back to help someone else. I’d been beating myself up so hard, thinking I was betraying Erik. But really, he had betrayed me all along.
As Cooper wrapped his shirt around my palm, it turned a purplish color from the crimson mixing with the blue fabric.
“We need to learn the truth,” I said in a distant voice.
The world felt far away. Like I was floating just above the chair instead of sitting on it. The only thing that kept me anchored was Cooper’s gentle touch as he tended to the wound.
He tucked the end of the fabric underneath the wrapped pieces. “Do you have any idea what his password might be?”
My chest tightened, and I shook my head. It dawned on me how little I actually knew about Erik. How much he’d been hiding from me. What else didn’t I know?
Cooper walked over to the computer and poked at the keys. “Maybe there are retrieval questions. If you know the answers to those...”
But I still focused on the photo. Not just in anger and pain, but now in curiosity. Something about the woman seemed familiar. I’d never seen her before, I was certain, but it was almost a sense of déjà vu.
Getting up, I walked over to the picture and knelt. I brushed aside the shards and picked the photo up in my bandaged hand.
“Who are you?” I asked no one.
I flipped the photo over. The names Ellie and Erik, along with the month and year were scrawled across the back in Erik’s handwriting. It had only been taken nine months ago. Three months before the supposed accident that took my memories.
Nausea brewed and bubbled in my stomach. I swallowed the bile down. “Try Ellie.”
The keys stopped clicking for a moment. Then they started up again.
“We’re in.”
9
Cooper tapped on the keyboard, going through file after file. I paced the room, wondering who that woman was. Why her name was the password. It seemed strange that she mattered more than finding out the truth of my past, but here I was. Bandaged, bloodied hand still aching from the glass, and still tempted to tear up the photo. But I didn’t. I planned on showing it to Erik and confronting him about the woman, no matter what else we found out down here. He owed me an explanation.
Even as I thought about him, the familiar ache started in my chest. Despite everything, I missed him. And it hurt to be without him. The anger faded, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand any of this. Erik never gave me any reason to doubt.
Until now.
Cooper paused in his typing.
The silence interrupted my thoughts, and I stopped pacing.
He leaned back, covering his mouth with his hand, shock etched into the profile of his face.
“What?” I stepped toward him. “What is it?”
“It can’t be.” He shook his head, dropped his hand, and looked at me. “If this is true, I mean. This is some insane stuff.”
His fingers moved over the keyboard again, tapping slowly. The pace made me want to look for myself, but something kept me frozen in place.
“This has to be wrong,” he said. “Some hobby, maybe. It can’t be real.”
Anxiety ping-ponged in my chest. Front to back with someone slapping paddles so hard it kept knocking the wind from me. Whatever Cooper read on that computer, the shock and horror shone out of his eyes like headlights. And I was the deer stuck in front of them.
“Cooper, what?!”
He stood up and turned the chair toward me. “Sit.”
I did without hesitation. “You’re scaring me.”
He swiveled the chair toward the computer screen. The glare of it hurt my eyes for a second before the words came into focus. The moment I started reading, it was like I got sucked into one of the thriller novels I loved to read.
Only this wasn’t fiction. But it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be, because each word was another piece of a horror story that built my life. An impossible thing. Nothing I’d ever even heard of.
“What the fuck? This has to be a joke.”
“I don’t think it is,” he said. “Your husband is Doctor Erik Franks. The Doctor Erik Franks.”
“Erik is a medical examiner with a PHD. So what?”
Cooper paused then, something passing over his face that was almost imperceptible. “Jesus, Lenore, you really don’t know, do you?”
I raised my brows. “That you’re being cryptic? Yes, I know that.”
“He’s not exactly an anonymous man.” Cooper crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the desk. “He