Page 20 of Saving Meadow

“Good. What happens next?”

“Pain. Pain everywhere. I feel every inch the knife is pushed into my stomach. Everything hurts. It’s too much. I want it to stop. I can’t make it stop. I’m hot, and I can’t breathe.”

“Skip it, Meadow. There is no more pain. What is she saying to you?”

“You shouldn’t take what isn’t yours, you dirty bitch.”

“Then what do you see?”

“Nothing. My head is pounding, and I can’t see anything. I can hear her breathing heavy. I can’t see her. She’s right there. Right in my face. She is right there!”

“Meadow! That’s enough. Open your eyes and look at me.”

“She’s there, right there looking at me. I can feel her. Why can’t I see her? The image is so close; I want to see her.”

“That. Is. Enough.” Mandy clapped her hands in front of my face, and I opened my eyes.

Unlike what I’d seen in movies when someone is hypnotized, and they wake up not knowing what’d happened – I could remember everything I’d told Mandy.

“Take a breath and relax. Let the image go.”

“I can almost see it, Mandy.”

“It doesn’t matter. You did great. Give your mind a rest. The harder you try to force yourself to see it, the fuzzier it will become. Leave it.”

She was right. The more I tried, the less I could see.

“A woman attacked me.” I had never taken into consideration it had been a woman who had hurt me. All these years I’d assumed it was a man, refusing to remember anything but a few sentences from that night. “When I dream about what happened in the alley, I hear her yelling at me. But the voice is never the same. Sometimes it’s high-pitched and shrill, and other times it’s almost robotic. Same words, different voices.”

“Is the voice always a woman’s voice?”

“No. Male and female both. I always thought it was a man.”

“The mind is programmed to process information in the way we perceive it. That’s why I wanted to try to hypnotize you. All that happened was we removed the expectation and your mind was free to remember.”

Holy shit. All these years I’d thought a man had tried to kill me. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the new revelation. A woman!

11

Red

That easily had to have been the worst hour of my life. Hearing a victim relive an attack is always hard, but Meadow? It took every ounce of self-control I had not to barge into the conference room and scoop her up into my arms and hold her. I hated she was having to remember. I couldn’t bear to hear her pain as she relived the attack.

“Damn, that was rough,” Ben said. He’d gotten to the office in time to watch Mandy’s session with Meadow.

“Seems Nick was correct. We’re dealing with a female offender. I’ll admit, I had my doubts but damn if he wasn’t right.” Joel looked up from his tablet. “I forwarded the session to Kilby. He’ll be back in an hour. He wants to sit down to revise the profile. Officer Lance is coming in with him.”

One step closer. Meadow’s pain wasn’t in vain. We were one step closer. Hopefully, the police could make an arrest before the twentieth.

“How is she?” I asked Mandy when she joined us.

“She’s… okay. She actually would like to talk to you before she leaves.”

I didn’t bother answering Mandy. I hadn’t realized how tense I had been until she told me that Meadow wanted to see me. I didn’t know why, but the thought of Meadow leaving without saying goodbye sat in my gut like a rock.

Meadow sat slumped forward in the chair, scratching Sally’s ears. Seeing her with Sally made me want to talk to Alexandra about getting a dog for Meadow. Homefront usually only paired comfort animals with vets, but if anyone ever needed one of their dogs, it was Meadow.

“Hey.”