Wincing at the image of her best friend’s body being thrown through the air like a rag doll, Jillian wiped away tears that had suddenly sprung to her eyes. Ellie had been through so much. The fact that she was going through hell trying to piece together the fragments of her memory made Jillian feel worse for her.
“It was surreal.” Ellie bit her bottom lip. “I didn’t feel anything for an eternity, and then I felt everything. It was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.”
Jillian swallowed the bile that rose in her throat at the image Ellie’s trembling words conjured up.
Sitting at the table, Ellie’s eyes were closed, and she swayed slightly, her white-knuckled grip on the tabletop.
Jillian decided to push a little more and sat quietly in the nearest chair to Ellie. “You said you could hear the kidnapper. When he was chasing you before you saw the light, did he say anything to you?”
“He said that I stabbed him in earnest, but he deserved it for letting me go.” Ellie’s brow furrowed, her frown deepening as she searched her memory for some elusive fragment. “No. That’s not it. Ernest!” She practically shouted the word. “He said he was delighted that I stabbed Ernest, but I wasn’t going to fool him so easily. Or something like that.”
“Is that the weapon you keep feeling in your hand during hypnosis?”
“Yes!” Ellie said without pause. “Not a knife. It was thick, and I held the weapon by the blade, not a handle, when I swung my arm through the air.” She made the motion, still holding on to the table with her other hand. When her arm came all the way down, she cringed as if she were stabbing the man right there in her kitchen. “The weapon was heavy.”
“But not a knife?”
Ellie shook her head. “No.”
“Where did you get the weapon?”
“A tray of medical instruments.”
“That’s good, Ellie. Don’t think too hard about things, just say the first answer that comes to you.”
“Okay.” Ellie’s voice was distant and almost dreamy, but there was a tinge of panic just beneath the surface. Her lips were parted, and her chest was moving rapidly with tiny, frantic breaths. Eyes still shut tight against the horrors she was reliving, Ellie licked her lips, and a single bead of sweat escaped her hairline.
“Ellie, what did you stab Ernest with?”
“Scissors. Big, heavy scissors.” She paused, the sound of her fast and shallow breathing filling the room. “They were silver, no rubber on the handles.”
Sam appeared in the doorway, her dark eyes on Ellie, ready to protect her from whatever was causing her harm.
“How many times did you stab him?”
“Once. Right over where I thought his heart should be, but I hit bone, and there was so much blood. As soon as I buried the tip into his flesh, it bubbled up like a spring.” Ellie gagged, covering her mouth with one hand.
“Just breathe, Ellie.”
When Jillian touched Ellie’s arm, she reached out and grabbed Jillian’s hand so tight her fingers ached. She winced, but Ellie’s eyes were still closed from where she was still clearly stuck between her past and the present. Jillian held fast, taking deep breaths with Ellie until her friend’s grip loosened, and the blood rushed back into Jillian’s fingertips.
Ellie cleared her throat, eyes still shut. “I tried to pull it out so I could stab him again, but the scissors slipped out of my grip, and I heard the doorknob turning, so I just ran. I slammed into the man and knocked him down. Ernest was screaming, and the man was yelling at him, but I just kept going. I ran into the trees, and I kept running.”
Ellie’s eyelids flew open, her chest heaving, gaze wild and distant. She turned, staring at Jillian for a moment before she shook off the past. Looking around the room, she slumped farther down into the chair with a desolate moan.
Jillian hurried to the fridge and grabbed Ellie a bottled water. She downed it in loud gulps, and sat in the chair staring at the past, her eyes focused on a memory she’d been trying to uncover for years.
“He’s got to be dead, right?” Ellie’s voice was low, but the tremor in it was gone. This time when she turned to Jillian, she was in the moment, the lost expression of a few minutes before replaced by the feisty, green-eyed force of nature Jillian knew. “He just left that man there on the floor to die while he chased after me. Could he have lived?”
Jillian was already on her laptop, keys tapping as her fingers flew over them. “If he did survive, that kind of injury would need extensive surgery to repair.” She scrolled through several news stories from the night Ellie had escaped and the week that followed and shook her head. “I don’t see anything online, and I can’t access the department’s information here.”
“We’d have better luck calling the hospitals.”
“And that’s going to require a warrant.”
Ellie blew out a long breath, glancing at the notes she’d written before the flash of memory had surfaced. “It’s still more than we had before. Tomorrow’s Friday. We can check the John Does and see if anyone matches up with this man and his wound. If we can find the assistant, we can probably identify the kidnapper.”
“Tomorrow’s the thirteenth. Aren’t you going to lay low?”
Ellie shook her head. “I think Powell is right. The thirteenth year isn’t any more momentous than the tenth or fifteenth anniversary. Besides, I can’t sit around all day and wait for something to happen.”
The shrill ring of Ellie’s cell phone split the air, and they both jumped. Jillian’s eyes went to the screen of the smartphone beside hers on the table. When the caller ID popped up, Jillian groaned.
“That’s one of the Violent Crimes Unit’s direct lines.” Ellie didn’t reach for the phone, letting it ring for a third time before she picked it up. “This is Detective
