Tymber Dalton - Pinch Me

Steve stepped close. “Stop it. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You know damn well that’s not true. She is a different person because she doesn’t have her memories. As her fiancé, you’re the one who needs to take the lead and help her.”

“I don’t want to force her.”

“Talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”

Rob turned and watched Carol lead Laura around the backyard, from person to person. “What if she doesn’t want to?”

“Well dammit, you won’t know until you try, will you? You’ve got to start somewhere.”

* * *

Steve’s house had a good view of the southern end of Lemon Bay. After dinner, Rob found Laura and got her alone for a few minutes. “Will you come watch the sunset with me?”

She nodded. He held out his hand and finally, timidly, she took it. He led her to the end of the dock, away from everyone else.

He sat down and patted the dock in front of him. She hesitantly sat, leaning against him and accepting his arms around her.

It felt right. She couldn’t deny that.

As darkness fell, a snook hit the surface of the bay a few yards from them, rippling the water. She was afraid to break the spell, worried there might not be too many moments such as these again in her life.

“This isn’t fair to you,” she said.

“This isn’t about me.”

She turned to face him. “Half your life is gone. It’s about you as much as it is me.” From a few private conversations with Carol at the shop, and with Shayla while still in the hospital, she’d learned a lot about Rob, too embarrassed to ask him herself.

She learned they had been nearly inseparable, before. That she’d told Carol, Shayla, Steve, Bill, and others that he was the love of her life, but could she honestly say she loved him now when he was still a stranger in so many ways, regardless of how he made her feel?

Those thoughts led to more guilt.

Rob brushed a stray hair from her face. “Laura, I love you. I have loved you for years, and I will always love you. If that means I have to wait, I’ll wait. You are my life. I will take whatever I can get. If that means sitting back and waiting, I can do that. I will do that.”

Laura didn’t know what to say. She leaned back against him and they watched the boats on the bay in the deepening dusk.

* * *

Back at the house, Bill offered to go ahead and take Doogie home and left Laura with Rob to give them some alone time.

She hoped she hadn’t screwed things up between them so badly that it couldn’t be fixed. “Will you stay tonight?” she asked him. “At the condo? Please?”

“Is that what you want?”

She nodded.

He gathered her hands in his and kissed them. “Okay.”

She relaxed a little, relieved. “Thank you for a nice evening. I appreciate all the trouble you and Steve and Carol went through to put that together at such short notice.”

He nodded and looked at the floor. “You’re welcome. I’m sorry you didn’t get more memories back from it.”

“It’s okay.”

“I need to go grab some stuff.” When he returned he found her curled on the couch and listening to a CD. John McLean’s Better Angels album.

“You like it?” he asked.

She nodded. “Did I always like it?”

He smiled. “It’s one of your favorites. You ripped it to your iPod. You’d put it on and play it over and over while you were writing. You’ve got two kinds of music, writing and driving. This was one of your writing music selections.”

“How can you put up with me when I don’t know anything?”

He sat next to her on the couch and held her. “Because I love you.”

Monday morning, Bill drove Laura to her next appointment with Dr. Collins. He sat in the room with her while Dr. Collins once again tried hypnosis. The nightmares about the door and the shadow hadn’t stopped.

If anything, they’d grown more intense, the shadow gaining substance with every repetition.

Unfortunately, by the end of the session Laura hadn’t recovered anything helpful about the dreams, or the rest of her life.

She made another appointment for the next Monday and slumped in her seat on the ride back to Englewood.

“Don’t let it upset you,” he gently chided.

“I need to figure this out.”

“You won’t do it driving yourself crazy. If it comes back, it comes back.”

* * *

She rode up to Tampa with Steve to take Bill to the airport Tuesday morning. After checking in, he stood with her in the main terminal near the shuttle that would take him airside.

She felt like she was losing one of her lifelines.

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, sis.” He hugged her close. “I’ll come back in a few months.” He laughed. “Sooner, if you decide to get married.”

