A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 Read Free Page B

in the United States Army. The Army sent a team of soldiers to assist in the search for you. I was assigned as your husband’s driver. Since we have the same first name, he was introducing himself to people we talked to as Bryan. Then he introduced me by saying, ‘This is Bryan too.’ And it kinda stuck.”
         “I’m so confused, Bryan. I just don’t know what to think.”
         “I think I might be able to offer you some proof that he’s telling you the truth.”
         She looked forlornly at him. She wanted so much to know one way or the other who was her husband.
         “Go on.”
         “Bryan and I spent several days together in an Army Humvee, driving from town to town and asking about you. We had a lot of time to talk, and to get to know one another.
         “He told me all about you. How the two of you met. What your favorite foods were. Your hopes and dreams.”
         “If you’re going to compare what he told you about what I know, it won’t work. Not even I know what my hopes and dreams are. I don’t even know my favorite food. I seem to have forgotten almost everything since I fell down the stairs and hit my head. Or, by your account, Nathan hit me in the head and kidnapped me.”
         “He told me about your tattoos.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    -3-
     
         Without thinking, Sarah’s hand went to her shoulder. She touched the tiny bluebird in flight.
         She’d asked Nathan where it came from and he said he didn’t know. She thought it odd that her husband of several years wouldn’t know the origin of her tattoo.
         “What did he say about them?”
         “He said you have a tattoo of a bird on your shoulder. I don’t remember what kind. But he said you got it to celebrate your twenty fifth birthday, but that you didn’t like pain so you made your friends take you out and give you tequila shots to make you brave first.”
         He was hoping to trigger a forgotten memory, but the blank look she gave him told him he’d failed.
         It wasn’t that she didn’t want to believe him. It was just that she no longer knew what to believe.
         And it could have been that he’d seen the tattoo on her shoulder before she covered it. And that he was making up a story about it just to win her trust.
         It was possible he was trying to take advantage of her memory loss to manipulate her mind. The same way he and his friends accused Nathan of doing.
         Then Bryan Too went on.
         “Bryan told me that was your second tattoo. That your first one was a small rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, sitting atop a tiny banner with the words, ‘BACK OFF.’ And that the snake tattoo was on the back of…”
         She finished the rest of his sentence at the same time he did: “Your neck.”
         She’d discovered the snake tattoo the day before, when she was examining herself in the bathroom mirror. It was hard to see, since her hair went to the center of her back and was quite thick. She almost missed it, but caught a glimpse of what looked like words when she brushed her hair off to one side of her face.
         She knew that when Bryan and the others came rushing into the bedroom where Nathan was beating her, they couldn’t have seen the covered tattoo on the back of her neck.
         Bryan Too now had her undivided attention.
         “Bryan said that was his favorite tattoo. That he thought there was something… sexy about it. Like it told everybody how tough you were, that you couldn’t be taken advantage of. He said it made you look tough.
         “He said you used to wear your hair very short. Then you got tired of short hair and he seldom sees the snake anymore. I’ll bet if you went and checked you’d see it was there.”
         She said nothing to confirm or deny the snake’s existence. She