Crash & Burn by Lisa Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

jawline. I can’t help myself. I pull my arm from beneath the bedclothes. I touch the bruise, trace it with my fingertips, feel the rasp of morning whiskers he hasn’t had a chance to shave. He doesn’t retreat. But his fingers fall from my temples and I can tell he’s holding his breath.
    I inflicted that bruise. I know that without a shadow of a doubt. I hit this man. And I’d do it again, if given half the chance.
    â€œYou hate me,” I whisper, not a question.
    â€œNever,” he says. An obvious lie.
    â€œYou hate me,” he corrects, more quietly. “But you refuse to tell me why. Once, we were happy. And then . . . I still dream, Nicky. What about you?”
    I’ve gone wrong, I think, taken a misstep. Because even if I don’t remember who I am, I like to think I know what I once dreamed, and it wasn’t this. It was never this.
    Vero, I see her again, the image dark around the edges. Like the vision is fading from my tired mind, becoming impossible to focus. She turns, as if to walk away, and my first thought is to grab her hand. It’s important to keep her. I can’t let her go.
    She looks at me. Her face is thinner, older, I realize with a start. She’s not a toddler anymore, but a girl, maybe ten, eleven, twelve.
    â€œWhy me?”
she asks, voice plaintive.
    â€œVero,” I whisper.
    â€œShhh,” my husband says.
    â€œWhy me, why me, why me?”
    She’s turning away again. Leaving me. I reach for her arm, but it slides free. I can’t hold her. The world so dark. My head about to explode. Or maybe it already did.
    â€œVero!”
    â€œNicky, please!”
    I’m thrashing. I’m fighting. I know that, but I don’t know that. All that matters is that I get to Vero. He’s going to keep me from her. I realize that now. And it’s not the first time.
    â€œNurse, nurse!” Someone is yelling. The man who claims to be my husband is yelling.
    Vero, Vero, Vero. She’s walking away from me.
    I run. In the hospital bed? In my mind’s eye? Does it matter? I run; then I catch up to her. I snag her arm, hold on tight.
    Vero turns.
    As maggots burst from the empty sockets of her eyes and wriggle around her gleaming white skull.
    â€œYou should’ve told me that little girls were never meant to fly.”
    *   *   *
    O NE MOMENT . O NE memory. Then it’s gone.
    And I’m no one at all, but a woman twice returned from the dead.
    *   *   *
    T HE NURSE COMES . I don’t fight anymore. I lay perfectly still as she administers the sedative. I stare straight ahead. Past the nurse’s bent form. Past my husband’s haggard face. I stare at the open doorway and the two detectives waiting for me there.

Chapter 6
    W YATT AND KEVIN arrived at the hospital just in time for the show. Their person of interest was thrashing wildly in the bed, while a man yelled for help and attempted to pin her down. Next came the nurse hustling in to administer a massive dose of sedative, and there went Wyatt’s best opportunity to get to the bottom of things.
    Their female driver, Nicole Frank according to the vehicle’s registration, passed out cold. Only the man remained, breathing heavily and looking ragged around the edges.
    Husband, Wyatt would guess. Or boyfriend. Whatever. Wyatt needed answers, he needed them now and he was willing to be flexible. He’d already sent a detective to the courthouse to request a search warrant for Mrs. Frank’s medical records, which would include the woman’s blood alcohol levels. He also had deputies backtracking from the accident site to neighboring liquor stores to prove exactly where and when she had purchased her eighteen-year-old bottle of scotch. In the short term, they were pursuing charges of aggravated DWI.
    Of course, there still remained the issue of the missing child.
    The nurse exited the room, barely sparing