With Open Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

beauty. It was the most dangerous form of allure, which could challenge a man to try to make that elusive beauty reappear again and again. She wouldn’t appeal to everyone. She was too strong, too confident, but Lynch was drawn to that challenge.
    He felt a rush of sudden eagerness at the thought of dealing with Kendra Michaels. She was interesting. He had grown so accustomed to successfully manipulating his targets that any change, any stretch, was welcome.
    What was the key that he could use to make her go in the direction he wanted? Sympathy? She obviously had a warm attachment to children. But would that extend to adults? Anger? Fear? Sex? No, that last choice had popped up out of nowhere and probably had nothing to do with logical reasoning and everything to do with his physical response. The other two were possibilities, but he would have to see if they were necessary tools.
    Oh well, it would come to him. He leaned back against the wall, his gaze intent on Kendra Michaels. In the meantime, he would enjoy watching her. She was like a kaleidoscope, with different shadings and settings shifting before his eyes.
    Yes, Kendra Michaels was going to be an interesting project.
     
    THE HOUR-LONG SESSION with Jimmy stretched to an hour and fifteen minutes, violating Kendra’s own rule about her enforced stopping times. She wanted to leave her clients wanting more, eagerly anticipating their next session together. It was always tempting to keep going when she saw them enjoying themselves, but Jimmy had hit such a joyful groove in his drum playing that she knew he wouldn’t tire of an extra quarter hour.
    Kendra opened the door to the waiting room, where Jimmy’s mother, Tina, had watched from behind the large one-way glass.
    Jimmy rushed toward her. “Mom, I played the drums!” He pounded his drumsticks into the air.
    Tina laughed and hugged him. “I saw! You were amazing!” She glanced at Kendra. “I can’t believe the way he lit up!”
    “Yes, he did.”
    “I actually think…he’s getting better.”
    “He could be.” Kendra managed a smile. She knew that Tina wanted more confirmation than that. All the parents did. They spent their lives searching for some sign—any sign—that their children might finally be turning the corner in their affictions, but it was rarely that clear-cut. It was a marathon, not a sprint, she liked to say, and this race could go on for the rest of their lives.
    But once in a while, there could be an exception. And who was to say that exception couldn’t be Jimmy?
    “It was a good day,” Kendra said. She gently took the drumsticks from Jimmy. “I’ll see you Friday?”
    “Yes!” He pounded the air again, still playing to the song in his head as his mother escorted him out.
    It had been a good day, Kendra thought. Maybe she should have been more—
    “So this is what you do for a living.”
    The voice came from behind her. She spun around to see a man strolling toward her from the waiting room. “How did you get in here?”
    The man was fortyish, tall, well dressed, and his dark hair was cropped short. Ice blue eyes lit a craggy face that was as tanned as if he’d spent the winter in the Caribbean. He jerked his thumb back toward the waiting room. “The main entrance was locked, so I tapped on the door from the hallway. That nice woman let me in. She may have had the impression that I worked with you.”
    “Maybe because that’s what you told her?”
    “Not in so many words.”
    “It doesn’t take so many words if you choose the right ones. Who are you?”
    The man walked toward the piano and idly plunked a few notes on the keyboard. “If what I’ve heard about you is true, you already know quite a bit about me.” He turned back to her. “Why don’t you tell me who I am?”
    She gazed warily at him. She had been acquiring information about him since he walked into the room, but she realized it was being submerged by the sheer impact of his personality. There