Forget Me Not: A Novel (Crossroads Crisis Center) by Vicki Hinze Read Free Book Online Page A

“Susan Brandt was my dear friend and she was shot dead.” Pain filled Peggy’s voice and leaked into her face. “I saw her body at the crime scene, in her casket, and I watched them lower her into the ground.”
    A tear trailed down Susan’s cheek. “I’m so sorry.” That must have been horrible for Peggy. Maybe
so
horrible that she’d been wrong. That she’d seen what she expected to see and not what was actually there, before her eyes.
    “Me too.” Peggy spoke with sincerity, seeing or sensing Susan’s doubt. “But truth is truth, and you are not that Susan.”
    “How can you be certain?” She motioned between herself and the painting. “Look at us.”
    “The resemblance is striking—I admit it. But there are differences and, remember, I stood at her husband’s side in the cemetery and watched him bury them both.” Peggy nodded. “No husband is apt to be mistaken about burying his wife
and
his son.”
    While that served as sufficient proof for Peggy Crane, it didn’t for Susan. Mistaken identity happened all the time. To mothers and their own children even. If it could happen between a mother and child, it could happen between a husband and wife. It was possible.
    “The abductors knew me. They called me Susan. I-I am Susan. And I am—” A hitch in her chest made her stutter. “I was a mother? A wife too?” Before she’d
died
, she had a family.
A family
. A deep yearning she didn’t understand yawned inside her like physical starvation. It weakened her knees and had her entire body trembling.
    Peggy hedged. “Susan Brandt was a wife and mother.”
    Her head went light. Filled with wonder, Susan glanced at Clyde. “I-I had a family. A husband and a son … ” As the words left her mouth, the room began to spin; white spots formed before her eyes, and the air evaporated from the room. “And they think I’m … dead.”
    She crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

Sunday, October 11
    Sunrise broke on the horizon.
    Edward breathed in the brisk air and let the rush of wind over his face relax him. It had been a long two days.
    “This is not cool.” Harry leaned against the fender of the red Jag and poured peroxide on the deep scratches Susan had clawed into his arm. He hissed in air through his teeth. “Yow!” He shot Edward a frown. “I shoulda smacked her harder.”
    “Get over it, Harry. The woman scratched you. She didn’t put out your eye.”
    “It hurts, man.”
    “Yeah, well, right now she’s feeling a lot worse.”
    “She should be feeling dead.” Harry tossed the empty brown bottle toward the trash drum, then opened a tube of ointment with his teeth and squirted it on the red lines streaking the back of his forearm. He squinted over at Edward. “They’re gonna come after us.”
    “We expected that.” Edward looked through his dark sunglasses out onto the sun-streaked Gulf of Mexico. The water was emerald green and clear, and the air fresh, tangy with salt. He loved the view from the shore. “We’ll be okay if we stick with the plan.”
    “Stick with the plan? She was supposed to be dead. She ain’t dead, Edward.” Harry lit a cigarette and exhaled a puff of smoke. “You think Chessman is going to let us live when his
subject
ain’t dead?” Harry grunted. “Noway.”
    “We’re not the threat to him that she is.”
    “Are you snorting dope again? We’re breathing. We can tie him to the first murder. We’re a huge threat.”
    She’s worse.
    “That don’t mean he’ll let us live, man.” Harry rocked his head back on his shoulders and closed his eyes, lifting his face to the sun. “You think he will, you’re making a big mistake. We’ll be running forever—at least until Chessman’s pit bull, Johnson, runs us down. Then we’ll be dead.”
    “You’re panicking, not thinking.”
    “Oh, I’m thinking plenty.” Harry paced between the trash drum at the base of the pier and the front end of the Jag. “I’m thinking I signed on for murder the first