by Ravenna Tate
Yes. Yes, that’s it! Houston glanced toward the side window, but his eyes were closed. Brian had followed her out of the house that morning. Had he followed her to the field where he fell, or had he led her there? Had he forced her to go there with him? Was the duffle bag she’d been carrying the same one that made that mark on his cheek?
“Did you hear me, Cassidy?”
“Yes. And I believe you’re right. We find the girl, we find the flash drive. And we find proof of the gang rape on it, more than likely.”
“I’m convinced that’s exactly what’s on it. She probably killed him, you know. Or, he fell and she left him there to die. But at least now we know her motive.”
They certainly did. She was gang raped by Brian, her boyfriend Mike, and God knows who else. And Brian Wayside recorded the entire fucking thing.
If he’d been a sixteen-year-old girl who had snuck out of the house and driven an hour and a half to spend the weekend with her boyfriend, then been forced to have sex with his friends as part of a fucking game at a party, he’d have killed the son of a bitch who recorded it, too.
Where was that flash drive? Did Rosanna still have it? Had she hidden it, or thrown it away? And would she recall it if her memories were recovered, or had they hit a dead end again?
The idea that he might find that flash drive in her apartment chilled Houston to the bone.
Chapter Sixteen
Since Houston picked Rosanna up from work, the plan was for her to leave her car in the parking garage overnight. Houston would drive her home from the appointment, and then drive her back to work in the morning. The parking garage had twenty-four surveillance, and the attorneys who worked in the firm often left their vehicles there. It would be safe.
After he picked her up from work, he drove her to JoElle’s office. Rosanna fidgeted a lot, and he tried to think of reassuring things to say, but all he could do was go over Gareth’s words from that morning in his mind. He would hold out hope for a while longer that Rosanna was not the girl from that party. He had to, or he’d lose his damn mind.
The urge to take her home, beg her to pack a bag, and drive her across the country was strong. He’d find another job, and so would she. They could spend the rest of their lives away from everyone who had the power to hurt her, wrapped up in ignorant bliss of that missing year of her life.
He’d make her happy. He’d make her so damn happy she would forget that she couldn’t recall a couple one year of high school. He would pour his heart and soul into their relationship so that when they were old and gray, neither one would have any regrets that they’d once chucked it all and run away together.
“Houston, I’m so nervous. What if I say something ridiculous while I’m out? What if I can’t remember any of it, after all?”
Once he’d parked the car, he pulled her close. The images that had danced around his head all day make him sick. He hoped she couldn’t recall any of it, either, because he could not imagine having lived through something like that. If Mike was still alive, it would be difficult not to find him and kill him, if what Houston suspected had happened was true.
“Now you listen to me. No matter what happens in there, you won’t say anything ridiculous. It doesn’t work that way. And even if none of the memories come back, will you really be any worse off than you are right now? You have lived with this hole in your life for twelve years, but look at all you’ve accomplished in spite of it.”
As soon as he said “twelve years”, he felt her stiffen slightly. Fuck. Had she been the one to tell him it was twelve years? He suddenly couldn’t remember.
“That’s true. Everything you said. But, Houston, I’m desperate to get that time back.” She pulled away and looked into his eyes. “Can’t you understand that? How would you feel if you had missing pieces in your life?”
“I do understand. Completely. I just don’t want you to pin all your hopes on one session.”
The bright smile on her face told him she hadn’t reacted to the number of years at all. “Right. Of course. JoElle did say it might take more than one.”
Oh, he was going to hell for sure. “You ready to go inside?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
****
“Why aren’t you sitting in on the session?” Rosanna had assumed all this time he’d want to be there, and was heartbroken when he said he would wait in an empty office across the hall.
“There are many reasons why it’s not appropriate.”
“Such as?”
“Doctor-client privilege, for one.”
Rosanna cut her gaze toward JoElle. “I’ll sign a consent form.”
“Rosanna, I understand why you want him to be there, but you will be better able to relax and speak freely without anyone else in the room.”
“And, I’m a cop, babe.”
“I highly doubt I committed a crime during the missing time.” Did he just blanch slightly? The hairs on the back of her neck prickled at the look of dread in Houston’s eyes. What the hell was that about?
“Even if you did, and you say something about it under hypnosis, I can’t do anything with the information. You weren’t mirandized, for starters. Plus, there are a host of other technicalities with such a situation. We’ve never get it into court.”
Why did she suddenly feel afraid to go through with this? “Um, good to know.”
JoElle shot him a confused, slightly annoyed look. “Rosanna, this will go better if it’s just you and me. I will videotape it, at any rate. I do that with all my sessions. If you want to sign a consent allowing Houston to watch the tape at a later time, we can do that now.”
“What about if he watches it from another place, where I can’t see him?”
“It’s not an interrogation, babe. Dr. Thompson is right. You need to be completely relaxed, trusting only her voice, and concentrating on nothing else. I would only be a distraction, even if I wasn’t there. You would still know I was watching or listening from another room.”
