This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The rain hammered against the windows of St. Helena's Hospital with the persistence of an unwelcome visitor. Elena Vasquez pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she walked down the sterile corridor, her soft-soled shoes making barely a whisper against the polished linoleum. The fluorescent lights above cast everything in harsh, unforgiving whites that made even the healthiest person look corpse-like.

She paused outside room 237, her hand hovering over the door handle. Three months she'd been working as a trauma counselor at St. Helena's, and she'd never encountered a patient quite like the one behind this door. Marcus Blackwood had been brought in six weeks ago after what the reports called "a severe psychological break following traumatic circumstances." The details were sparse, deliberately so, she suspected.

What she did know was troubling enough. Former military, decorated soldier, honorable discharge two years prior. Then civilian life, a successful security consulting business, a fiancée. Until everything went dark. The fiancée was dead—murdered, according to the police files she wasn't supposed to have access to but had glimpsed anyway. Marcus had been found three days later in an abandoned warehouse, catatonic, covered in blood that wasn't his own.

Elena took a deep breath and knocked softly before entering. The room was dim, curtains drawn tight against the gray afternoon. Marcus sat in the chair by the window, his back to her, shoulders rigid with tension that seemed permanently etched into his frame. Dark hair fell across his neck, longer now than it had been in his intake photos. He didn't acknowledge her presence.