Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(8)

I honestly couldn’t fathom it. People wanted to read all the gory descriptions of my victimization at the hands of a serial rapist and murderer? They wanted to know exactly what it was like to live in a coffin-sized box, only to be pulled out to discover what waited for you on the other side was even worse?

“Don’t think of it that way,” the first TV producer had told me. “It’s not the victimization that’s the selling point. It’s your story. You, the survivor. How you did it. That’s what viewers want to understand.”

I wasn’t convinced back then, and I remained unconvinced now. Seemed to me, for everyone who showed up at the Colosseum to see the gladiator win so many centuries ago, equal numbers came to watch him lose. It’s simply human nature.

I was offered TV interviews. Book deals. Movie rights. Maybe I should have grabbed the money and run. But I didn’t. I just . . . couldn’t. My family had lost enough of their privacy during their own desperate efforts to help find me. I couldn’t take more from them. Plus, it turned out, I was one of those survivors who assumed that now I was safely home, I could put it all behind me. Never look back. Never utter Jacob’s name again.

All those moments, hours, days I’d promised myself, if I could just get out of here, I’d never complain again. I’d always be happy. I’d never forget the feel of the sunlight on my face. I’d be the perfect daughter, the most loving sister. I’d never take life for granted again.

If I could just get out of here . . .

Return home.

Survive.

Four hundred and seventy-two days, plus six years, who was I?

? ? ?

MY BROTHER LEFT. HE’D RUN the Facebook page, Find Flora, when I first went missing. One of his jobs had been to post daily photos, family tidbits to remind my yet-unidentified abductor that I was a sister, daughter, friend, dearly missed. We never spoke of it when I returned. Me trying not to traumatize him. Him trying not to traumatize me.

But even sooner than my mother, Darwin realized the truth: His efforts had saved a girl, just not the sister he’d once loved. He went off to Europe on a voyage of self-discovery. I wondered sometimes if he ran daily along the Thames. If those were the only times he could think, if the question he still asked himself the most was who am I, who am I, who am I?

Stairs. Up, up, up to the bridge spanning the Charles. I loved the quick rat-a-tat of my tennis shoes against the metal steps. Moving so fast nothing could catch me. Not even my own spinning thoughts.

Last year, I’d done something I hadn’t expected to do: I’d saved a girl. Another abducted college student. Just like that, the media returned. Except now, they didn’t just want the story of Jacob Ness and the four hundred and seventy-two days I’d never spoken of; they wanted the story of me. Flora the fighter. Flora who’d gone from victim to vigilante.

They asked and bullied and demanded and begged.

I still didn’t answer. Maybe I just didn’t like to talk. Or, more likely, I still hated the press.

But what to do?

Once upon a time, I’d thought about trying to return to school. Find a career, get a real job, become a normal person again. But thanks to my PTSD, I still had problems with crowds, rooms with limited exits, and, oh yeah, focus of any kind.

Not to mention, most days, I simply didn’t feel normal.

Some can do it. I’ve read their stories. Examined, reexamined, hyperanalyzed.

You can be traumatized and still pick up the pieces of your life.

Except then there are the others, the survivors like me. Who waited too long to be saved and gave up too much along the way.

My strengths? Lock picking, self-defense, threat assessment, and really fun weapons you can make with items found in the trash. Not to mention homemade Mace-like concoctions. And running. I loved to run. Morning, noon, and night. Anything to quiet the thoughts in my head, but also to feel the wind, rain, snow in my face.

Not in a box, not in a box, not in a box. That’s how my footsteps sounded as I pounded across the bridge into Cambridge. Not in a box.

Who was I?

A survivor.

My victim advocate, Samuel Keynes, called me that the first day we met. At the time the word sounded good. Strong. Definite. Once I was a victim. Now I was a survivor. One who ran like a cheetah, and had a fanny pack stuffed with enough items to ensure she was never a victim again.

But even now, edging up my pace, nearing the end of the bridge, my final sprint, I could still hear the other thoughts that come with that.

Being a survivor didn’t just mean being strong. It meant being lonely. Honestly, truly lonely. Knowing things other people weren’t supposed to know. Carrying memories I was desperate to forget and yet still couldn’t blank out of my head.

And guilt. For so many things. The coulda, woulda, shouldas.

Once there was this pretty girl dancing on a beach . . .

And I can never go back there again.

End of bridge. Faster, faster, faster. Till now my chest was heaving, heart thundering, faster still . . .

Who am I, who am I, who am I?

I thundered across my self-designated finishing line, breaking across the end of the bridge into Cambridge. Stopped. Bent over. Drew three quick deep gulps of air, then resumed moving before I cramped up. I had a mile to walk now to return to my one-bedroom, covered-in-deadbolts apartment, which my elderly landlords graciously granted to me at well-below-market rent. They’d followed my case in the news, they’d told me when I first met them. And not with a voyeuristic gleam in their eyes, but with genuine compassion. I still didn’t trust many people, but I learned I could definitely believe in them.