“Okay. I understand. Let’s do this.”
****
What Rosanna hadn’t realized was that she would be fully aware while in the hypnotic state. She’d always imagined it would feel like going to sleep during a surgical procedure. The next thing you remembered was waking up, talking, in the middle of a sentence.
It wasn’t like that at all. She was more relaxed than she could ever remember being, but at the same time, her awareness was heightened, like she’d worked out for a long time and was high on endorphins.
“Rosanna, tell me about the first date you had with Mike Rowland.”
“He asked me to the spring dance my freshman year of high school. He was a senior…” She told JoElle about the dance, how romantic it had been, the name of the band playing, and even what color dress she’d worn.
“Did you have sex with Mike that night?”
“No, not that night.” Rosanna frowned as images rose up. Clear images. Images of a Saturday afternoon in late September, when Mike had taken her up to his dorm room at CWRU. He told her all about the fraternities he planned to rush.
“What are you remembering right now, Rosanna. Tell it to me out loud.”
“Mike showed me his dorm room right after he started at CWRU. He didn’t have a roommate. It was one of those suites. Four rooms shared a bath, but we had privacy in the bedroom.”
“Is that when you first had sex with him?”
“Yes. We had been dating almost six months, and I wanted to, but was still a bit afraid.”
“Did he help you feel unafraid?”
“Yes. It hurt, but only at first. I wasn’t sure afterward if I liked it, but Mike said it would get better the more we did it. I was already on the pill, and he swore to me he had no STDs.”
“Was he true to his word?”
“About the STDs?”
“About that, and about it getting better.”
“Oh, yes. About both.” She smiled as happy memories flooded her mind.
“Tal
k to me out loud about the images you’re seeing in your mind, Rosanna.”
“I went up there almost every weekend. I even went to some rush parties with him. He really seemed to like the guys at Gamma Chi Alpha, and that’s the fraternity he ended up pledging. They opened the house up to freshmen that year because so many seniors had graduated the year before, so Mike was able to move into the house for the second semester.”
“How did your parents feel about your spending weekends with him?”
“They were worried about my school work, and they didn’t like me driving so far alone. So sometimes Mike would come and get me.”
“Did they know you stayed in his dorm room with him?”
“No. We told them I was staying with one of his female friends.”
“Were your parents aware that you and Mike were sexually active?”
“I’m sure they were, but we didn’t talk about such things in my house.”
“Are there any gaps in your memory of Mike’s first semester at CWRU?”
“No. It’s all there. I can recall everything.” It was as if someone had flipped a switch and there it all was, month by month.
“How was your relationship with Mike, Rosanna?”
“It was good. He was sweet to me. Even if I couldn’t go up there one weekend, he’d call and text me during the week, and tell me how much he missed me.”
“Did you date other men?”
“No. And he didn’t cheat on me. I’m sure of it.”
“Would it be fair to say you had fallen in love with him by then?”
“Yes. I told him I loved him.”
“Did he love you, too?”
“He said he did. He talked about us getting married one day. I told him how I wanted to be a paralegal, and I chose a school in Cleveland so I’d be closer to him. I said one day I wanted to go to law school.”
“Why didn’t you want to get a four-year degree right away, and apply to law school afterward?”
As those memories returned, Rosanna frowned. “My father said being an attorney was no profession for a woman. It was a compromise. Me deciding to begin with being a paralegal, I mean. He wanted me to find a husband, get married, and have kids. He kept trying to get me to date other boys, including sons and nephews of his friends. He thought I was moving too fast with Mike.”
“Let’s talk a bit more about the compromise. Your parents were history professors. Why do you think they had such old-fashioned ideas about what women should do with their lives?”
“My mother didn’t have them. Only my father. He said if Cheta had lived, he’d have had choices. But being a girl, I only had one clear choice. To give him a grandson to carry on the family name. He said if I went to law school I’d become too independent and might never get married.”
“That seems extreme.”
“He was an extreme man.”
She didn’t want to talk about her parents, but she was so relaxed that she simply answered JoElle’s questions, regardless. It was nice, being in this state. All the memories were clear, and she didn’t have to do anything except speak them out loud. Why hadn’t she done this years ago?
“Rosanna, let’s move forward to the second semester of Mike’s first year at CWRU. Can you recall anything from that time period for me?”
A dark memory, as vivid and real as any that had been bombarding her mind since JoElle had helped her relax this afternoon, came back to her. “In late January, there was a bad snowstorm forecast for Cleveland, but not for Kent. My parents had to go out of town for a seminar. They left me alone because they said they trusted me.”
“Did they ask you not to drive up to Cleveland that weekend?”
Rosanna wanted to wake up, but she wasn’t sleeping. She wanted to stop the images and the sounds from filling her head, but it was as impossible to do as willing herself to cease breathing would have been. “Yes.”
“Did you go anyway?”
“Yes,” she whispered. And just like that, the entire weekend was there, as clear as day. She couldn’t stop the memories. They came back in an instant, and the pain and fear came back with them.
