by Nancy Bush
“I think I’ll go back to my room,” she said tremulously.
“All right.” He led her toward the bank of elevators and punched the button for the fourth floor.
Gemma didn’t say anything more, concentrating solely on moving her quivering legs back toward her room. Will cupped her elbow with one hand and helped steady her. If he had more questions, he kept them to himself as they reached the fourth floor and he guided her into her room. Gemma sat herself heavily down on the bed and took a deep, calming breath.
“Do you feel up to a little more conversation?” the detective asked.
No, Gemma thought. All she wanted to do was lie down and gather her strength again. Actually, all she wanted was to recall how she’d come to be at the hospital. But she didn’t want to give Tanninger any reason to make herself seem more interesting. “Fire away.” She eased herself against the headboard and pulled her shoes off, dropping them to the floor.
Nurse Penny looked into the room. “What are you doing?” she asked Gemma sharply.
“Trying to escape. But I got caught.”
The nurse whipped around to glare at Tanninger, as if it were somehow his fault. She pursed her lips, said she would bring Gemma a new hospital gown, then steamed out of the room as if they had both purposely thwarted her authority.
“Don’t you have more pressing cases than a mystery patient?” Gemma asked before Tanninger could speak.
“I was waiting to speak to the EMT who saw you come in two nights ago. We haven’t connected yet.”
“You said I walked in?”
“And collapsed.”
Gemma struggled to remember but her mind was empty. More gaps. “Did you tell me where I came in?”
“To the ER. From the parking lot. I’ll know more when I talk with the EMT.”
“I want to be there when you talk to him.”
“So, you’re not planning to disappear again, then, after I leave the room?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to work out—”
Nurse Penny hustled back inside the room and gave Tanninger a look that said vamoose. He walked out the door and Gemma got a good look at his strong back, wide shoulders, and narrow hips as he disappeared from view.
“Let me help you put this on, hon,” the nurse said, and Gemma let her undress her and tie the gown around her back. “You don’t have someone to bring you fresh clothes?” she asked, inclining her head to the T-shirt and jeans.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll just head home and change. Tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Depends on Dr. Avery.”
Tomorrow, Gemma thought determinedly. She had to get back to her real life. She had to remember what she’d been doing. What showdown she was heading for. Who, or what, she’d been after.
The nurse looked as if she wanted to take Gemma’s clothes with her, but she left them in a neat stack on the chair. Gemma momentarily wondered if she had the strength to put them back on, distasteful as that thought was becoming. But even as she gave up the idea for the moment, Detective Tanninger reentered the room.
They eyed each other for several moments, and then he observed, “If you’re too tired, I can come back.”
“I’d like to help you. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Where do you live in Quarry?”
Gemma hesitated. “It’s a farmhouse.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“It’s coming back, but it’s not all there yet,” she said.
“Take your time.”
“A lot of homes in Quarry are farmhouses, though there aren’t as many farms anymore. It was my parents’ place, Jean and Peter LaPorte, but they’re both gone and they left it to me.”
“You live there by yourself?”
Did she? Gemma opened her mouth, thought hard, then said slowly, “Yes…”
“You think your memory difficulty is from the concussion?” he asked casually.
“What else?” she responded quickly, her pulse jumping. But she had a moment of remembrance then. A mental snapshot of herself and her mother in the front room of the farmhouse. There was another woman sitting on the edge of her seat, staring hard at Jean LaPorte. Anxious. Waiting. And all around them the cloying, sweet scent of peonies from the magenta bouquet bursting in a vase on the scarred table.
“Your memory lapse seems greater than what I would expect from a concussion,” he said. “What’s your address?”
“I don’t really want to talk anymore.” Gemma looked away.
“You can’t remember it.”
“I’ve been in some kind of accident, detective. I’m not a hundred per cent. If you have a specific question, ask it. Otherwise I don’t think I can help you any further.”
He looked at her hard. “Afraid of me finding out that you ran down a man with your car?”
Gemma stared at him in shock. “What?” she asked softly.
“The man’s unconscious, upstairs. He’s a pedophile, by the looks of what we found in his van.”
“In his van…?” she repeated faintly.
“It looks like you ran him down on purpose.”
There was no humor in his face now. It was hard and tough and an accusation hung in his dark eyes. Gemma tried to remember. She’d remembered the man’s lust. She’d felt it. She’d chased him…
Or, had she? It felt like these were someone else’s memories. Manufactured. Not real, and not hers!
“No…I don’t think so,” she denied.
“You don’t think so.”
She didn’t respond and Tanninger went on to tersely explain about the man who’d been run down at a soccer field, how he’d been driving a van filled with handcuffs and chains and ropes, how some unidentified woman had aimed her car at him and flipped him into the air, how he’d survived the attack, but just barely. As Gemma listened she understood that the detective had been plying her with questions in order to find out what she knew, if anything, about the attack. He half-believed—maybe even fully believed—that she’d been behind the wheel of the car that had attacked the man, a pedophile.
When he was finished Gemma’s head felt like it was going to explode. Is that what she’d done? Is that why she couldn’t remember?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a shaking voice that nevertheless rang with conviction.
