Silence Read Online Free Page A

let anybody hurt you. You’re safe now.”
    I didn’t like his long, easy stride or the familiar way he spoke to me.
    “Don’t come any closer,” I told him, the sweat on my palms making it hard to grip the stick properly.
    His forehead creased. “Nora?”
    The stick wobbled in my hand. “How do you know my name?” I demanded, not about to let him know how scared I was. How much
he
scared me.
    “It’s me,” he repeated, gazing straight into my eyes, as if he expected lights to coming blazing on. “Detective Basso.”
    “I don’t know you.”
    He said nothing for a moment. Then tried a new approach. “Do you remember where you’ve been?”
    I watched him warily. I moved deeper in my memory, looking down even the darkest and oldest corridors, but his face wasn’t there. I had no recollection of him. And I
wanted
to remember him. I wanted something—anything—familiar to cling to, so I could make sense of a world that, from my vantage point, had been twisted to distortion.
    “How did you get to the cemetery tonight?” he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly in that direction. His movements were cautious. His eyes were cautious. Even the line of his mouth was politic. “Did someone drop you off? Did you walk?” He waited. “I need you to tell me, Nora. This is important. What happened tonight?”
    I’d like to know myself.
    A wave of nausea rolled through me. “I want to go home.” I heard a brittle clatter near my feet. Too late, I realized I’d dropped the stick. The breeze felt cold on my empty palms. I wasn’t supposed to be here. The whole night was a huge mistake.
    No. Not the whole night. What did I know of it? I couldn’t remember the whole of it. My only starting point was a slice back in time, when I’d woken on a grave, cold and lost.
    I drew up a mental picture of the farmhouse, safe and warm and
real
, and felt a tear trickle down the side of my nose.
    “I can take you home.” He nodded sympathetically. “I just need to take you to the hospital first.”
    I squeezed my eyes shut, hating myself for being reduced to crying. I couldn’t think of a better or faster way to show him just how frightened I really was.
    He sighed—the softest of sounds, as if he wished there were a way around the news he was about to deliver. “You’ve been missing for eleven weeks, Nora. Do you hear what I’m saying? Nobody knows where you’ve been the past three months. You need to be looked at. We need to make sure you’re okay.”
    I stared at him without really seeing him. Tiny bells pealed in my ears but sounded very far off. Deep in my stomach I felt a lurch, but I tried to stuff the queasiness away. I’d cried in front of him, but I wasn’t going to be sick.
    “We think you were abducted,” he said, his face unreadable. He’d closed the distance between us and now stood too close. Saying things I couldn’t grasp. “Kidnapped.”
    I blinked. Just stood there and blinked.
    A sensation grabbed my heart, tugging and twisting. My body went slack, tottering in the air. I saw the gold blur of the streetlightsabove, heard the river lapping under the bridge, smelled the exhaust from his running car. But it was all in the background. A dizzy afterthought.
    With only that brief warning, I felt myself swaying, swaying. Falling into nothing.
    I was unconscious before I hit the ground.

CHAPTER
2
    I WOKE IN A HOSPITAL.
     
    The ceiling was white, the walls a serene blue. The room smelled of lilies, fabric softener, and ammonia. A cart on wheels pushed up beside my bed balanced two flower arrangements, a bouquet of balloons that cheered GET WELL SOON ! and a purple foil gift bag. The names on the note cards seesawed in and out of focus. DOROTHEA AND LIONEL. VEE.
    There was movement in the corner.
    “Oh, baby,” a familiar voice whispered, and the person behind it flung herself out of her chair and at me. “Oh, sweetheart.” She sat on the edge of my bed and drew me into a suffocating hug. “I