“Rosanna, what are you recalling right now? Tell it to me out loud.”
“I don’t want to…”
Every dream she’d had since Houston had told her about his old case, every image that tried to materialize, and every doubt that accompanied both were suddenly made whole. The entire incident coalesced into one large, dark, frightening memory, until Rosanna couldn’t handle it any longer.
She opened her eyes and sat straight up. Rosanna knew she’d come out of the hypnotic trance on her own, without any prompts that she and JoElle had discussed beforehand. And the memory of what Mike and Brian had done to her, one snowy, cold night in January twelve years ago, came with it.
Chapter Seventeen
From across the hall, Houston heard Rosanna cry out, and he was out of his chair and in the office, not giving a shit whether Dr. Thompson approved. “What’s wrong, babe? Are you all right?”
“She’s had a memory recall that’s frightened her.”
In the time it took him to sit next to the woman he loved and reach out to stroke her hair, Houston knew the truth. He’d been right. Rosanna was that girl at the party, and now she knew it as well. Because he’d encouraged her to see a therapist, the memories she’d worked so hard to bury forever had resurfaced.
And his life would never be the same again.
“Rosanna, can you tell us about that weekend?” Dr. Thompson’s voice was gentle, coaxing, and it reminded him of the way Annie interrogated certain suspects, or led witnesses along whose corroboration they desperately needed. Maybe Annie had missed her true calling?
“I’m too ashamed to talk about it.”
Her voice gave him nasty chills. She sounded like a frightened child.
“We’re here for you, Rosanna. You’re in a safe place. Let’s talk about this.”
As if realizing for the first time they both were there, she glanced from Dr. Thompson to him, and back again. When her gaze cut to him once more, Houston wanted to die at the look of pain and fear in those beautiful eyes. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“You might change your mind once you hear it.”
“No, I won’t.” Fuck it. He would not hurt her, no matter what that meant for his career.
A surprisingly strong grip from her right hand locked on his left one. He held on for dear life, not wanting to hear what she had to say, but knowing he had no choice. Once he did, he’d be obligated to report the information to Annie and to Ty. But how the fuck could he do that? It would mean they’d arrest Rosanna. How could he let that happen to her? And yet if he didn’t, he’d be brought up on charges.
“I drove up here that weekend anyway. Even though I told my parents I wouldn’t. There was a huge frat party, and Mike begged me to come. It wasn’t snowing when I got here. It snowed overnight and the next day. But once I drove further south, the roads were clear. I got home without my parents ever knowing I’d been gone from Friday night to Saturday afternoon.”
“So, you didn’t stay the entire weekend that time.” Dr. Thompson’s voice was lilting and soft.
Rosanna shook her head.
“What was different about that weekend, Rosanna?”
She sucked in a huge gasp, and when she exhaled, her breath came out shaky. “By the time I got to the party, Mike was really drunk. He had become friends over the past couple of months with a boy named Brian Wayside. Brian was also a freshman. I couldn’t stand him. He was arrogant and smug, and Mike was becoming just like him. Brian thought he was a real ladies’ man. He was always hitting on me when Mike’s back was turned.”
It took all of Houston’s concentration not to move or speak.
“There were a lot of high school girls at the party, as well as college age kids. I knew some of the other guys in the frat fairly well by then, so I was walking around the h
ouse, talking to people. I met this high school girl named Hollee whose parents also taught history, but at Cleveland State. We talked about what it’s like to have brilliant parents.”
The grip on his hand increased.
“You need to know that at first, I only drank a little at that party. But not enough to get foggy. I never did. And Mike didn’t usually, either, at least at the beginning of the semester. It was Brian’s influence that changed him. The past couple of parties I’d been to before that one … Mike was different. Much drunker than usual and a lot more insistent that we have sex.”
When she stopped for a few seconds, to Houston, the time dragged on like she’d stayed silent for hours. Sweat broke out along his hairline and under his arms. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and make this go away. What good could come of her having to relive this?
“I don’t recall how much time had passed between when I arrived that Friday, to when Mike came looking for me, but it was probably about two hours. He was pissed off that I hadn’t stayed with him the entire time. I told him I was just mingling, but he was acting like an ass about it, so I went upstairs with him.”
The tiny whimper that escaped her throat was Houston’s undoing. “Does she really have to do this? Clearly it’s disturbing for her.”
Dr. Thompson shot him a look that would have made hell freeze. “I think it’s very important she get this out now so we can begin the process of helping her heal.”
Shot down by a psychologist. Well, it wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. He certainly had tangled with enough of them during his career.
“Are you ready to continue, Rosanna?” she asked.
After nodding, she began to speak again. “Brian was in Mike’s room, as drunk as Mike was, and he was typing something on his laptop. When I came in with Mike, Brian grinned and said something about now the game could begin. I ignored him because that was the only way I could deal with him most of the time.”
“What did he do with the laptop?” asked Houston, ignoring the death glare Dr. Thompson gave him.
