Laura reached out and touched his hand. “I think we can try it. If I’m not comfortable, we won’t do it again, for a little while at least. Okay?”
He nodded. “Deal.” He hesitated, then leaned in and gently pressed a kiss to her forehead. She caught his spare hand and pulled him back in for another kiss, this one on the lips.
“Deal,” she said, giving him a smile.
Rob could tell Laura was tired and in pain, so he sent her and Doogie to go lie down on the couch while he fixed them dinner. He decided on macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. It was an easy and quick meal she usually preferred when she wasn’t feeling well.
He watched over the pass-through as she turned on the TV and channel surfed. After five minutes she settled on cartoons. He smiled as he observed from his vantage point in the kitchen.
Some things hadn’t changed. Laura was a kid at heart. Whenever she couldn’t find anything else she wanted to watch, Scooby-Doo or The Flintstones or any of her other favorite cartoons were a preferred choice.
Rob put a pot of water on for the macaroni and leaned against the kitchen counter.
It’ll just be a matter of time before she recalls other things.
Wouldn’t it?
He held on to that thought like a magic charm. The possibility of her never remembering terrified him. The neurologist already warned him her memory could come back in strange ways, if at all. And anything she did remember should be considered a blessing and not an indication of its importance in her mind before the attack.
He’d seen proof of that today. But Doogie? Steve, he could understand. She loved him like a father.
But the dog?
The water boiled and Rob threw in the pasta. The hot dogs only took a minute to nuke. Laura looked at the plate before taking it from him. “I like this?”
“You used to.”
Dubiously, she tried it, then smiled. “I still do.”
He laughed. “Yanking my chain again.”
“Gotta ring your bell—”
Rob froze, his fork halfway to his mouth, the hope nearly painful in his chest as his heart pounded. The look of concentration on her face bore silent testimony to the war going on inside her to retrieve the rest of the memory. He put his fork down and waited, hopeful.
Finally the frustration sent her into tears. “I’m sorry. There was something, but it’s gone.” She put her plate down and limped to her bedroom.
Doogie, torn between his upset mistress and a now-accessible plate of food, faced a moral battle known to dogs throughout history. He finally chose Laura and padded after her, casting one last longing look at the plate on the coffee table.
Rob’s appetite disappeared. It was frustrating how she seemed to pull other thoughts from the past, but couldn’t remember him or their relationship. Did it mean maybe she had second thoughts she never voiced before the attack? The neurologist’s words gave him little comfort.
Despite Shayla’s assurances that she’d been as crazy in love with him as he was with her, it still hurt.
He picked up the plates and carried them to the kitchen before going to her room.
The door was open, lights off. Laura had sprawled across the middle of her bed, Doogie lying next to her. She never used to let him get on the bed. Doogie didn’t seem inclined to remind her.
The Lab looked up and gave him a “please don’t tell her” look. Rob sat down and stroked the dog’s fur.
“Want to talk?”
Laura shook her head.
“Want some company?”
She paused, then shook her head. “Not right now. I’m sorry. I’ll be out in a little while.”
He fought the urge to ask her to change her mind. Before, she would hunt him down to talk, curling up in his lap, ready and willing to share whatever was on her mind.
“Okay.” He went back to the living room and channel surfed.
It was going to be a long night.
She returned twenty minutes later, Doogie on her heels. He warmed up her dinner and sat with her while she ate. When she finished, he offered to take her plate for her, but she wanted to do it.
When she stood to walk to the kitchen, Doogie started to follow her but broke formation and trotted to the front door where he sat, looking from Laura to Rob.
“He needs to go out,” Rob said. “I’ll take him.” He grabbed the leash and closed the door behind him.
Laura stood in the living room, realizing how empty the apartment felt without them. She noticed the blinds were still open and moved to close them. Looking out the dark window accentuated how vulnerable she felt. She jumped when the phone rang.
Following the sound, she located the base unit for the cordless phone on the kitchen counter. She picked up the handset and fumbled it. “Hello?”
There was silence on the other end, then a click and the dial tone. The phone felt icy in her hand and she dropped it without thinking. Racing for the front door, she nearly collided with Rob as he came in.
He calmed her down enough for her to tell the story. She didn’t have a caller ID display on the older phone. Rob tried *69, but it came up an unavailable number.
He called Thomas to notify him of the hang-up call.
Thomas said it was probably nothing. Then again, with her attacker still on the loose they couldn’t be sure. They had a standing order to trace all calls on her phone and would have to run it.
After the excitement died down, Laura wandered into her office and looked around before she sat at the desk. Rob followed her in.
“Want me to walk you through it?” he asked, and she nodded.
“Please.”
He reached around her and turned on the monitor and tower. “I just left everything the way it was. I didn’t delete your email or anything.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got to learn how to do this.”
He showed her as he logged into her email. There were over a thousand new messages for her to wade through.
It wasn’t until she had almost all the messages sorted that a new one arrived, with the subject line Congratulations.
She opened it.
You got lucky the last time. Don’t worry, I’ll be seeing you again. Soon.
Laura screamed.
Chapter Fourteen
Thomas personally responded to the call, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with his badge hanging from a lanyard around his neck. Rob finally got Laura calmed down and asleep in bed with the aid of the anti-anxiety medication Dr. Simpson had prescribed for her, and a dose of the painkillers, with Doogie protectively curled next to her.
He stood in the living room and talked with Thomas in low tones so as not to disturb her. “So we’re looking for someone who’s not only psychotic and vicious, but also a computer expert?” Rob felt disgusted by the lack of answers and compounding questions.
He also fought his own rising panic that he might not be able to protect Laura from her attacker. He couldn’t quit work to watch over her twenty-four-seven.
“Not necessarily,” Thomas said. “There’s readily available information out there about concealing your identity on the Internet. Whoever sent her that message knew how to mask his IP address, but it wasn’t foolproof. It came up as a computer in a public library in Vancouver, Washington.”
“You don’t look convinced.”
“I’m not. It’s going to take some digging to determine if we can locate his true location.”
“Aren’t there people who can track freaks like this?”
“We’ve forwarded the information to the FDLE and they’re working on it.”
“That’s not good enough. This guy’s still out there getting his jollies tormenting her. Who knows if he’s going to come back to finish the job?”