Three years ago…
I held her pink silk toe shoe in my hand, helplessly watching the cab drive away before I could give it back to her. The next morning when I stood in front of the portrait drying on my easel, I knew the beautiful ballerina would soon die. Her portrait is one of two hundred and twenty-seven. Each one of the subjects is the victim of murder, and I’ve painted them all. I’ve kept my morbid ability a secret for twenty years, terrified someday, someone would find out.
Someday has arrived, and the someone banging down my door today demanding answers is a gorgeous, irate homicide detective armed with a photo of one of my paintings right there on the front page of the most popular tabloid in the city. He peppers me with questions I can’t answer, and despite my worst fears being realized, all I can think about is painting this man, alive, and with far fewer clothes on.
Detective Callum Graham tells me the dead ballerina I painted is his sister, and she's been missing for three years. Missing, he says firmly, as though any other conclusion is unacceptable. My inappropriate thoughts of seeing him naked, vanish. How do I explain to this man, this brother desperate to find his baby sister alive, that she’s been dead for two years, eleven months, and three weeks?
It’s time to go home, Jo…
I hear the voice in my dreams, but I don't understand what it means. I am home. I haven’t left for two weeks because once again, my name and my private life is the hottest topic in local news, only this time, it’s not a drug-addled ex-boyfriend dragging me through the mud.
Some intrepid reporter no one ever heard of before tracked my parents down in Florida and asked for a comment about my recent brush with a serial killer. Now, they’re here in Manhattan, and every other day there's another exposé. Another story. Another lie.
My plan was to ignore it all. To wait for the feeding frenzy to die down, go about my business, focus on the strong, powerful man in my bed who whispers and growls in my ear that I’m his.
But my plan isn't working, and now I understand what that voice in my dreams meant. I have to go back to the place where I lived as a child. To the place where my brother died. I have to go home and give one more interview to set things right... before it’s too late.