TWENTY-SIX
Rora didn’t know what had woken her up. But lying in the dark, she tried to adjust to the absolute blackness around her and remember where she was.
The first thing she did was reach to the other side of the bed, but when she found it empty and the sheets unfamiliar beneath her palm, she recalled that Strike wasn’t there. No one was. She was all alone in this isolated place and alone was eerily unfamiliar.
It took her a second to read the glowing numbers on the clock on the nightstand and establish it was just after four-thirty in the morning.
Usually she only woke this early if Strike was waking her, either for fun or to flee. But she sank onto her back and closed her eyes again. Letting her fingertips brush across her thigh, this seemed like a rare opportunity; being all al