Tanninger drew a breath, expanding his chest. What did it say about her, Gemma wondered, that even when he was panicking her with his questions, she could notice how tan his skin was, how good he looked in his pressed shirt and dark pants, how strong and able he seemed, like someone she could depend on.
But then she recalled, with almost a ping of remembrance, that she’d always been attracted to a man in a uniform, no matter whether they had a sense of humor or not.
Outside good old Laurelton General, Inga Selbourne had raced to her Honda compact as soon as she’d gotten off work. She was proud to be a nurse. Proud to wear the uniform. Proud to have a job—a really good job!—at the best, the only, hospital in Winslow County. She’d congratulated herself again as she’d hurriedly unlocked the door and climbed inside, and she’d been congratulating herself all the way home to the little apartment attached to the farmhouse on the outskirts of the town of Laurelton itself.
Or, was it the inskirts of Laurelton? she thought with a grin, as it was on the eastern side of the city, toward Portland.
She’d had one heck of a time getting through nursing school. Whew, those classes had been rough. She’d had to pull all-nighters more often than she cared to admit, and even then if it hadn’t been for Jarrod Benningfield and his copy of that anatomy test, she would have been screwed! Jarrod’s sister had whizzed through the semester before, and Jarrod had handed Inga the test and the answers and all she’d had to do was pretend to be his girlfriend—the pimple-faced little horror—and oh, yeah, give him a blow job or two, but she’d been through that drill enough times to know that sex was a b
argaining chip, nothing more.
Luckily the shortage of nurses made it a slam-bang for her to get a job as soon as she graduated. And she was good at what she did, anyway. Really, really good. There was a hell of a lot more to caring for the sick than acing a few tests, that was for sure. Everyone told her how good she was at her job and it just swelled her with pride. It sure did.
And she’d wanted to be at Laurelton General. It was totally perfect! It wasn’t too far away from her apartment, and if she wanted some fun, it was a straight shot into Portland on Highway 26, the Sunset Highway, on that last stretch before Portland city center, and when she needed to go to her job, well, that was a cinch. She was thinking about heading into Portland tonight. Lately she’d been going to that new nightclub in the Pearl that played hot music and served Caribbean martinis. Whew, they were powerful. She’d had to take a taxi home a few times, and she’d gone home with friends a few times, too. Slept with a couple of guys she shouldn’t have. Fuck-buddies. She shrugged her small shoulders. What’cha gonna do.
As the wheels of her car ate up the miles, Inga shrugged those thoughts aside. She didn’t dwell on past mistakes or less than perfect decision-making. Life was good. She had her own place and her own life. The apartment was small: a studio with a partition. The only honest-to-goodness room was the bathroom. It at least had a real door. But the space was all hers and now, as she drove through the dark toward home, she felt a smile cross her lips despite the sudden rain that was peppering hard against her windshield.
She switched on the wipers. Jesus, what a downpour. You’d think it was the middle of winter.
The couple in the front farmhouse—her landlords—were kind of out of it, but they left her to her own devices. It was a little creepy sometimes because they’d given up farming years earlier and the property was overgrown, with a barn of gray, broken wood, that listed heavily. Beyond the house was a pasture of Scotch broom and weeds with a stand of firs ringing the northern end. Nothing had been taken care of for years.
But her apartment was the best. The absolute best. And cheap!
She hummed to herself as she pulled into the drive that ran alongside the farmhouse, tucking her Honda into the space provided for her at the north end of her apartment. She hurried up her front steps and unlocked the door. Her ears caught the sound of another vehicle pulling into the gravel drive, somewhere behind her on the route she’d just traveled. The farmers? There’d been lights on in the main house and she’d just assumed they were inside. Huh.
She hesitated for a moment, listening. She thought she heard an engine, but the crunch of wheels on gravel was gone. Was someone waiting inside a car around the front of the farmhouse where she couldn’t see? Or was it just roadway sounds she’d let enter her mind?
Inga let half a minute pass, then lost interest. She had places to go, people to see, dances to dance, drinks to knock back. Quickly she dropped her purse and coat on the single chair in the main room and tossed her keys on the kitchen counter. She then headed to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stripped off her uniform, letting it pool on the floor.
There was a guy she’d met. Daniel. He was so damn hot, with longish dark hair that brushed over the collar of his shirt, and the most fabulous blue eyes. His physique was lean and taut, just the way she liked it. She’d wanted to moan when they’d slow-danced, his crotch pressed to hers. Whenever she saw him it was like he radiated the word sex. She didn’t care what it took, they were going to get together tonight. She’d find a way to go home with him. Her shift didn’t start tomorrow until eleven, so they had hours to kill making love.
She practically gave herself an orgasm just thinking about him.
She was toweling off when she heard the sound. A slight squeak of a soft-soled shoe. Her heart clutched. Had she locked the door? Had she? She could visualize her keys tossed on the kitchen counter, but she couldn’t remember twisting the lock.
She was naked. Carefully, she stepped from the shower and pulled her uniform back over her head. Minutes passed. Finally her breathing turned to normal. There was no one out there. She was making it up. Living alone did that to her. Every noise sounded alien.
