Читать книгу Stolen Memories - Liz Johnson - Страница 12

THREE

Julie tried to scream, but no breath could pass through her constricted airway. The pressure on her throat made her eyes water and her chest burn. Darkness clouded the corners of her vision, but she fought the temptation to succumb to its sweet release.

And she fought the man standing next to her bed, the man who was causing her agony.

All she could see were his broad shoulders and beefy arms, his face just out of her line of sight, but she clawed at him, digging her nails into every bit of flesh she could find. As she raked her fingers down his arm, he growled and yanked his hand away from her throat before hitting the elastic bandage covering the brace around her arm with his fist.

Every point from her wrist to her elbow screamed at the abuse, but she pushed it from her mind, gasping for oxygen before he pressed against her air pipe again.

He leaned in closer, but she could still only see his blond hair, wrinkled forehead and squinty eyes, the lines at the corners taut with the effort it took to keep her from flying out of the bed. She kicked and pushed and tried to scream, but again, there was no sound.

Grasping for the nurse’s call button near her waist, her fingers caught only the very edge before her attacker shoved it to the floor, the plastic landing with a sharp report on the tile floor.

She needed a weapon. Something. Anything to make him back off long enough for her to catch a breath and call for help.

And still the darkness called, willing her to just close her eyes and drift off to sleep, whispering that this fight wasn’t one she could win.

But she had something to live for. She did.

She just didn’t know what it was.

With jerking motions, she patted her chest and stomach, hoping to find a scalpel or a pair of scissors or a syringe. Her search came up empty, and she flailed her arms until her uninjured hand connected with the side table holding the dinner tray she’d picked at all evening. The metal lid clanged as it bounced off the wall and reverberated when it reached the floor. If she could just get a hold of the edge of the tray, maybe she could hit him in the side of the head. But her fingers couldn’t find a purchase on the rounded edge, and it, too, slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor.

As the suffocating pressure below her chin increased, she swiped her hand over the table one more time. And then she found just what she needed.

A fork.

Clutching the handle in her fist, she swung it at his arm with as much force as she could muster. When the tines broke skin, she pressed it farther into his arm before yanking it back and stabbing him again.

“Ow!” he screamed, as if she wielded a dagger.

She plunged it into his arm, and his fingers loosened. Gulping air, she jabbed at him over and over, puncturing skin and pulling out every time.

She wasn’t seriously injuring him, but it couldn’t feel much better than a bee sting.

Finally he let go altogether, and she had the freedom to let loose the blood-curdling yell that had been trapped. It filled the room, went right through the door, flooded the hallway and was promptly followed by a ruckus outside her room that would have brought her out of a coma.

She knew Brad, her night nurse, was on his way just by the rhythm of his feet on the floor by the nurses’ station. And his steps were not alone. But her attacker vanished. He kicked the mop bucket by the door and it sloshed water, which fell onto the floor with a clap, a sweet pine scent filling the room. The chatter of a handful of high-pitched voices demanding to know what had happened reached her long before she could make out their forms.

“Who was that coming out of your room?”

“What happened?”

As Brad reached her bedside, she held a shaking hand out to him, needing the stability and support that she’d come to expect from the only other man in her life for the moment, but Brad didn’t reach out to her. Instead he picked up the end of her IV tube, which had pulled free during the struggle, and looked at the mess. Leaking saline had left a trail from her stomach down the side of the bed and halfway across the floor.

Where was Zach? He’d know what to do. He’d know how to make her trembling stop.

“What happened?” Brad asked again, his words nearly drowned out by the pounding of her heart in her ears.

“Call security.” Her words came out on a wheeze, and she sucked in air as fast as she could. “That man attacked me. Tried to—” She pointed at her throat. “Tried to strangle me.”

Brad’s eyes grew wide, if a little doubtful. “Are you sure?”

Hadn’t he seen the man running down the hall? She nodded, pushing herself up on her elbow and ignoring the pain that sliced down her arm.

He snatched up the phone and punched in a few numbers before telling the person on the other end to send up security and have them check the back stairwell and exits for a man with blond hair in a blue maintenance uniform. Two female nurses hovering in the doorway followed suit, hurrying in the direction of the attacker’s hasty exit.

As Brad’s voice chirped on, Julie sank back against the elevated bed. The rush of adrenaline had vanished, stealing her strength.

