Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [52]
“It was the same guy, then, because this man was the one who tried to smother me yesterday.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his pulse quickening at the link they’d discovered. “I thought you didn’t get much of a look at him.”
“The eyes are the same. It has to be him.”
“You must have drawn this. Amanda said you were unwilling to call the police, so I doubt this was done by anyone else.”
“You think I drew that?” she asked in amazement.
He nodded. “I’m not surprised it’s a good sketch. You used to doodle when we were watching football games together. In fact, you used to draw this character with a cape and a big gold belt with all kinds of gadgets on it. What was the name you called him?” He shook his head as the name escaped him. “He was some kind of a superhero, Alexander or something like that.”
Sarah stared back at him, an odd flickering in her eyes. “Alexander?”
“Does it ring a bell?”
“Not exactly, but it sounds a little familiar.”
“You liked to draw faces. Funny, now that I think about it. You wouldn’t use your camera to record actual faces, but you’d sketch people. Whenever I looked to see what you were doing, you’d crumple up the paper and throw it away. I thought you were just modest, but maybe you didn’t want me to see the faces. I wonder if you were drawing the people from your past. You certainly didn’t have any photographs of your relatives.”
Sarah glanced back down at the sketch. “I don’t remember drawing this, but maybe I did.”
“Let’s see, why don’t we?” he suggested.
“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
He pushed a blank piece of paper across the table toward her. “Draw something.”
“Like what? I don’t remember anything. I can’t draw a past that isn’t in my memory.”
“Maybe it’s buried deep,” he replied. “Sit down, Sarah. Give it a shot.”
“Jake, this is a waste of time.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Yes, search the apartment.”
He could see not just reluctance in her eyes, but also fear. He’d noticed the conflicting emotions before. Sarah wanted to remember her past, and yet she didn’t. No wonder her memory was still hidden away. She was sending her own brain mixed messages. “We’ll search,” he said. “But let’s try this first.”
After a moment’s hesitation Sarah took a seat at the table. He sat down across from her and watched her stare down at the paper.
“I don’t know what you think is going to come out of my head,” she said. “It’s as blank as this page.”
“You’re trying too hard.”
“Now I’m trying too hard? Usually you don’t think I’m trying hard enough.”
“Just close your eyes and then draw whatever image comes to your mind. Let yourself go. I know you can do it.”
She gazed back at him for long seconds, and he felt his stomach turn over with feelings he didn’t want to feel.
“You have faith in me,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat, not wanting to go down that road. “Draw, Sarah. Draw something you feel. Listen to your heart, not your head.”
Sarah put the pencil to the paper but didn’t make a move. She appeared lost in thought for several long minutes. He was beginning to think the experiment was a waste of time when she began to sketch, slowly at first and then with more purpose and enthusiasm. In a few minutes she was finished. She pushed the paper across the table and looked at him. “I feel as if this place is important to me.”
He felt the blood drain from his face as he stared down at the picture she’d drawn.
“Jake? What is it? Do you know this place?” she asked, giving him a concerned look. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t know if he could get the words out. He was quite simply stunned. “That’s the house I designed for us, the one we were building together. You drew it better than I did.” He looked into her eyes and felt the ice around his heart crack and melt. Sarah had remembered their house, the place where they were going to share their lives together, create a family. He’d never realized she’d studied the design in so much detail that she could actually re-create it as she’d done.
“I thought it was my home,” she said.
“It was going