Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Poison
Four Weeks Later
I push my glasses up my nose, struggling to come up with the words to say to Maisy.
She’s been by my side for everything over the past several weeks, but I don’t want to be her focus.
I don’t like depending on others. I need time to process everything.
I can’t be the woman I was before. Physically, I’m not her anymore, and emotionally, I will never feel that freedom again.
Maisy has her own life to live and shouldn’t be burdened with my self-doubts.
She’s constantly reassuring me, telling me everything will be okay. I wonder if that’s even possible.
After Atlas came to the hospital to question me, I knew I needed to get away. That night, the hospital moved me to another floor, and the staff told anyone who asked that I had discharged myself. In reality, I was still there, in hiding.
I still can’t believe he came for me. He figured out who I was.
I knew he had when he promised to protect me.
It was a good thing I was covered in gauze, because tears flowed at his words.
I wanted to trust him, but I knew I couldn’t.
Especially after hearing that Scout and Thad were expecting.
I need to protect them, and I can’t do that if they know where I am.
Today I’m being moved to the rehab hospital, where over the next couple of weeks I should be able to start working on walking again.
I’ll be in these splints for at least another two weeks.
I have a brace on my right arm and right leg.
I’ve been learning to use my left arm and hand, but with the burns, it’s hard to move.
My face is wrapped in thin gauze as it finishes healing from the latest plastic surgery.
I’ve seen myself in the mirror, and they tell me I’ll look better once the swelling goes down, but it scares me how different I already look. I’m no longer Stormy.
“Maisy, you have a life to get back to,” I start the conversation.
“I’ll be in another facility for at least four weeks, maybe longer.
” Because I don’t have a place to go and they believe I don’t have my memory, they’re putting me up.
Plus, with both splints, I can’t care for myself.
“After I’m done there, I don’t know where I’ll go. ”
I haven’t been honest with Maisy either.
She doesn’t know I have my full memory. She’s stayed by my side through numerous surgeries and procedures.
She sat with me when a counselor came in to talk.
Maisy has been a calming presence, but I can’t get attached.
The longer she’s with me, the more her life is at risk too.
She told me she ran away from home at sixteen and has been hiding with an aunt in Northern British Columbia. She said she’d tell me more about how she found and saved me.
“I have nowhere else I’d rather be. I’m here to help you, and I already know where we’re going after you’re discharged. I have it all planned out. Don’t worry about it. You need to focus on getting better.”
She flutters around the room, avoiding eye contact. I can’t read her emotions, but something feels off. Her long black hair is twisted up at the back of her head. When she finally turns to face me, she still won’t meet my eyes.
Instead of pressuring her to be honest when I’m not being honest myself, I decide to ask the million-dollar question. “Where is that?”
“Montana. There’s a place that will help you get established somewhere safe.”
Something niggles at the back of my mind. “What is this place?”
“You’ll see. Let’s get you healed first, and we’ll deal with that when the time comes.” She finally sits down in the chair she’s been sleeping in for over seven weeks.
“Why are you helping me?” I ask her this all the time.
I don’t understand what she wants from me.
I won’t testify against Andrus because he’ll kill my family.
I can’t give her any money or even a promise of it.
Before I was kidnapped, I was living paycheck to paycheck, working as the manager of a bar right outside my hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska, just like Atlas said.
My mother cut me off when I was eighteen.
After that, I didn’t depend on my parents for anything.
I did what I wanted and lived how I wanted.
My life had been heading in a good direction.
My brother and I were finally getting along better than we had in years.
My parents were getting divorced, but for the first time in a long time, my father and I could be in the same room without tension.
I love my father and wish we could have gotten the second chance we were heading toward.
My mother was out of the picture, no longer telling him lies about me.
I don’t know why she always needed the attention or why she had to screw with everyone’s lives, but I’m not mad that she’s gone.
Scout is suing her for what she did, including paying Scout to abort Skyler before she was born.