“I’ll be right back to get you cleaned up, Julie. Security is on its way.” Brad turned to go, but she grabbed at his arm.

“Call Zach. Please.”

“Who?”

“Detective Jones. Tell him...tell him I need him.”

* * *

Zach jabbed the hospital’s elevator button three times, probably harder than it required to light up, but he didn’t have time to wait for it. When the doors didn’t open, he abandoned the lift and ran into the stairwell, taking them two at a time for three flights before running down the corridor.

His breathing was rapid and painful by the time he reached the ICU. The night nurses shot him strange looks, but the big guy, the one who had called him, waved him toward the security guard in a black uniform.

“Tell me what happened.” His words were sharp, like the smack of a hammer against wood.

The security guard had pimples and a patchy beard. He wasn’t much more than a kid with a walkie-talkie and a flashlight, and he took two steps back at Zach’s approach. “Umm. Got here as fast as I could when I got the call, but the guy had already vanished. We checked the back stairwell, and he’s not there, either.” The kid wrung his hands and looked toward the ceiling tiles. “I guess he’s long gone.”

“When did you get the call?”

Zach could almost see him calculating the time as he stared at his watch through narrowed eyes. “I guess about twenty minutes ago?”

He let out a short breath, jamming his hands onto his hips. “Can you be more specific?”

The kid shrugged and shook his head.

“You can go.” Zach dismissed the guard but couldn’t seem to take the single step required to enter Julie’s room. Straightening his shoulders, he tried to prepare himself for whatever he might see. Brad wouldn’t have been so calm on the phone if she’d been severely injured. But he’d said she needed Zach.

It had at once exhilarated and terrified him.

He liked being needed. He liked taking care of people who couldn’t take care of themselves. Except Julie was an unknown. Nothing about her or her situation was certain or easy.

And he couldn’t stay away from her.

He strolled across the room, his shoes silent against the tile. She was so small beneath the blanket, her feet not even close to reaching the end of the mattress. The bed was angled so she was partially sitting up, but her eyes were closed, as though she was fast asleep. Maybe he should go. Let her get some real rest after another traumatic event.

But she’d asked for him.

At her side he rested a hand on her arm. She was so pale. Her face and lips were nearly white, the only real color a ring of yellow already materializing at her throat and the still purple bruises.

Her good eye fluttered open, and her swollen one even managed a slit through which he could make out a matching brown iris. The corners of her lips shifted into a low-wattage smile. “You came.”

“The nurse said you needed me.”

Her eyes drifted closed again, and she bit both her top and bottom lips until they disappeared. “I did—do.”

“All right. I’m here.” He brushed a strand of hair out of her eye, but jerked his hand back immediately. That was way more than professional, and he couldn’t afford to be anything but with a victim. He had to rein in any wayward feelings and get down to business. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“I must have seen or done something pretty incredible.”

He lifted his eyebrows, but she continued without any other prodding.

“He still wants me dead.”

She spoke with such certainty and calm, yet every muscle in his body tensed, every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. She was in danger. And it was his mistake. If he hadn’t suggested the newspaper article, her attacker might still believe his work was done.

He swallowed the guilt that rose in his throat. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.” Every syllable threatened to choke him, each one harder than the last.

Her eyebrows rose, the top of her nose wrinkling as she stared at him. “Funny. You don’t look much like the guy who was in here before.”

“You know what I mean. I promised I’d take care of you. And instead I inadvertently led that guy right to you.”

She shook her head, shifting her arm out from under his hold, and his fingers immediately missed the absence of her warmth. Until she slipped her hand into his and squeezed. A breathy sigh escaped, her shoulders relaxing into the pillow. “It wasn’t in the paper. Tabby didn’t say where I was.” With the lift of her sprained wrist and the wave of a single finger, she halted his intended interruption. “If he was watching the paper, he would’ve noticed there wasn’t a story about me. About my body being found. He knew I was alive. And he would have found me eventually.”

His heart thudded twice and then returned to a normal rhythm. She was absolutely right. But the guilt still poked and prodded his insides, leaving him sore, as if he’d taken a hockey puck to the gut.

“And he’ll come looking for me again.”

She was so matter-of-fact about it that he choked on his own breath, coughing and sputtering while she stared at him out of one eye. Of course, she was right. Someone certainly wanted her dead, so why didn’t she look more scared?

