by Liz Johnson
Shoving his third and final disc into his computer’s player, he sighed. At least this camera, unlike the restaurant cameras, was angled toward the faces of the pedestrians, most of them walking toward their cars parked along Thomas Road. He sped up the video as the time stamp passed the dinner rush and through long periods without anyone using the crosswalk. The clock on the footage showed almost 2200 when a lone figure carrying some sort of case against her chest, with both arms wrapped around it, stopped at the corner.
He pushed his chair back and sat straight up in it before leaning closer to the screen. The figure looked like a woman with dark hair, and as she swung to look over her shoulder, her hair fanned out, long and just a little wavy.
Just about like Julie’s the night that she’d been found.
On the screen, the woman jabbed at the crosswalk button several times, looking behind her twice before she finally ventured out into the road, checking for oncoming traffic from both directions. The light hadn’t changed in her favor, but she still hurried into the street, pausing only to brush something from her cheek into the bag she was carrying.
And then she disappeared from the camera’s view.
He rewound the scene and slowed it to a crawl and zoomed in on her. Frame by frame the figure moved across the street. And then she stopped for a fraction of a second and looked right into the camera.
Julie.
Even without the scrapes and black eye she now sported, there was no doubt this was her.
His stomach lurched. It was their first real clue. But what did it mean? Only that she’d been attacked sometime after ten o’clock that night.
And then she reached for her cheek.
He’d thought it was a hair in her way, but at the slower speed, he could clearly make out the five little fingers and the care with which she tucked the wayward hand back into the blanket in her arms.
“Ramirez? Do you have the number for that contact in the marshals’ office you just told me about?”
“I think so.” Papers rustled on the other desk, but Zach couldn’t tear his gaze away from the woman looking directly into the street camera and carrying what was undoubtedly a baby.
*
Julie popped a piece of melon into her mouth, set her fork back on her dinner tray and picked up the newspaper for the tenth time, staring hard at the picture on the front of the section. Who was the woman gazing back at her?
She knew that it was her own likeness. After all, Tabby Guster had taken the photo when she’d stopped by the day before. Zach had told her this could help them identify her and begin to put the pieces of her life back together. She’d been only too eager to agree.
But now that she stared at the square chin, full lips, brown eyes and pixie cut that she didn’t recognize, it tore at her insides.
How could she not even know her own features? How could they be so foreign when they were literally at the tip of her nose?
With a finger she traced the short hair in the photograph then touched the real hair at her temple. The nurse said they’d cut off a lot of it that first night. But Julie didn’t have anything to compare it to.
The disposable cell phone that Zach had left with her let out a low hum as it scooted across the table at her bedside. Setting the paper down, she scooped it up. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Zach.”
“Hi.” She twisted to catch a glimpse of the clock on the adjacent wall. It was after eleven. “Are you still on duty?”
“No. Why?”
“Oh. It’s just kind of late—”
He sucked in a sharp bite of air. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
“No. Not at all. I was just— I’m just looking at the article in the paper. Again.” Oh, why did she add that? She sounded like she was so interested in herself that she couldn’t stop reading about the woman without her memory.
“It’s a good article.” He paused for a long time, but she could tell he wanted to say more. Finally he filled it in. “It’s a pretty picture.”
Where her self-berating had just been, warmth filled her chest at his compliment. And with it a bit of trepidation. She wasn’t used to being complimented like that. At least she didn’t think she was.
He cleared his throat, effectively turning the conversation to less awkward ground and relieving her of the pressure of finding an appropriate response. Thank goodness.
“I was actually calling to let you know that we’ve gotten a couple tips from the hotline.”
“Already? Did you find out who I am?” The smile that tugged on her mouth refused to go away, growing as fast as the hope blooming in her heart.
“Not yet. But there are a few that we’re going to follow up on and see if anything pans out.”
Like a leaking balloon, hope escaped, leaving a weight heavy on her shoulders.
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“We’ll figure out who you are. I promise.”
His words were kind, but were they really in his control? She replayed them as she hung up the phone and leaned back against her pillows with closed eyes. She needed help beyond this world. God was going to have to heal her brain and restore her memories, or she might always be Julie Thomas—not who she really was.
A squeaking wheel jerked her out of her reverie, and she glanced up just as a large blond man in a maintenance uniform rushed across her room. He’d left his mop and yellow bucket sitting by the door, which he’d closed behind him.
She tried to wave him off. “I don’t need anything.”
But he ignored her, and before she could make sense of his presence, he reached her bedside, pressed his meaty hands to her throat and squeezed.
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 ey
e. 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.”