Fear. It's a knife in the gut, slowly twisted. A constant hammer on the head. And the shackles keeping me prisoner...

Screams. They made me feel as if my eardrums were going to burst. They told the pain within and made agony seep into my skin.

Blood. Fountains of red filled my nostrils with a sickening metallic smell.

Death. Maybe I had died too along with them, but they just forgot to bury me...

My eyes abruptly shot open. My heart was pounding, and I was panting and covered in sweat.

Inhaling deeply, I tried to calm myself down.

Bloody images flashed through my head when I closed my eyes, forcing me to open them back in an instant. I sighed as I lowered my body back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Something was definitely wrong with me.

I was used to having nightmares like the one I had just experienced from time to time. But they have been haunting me nonstop since I started working for the FBI. I couldn't even remember the last time I had a decent night's sleep without waking up in the middle of the night, feeling as if someone had been suffocating me in my sleep.

Grumbling, I kept tossing and turning in bed till the sheets under me became crumpled and wrinkled as if someone fought a battle on top of them.

I avoided looking at the alarm on my nightstand because it would only prove the fact that I was hardly getting any sleep. Reluctantly, I stole a peek at it and found out that I had almost five hours before having to go to work.

Covering my face with the pillow, I tried to stop my mind from thinking about all the horrible things that occupied it as if it were a country that had just lost a war. It turned out to be futile, and my mind kept drifting into dreary places.

Throwing the covers away, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I pulled out a package of coffee grounds from one of the drawers and added it to the filter before I turned on the coffee machine.

Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I started massaging my tense shoulders to kill time while waiting for my coffee to brew.

I slightly grinned when I heard the heavenly sound of the machine, which meant my precious coffee was ready.

After pouring myself a large cup, I returned to my seat and stared at the freshly made cup of coffee in front of me, steam rising from it. I took it in my hands to steal the heat, feeling pleased with the warmth that transferred to my body. I watched the swirling hues of the coffee that were a blessing as every shade of brown I adored blended so perfectly.

After I took a long sip, my eyes wandered around the empty apartment.

Loneliness never scared me. I was used to it, after all. Most of the time, I even found peace and solace in it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even though I liked being alone, I didn't fancy being alone.

Maybe I should really consider getting a cat.

I let out a long sigh, and then my mind went back to my recurring nightmares. I read once that our brains were hard-wired to remember the bad events in our lives better than the good ones, and I found that pretty ironic. It made me somehow blame our natural biology for my current suffering.

But yet again, I knew that those were memories you could never come close to forgetting, no matter how hard you tried. There was no black box in your brain that could contain them. All you could do was adapt and learn how to live with them.

And I really thought that I had learned how to do that and that the pain had become less with time, but it turned out that I was hugely mistaken.

Remembering the details of that night still brought me so much agony. Like if someone were cutting my insides with shards of glass.

The thoughts accelerated inside my head, and I hoped they would slow down a bit because I was finding it harder to breathe with every second passing.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and my hands were trembling nonstop. I rose from my seat slowly so I wouldn't lose my footing and walked toward the nearest window. I breathed in and out in a slow pattern, trying to calm myself down a little.

It took me a few minutes to regain my normal rhythm of breathing, yet I was still shaking.

Moments like these made me feel the worst. I felt so fragile, and I hated that. It was like being claustrophobic, but in this case, the cage I was trapped in was just my memories.

Sometimes, I used to wonder if I had what it took to be an FBI agent. And thinking about it at this moment, I believed that this sort of thinking somehow had something to do with the nightmares.

Maybe it was too much for me to handle. The job was a constant reminder of what I had lost because my father was an FBI agent too...

Sighing, I looked out the window and noticed that the darkness had started to surrender to the light. The sun rose, filling the sky of New York with brilliant shades of orange. I allowed myself to get lost for a while in this silent beauty.

After the streets of Manhattan were totally illuminated, I decided to go jogging for a while, taking it as a way of distraction.

