Once Buried

“Are you the dick that dug this hole?” she snapped. “If so, it’s not funny, damn it. Get me out of here!”

She was shocked to realize that she was weeping.

“How?” the man asked.

Courtney reached up, stretching her arm as far as it would go.

“Here,” she said. “Reach down and take my hand and pull me up.”

“I’m not sure I can reach that far.”

“Sure you can.”

The man laughed. It was a pleasant, friendly laugh. Even so, Courtney still wished she could see his face.

“I’ll take care of everything,” he said.

He stepped away and out of sight.

Then she heard a rattling of metal and squeaking, grinding sounds coming around from behind her.

The next thing she knew, she felt a huge weight crashing down on her.

She gasped and sputtered until she grasped that the man had just dumped a load of dirt on her.

She felt her hands and legs getting cold – signs of panic, she realized.

Don’t panic, she told herself.

Whatever was going on, she had to stay calm.

She saw that the man was standing with a wheelbarrow tilted over her. A few remaining clods of dirt tumbled out of the wheelbarrow onto her head.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

“Relax,” the man said. “Like I said, I’ll take care of everything.”

He rolled the wheelbarrow away. Then she heard a dull, drum-like pounding against metal again and again.

It was the sound of the man shoveling more dirt into the wheelbarrow.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and let out a long, piercing shriek.

“Help!”

Then she felt a heavy clump of dirt hitting her directly in her face. Some of it got into her mouth, and she choked and gagged and spit it out.

His voice still sounding friendly, the man said…

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to yell a lot louder than that.”

Then with a chuckle he added…

“I can barely hear you myself.”

She let out another shriek, shocked at the loudness of her own voice.

Then the man dumped the new wheelbarrow full of dirt onto her.

She couldn’t scream again now. Her throat was clogged with dirt.

She was overcome by an eerie sense of déjà vu. She’d experienced this before – this inability to run from danger or even to scream.

But those experiences had only been nightmares. And she’d always woken up from them.

Surely this was just another nightmare.

Wake up, she told herself again and again. Wake up, wake up, wake up…

But she couldn’t wake up.

This was not a dream.

This was real.

Chapter One

Special Agent Riley Paige was working at her desk at the BAU building in Quantico when an unwelcome memory swept over her…

A dark-skinned man was staring at her with glassy eyes.

He had a bullet wound in his shoulder, and a much more dangerous wound in the abdomen.

In a weak, bitter voice, he told Riley…

“I order you to kill me.”

Riley’s hand was on her weapon.

She ought to kill him.

She had every good reason to kill him.

Even so, she didn’t know what to do…

A woman’s voice snapped Riley out of her reverie.

“You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”