Page 66 of Fallen Petal

Chapter 33

Petal

“You don’t remember who I am, do you?”

The man sounds bitter as he asks that question, casting me quick glances from the side while he drives us away from the house. He’s a tall man, almost as tall as Jayson, and he seems to be about the same age. I study his face, the light eyes and the blond hair that flees in thin ruffles from his head. He seems familiar, but I can’t place him at all.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “My memory—”

“Has been erased. Yeah, I know that,” he interrupts me, while his hand tightens around the steering wheel. “I can’t believe he did that, again.”

He’s said that before. Again.

“Was this not... the first time?” I wonder out loud.

The man huffs. “No. With you, he has done it before.”

“When?”

“Long time ago.” He grimaces, moving his lips as if he was trying to stop himself from saying something wrong. “You were a human guinea pig for him. He erased something from your mind, and when word got out about it, people fell on their knees in front of this lunatic. Suddenly, everybody wanted a piece, and he was all too happy to provide.”

My mouth falls open as I listen, unsure what to make of his words, let alone how to respond.

“Jayson Bowlan took advantage of you,” the man continues, arching his eyebrows with intent as he throws me a look from the side. “What he did to you was wrong on so many levels. He changed you; he messed you up. You were a different person when you came to, and instead of punishing him, those idiots rewarded him with fame and money.”

He scoffs with disgust, shaking his head while the street lights cast changing shadows across his strained face.

“He’s a murderer, you know,” he hurries to add, giving me no chance to follow up on his former statement. “He kidnaps women, locks them away like he did with you, and then he kills them. That’s what he does.”

A tight clamp closes around my throat. I feel like I’m being pushed underwater, unable to come up for air.

No, it can’t be. I don’t want to believe this.

“The Bridgewater murderer?” My voice is so weak that I’m not even sure he could hear me, but the guy nods emphatically.

“Exactly,” he says. “That’s what they call him.”

The newspaper headline flashes up before my eyes, and my busy mind is connecting dots before I know it. The sedative, the time frame. Four years since that mysterious evening at his house. The evening that I can mostly remember in the form of emotions and fragmented images, but I know it didn’t end well.

Four years since that murderer was striking terror in this area. Using sedatives to control his victims, just like Jayson does for his job.

It all makes sense.

But on the other hand, it doesn’t.

“I got you out right in time,” the man says. “You’re lucky we got there before he...”

His voice breaks off, and he shakes his head as if to cast away a dark thought.

“You know, you and I, we go way back,” he says now, meeting my questioning gaze with a reassuring smile. “We were close, very close. Went to school together, graduated together. We were friends, Liliane. Very close friends. And even more than that.”

Liliane. Is that my name? Why does it not touch anything within me? It was different when Jayson told me his name. I felt something, a reaction, a foggy memory dancing around inside my head while teasing me with images I couldn’t place.

But this name, the one that the man uses to address me, it doesn’t do anything to me.

I turn to him, narrowing my eyes with focus. “What’s your name?”

“Christopher,” he replies with such implicitness that I feel instantly ashamed for asking.

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