She laughed but pushed back the melancholy over that statement. It felt like she’d hit a stalemate in terms of new memories. But that evening, after Rob got off work, they were going to meet at a restaurant on Boca Grande that he told her used to be one of her favorites.

Maybe it would help trigger something.

Later that morning, while she was working at the shop, Det. Thomas called her to update her on the investigation.

“Well, do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

Laura closed her eyes. “Is the good news that you’ve got him?”

“No, but we know more about who he is.”

She sighed. “What’s the good news?”

“The DNA evidence we recovered from underneath your fingernails pinged several hits in the national database. We can link him to several crimes all over the country.”

She swallowed hard. “What’s the bad news?”

He paused. “The other victims were all raped and murdered.”

Her heart pounded in her chest. “How many?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She forced the words out of her mouth. “Tell me.”

“Fifteen. That we know of. Possibly ten others with the same MO, but either no DNA evidence or it was inconclusive. We don’t have any reports of crimes with victims who survived.”

No more untraceable calls had been received at her home line, and no fingerprints were found on the note she’d gotten in the mail. The possibility that the email and letter were just from cranks or a copycat was considered, but not ruled out.

The sheriff’s office was also still running nighttime patrols along her street, usually once an hour if not more often.

“And I’ve got your concealed carry license here. Do you want me to bring it to you?”

She had difficulty processing that while still thinking about the fifteen dead women. “Can Rob get it?”

The detective must have realized how shaken she was. “Sure, just have him call me. Are you okay?”

“No.” That number resonated in her brain. Fifteen dead women.

And she would have been sixteen.

Or twenty-six, if the others were related.

Her hands shook. “I have to go now. Thank you for calling.” The receiver fell from her hand onto the phone. Fifteen confirmed victims? And she was the only one who survived?

Laura couldn’t stand. Her legs shook too badly. Steve walked in and saw her. “What’s wrong?”

She burst into tears as she related what Thomas said.

He hugged her. “Honey, you’re lucky. You’re a fighter. That will always keep you alive. You’ve been scrappy from when you were a kid. This guy isn’t going to get another chance at you.”

She couldn’t stay in the shop and she didn’t want to go home. She told Steve she was going out for a little while to get some lunch and drove into town. Despite his insistence on going with her, she refused.

She needed to be alone, and she’d be in public. What could happen?

Wandering through Merchant’s Crossing shopping plaza, she passed a hair salon. Laura looked inside and saw they weren’t busy, then studied her reflection in the window. The bruises had finally faded and she’d stopped wearing makeup.

Today, she had her nearly waist-length auburn hair up in a ponytail and braided. Before she could chicken out, she walked in and talked to a stylist. The woman made a few suggestions. Laura called Steve and told him she’d be shopping for a few more hours so he wouldn’t worry, but didn’t tell him what she was doing.

Three hours later, Laura returned to the shop.

When Steve saw her new hairstyle, his eyes popped.

“I thought you said you were getting lunch and shopping.”

“Well, do you like it?”

“It’s different.” He stared. “Not bad different, it’s just…I’ve never known you to do anything like this before. It’ll take some getting used to.”

The stylist had scissored Laura’s hair to shoulder length. Still long enough to pull back into a ponytail when diving, but a drastic difference. After cutting it, the stylist colored it, lightening it a few shades and adding highlights, but not all the way to blonde.

Laura felt pleased with the results.

Sarah walked in and stopped short. “Uh. Wow. I mean…” She stared at Laura’s new hairstyle. “Wow.”

Steve still stared. “Rob’s going to flip.”

“Why?”

“He loved your hair long.”

Laura considered that. “Is that why I kept it long? For him?” Mindful of Bill’s comments about her temper, she reined in her irritation.

“No, hon. You kept it long because it looked pretty on you, and because it was easy for you to take care of. You only went to the salon maybe twice a year. You hated getting your hair cut because your mom made you keep it short and styled when you were little. When you were twelve she finally threw her hands up and let you do what you wanted with it, and you let it grow.”