The fingers in his grip began a slow tremor, quaking even more with every rise and fall of her chest. This was her fear in physical form. Her face showed no sign, but her hand trembled. While wearing a facade of confidence, she revealed the truth only to him. She was terrified.

And he had to scare her even more.

Whoever they were dealing with had disappeared. Right along with a baby she’d been carrying.

“You’re not in this alone.” The words were out before they were even fully formed in his mind, and he backed them up with a gentle smile.

She turned her head away to face the closed blinds over a window that looked out on the parking lot. Her eyes were closed, and for a moment, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. But then she whispered so softly that he had to bend all the way over to hear her words.

“What if I’m not who you think I am? What if I deserved this?”

What was going on inside that barren mind of hers? Her forgotten memories provided a breeding ground for fear to fester. With no truth to combat the lies, they easily stole her peace. She needed someone to remind her that she was a good woman with a kind heart.

He could do that. He wanted to do that.

Letting go of her hand, he walked around the end of the bed until he could squat so his face was right in her line of vision.

“Look at me, Julie.”

One lid slowly lifted, her pupil dilating until it seemed to blend with the darker circles in the outer rings of her eye.

“First of all, no one deserves something like this. No one. Do you understand me?”

She nodded.

“Second, you’re not a criminal. No matter what you can’t remember, the core of your heart, the person you are deep down, is still there.”

She nibbled on the corner of her bottom lip, her eyebrows pulling together to make three little lines above her nose. “How can you be so sure?”

“I see it in the way you treat people and the way you reach for my hand when you need something stable.” She let out a little laugh, half embarrassment and half uncertainty. “You trust me, and I trust you. Criminals don’t trust cops.” Then he added a little wink. “Plus, I ran your fingerprints. If you’d committed a crime anywhere in the state of Minnesota, I’d know about it.”

Her laugh this time was hearty if a bit hoarse. “Thank you.”

“I’m just sorry that he found you. But I swear, I won’t let it happen again. We’ll find him and you’ll be safe.”

He liked being right at her level as emotions flickered in her eye, first relief, then uncertainty and finally resignation. She didn’t have a choice but to see this through. But maybe knowing she wasn’t facing it alone helped her to find some strength.

He stood, and her eye grew wide. “You’re not leaving, are you?” The pitch of her voice rose, her hand clenched into a fist around the brace and bandage between her thumb and forefinger.

“I was just going to grab a chair. My legs will fall asleep if I stay in that position too long. All right?”

A chagrined smile fell into place as she nodded. But her grin was immediately broken by a yawn that cracked her jaw.

As he carried the chair from the corner, the urge to ask her about the baby he’d seen in the security video battled with the voice telling him that she needed rest. If she heard about a missing baby, she wasn’t going to get a minute of sleep. He needed her mind fresh and prepared to remember anything that might surface when the U.S. Marshals arrived.

Still the voice that demanded to know the whereabouts of the missing child poked at the back of his mind.

He didn’t have to cannonball into the question. He could dip a toe in. He could just check the temperature.

Sitting down, he was almost directly on her level again. Her eyelid had drooped, the lines of tension on her face vanished in the peace near sleep.

“Julie?”

“Hmm?” The sound was little more than a hum in the back of her throat, her eyelashes barely fluttering against pale cheeks. For the first time, he noticed a path of freckles running across her nose. They were close together on her nose but turned sparse as they reached her cheeks. She embodied both the innocence of youth and the fear that was very adult. And it twisted into his stomach.

“I got a call today from a marshal, who is interested in your case. She wants to talk with you tomorrow.”

Her brows furrowed, eyes still closed. “About what?” Her tongue sounded thick, like every word was a fight to get out.

He pressed his finger and thumb around his mouth, scraping at the dark shadow growing there. “I’m not sure exactly. She wonders if you might be able to recognize someone that she’s been investigating. I suppose she wants to know everything you know.”

“Ha.” There was genuine humor in her shallow laugh. “That’s not much these days.”

A smile that matched hers fell into place for just a moment. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just laugh with her? But it would do neither of them any good so long as someone was after her and a baby was missing. “Julie, do you remember anything else about that night?”

“Like what?”

He let out a slow breath, praying for the words that would neither frighten nor mislead. “Were you alone that night? Was there anyone else with you?”

The shallow rise and fall of her chest stopped for a long heartbeat. “I can’t remember anything.” And then just before her breaths turned deep with sleep, she sighed. “Yet.”