Page 41 of Prodigal Son

He rolled his eyes and ducked back in the bathroom. “You should have woken me the moment you got home.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” she said, then frowned. The words felt true, but she had no recollection that fit the conviction.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve. I had the cops searching for you. I’ve been going crazy. I thought you were dead!”

“What?” Cops?

Her brows drew tight as she had the strangest impulse to form her hand into a C shape and place it over her heart. She shook it off.

“Yeah. You’ve been MIA for days,” he said from behind the bathroom door.

“I was…here.” Her frown deepened, a sharp wave of nausea churning her stomach. No, she wasn’t there. She’d been…

I had a nasty fall. The thought surfaced with zero memory, but her certainty felt as solid as plastic. Synthetic and unlikely to biodegrade with time. Planted like pollution among the soft gray matter of her mind.

Vito emerged from the bathroom in a pair of jeans and a wrinkled Phillies T-shirt. “D, I’ve been here for days. The least you could do is be honest with me.”

Moving into the living room, she tripped over a pizza box on the floor. “What the…”

Papers were everywhere. News articles pinned to the wall, sticky notes with masculine scribble, maps, brochures, highlighted reference books scattered across her coffee table, empty beer cans, pizza boxes, and, most frightening of all, a handgun.

“What is all this? My house is trashed.”

“Me first. What happened in the woods?”

“The woods?” Pine needles. Mud. Roots. Trees. Moss. Snow. Running. Ripping. Fear. Searing pain. Panic. Images and emotions flashed through her mind too fast for her to analyze. She sucked in a sharp breath. “I was in the woods.”

“No shit. You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

“I had a nasty fall.” The words came out of her like a compulsion without memory. Yet, she was certain she had a nasty fall. Maybe she hit her head.

“How did you get home?”

She dropped onto a couch cushion. Her memory sliding through one gaping hole into another. “I don’t know. I lost track of my crew and… I must have fallen and hit my head or something.”

“Destiny, you were gone for days. Days. You have to give me something more. Did someone find you? How did you get home?”

She’d gone back to Jim Thorpe to investigate the recent murder scenes and… Jim Thorpe was quite a commute. She’d been all alone in the woods, of that she was certain. Then she had a nasty fall. “I woke up in a convent.”

He snorted. “Come again?”

She shook her head. “A convent. You know, where nuns live. A nun named Larissa took care of me, and a very nice bishop helped me get home.” She pursed her lips as a bitter taste filled her mouth like a lie.

“Wait, did you just say a nun named Larissa?”

“Yeah, why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s kind of a weird name for a nun.”

“Who cares what the nun’s name was?”

“You’re right. What else do you remember?”

“She fed me soup and…I think there was a bishop.”

“What convent? St. Elizabeth’s?”

“No.”

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