent and shadow.

5
    I am crouched in my cabin; I will be hidden in the corner by the door when it swings open. My breathing has slowed, and my legs are starting to ache from the position I’ve been holding for I don’t know how long. I can hear the thrum of the engine and nothing else. I start to wonder if maybe everything is all right. It’s conceivable that there might not even be another boat out there, I tell myself. Could just be a trick of the night, my own paranoid imagination, or some combination of those things. As I start to accept this possibility, there’s a knock at the door. Scares me so badly that my head jerks and I hit it on the wall behind me.
    “Annie.” A muffled male voice. “Are you in there?”
    I recognize the Australian accent; it’s the voice of one of the men who have been hired to help me. I open the door for him. His eyes fall immediately to the gun at my waist. He gives a quick nod of approval.
    “There’s a boat trailing us,” he tells me. He has sharp, bright eyes and is thick with muscle. I search my memory for his name. They all have these hard, tight names that sound like punches to the jaw. Dax, I think he told me. That’s right, Dax. “Might be a fishing vessel, poachers—or even pirates. We hailed them, and they didn’t respond.”
    His eyes scan the room. He walks over and checks the lock on the porthole, seems to satisfy himself that the room is as secure