Dusk (Dangerous Web #1) - Aleatha Romig Page 0,69

soon as possible. Too many bites, even from nonpoisonous insects can be...”

Deadly was the word she didn’t say.

I couldn’t peel my gaze away from my wife as Laurel helped her and talked with me.

Finally, I noticed Mason standing near the car and staring. His arms were crossed and his neck stiff. There was something in his demeanor. I’d expect more jubilance at finding Lorna alive. And then I remembered the stranger found with her. I walked over to my friend. “Is she...” I bent down and looked closer at the other person, placed my fingers on her neck. I did as I had done in searching for Lorna’s pulse.

There was none.

Not only was she dead, but she looked as if she’d been that way for a while. Not as in decomposed, but as in emaciated. Hell, she looked like a skeleton.

“Fucking dead,” Mason replied.

The dome light in the car illuminated her gaunt features, dark circles around her eyes, and thin skin. “Why does she look familiar?”

“Because she looks like Lorna,” he said. Turning his stare to me, he added, “She’s our mother.”

Lorna

It had been three days since I awoke to the sound of beeps and the handsomest, most loving gaze I’d ever known. It was as if I’d fallen asleep in his arms and awoken under his gaze. I had sparse memories of Mason and Laurel’s ranch, yet nothing was solidly fixed in my recollection after our safe life in this tower.

Nearly two weeks of my life were gone or hidden by an unmovable veil.

I wasn’t without clues.

My body ached in places I hadn’t known existed. I had multiple broken ribs, my left cheekbone had been surgically reconstructed, and I had an appointment to have a broken tooth repaired.

My skin was covered in medical creams and still the bites over my arms, torso, and legs continued to itch. I’d lost over ten pounds, yet I had trouble keeping food down. A step or even reaching for a glass of water was painful. My temples ached from an incessant ringing in my ears that had only recently begun to fade. One look in a mirror told me that I’d lived through a nightmare—one I couldn’t recall.

While the particulars of what had happened weren’t in my mind, there was a looming sense of terror just outside my reality. It was with me, lingering and waiting to pounce. I couldn’t see it, nor could I escape from it.

Even in the apartment where I’d lived with Reid for the last nine years, a simple noise set me on full alert. I jumped at the beep of the microwave and startled at the whistle of the tea kettle. A blinking light set my pulse racing, and perspiration dotted my brow as I tried mostly unsuccessfully to sleep.

All that I knew of my ordeal was what I could see and feel, as well as what I’d been told by Reid and the others.

Araneae and I were taken from Mason’s ranch.

It was believed that we were kept in a mostly underground bunker.

We were found nearly two days apart in the same area.

If there was more to the story that anyone knew, I hadn’t been told. I also hadn’t pushed. The doctor said my body needed to rest and heal, and in time, my mind would catch up. The resulting black hole in time left me as uneasy as the injuries I’d suffered.

At least, I wasn’t alone in my loss of recall. Araneae couldn’t remember what occurred either. Our questions were met with platitudes and offers of food, drink, and rest. Reid and the others walked around both of us as if there were eggshells scattered about the floor in danger of cracking.

I spent hours peering out at the Chicago skyline and the blue of Lake Michigan, hoping that something would come back. I have sat and paced within the safe confines of our tower. The answers seem so close, yet out of reach.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” Araneae said, as she lay her head on the sofa and rested her hand on her growing baby bump.

The two of us were sitting in her living room, the cobalt-blue sky and waves of the great lake sparkling beyond the windows.

“I hate not remembering,” I confessed.

Araneae turned to me. While her expression was filled with concern, her face had been spared the same signs of our captivity as mine.

Some of my dark bruises were lightening, turning from deep black and purple to shades of green with yellow halos. Both of