Page 5 of Lost In The Dark

ADDY

“Adeline Brooks. Your under arrest for the murder of senator Leo Hilton.” The police detective kept on talking, but I couldn’t hear the words. My heart was pounding too hard, so hard I couldn’t hear anything over it. I started to tremble with adrenaline as I broke out in a sweat. How was this happening to me? I was the most boring woman in the whole state, maybe even the whole country. I had never even struck a person, let alone killed someone. I couldn’t even kill a spider in my tub, even though I was terrified of them. It wasn’t the spider’s fault he was a terrifying looking creature, after all.

This had all started a week ago, when I woke up with an EMT fussing over me in the back of an ambulance. He told me I had been hit by a car on the highway, and I definitely felt like that had happened. But I couldn’t remember it happening. I couldn’t even remember how I got to the highway. Then I found out I was in Las Vegas, and I had no clue at all how I had gotten there. The last thing I remembered was leaving the library I worked at, late one night. I remembered getting into my car, and that was it. There was nothing else.

The doctor later told me the date, and I realized with horror that there were two years I could not account for. Two years had passed since that last night that I remembered leaving thelibrary and I had no memory of any of what had happened in that time.

The doctor explained I had taken a severe hit to the head in the accident, and memory loss could be a symptom of the head injury. I also had a broken wrist with four shiny pins now holding it together, and several broken ribs. I was choosing to ignore what she had also said about the areas around my wrists and ankles that showed signs of being shackled. As I was also ignoring the pain in my back where there were apparently long deep welts consistent with me being struck with a whip of some kind. The doctor and the police had clearly told me I had been held at some point and hurt, but I couldn’t focus on that. I couldn’t allow my mind to conjure up what could have happened to me in the last two years, or how I had even gotten there. I couldn’t because I knew I’d fall apart, and right now I had a whole other battle to fight with the police.

Strong hands grabbed me and pulled me from the bed. My wrist was wrenched behind my back, causing so much pain, tears filled my eyes and I could barely hold in my cry.

“You can’t cuff her. She has a broken wrist,” the nurse in the room with me cried as she looked to me with concern.

“We’ll keep the cuff loose around the cast,” The detective assured her, like that would stop the blinding pain throbbing up my arm.

I wasn’t even wearing clothes. Just a thin hospital gown that flapped open at the back, but that didn’t seem to concern the very overzealous detective, who was now passing me off to a uniformed officer. The room around me was spinning and my legs would barely hold me up, but still they ushered me from the room and down the hall, my bare feet slapping against the cold linoleum.

I was bruised all over, apparently a mixture of injuries I sustained before and during the car accident. Every panicked breath that I took caused agony to shoot down my right side, where I had broken ribs, and I was just so shaky and weak. I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror, but I knew from how thin and bony my arms and legs were, that I had lost a huge amount of weight during the time I had lost.

“Th-this is a mistake,” I finally got out as tears poured down my face.

Leo Hilton was dead. He was a senator, or so I’d been told. He had been found in his home with a bullet in his chest. A bullet that matched the gun I had been told I was holding when I landed on that highway. I was also, apparently covered in this strangers blood when I was found. That was why they had arrested me. That was why they were taking me from the safety of the hospital and into the jail system.

But it couldn’t be right, could it? I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t hurt another person in that way. I had been a good girl my entire life. I had never ever put one foot wrong, always so diligent when it came to sticking to rules. I would not take a life. I couldn’t.

Except I had no idea what had been done to me for the last two years. The nurse had tried to encourage me to let them do an examination for signs of rape. Apparently injuries on my thighs were consistent with that, but I had refused. I didn’t want to know. My world was falling down around me and I didn’t want any more terrifying facts to add to the horror. But if I were raped and held against my will for the last two years, would that be enough to change who I was? Would that be enough to make me kill a man? I was so scared and so damned alone.

