Page 44 of Stay Awake
“Or what?”
“Or she’s dead.”
“Tell me about the blackouts.” Halliday opted against mentioning that she believed Liv Reese was alive and well, and that she had been seen one day earlier in the company of a man who was subsequently murdered hours later. “How exactly do these memory blackouts manifest themselves?”
“According to her doctors, every time she goes to sleep, she wakes up with no memory of anything that has happened in her life, going back to when she was still living in New York two years ago.”
“That seems very specific. Why two years?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Why not five years, or ten? Why does she forget everything going back two years?”
“It’s two years and three months, actually,” he clarified. “You don’t know anything about the case, do you, Detective Halliday?”
“Not a lot. That’s why I contacted you.”
“Liv Reese was almost murdered two years ago. I gather that’s why she moved to London. For her own safety. Her assailant was never caught. By all accounts, she was doing well, establishing a life for herself in Britain, until a few weeks ago, when she apparently woke in her London flat suffering a memory blackout. She didn’t remember a single thing that had transpired going back more than two years to the day when she was almost killed.”
“So she’s living in the past,” said Halliday.
“Something like that. Only worse,” he said, “because every time she goes to sleep, she forgets everything all over again. The poor woman is absolutely helpless. In fact, she’s a sitting duck, really. That’s why we enlisted Interpol to help us find her.”
“What do you mean, she’s a sitting duck?”
“Well, if the person who tried to kill her two years ago finds her before we do, we’re terribly worried that she’d have no idea this individual was a threat to her.”
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Wednesday 2:28P.M.
The rattle of a jackhammer drilling at a construction site gets louder as I climb the subway station stairs to street level. I emerge into daylight only to get body-slammed by a woman rushing past in a whirl of shopping bags.
“Hey, lady! Watch where you’re going,” the woman calls out.
Farther ahead, a tourist in a puffer jacket drags an oversized suitcase out of a budget hotel directly into my path. I step out of the way to let him pass. His wife and daughters, dressed in matching puffer jackets, walk behind him wheeling their own suitcases.
The family walks slowly, like their bodies are weighed down by fatigue, until I realize it’s me who’s exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. I walk into the narrow lobby of the hotel and ask a receptionist how much it costs to get a room.
While I wait for her to check the rates and vacancies on her computer screen, I look down at the knuckles of my hands resting on the counter.STAY AWAKE, they read.
The message immediately revives me. I can’t get a room. I can’t go to sleep. By the time the reception clerk looks up from her screen, I’m heading out through the smoked-glass lobby door.
“Stay awake,” I repeat to myself until a constant hum in my head takes on the rhythm of those words. “Stay awake. Stay awake.”
There’s a Starbucks on the corner. I order two double expressos to go. The coffee is so strong I wince as I drink every drop of it. I swig the second expresso like it’s a shot.
It doesn’t take long until the caffeine kicks in, surging through me. After that everything moves in hyperspeed. Traffic rushes past and my mind races ahead at a thousand miles a minute. All I can think about is being with Marco. I ache to lie against his chest with his arms wrapped protectively around me and his scent on my lips. The thought overwhelms me, like I’m an addict needing a fix. I raise my hand abruptly to hail a cab. It pulls over and I scramble inside.
The scenery zips by through the windows of the cab. I talk so fast that the cab driver asks me to repeat myself. Twice. I hop out a block before my destination because the traffic is jammed. I can walk faster than the traffic can move.
At Marco’s building, the doorman is signing for a delivery when I walk in. “Hi Bill,” I say without stopping. I walk straight into an open elevator just before the doors close.
There’s only me in the elevator, along with a woman in her seventies with champagne hair. She’s holding a Whole Foods bag to her chest like it’s a shield.
Nervously, I tidy my hair as the elevator rises. The woman in the elevator slowly edges away to the farthest corner as if hoping I won’t notice. I do notice, but I don’t care.
