as jim followed behind sissy's mother, he was out-of-body overwhelmed. in a dim corner of his mind, he knew he had to keep tabs on veck, but this opportunity was not going to smoothly present itself again anytime soon.

turning the corner at the head of the stairs, the volume of the house was cranked up to slipknot levels. everything from the subtle creak of the carpeted floor beneath his boots to the soft talk down below in the foyer to his own breath in the back of his throat, it all seemed to scream in his ears.

abruptly, veck appeared behind them and made some kind of an i'm-only-here-for-a-minute comment. jim nodded at the guy - and promptly forgot he was even there.

"sissy's room is this way."

the three of them went to the right, and when mrs. barten hesitated at the closed door, jim raised his hand to put it on her shoulder ... and then couldn't quite make the contact.

"would you like us to go in alone?" he asked.

mrs. barten opened her mouth. but then just nodded. "i haven't been in there since ... that night. it's the way she left it."

at that moment, the phone rang, and there was visible relief in sissy's mom's face. "i'll just go get that. feel free to open the drawers and the closet, but if you have to take something, will you let me know what it is?"

"absolutely," veck answered.

as she hurried across the landing and disappeared into what he assumed was the master bedroom, jim cracked the door.

oh ... the scent.

slipping inside, he closed his eyes and tried not to feel like a letch as he breathed in deep. perfume. body lotion. dryer sheets.

it was ... extraordinary.

and he did not belong in this room. he was an adult male who had done things that shouldn't even be passing thoughts in a room like this - and the representations of those evil deeds were in the ink that covered his back. plus he had weapons on him. and then there was that shit he'd pulled with the demon the night before.

he felt like a stain.

as veck did his own recon, jim opened his lids, and went over to the built-in desk by the front window. the flat stretch and shelving were painted white, but the chair was a blue to match the gingham drapes and the striped wallpaper. carpet was an area rug with braided fringe. bedspread was a quilt made from different strips of blue and white fabric. handmade. had to be.

the books that were lined up were orderly and girlie. she liked jane austen, but there was also a whole shelf of gossip girls - probably left over from when she was thirteen. couple of 4-h ribbons, red and blue. track trophies.

on the desk there was an apple laptop along with two textbooks, one on calculus and the other on ... advanced trigonometry?

huh. his sissy might well be smarter than he was.

there was also a magazine. cosmopolitan - from this month.

okaaaay, the cover with the word orgasm in seventy-four-point hot-pink print didn't exactly jibe with the rest of this land of innocence and schoolwork ... but then, she'd been growing up, hadn't she.

pivoting, he all but ran into the foot of the twin bed.

shit, now he knew why her mother didn't come in here. that blue quilt was pulled back and the pillows still dented as if sissy had just been napping.

"i'm going to take off," veck said. which made jim wonder how long they'd been in the room.

"see you soon," jim said with distraction.

"roger that."

when he was left to his own devices, jim's hand shook as he reached out to touch the sheets. brushing what had touched her skin, he thought about devina and what that demon had done to this girl ... and her family.

adrian and eddie were wrong. if they wanted him focused on the war, this was exactly where he needed to be. this was motivation to win if he'd ever seen it: sissy was never going to lie in this bed again. she was not going to finish whatever article she'd been reading. and no more crunching numbers. ever. but he could at least find her a better place to wait for her parents' and her sister's passings so they could all be reunited for eternity.

and then he could make devina pay a thousand times over.

on the bedside table, there was a white alarm clock, another magazine - in touch this time - and the remote to her little white television. he had the feeling that even though she was in college, she came back on a lot of weekends, and a peek into the closet confirmed this. given the number of blouses and pants and skirts and dresses, it didn't look like the thing had been mined for favorites, but instead was on the ready. plenty of shoes on the floor.

he left the bureau's drawers alone, because he wasn't sure which one held her ... underthings, as it were. probably either of the top two, but he was not running the risk of guessing wrong. he was a voyeur here already, because he'd come not in hopes of finding something that helped him help her. god knew, there was nothing on earth that could do that. instead, he'd just wanted to ... be close to her.

right. fine. this was the sort of shit that ad and eddie were worried about.

on that note, it was time to go. again, he didn't know how long he'd been here. could have been two minutes or two hours, and the last thing he wanted was sissy's mother feeling like she had to knock on the door to see if he was okay or whether he'd already left.

he wasn't going to take anything, even though there was a temptation to hold on to an object, a focal point ... something of sissy's. her family had lost too much, however, and he wasn't about to graft anything more from them.

jim took a last moment to look around, and then he made himself leave. out in the hall, he closed the door and listened. sissy's mother was in the room across the way, talking quietly, her voice cracking.

jim took the stairs down and waited discreetly in the foyer by the front door. leaning to the side, he looked into the living room at the pictures by the big windows. the one that grabbed him and got his feet moving was a close-up of sissy. she wasn't looking at the camera, but off to the side, and she wasn't smiling. she was deep in thought, and the expression on her face was nothing girlish, everything ... survivor.

she looked iron willed.

"she had no idea the camera was on her."

jim straightened and glanced at her mother. "no?"

mrs. barten came over and picked up the frame. "she always smiled if she knew there was a camera around. when her father took this, she was watching her teammates in a game - she played field hockey. she'd sprained her ankle and she was on the bench ... and she wanted to be out with them." the woman looked over. "she was tougher than she appeared to be."

as their eyes met, jim took a deep breath and thought, thank god - that was going to keep her sane until he got to her.

mrs. barten tilted her head to the side. "you're different from the others."

time to go. "i'm just like everyone else."

"no, you're not. i've met more officers, detectives, and agents in the last three weeks than i've seen on cops over the course of my whole life." her stare narrowed. "your eyes ..."

he turned to the door. "detective delvecchio will be in touch - "

"i want to give you something."

jim froze with his hand on the knob and thought, bad idea. he was too hungry for whatever she had to offer. "you don't have to."

"here."

as he turned around to give her a "no, thank you," he found her reaching behind her neck. what came forward in her hands was a delicate gold chain.

"she wore this every day. i found it on the counter in her bathroom - she'd taken a shower and forgotten to put it back on ... anyway, take this."

dangling from the chain was a delicate winged bird made of gold. a dove.

"her father gave it to her on her eighteenth birthday. it was part of a set."

jim shook his head. "i can't. i'm - "

"you will. it's going to keep your eyes the way they are now, and our family needs that."

after a moment, he brought his hands forward, replacing her fingertips with his own. the necklace and charm weighed nothing at all. and it barely fit around his throat. but the thing went on like a dream even though the clasp was tiny and his hands were big.

as he dropped his arms, he stared down at her.

"what are my eyes like," he said hoarsely.

"destroyed."