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8

LENNY

He knew.

He knew, and I ran.

I ran until my legs ached, and I found myself miles down the stretch of beach I frequented when I could. This time, the sand and waves were a blur. My mind raced, every horrible thing I feared plaguing me, and I couldn’t stop it.

He knew, and now everyone would know.

I was the coward who ran. The Jane Doe who snuck out of the hospital before they could even identify her. I’d been mutilated and left to die, and by some stroke of luck, I’d survived.

I’d been unconscious for weeks, my body recovering. When I woke, the wounds were healed, but the scars remained.

Weeks, and no one had come for me.

The nurses said the FBI had taken extreme cautions. No one knew who I was, and they kept my appearance away from the press. There wasn’t any trace of my identity for them to contact my family. They kept the hospital I’d been taken to completely secret, afraid the killer might seek me out.

I was practically a ghost.

I feigned not remembering anything. What happened, my name, who attacked me, all gone like distant memories, but that was never true. I knew, but I couldn’t stand the idea of reliving it all. I didn’t want to become the whole focus of the investigation.

I knew he would never forgive me if I did.

So, I pretended I couldn’t remember when I woke, just long enough to heal a little more and leave. They never found my wallet or anything about my identity, the killer taking those things.

The nurses were patient and understanding.

Shock.

That was what they said it was, assured me it would come back. I just needed rest. I didn’t want it to come back. It was already there, and I would’ve done anything to forget.

All but one nurse, one who was the entire reason I was able to make it out before anyone knew who I was. She showed me a kindness I could never repay. I’d lost everything and was about to be thrust into the middle of an investigation and the spotlight.

She saw that and took mercy on me.

I bent down and picked up a pebble from the rocky shore, throwing it as far as I could into the ocean. Amidst the waves, it barely made a splash. That was exactly how I felt—in an ocean of people and cases, my story barely mattered.

Right?

I’d seen Agent Beck’s face. He’d been adamant I was the key to solving this. If he knew what I knew, he wouldn’t think so. I was a coward, and I hid from the truth. Even though I remembered, I never let myself fully remember.

I knew I was attacked, that I’d survived the Coastal Killer. I knew who I was and what I did, but I didn’t have any idea who had done this to me. They’d hit me from behind, it was dark, and I wasn’t feeling well.

What use was I?

Just another drunk woman who didn’t listen to her fiancé. No one knew the truth or what I lost that day.

That’s what Jake had said, that no one would believe me. Until one day, he finally just left. He never came looking for me in the hospital, never told anyone I was missing at all. I wasn’t allowed to have a job, no friends, nothing that would risk ruining the perfect life he built us.

His perfect life.

I’d wanted to go to the police so many times those first few days, but he refused to let me. I was an embarrassment to him. If anyone found out who he was marrying, and the consequences I’d caused, he’d be ruined.

Consequences that devastated me. Loss that was incomprehensible.

He left me because of it.

I’d been helicoptered to a large hospital over half an hour from Briarport. We lived in between the two. The possibility of ever running into one of those nurses again and being recognized was impossible. I kept far from the local sheriffs and kept out of trouble. No one ever had to know.

Except now, Beck knew.

Before I knew it, my knees buckled, and I knelt in the damp sand. The water barely reached me each time it drifted in across the sand.

My head fell into my hands, and I felt hot tears stream down my face. Beck was right, and now I’d run yet again from the past. I couldn’t escape it, yet I kept trying. What did that make me?

I picked my head up, gazing out into the water again through streaky vision. Birds flew close to its surface, and I felt my heart slow the longer I watched.

A seagull landed close by, a few others joining behind it. I could feel its beady black eyes on me.

“I don’t have food,” I muttered and it hopped closer, cocking its head at me.

“I don’t want company,” I grumbled, but it just stared blankly.

“I’m a coward,” I whispered, afraid if I said it too loud, the world would topple around me.

I’d built the perfect life in Briarport, one that kept my past buried.

And now, that was slipping away.