A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter Page A

the covers, feeling his presence in the room. Worse still were the dreams that were not nightmares, when he touched her so softly that her skin tingled, and she woke disoriented and aroused, her body shaking in response to the erotic images her sleeping mind had conjured. She knew the drugs she had been given during the attack had tricked her body into responding, but Lena still could not forgive herself.
    Sometimes the memory of his touch on her body would cover her like the fine silk of a spiderweb, and she would find herself shaking so hard that only a scalding-hot shower could make her skin feel like her own again.
    Lena didn't know if it was desperation or stupidity that had made her call the college's counseling center a month ago. Whatever had compelled her, the three and a half sessions she'd managed to attend were a huge mistake. Talking to a stranger about what had happened not that Lena had actually gotten around to that part of it was too much. There were some things that were too private to discuss. Ten minutes into a particularly painful fourth session, Lena had gotten up and left the clinic, never to return. At least not until now, when she would have to tell that same doctor that her son was dead.
    'Adams,' Chuck said, glancing over his shoulder, 'you know this chick?'
    Women were always chicks or bitches to Chuck, depending on whether or not he thought they would fuck him. Lena hoped to God he knew she was a bitch, but sometimes she got the feeling that Chuck thought it was just a matter of time before she threw herself at his feet.
    She told him, 'I've never met her.' Then, just in case, she added, 'I've seen her around campus.'
    He looked back at her again, but Chuck was as good at reading people as he was at making friends.
    'Rosen,' Chuck said. 'That sound Jewish to you?'
    Lena shrugged; she'd never given it much thought.
    Grant Tech was fairly well integrated, and except for one or two assholes who had recently decided to take up spray-painting racial slurs on anything that wasn't moving, there was an easy balance on campus.
    'Hope she's not-' Chuck made a whistling noise, whirling his finger near his temple. Of course Chuck would assume that anyone working in a mental-health clinic was nuts.
    Lena did not give him the satisfaction of a response.
    She was trying to think whether anyone at the clinic would recognize her. The clinic closed at two on Sundays, but Rosen had agreed to see Lena after hours, probably because of the notoriety attached to Lena's case. Anyone who could read a newspaper knew the lurid details of Lena's kidnapping and rape. Rosen had probably been overjoyed to hear Lena's voice on the line.
    'Here go,' Chuck said, opening the door to the counseling center.
    Lena caught the door before it closed in her face and followed Chuck into the crowded waiting room.
    Like most colleges, Grant Tech was seriously underfunded in the mental-health department. Especially in Georgia, where the lottery-backed Hope Scholarship pretty much ensured that anybody who could pencil in a circle got into a state university, more and more kids were coming to college who could not handle the emotional stress of being away from home or having to work. As a technical college, Grant tended toward math nerds and overachievers anyway. These type-A personalities did not take failure well, and the counseling center was practically bulging at the seams from the influx of new students. If their insurance plans were anything like Lena's, the students had no choice but to turn to the college.
    Chuck hitched up his pants as he walked to the counter. Lena could almost read his mind as he looked around the room, taking in the fact that most of the patients were young women wearing cropped T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans. Lena had her own thoughts about the girls, whose worst difficulties probably centered on boys and missing Fido back home. They probably had no idea what it was like to have real problems, problems that kept