I ran for a while, then I returned to my apartment and treated myself to a nice shower. After that, I started getting ready for work.

I figured out that I would need a lot of caffeine today, so I stopped by the coffee shop Liam had taken me to.

The barista gave me a warm smile and started preparing my usual order before I even reached the counter. I decided to grab a cup of coffee for Liam too, thinking that it would be a friendly gesture. Besides, he was the one who introduced me to this coffee shop, after all.

Ten minutes later, I made it to the FBI building and up to the floor of the violent crimes unit. I found Liam already sitting at his desk—he was always such an early bird.

Walking toward him, I placed the cup of coffee on his desk without uttering a word.

He looked at the cup of coffee first, then at me. Then, the corners of his mouth lifted up into a smile. "Look at you, being so generous."

"Well, I'm usually a really nice person. Just don't get on my bad side again," I teased, smirking slightly. "Besides, I give you credit for taking me to that coffee shop." I shrugged playfully.

He took a long sip of his coffee before he mumbled. "Well, thank you." He smiled. "And I will make sure to always be in your good graces if that guarantees me a cup of coffee every day."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, don't count on it." Then I looked at him and tried to hide the desperate look in my eyes. "Anything new?" I was hoping for something to occupy my mind and keep me from overthinking.

"Yup," he answered, handing me a copy of a file. "This case just landed on my desk."

Opening the file, I started reading through it. It wasn't a murder case, but it could be soon. A man had received lots of murder threats, and his wife called the FBI to check them out.

"Alan Miller..." I said, running the name through my head. I thought it was familiar from somewhere.

"He's a famous philanthropist, and that makes him a high-profile target." Liam filled in the blanks in my head.

No wonder why we were handling the case.

"We're taking that threat very seriously."

I nodded as I looked through the rest of the file quickly before I closed it and turned to Liam. "When do we leave?"

"Now," he replied, standing up, then he took his keys off the desk and put his suit jacket on.

I walked next to him, trying to kick all the thoughts that weren't related to the case out of my head.

***

We arrived at Mr. Miller's house. The middle-aged man gave the impression of being decent and amiable. I wondered why someone would want to hurt him.

"So, Mr. Miller. Can you inform us more about these letters?" Liam began, pointing to the letters that were sent to Alan Miller by an anonymous menace. "Maybe you can start off with when you first received them."

I inspected the letters. Unfortunately, they were typed on a computer and then printed, so we wouldn't be able to do handwriting analysis. Also, they seemed to be full of rage and pure hatred, which made me think that whoever sent them knew Mr. Miller personally and was affected by him somehow.

"I have told you before that this is unnecessary," Mr. Miller replied, grabbing my attention. "It's probably someone who wants to have a little fun."

He was about to continue but was cut off by his wife, who had walked into the room. "Whoever is behind this sent those letters to us a week ago when Alan announced the date of the upcoming auction. It's the same date that they threatened to kill Alan on."

"Amanda, you're just overreacting," Mr. Miller tried to argue with his wife.

"Alan, this is your life we're talking about. I'm not taking any chances," she argued, waving her hands in frustration.

"Sir, Mrs. Miller is right. We must take these threats seriously," I said, interrupting both of them. "So, can you tell us about that auction, please?"

The man sighed. "It's one that I have been planning on for years. It's a charity fundraising auction."

"Sir, is there any chance that you could cancel that auction?" Liam asked.

"No!" the man answered almost immediately. "All the money will go to help the people who are suffering and dying out of starvation in many refugee camps around the world. I will never cancel it at any cost—a lot of lives are depending on it."

"Sir, we understand, but—" I was about to say something, but Mr. Miller's phone started ringing and interrupted me.

Mr. Miller sent me an apologetic look before putting the phone to his ear. "Alan Miller," he answered the call.

We all watched as his eyes widened, and he looked at us with eyes clouded with fear.

He covered the phone with his hand and whispered. "I—It's him..."