She checked the clock. She’d slept for about an hour, but the nap hadn’t done much toward helping her make a decision about trying to read the jacket again. Knowing what might lie ahead of her, she got up, went into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face. But finding the nerve to do what needed to be done was going to take more than cold water. She clenched and unclenched her fist trying to work out the numbness as she walked a path into the carpet of her room. She never should have agreed to touch the jacket but Augustine was after her mother’s killer. That wasn’t something she’d stand in the way of. Usually when it came to touch, she put up her personal firewall and went on the defensive, but this time, right before she’d touched the leather she’d decided to treat it like a system she was trying to hack, opening herself up in a way she’d never done before. Bad idea. She’d never expected to take such a surge. It had shaken her, hard. More than that, the split second of information she’d received before she’d passed out had jolted her heart, caused her brain to go nova and made her feel like she was dying.
