No sleep.
Sleep was a luxury she couldn't afford. Sleep was when you lost control. So the answer was to stay awake all night. She had coffee, she had the television. Jill was peacefully asleep upstairs. Kara would stay down here, and stay awake.
Janine. The name had plagued her all through the hellishly long day. Writing had been impossible because she couldn't stop thinking about Janine. If indeed there truly was a Janine inside her, where had she got the name? Since her unconscious had presumably created Janine during Kara's childhood, where had it dug up a name Kara had never heard as a child? Or at least did not remember hearing. Maybe the source of the name was locked away with the personality that bore it.
But another question haunted her: Did Janine really exist? Or was what had happened here these past two days a part of her own reaction to Kelly's death? She clung to that explanation. She had to.
She could probably clear it up with a simple phone call to her mother. Or could she? What could she say? Mom? Did Dad rape Kelly and me on a regular basis when we were kids?
No way.
Shuddering with revulsion, she got up and poured herself another cup of coffee, then settled herself on the straight-back wooden chair and tried to lose herself in the irrelevance of a three-decades old British television show.
It beat thinking.
February 16
5:45 A.M.
Kara realized she had been asleep.
She jumped up from the chair and stared frantically around the living room. Good God, it was morning already! Body by Jake was on the TV. How long had she been out? Was anything different? Had she done anything while she was out? She checked her feet—clean. But that hadn't meant anything yesterday. She scanned the kitchen. Everything seemed the same there except for—
—the carving knife on the counter.
Feeling weak and sick, Kara stumbled toward the kitchen.
Please, God, no blood. Don't let there be blood on that blade.
There wasn't. The blade was clean. It was Dad's ancient carving knife. It had been new when it was a wedding gift thirty-five years ago. He'd honed it so many times over the years, standing before Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas hams, and summer steaks, that the blade was now half its original width. Kara had never thrown it away. It had always been special. Now she didn't want to touch it. But she did.
As she lifted it gingerly and carried it to the sink, she saw that the point was broken. She didn't remember ever noticing that before. What could—?
"Mom?"
It was Jill's voice from upstairs. She sounded a little frightened. Probably looking for her. Kara hurried to the foot of the stairs.
"I'm down here, hon. Everything okay?"
She held her breath. Please say yes.
"Sure," Jill said, smiling from the top of the stairs.
Kara exhaled.
Jill said, "But who's Janine?"
Biting back a scream, Kara fought off the blackness that crowded the edges of her vision and forced herself up the stairs.
"Wh-where did you heard that name?"
"You okay, Mom?'
"Just tell me!"
"I read it. Mom, what's wrong?"
"Where? In the bathroom?"
"No. In my bedroom."
Kara brushed past her alarmed daughter and hurried to the bedroom at the far end of the hall. She burst through the door and didn't notice anything at first. Then she saw the thin letters sliced into the wall above Jill's bed.
Kara couldn't hold it in any longer. She stood in the doorway and screamed.
▼
6:50 A.M.
They made it to the New Jersey Turnpike in record time.
After Kara had calmed herself and soothed a very frightened and mystified Jill, she called Dr. Gates. He wasn't available yet, according to the answering service. Kara couldn't wait. She had to get away from the farm, away from those words carved in the wall above Jill's bed. She threw some clothes in a couple of suitcases, loaded the car, and fled for New York.
As she drove, she could not escape the vague, ominous feeling that she was heading toward even worse trouble. She laid that off to her long-time aversion to New York, and the cruel irony of having to run for help to the city she loathed.
Along the way, Kara pulled into every rest stop she saw and called Dr. Gates' number. It wasn't until the Adm. Wm. Halsey Plaza near Newark Airport that she reached him.
"Strange things are happening," she told him. "Frightening things."
Dr. Gates' voice conveyed all the concern of a man inquiring about a train schedule.
"What, for instance?"
She didn't want to talk about them now, and she didn't want him to put off seeing her.
"I'm only half an hour from the city. I'll tell you when I get there. When can you see me?"
"Well… my schedule is already filled, perhaps I can—"
"It's got to be today. If you can't squeeze me in, perhaps you can recommend someone."
Kara didn't want to see anyone else, but she sensed Dr. Gates would never send her to a rival.
"Well, since you seem to think this is an emergency, perhaps I can add you on at the end of the schedule. Please be at my office at five."
"I'll be there."
She hung up, feeling a little better. The foreboding still clung to her like a shroud, but at least she was doing something about whatever was happening to her. She had taken the first step toward beating this. And she would beat it. Kara had structured her life so as to maximize her autonomy. No one controlled her. No one ever would.
Especially not something or someone who called herself "Janine."
▼
10:29 A.M.
Rob recognized her voice immediately. It gave an instant lift to an otherwise dreary Monday.
"Kara! What's up? How's the farm?"
"It's fine," she said. She sounded subdued. "Rob, there's something I've got to ask you."
Rob glanced around the squad room. His desk was situated near its center, surrounded by everybody else's. He wished he had more privacy, but the enclosed office went to the lieutenant. It didn't matter much at the moment. Karpinsky and Reddington were in the corner, arguing animatedly with Rob's partner, Augustino Manetti; Madsen and Carter were at their own desks, banging out reports on their typewriters. There was enough racket to cover his end of the conversation.
"Sure. Go ahead."
"You were with me on Thursday in Dr. Gates office when he hypnotized me, right?"
"Right."
"Were you with me all the time? I mean, did you ever leave the room?"
"Not for a second. Gates did. He left to get some files. But I never budged from my chair."
"So he didn't plant any post-hypnotic suggestions in me then, right?"
Rob was becoming concerned now. And he could tell Kara was upset.
"Kara, what's this all about?"
"A couple of weird things happened over the weekend."
A wavelet of nausea rolled through Rob's stomach.
"What sort of things?"
"I don't want to talk about it now. But you're sure nothing happened while I was hypnotized? No one named 'Janine' spoke from me?"
"Gates kept calling for 'Janine' to speak, but she never did. Only when he called you 'Kara' did you answer him. You just looked like you were asleep the whole time, except when…"
"When what?"
The sight of Kara turning her head and looking at him with that awful grin flashed before his eyes.