Scout was only sixteen at the time. Thad and Scout are finally in a good place, working through life together.
From the news report I saw, they are now married.
Thad even referred to Scout as his wife. Atlas also called her my sister-in-law.
But the biggest part of my life was the Devil’s Handmaidens Motorcycle club, which I was prospecting to join.
Scout, or Riddler as the club calls her, is the president, and she was helping me.
I loved being part of a group of women who lifted each other up instead of tearing each other down.
My mother was the opposite. She constantly talked about other women behind their backs.
She repeatedly told me that I wasn’t feminine enough because my breasts are only B cups. She hated that I dyed my hair purple.
I can’t stop myself from carefully sliding my hand through my short hair. They had to cut it because the fire destroyed so much of it. I no longer have any purple left, only my medium-blond hair, which my mother always called dirty dishwater.
“Jane, are you ready?” Nurse Pamela’s voice comes from the doorway.
I look up at her, and she moves toward the bed. I don’t notice the tears rolling down my face until she gently puts a hand on my shoulder.
“It will be okay. Your memory will return soon enough.”
Pamela has been my nurse from day one, whenever she’s on shift. She moved with me from the ICU to the acute care floor. When I asked her about it, she explained that the neurologist felt familiar people might help with my memory recovery.
I can’t lie to her right now. “I just remembered that my mother hated me.” I tell her the truth as I know it. She didn’t love me. I was just a pawn for her to use. That’s not love.
“Oh, sweetie, I doubt that. Moms love their daughters.”
A bitter laugh escapes my throat, and I twist my body to help maneuver into the wheelchair she has moved next to the bed.
“I’ll help her,” Maisy offers. “I know what you mean,” she whispers into my ear before leaning her head against mine in a slight hug.
I lean back and, for the umpteenth time, I wonder what Maisy is really hiding.
She’s said she’s thought of suicide. She says her mom hated her.
She startles easily. She’s suffered trauma too.
I don’t want to push her away. Maybe Maisy needs me as much as I need her.
I always say I don’t need anyone, but maybe I do need Maisy.
We make our way through the hospital to the entrance, where a wheelchair van is waiting.
I’ll be transported that way while Maisy follows behind in her car to the new hospital, over thirty minutes away.
The wind off the bay blows through the buildings, brushing against my body, but the gauze keeps it from touching my face, along with the sun.
I push up my glasses and look around, but then remember what Keys, the computer girl for the DHMC, used to say about facial recognition software, and I look down.
“Good luck, Jane. I know you will do well. Even if your memories don’t completely return, you have a new lease on life. I hope they find who did this to you,” Pamela says as she carefully squeezes my hand.
“Thank you, Pamela.” My lips tip up in a soft smile.
“I’ll come see you in a couple of days.”
I nod as they secure the wheelchair in the van and get me ready to be transported.
The hospital’s social worker climbs into the front passenger seat, and I can’t stop myself from looking around, scared that Andrus might be out there watching.
I see Maisy getting into a small car while talking on her phone.
Onto a new hospital and another step in my recovery. I worry every day that they will figure out I’m faking the amnesia and that Andrus and his men will find me again. That I’ll be sent back to the hell I already escaped once.
Titan
“Motherfucker,” Thad’s voice booms through the office as I step inside from the chilly early May morning air. Spring is trying to push through, but winter refuses to give up her death grip on the Interior Alaskan terrain.
When I moved here almost a year ago, I had no idea what a true Alaskan winter was like. The first time Fairbanks and Ptarmigan Falls hit -30, I thought I was going to quit and leave right then. Somehow, I stuck it out, and now I’m not sure why.
“Problem?” I ask as I pull off my midweight coat and hang it on the hooks inside the door.
Our office is in a building right across the street from Thad’s wife’s shop and next door to the Drago Defiance clubhouse.
Several people questioned why we didn’t open in Fairbanks, where we’d get more attention, but he wanted to be close to Riddler.
I don’t blame him. When I get my girl back, I’m never letting her out of my sight again.