Chapter 14
Emily
I can feel my mental health slipping.
Other than when I find the time to stalk Atlas, I haven’t seen him. He hasn’t sought me out or made an effort to talk to me in person. I wasn’t even being sneaky about following him, yet he acted like I wasn’t there. Was he ignoring me?
I’m starting to think I messed everything up by sleeping with him the other night.
Was that all he wanted? Does he regret it? Does he regret me?
I can’t believe I ever thought I could be good enough for someone like him. There’s no way a man would want to be with the real me. Trevor spent years telling me that and trying to help me be lovable. I should’ve listened.
We’ve texted a few times but it’s not deep. It’s been basic small talk that leads to nothing. I can’t exactly ask him to label what we are yet, but I thought what happened on the swings changed things.
I need to clear my head. I’d go to Pages, but it now holds memories of Atlas.
Will I have to find a new safe place? The book store no longer feels like it belongs to me.
Over the last few weeks, my spot started to smell like him.
I think he owns it as much as I do at this point.
That only leaves one other place in this town to go.
I climb up the fire escape with ease. I don’t come here as often anymore, but it hasn’t changed much.
The first time I climbed up here, I was still walking in that stupid boot on my foot.
It’s a lot easier to climb without it. I get to the top and climb over onto the roof of the empty building.
I think it used to be a movie store once upon a time, but it’s been abandoned for a while now.
The view from up here is amazing. The building is tall enough you can see almost the whole town from here.
I climb up onto the raised ledge and plop down.
It’s probably not the safest decision to make, but my body moves before I even process it.
My feet dangle over the ledge– swinging in the wind.
It’s kind of freeing. But the peace doesn’t last long.
The voice in my head starts whispering almost immediately.
It would only take me sliding another three inches forward to fall.
I lean forward and realize I’m higher up than it looks.
Three inches is all that’s keeping me sitting on this roof top.
My hands grip the ledge as I battle with the idea.
It’d be so simple, but I wouldn’t be the one living the consequences of this decision.
I scoot an inch further and watch as my feet swing back and forth.
The people below have no idea I’m even up here. They’re so busy with their own lives, they don’t see the girl currently sitting two inches away from going over the edge.
Will anyone ever see me?
Taking a deep breath, I scoot back and climb back over the ledge.
I run to the other side of the rooftop, making my way back down the fire escape before I change my mind.
I don’t think going up on that rooftop had the calming effect I was hoping for.
I could’ve jumped. It would’ve been so damn easy to do.
No one is there to stop me, but I didn’t do it.
I was only two inches from falling off, but I climbed back down instead.
Even though the thought was tempting, I am still holding on to the hope that I won’t always be my own worst enemy.
I’m smart enough to know the voice in my head doesn’t always have my best interest in mind.
I’ve lived with my own destructive thoughts long enough to know that.
I have a feeling that if anyone can save me from the chaos I battle, it’d be Atlas. If he sees me like I thought he did the other night, then he could be the answer to everything. But what if that was all in my head?
Atlas
I can’t keep my mind off Emily and those fucking swings. She was breathtaking and she was every bit the woman I remembered. I know she was back to stalking me and I feel bad about keeping my distance from her, but I didn’t trust myself around her right now. I wanted to tell her everything.
She was still mine even though she didn’t seem to remember that.
Emily– or Maizyn– I didn’t know the reason behind the name change or the secrets she seemed to have kept from me back then, but I’d figure it out.
I needed answers before I snapped and ruined everything.
I needed to know what caused the memory loss and I suspected it might have something to do with the limp she has every once in a while.
I started by digging up everything I already knew.
Even though I knew her as Maizyn Lewis, she was also Emily Carter.
The timeline adds up when I compare it to the intel that Gavin dug up on her when I first ran into her.
There seems to be a gap in the information on Emily.
It stops for a while, then picks back up around the same time Maizyn showed up and then disappeared from my life.
If she ever gets her memories back, I’ll have to ask her the reason for the fake identity.
I know she’s not the type of person to do something that in depth without a reason.
It was more than just a fake name she gave to a stranger in a bar.
Her drivers license and everything matched that name. What was she running from? Or who?
I researched any accidents involving a taxi around the time Maizyn would’ve been in one, and the articles started popping up immediately. I guess the perks of a smaller town is that something like this is a big deal to the news reporters.
There seemed to have been no witnesses to the actual accident, but it states the driver died on impact.
It mentions the taxi was hit from the side and went airborne where it flipped a few times.
The reports state no one else was in the car when emergency response arrived, but there was other blood found at the scene that suggested otherwise.
I click on the next article and it’s a grainy picture from a street camera across from the hospital showing a woman getting dumped in front of the ER. I could tell even from the bad photo it was her.
The timing lined up and when the hospital was notified of the accident, they matched blood samples from her to the scene. They mentioned the woman had no form of identity on her when she was found but her boyfriend, Trevor Sinclair, arrived shortly after and identified her as Emily Carter.
Was she still with him the whole time she was with me? Did she call him too?
I keep digging for any information regarding her medical condition but the media doesn’t seem to know much about it, just that she arrived in critical condition and got there just in time. I make a note to hack into the hospital files and keep digging for anything else I can find about the wreck.
After another twenty minutes of searching, it’s pretty clear I already found out all the information I would find. I sent a quick text to Gavin. I can admit when I needed help and he was the fastest hacker I know. I could do this all by myself but I wasn’t patient enough for all of that.
Atlas
Hey man, I need a favor. Are you busy?
Gavin
For you? Never. What am I hacking this time, brother?
Atlas
How did you know I needed you to hack into something?
Gavin
Ha ha, because it’s the only thing that I am better at than you. Am I wrong?
Atlas
Okay, smart ass. You are not completely wrong.
I need a medical file from the hospital database.
Gavin
Shit. Okay, what hospital?
Atlas
Saint Lukas General Hospital.
Gavin
Is it safe to assume this has something to do with Emily?
Atlas
It has everything to do with her. I need answers and that’s
the hospital that treated her after the wreck. I need to know
how bad the injuries were and what caused the memory loss.
Gavin
Okay man. I got you. It shouldn’t take me long.
I exit out of my text thread with Gavin and look back at the photo from in front of the hospital. If no one witnessed the wreck, who dropped her off at the hospital? Why didn’t they stay with her or say anything to the press about it?
It’s very possible the person who caused the accident is the same person that ditched her in front of the ER.
I take a closer look at the image and spot a man climbing into a black car that has a lot of damage to the front of it.
No fucking way. The same person responsible for the hit and run proceeds to drop one of the victims off at the hospital.
I feel like instead of answers, I only end up with more questions.
I run the license plate through a software but it traces back to a rental company.
I make a quick call to the car rental company but they’re of little help.
They reported that particular car stolen.
I switch to another screen and search the tag for any police reports.
The results correlate what the rental company said.
I was able to find a police report stating that the vehicle was reported stolen from Eazy Motors Rentals and was later found abandoned in a gas station parking lot days later with a lot of damage to it.
The list of damage matches what little I can see in the surveillance footage from the hospital.
That little bit of information is starting to make the wreck seem intentional. But why would someone hit the taxi on purpose? Who was the target? If it was intentional then I don’t think she was the target. It’s also possible the driver was scared and panicked.
I decided to torture myself just a tiny bit more and replay the voicemail I got that night from Maizyn.
Even though hearing the sadness in her voice wrecks me, I try to listen for anything I may have missed.
Her sentence cuts off in the middle of her talking before the unmistakable sound of the taxi being hit follows.