I turn my head—as much as the throbbing pain allows—and see a shock of blond hair draped over my shoulder.
Shit.
I don’t even know what I look like.
How do you forget who you are?
“Mirror,” I croak. “P-please.”
Reyes stiffens. “Are you certain? There is significant bruising.”
I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. Or…I don’t think I have. “Yes.”
The doctor pulls out his phone and opens the camera app. “Here.”
My hand shakes too much, so Reyes does his best to get the angle right. The white bandage around my head shocks me, but it’s nothing compared to seeing myself for the first time.
Dark circles swell under my blue-green eyes.
The deep purple bruise on the left side of my face almost looks like…a boot print. A long scar follows the curve of my right cheekbone.
“I don’t know her.” The words fall from my lips like dust. Gritty and in so many pieces, I’ll never put them back together again.
Carefully, I ease my head back down to the pillows. The throbbing gets so much worse.
“You are not alone, señora. Not anymore. I will do whatever I can to find out who you are.” Reyes gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “A white, American woman missing will have made the news. Somewhere.”
I want to believe him. But panic swells in my chest and the beeping gets faster and faster until the pain in my head is overwhelming.
I want to ask more questions, but the words won’t come. They’re all tangled together like someone took the letters, scrambled them in a bowl, and dumped them out on the floor in front of me.
Reyes injects something into the IV—how do I know what an IV is, but not my name?—and within a few seconds, my body starts to float.
Closing my eyes, I give into the gaping emptiness of where my life should be.
Chapter Fifteen
AJ
I pull the cord on the old banker’s light on my desk. Too many late nights and too much fucking paperwork. My neck is killing me.
Spinning around in my chair, I rub the stabbing pain until it turns into a dull ache. From the credenza against the wall, Grace laughs from the last photo I took of her. Two seconds before I’d snapped the picture, Belle had stuck her tongue in Grace’s ear.
The dog has never been the same since Grace disappeared, but she no longer sits by the door all day, hoping her person will finally come home. And while I still run the trail every fucking Saturday, Belle and I spend our weeknights in a cheap studio apartment only two blocks from the station.
More than once, I’ve thought about selling the house at the lake, but I can’t face the prospect of living somewhere Grace has never been. And Belle needs the space to run on the weekends. The apartment was a compromise. A way for me to sleep at night in a bed that doesn’t constantly remind me of all I’ve lost, while keeping the house we bought together in case, by some miracle, Grace comes home.
She should be waiting for me right now. Steam coming out her ears. Ready to remind me what I’d promised the day she disappeared. That when I made captain, I’d come home on time more often.
Shit.
I gotta get out of here if I don’t want the doggie daycare to read me the riot act. Again.
“I miss you, darlin’.” Picking up the photo, I crush the wood frame to my chest and give myself a count of five to wallow in my grief. “I’ll never stop lookin’ for you. There ain’t been one single moment I’ve forgotten you. And there never will be.”
My eyes burn. I haven’t cried in at least a month, but the anniversary of Grace’s disappearance is in a little over three weeks. And the closer it gets…
I already put in for time off. I’ll let Elmore take Belle so I can spend a solid forty-eight hours drowning myself in a bottle of tequila.
