Mind Games Read Online Free PDF

her a steaming cup of herbal tea. Sparrow sat shivering with the pink blanket printed with dolls wrapped around her shoulders. She didn’t suffer from hypothermia, but her physical and mental condition concerned him. She’d mumbled about the dead girl in the ocean until he got her home. A corpse hadn’t washed up on the shore, and Derrick didn’t see a body bobbing above the ocean’s surface.
    What had she seen?
    He knew better than to push the issue, since most of the kids he dealt with didn’t confide in him much, if at all. Pressing people to open up only made them shut down more. He’d do this on her terms.
    She was a kid when they first met, a young girl with puppy love in her eyes. He hadn’t thought twice about her. She was thirteen. He was sixteen. And, if his memory served him correctly, he and his friends were all about finding girls and getting laid. Unfortunately, his memory also served a mind-blowing reminder to his manhood that he’d been a virgin until he was eighteen. But now, she was a gorgeous, grown woman who was being tight-lipped about what she was doing outside in the wee hours of the morning. More concerning was what she thought she heard and claimed she saw.
    All he’d managed to get out of her was that she heard someone calling her name and she didn’t remember leaving the house. What she wasn’t saying to him was if she remembered telling him she had seen a dead girl in the ocean.
    He picked up her limp wrist from the table and checked her pulse again. The teacup had warmed her hands, and he suspected, by the color growing in her cheeks, that it had warmed her insides, too. He massaged her hand between his and pondered whether he should offer her a quick physical checkup. As a doctor he had an oath to uphold. He didn’t see offering her a clinical exam a conflict of interest. It was the least he could do for her. As for her mental state, his limited knowledge of psychology could do her more harm than good. He’d suggest she talk to her father about her memory lapse and the girl in the ocean, whom she had yet to speak a word of.
    “Sparrow, I’m really worried about you. Would you mind if I did routine checkup? I want to make sure you’re all right, physically.”
    When she didn’t object, he excused himself and went out to get his medical bag. Had she been attacked or worse? He’d need to check her for signs of a struggle, visible bruising or marks. If he suspected anything remotely suspicious, he’d take her to the ER pronto.
     
    *               *               *
     
    Sparrow’s head throbbed. The cold wind and rain had pelted her in the face, and her sinuses swelled from the residual effects. Pressure behind her eyes created sharp bursts of lightning, producing strange flashes. She stood to close the open blinds and a jackhammer started a slow, steady rhythm at the top of her skull. She reached for the marble countertop edge and steadied herself against the laser light show and resounding crescendo.
    She took a deep breath. Better let Derrick check her vitals, and then she hoped he’d be on his way. She wasn’t going to the hospital. She’d allow him this distraction rather than try to explain to him again that she had no recollection of going outside, leaving her front door wide open, and standing for God knows how long staring out at the ocean.
    Apparently, she’d told him she heard someone calling her name. That sounded plain crazy. The last thing she remembered was lying down in corpse pose and listening to the sound of her inhalations and exhalations. She had been picturing the color blue. A sharp pain shot through her head, different than the still-present jackhammer chiseling away at her skull. The disturbing pain had disrupted her thought process.
    She regained her balance and walked to the bathroom. A warm shower would help open up her nasal passages and possibly relax her enough to recall what happened last night. She tossed her hair up