Page 122 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
There were more, and they got worse. As she listened to these messages, dozens of them, each one more gruff and weepy than the next, it occurred to Jack that what Hawk had told her may have had more meaning than what she first assumed.
Some things are better forgotten, Jacqueline. Sometimes . . . forgetting can be a gift.
Because she could remember only bits and pieces of her early life, and nothing at all of the past weeks, with the exception of a few recent days, she’d become obsessed with those words. She dug through her apartment, hunting for anything personal, a diary, photo albums, any kind of mementos that might trigger her memory or offer some insight into the person she’d once been—and what had happened to her—but there was nothing. Her apartment was utterly barren of clues that would have given her a glimpse into her past life. Or her current life, for that matter.
With the exception of the clothes in the closet, the toothbrush in the jar in the bathroom, a few cosmetics in a vanity drawer, and a handful of take-out menus in the kitchen, it was almost as if no one had ever lived there at all.
Jack found that telling. Sad, and telling. She also wondered about that look on Hawk’s face when Morgan tried to access her memory and failed. Beyond his disappointment, the glimpse of relief, swiftly erased.
It made her think Hawk knew something. Something she’d forgotten. Something that didn’t have anything to do with him.
Something bad.
But there was nothing to be done about it. She looked up hypnotherapists in the yellow pages, eventually deciding that if she couldn’t regain her memory with the assistance of a woman who could make you quack like a duck with only a word, a hypnotherapist was probably a complete waste of time.
And . . . did she really want to know?
That question continued to simmer on the back burner of her mind as she tried to piece her life back together, going through the motions in a daze. Though she didn’t remember leaving it there or even having one, a cell phone lay on the kitchen counter, next to a gleaming stainless-steel toaster that had obviously never been used. When she scrolled through it, a list of numbers appeared, only some of which she recognized.
“Dad” was there. So was “Work,” “Nola,” and someone named “Asshat,” among dozens of others. She stared at the names, her hands shaking, her eyes welling with tears, wanting to break something, wanting to run.
She scrolled to the Hs, but there was no “Hawk.” And why would there be? He wasn’t from her world. He was someone she knew for a few weeks . . . who she just happened to have the awful, impossible feeling might be her soul mate.
“Idiot,” she whispered as the tears slid down her cheeks. And then, “Fuck.”
The minute she said it, she wanted to take it back. It felt wrong, though she didn’t know why. Which made her cry even harder; stupid, useless tears that did nothing to quell the ache of longing or the crushing despair caused by the certainty that she’d never feel right again.
“You ready for this?”
Nola, dressed in an elegant black pantsuit, her hair scraped back severely from her face and gathered into a low knot, was watching Jack with worried eyes, just as she had been watching her for the past two days. Nola had appeared at Jack’s door the morning after her return, and had only left the apartment on forays for fresh clothes and food.
And booze. Jack wasn’t sure the exact quantity of alcohol one had to consume before being involuntarily admitted to rehab, damaging the liver beyond repair, or falling into a coma from which one would never awake, but she was well on her way to finding out.
Now it was Monday morning, and they were standing in Jack’s kitchen, preparing to leave for a press conference she was looking forward to about as much as standing naked in line at the DMV.
“Not even close,” Jack admitted, shoving a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “But if I don’t give them something, the vultures will never stop circling.” She gulped down the last of her coffee and set the mug in the sink. She was wearing a black suit, too, and between the two of them they looked like part of a funeral procession, which seemed apropos.
“You have your speech ready?”
Jack nodded. She’d spent hours working on it, and though it wasn’t long, it said everything she wanted to say. After this morning, she was determined never to speak of her lost weeks again.
She still hadn’t called her father. She didn’t know what she could possibly say that wouldn’t sound insane. “Hi, it’s your daughter, I have no idea who you are?” That wasn’t a phone call she could imagine making. Instead she’d had Nola call him to let him know she was fine, just not ready to talk yet.
She’d asked Nola to leave out the part about not remembering him.
She was scheduled to go back to work first thing the following morning. Work was the only thing she could think of that might help her keep her ever-loosening grip on her sanity, and her boss, though proffering half-hearted protests that it was too early, quickly agreed. It would be great PR for the paper, and, in fact, it had been his idea to hold the press conference at the Times’s offices. She wouldn’t be able to go out on assignment for a while—she’d attract too much attention—but there was always work to be done around the office, and once the circus and its attendant carnies had left town, she’d be able to return to the only thing she was one hundred percent sure about: reporting.
Though she knew she’d forever have the bloated ghost of notoriety hanging over her head, cackling like a crone stirring a bubbling cauldron of newt eyes and frog toes.
Some demons, once summoned, can never be exorcized.
“Okay, before we go, I’m just going to put this out there.”
Jack looked at Nola, her eyes narrowing in suspicion at the tone in her voice. “What?”
Nola began to fiddle with the small gold hoop earring in her left ear. Fiddling was uncharacteristic for her, and it amplified Jack’s nervousness like a dial had been cranked.
“I know you don’t want to talk about what happened to you yet . . . or maybe ever.”