Nevertheless, she grabbed a glass bottle of bath salts, tested its weight, then threw open the bathroom door, letting it bang hard against the wall, bath salts held high, ready to take on any danger.
There was no one there.
But her front door was unlatched and she quickly crossed the three steps to take care of that mistake.
Her fingers were reaching for the lock when the front door suddenly slammed inward, sending her reeling. Inga staggered, her back hitting the opposite wall. A man stood in the aperture, his arms hunched forward, his head thrust toward her, breathing hard.
She shrieked in fright, and then he was upon her, his hot breath in her face, his body big and hard, his hand grabbing hers and twisting her arm in one swift movement so the bath salts fell to the hardwood floor and shattered, little lavender grains of sand flying everywhere.
“Witch,” he said, throwing her down so that her head cracked hard on the floor and she saw stars.
“Wait…wait…I have money…please…”
He was unbuckling his pants, humping hard against her. Determined. She knew he wasn’t hearing her.
“Wait! Please…!”
Part of her brain was disengaged. Her hand groped along the floor and landed on a sharp shard of glass. She grabbed it and jabbed forward, gouging the piece into his neck, pulling it out and stabbing again and again for all she was worth. She couldn’t let him win. Couldn’t!
In surprise he jumped back, clapping a hand to his neck, his eyes wide. He looked kinda crazy to Inga’s way of thinking and he threw his head back and howled like a beast. Then he hit her in the face till she was dizzy. She flailed the glass at him again and again until he ripped it from her hand.
She tried to scream but his hands circled her throat. “Burn in hell,” he growled through gritted teeth.
Her fingers scrabbled to loosen his hold but it was no use. His grip was too tight, too hard. Pinpoints of light swirled in front of her eyes. She fought against the darkness but it was no use. The pressure wouldn’t give. Wouldn’t quit. She tugged and tugged at his hands but he was too strong. Her trachea was clamped shut. She couldn’t breathe!
Couldn’t…breathe…
Oh, God. Please…
“Witch,” he spat and then Inga’s world circled and spun into blackness.
Her last thought was a regret that she wouldn’t get to be with Daniel after all.
Chapter Four
Dr. Avery was in his fifties, with silver hair and black eyebrows and a stony expression that would have worried Gemma had she not learned that beneath his cold exterior he was a man who fiercely loved his wife and two sons, one of whom was engaged to be married. She knew he’d been in to see her before but she’d gained mostly impressions about him, about what he thought of her injuries, nothing concrete or substantial.
This visit he’d removed the bandage over her eye, the white of which was half-filled with blood.
“I look gruesome,” Gemma said.
The doctor didn’t answer, just kept writing vigorously on her chart.
She’d spent a restless night, waking up to shadowy thoughts and images, fading back to sleep, waking again with her heart pounding in fear and a sense that she needed to save someone, falling to unconsciousness once again, back to the fleeting ghosts and skittish memories.
“Am I going to be able to leave today?” she asked a tad belligerently as the doctor just kept on writing.
He didn’t look up.
“When’s the wedding?” she tried, hoping small talk might get his attention if medicine wouldn’t.
“What wedding?”
“Your son’s.”
His gaze slowly lifted from the chart, which he slid back into its holder at the foot of her bed. “The end of next month.”
“So, are you releasing me? I feel incredi
bly better than yesterday. Even if I’m gruesome.”
He gave her a studied look. “You seem to have recovered fairly quickly. Your head injuries aren’t as severe…as we initially suspected,” he said cautiously. “You have some bruising around your chest, probably from the seat belt. You’ve lost some time, maybe as a result of concussion, although you haven’t displayed other symptoms.”
“Seat belt…” Gemma repeated. “So, it was a car accident?”
“We’ll know for sure when you locate your vehicle.”
“Then…I’m outta here?”
He nodded once, shortly. Gemma had already spoken on the phone to someone from administration and given them information about herself, which though meager, was enough to satisfy them. She knew her own social security number, or at least one that popped into her head, so she’d rattled it off and the woman at the end of the line had typed it into her file. It had to be hers. It wasn’t like she would know anyone else’s, right?
She was torn between just skedaddling and throwing herself on the hospital administration’s mercy, asking for some cold hard cash to find her way home.
The doctor stood for a moment, rocking on his heels, as if he had something else he wanted to say. Gemma waited somewhat impatiently. She’d redressed in her blood-spattered clothes, knowing she was going to burn them the first chance she got. She just wanted to get out of here and find a way back to Quarry. She couldn’t recall her address but she had a murky idea of the direction to go.
Maybe if Detective Tanninger were around today, trying to meet with that EMT…maybe he’d give her a lift. It was as good a plan as any.
Dr. Avery finally headed toward the door and Gemma swung her legs over the bed. But the doctor hesitated before entering the hallway, gazing back at her thoughtfully. “I haven’t told anyone my son’s getting married. Didn’t want the hospital staff talking about something that might not happen. My son and his fiancée have had a very on-and-off relationship. I don’t know how you knew.”