As I was thrust into the back of the police car, sobbing and cold, terrified of what would come, and in so much pain, I found myself wishing my mom were still alive. And wasn’t that the most ridiculous thought? Even if she were still alive, she wouldn’t have come to my aid. She never had, not once. Not when bullies at school were making my life hell. Not when our social security payments were stopped and I had to work two jobs to cover the rent when I was fourteen years old, as well as taking care of her every need. Not when my first ever date had gotten too pushy with me, parked right outside our trailer, and I had screamed for her to help me. She had never been there for me. I had always been alone, just as I was in that moment, but I had never in my entire life wished more for someone to come and save me. I was so very scared and all out of fight to even begin to find my way out of this new hell.

***

“Let’s go,” the officer said as he roughly handled me. I struggled to keep up as he dragged me down the hall, then shoved me into a huge cell. I stepped in and froze as three other women also in there, looked to me like a lamb to the slaughter. I was still in my thin hospital gown, desperately trying to keep it clutched together at the back as I stood frozen and trembling, terrified these woman were going to eat me alive.

I had been in the interview room with the detective, who had arrested me, for hours. They had left me sat in there for so long at first, that I had fallen asleep, despite my fear. Then he walked in and started asking me everything he’d already asked me several times during his visits to the hospital, where he’d also had me cuffed to the bed. I pleaded with him to believe me. To believe I didn’t remember a thing. I told him about my life. I was a librarian, for goodness sake! In a tiny town where nothingever happened. I told him over and over I didn’t do it. I didn’t shoot that man. Then he started yelling at me and I just closed down, curling into myself and cowering, fear racing through me until finally he left me alone. I’d broken down when he was gone. I had never known a fear like the one consuming me, and my stomach would not stop churning. I didn’t know what I should do. I’d never been in trouble before. Did I need an attorney? But why would I, if I didn’t do anything wrong?

Then, a couple of hours later the detective had come back and tried all over again. Finally he seemed to give up when I was curled into myself as much as I could with my injured ribs, on the chair, my hands over my ears, unable to take anymore. I was exhausted and in so much pain without the pain meds the hospital had been giving me. I was terrified too, and I just needed it all to stop.

That was when the uniformed officer had come for me, and how I now found myself like a deer in the headlights, trapped in that cell with three extremely pissed off and intimidating looking women.

Unable to stand any longer I sidestepped to the corner of the cell and allowed my exhausted body to slip down the wall and to the floor. I tucked my knees up against my chest and tried to breathe through the agony it caused in my right side and in my wrist, as I fought not to cry any more. How did this happen? How did my life bring me here? All I had ever wanted was a quiet, safe existence. After the hell my mom put me through growing up, I was happy to live that way, but it seemed life had other ideas for me. Now I was going to live the rest of my life in a maximum security jail!

I don’t know how long I stayed there, just praying I was invisible and wouldn’t be bothered by any other women, but eventually I heard the cell open.

“What on earth is this? Where are her clothes? It’s freezing in here?” A deep voice demanded. I looked up and found a middle aged man, dressed in a very expensive suit, glaring at the police officer who had opened the cell.

“She was brought in from the hospital, and her clothes were taken as evidence,” the officer replied.

“This is unacceptable. I’ll be a making a formal complaint for starters,” the suit threw back. He was older, his dark hair greying slightly at the sides, but he had a kind looking face as he turned to me and his features softened. He held a briefcase and his shoes were so polished and neat. “Adeline. I’m your attorney. Can you come with me so we can talk?” he asked more gently.

“My attorney?” I repeated. “I…I didn’t know I asked for one.”

“A friend sent me. I’ll explain everything if you can just follow me?”

A friend? I didn’t have any friends, unless you counted Mrs. Withers who came into the library twice a week and chatted with me. She’d brought me cakes and cookies she baked before, but she wouldn’t send an attorney. Certainly not one as expensive as this one looked. Still, I struggled to my feet, stumbling a little as I moved towards him. My body was trembling. He was right – the cell was freezing.

“This is ludicrous. Miss Brooks clearly still needs medical attention. She should never have been taken from the hospital,” The attorney ranted as he set his briefcase on the ground beside him and started to unbutton his jacket.

“The doctor approved her discharge. It’s in the paperwork,” the officer told him.