San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany Jack King's nightmare catapulted him from his sleep.
He sat bolt upright in bed and, despite being dazed and disorientated, he instinctively grabbed for his holstered gun. Only there was no gun, and there hadn't been one since he quit his job as an FBI profiler more than three years ago.
'Wake up!' urged his wife. 'Wake up, Jack! You're okay; you're just dreaming again, it's only a dream.'
But Jack wasn't okay. He was far from okay.
He tried to slow his breathing, get his heartbeat down to normal, but his head still fizzed with images: bleached-white bloodless corpses floating in the Black River – the buzz of flies around dismembered young limbs – bold type headlines announcing the Black River Killer's latest kill. The horror show ran like some grainy speeded-up old movie that he'd seen far too many times.
Nancy got out of bed and switched the lights on.
'These nightmares of yours, they're scaring me to death. Jack, you've really got to go and see someone.'
Most days Jack looked as though he was living the dream, owning and running a small boutique hotel in a Tuscan village that time had barely altered and crime had hardly touched. But some nights – well, some nights he just couldn't keep up the pretence. And this sure as hell was one of them.
Jack squinted into the ugly brightness of the bedroom lights, sweat soaked his bare chest and ran down his back.
'Did you hear me? Jack?'
The visions had gone but now his head was filled with sounds: women screaming in pain, their desperate cries for help echoing out from the dark pits of his memory, and finally the unmistakable sound of razor-sharp steel slicing into human flesh.
Jack let out a hot, slow breath. 'I hear you, Nancy. Just give me a minute.'
It had been three years since his burnout, and despite a change of continents and lifestyles, the past and all its horrors were still haunting him.
Maybe his wife was right. Maybe he finally had to see someone.