Hide My Memories: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Series (Hide Me Series Book 1) Read online

  Hide My Memories

  By Lisa Ladew

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or organizations, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Copyright © 2015 Lisa Ladew All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by http://www.stunningbookcovers.com/

  Dedication:

  I dedicate this book to my readers. You guys are the best. I love you.

  Beta Readers: (thank you so much!!)

  Lisa Howard, Nicki Small, Johanne Poirier, Sharlena Biron, Joy Sward, Amanda Hollmer, Rachel Dillins, Nicki duMenil

  Advance readers: (thank you very much!!)

  Kelli, Marie, Verna Watson, Amanda Pintado, Sandra Mutert, Julie peterson, Porsha Johnson, Porsha Johnson, Mary Ann Kennard, Josephine Skweres, kelly lamley, Pat, Rich, Nicole Yearsley, Miranda Harmon-Sparks, Sue Brown, Barbara Straub, Beth Readd, Debra Worden, veronica lopez, tina, Geneva Vaughn, Jennifer Coe, Stacy Russell, Wanda Cudd, Sarita Coletrane, Katie Vanderzee, Lawanda House, Amy Boyce, Krysta Christman, Julia Bradley, Sandra Daigle, Kerry Li, Crystal , Lisalynn Calanni, Maggie Martinez , Frances wilson, Amanda Pintado

  Chapter 1

  Katerina Holloway held her breath and sped through the yellow light, pushing her tiny car to its limit. She couldn’t be late today of all days. When she was on a straightaway, she picked up her cell phone and called her friend Jordan, reciting the words she’d been rehearsing since leaving home. “Jordan, I know you’re not going to like this, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go out with you tonight.”

  The sound of Jordan’s outrage blared out of the speakers of Katerina’s cheap cell phone. “There is no way I’m going to let you start your dream job tomorrow without a celebration!”

  Katerina sighed. She knew Jordan meant it. “Okay Jordan, but no cop bars. Promise?”

  Jordan laughed wildly on the other end of the phone. “I promise nothing.”

  Katerina sighed again. Jordan and her cop bars. “I really have to go, Jordan. I’m already late.”

  “It’s your last day-”

  Katerina cut her off. “Come by after six,” she yelled into the phone and then pressed the red end call button. She wrestled her tiny, well-used Subaru into the right-hand lane of Ironwood Drive in Westwood Harbor, praying not to hit any more red lights. With one eye on the road and one eye on her phone, she speed-dialed the massage clinic where she worked. Well, where she worked for the rest of the day, anyway.

  “Ironwood Massage,” a female voice answered.

  “Pam, I’m almost there. Is my nine-clock in yet?”

  Pam’s voice dropped low. Katerina had to strain to hear her. “Yeah, he got here ten minutes early.”

  Katerina groaned. She was never late, never. But her car wouldn’t start this morning and she had to walk to the auto parts store and spend the last of her cash on a new battery. Hopefully she would make some decent tips today, enough money to get groceries until she got her first paycheck from the Westwood Harbor fire department. She had no idea if they paid after one week or two weeks or, God forbid, one month. She’d starve if it was a month.

  Pam’s voice rang in her ear again. “If you’re close, I’ll get him ready and put him in a room.”

  “Thanks Pam, that would be great.”

  Katerina hung up and tossed the phone on the seat next to her. The building Westwood Massage was in loomed ahead of her. She put on a burst of speed, praying there were no cops around, and negotiated the last quarter mile until the parking lot. She parked, twisted the key out of the ignition, and sprinted towards the building.

  Once inside, she hung a hard left towards the stairs. The elevator took too long for a morning when she was already late. Her feet pounded up three flights of stairs. At the top, she slowed to a walk, sucking in huge volumes of air. She wanted to calm her heart and catch her breath. She pulled open the door and walked in, still breathing hard.

  Pam greeted her immediately. “He’s ready for you.”

  “Thanks.” Katarina ducked into the bathroom and washed her hands, her breathing finally coming under control. She left the bathroom and walked down the hallway to her massage room. She knocked lightly and pushed open the door after she heard the muffled, “come in.”

  The room felt perfectly warm. She lowered the lighting just a bit more-she preferred to relax her patients as much as possible, not even minding if they fell asleep. The man on the massage table lay face-down, a white sheet covering his lower half.

  He was big. Over 6 feet, she guessed, by the way his toes hung off the end of the table. A man his size really needed to pay for an hour and a half to get a full massage but she would do her best. She already knew what her hands would find when she started. A steel-hard layer of muscle under what looked to be a bit of middle-aged fat. She was going to have to use her weight and her elbows to really dig into that muscle, or he probably wouldn’t feel a thing.

  Damn! She didn’t even know his name. She had forgotten to ask.

  “Hello sir, my name is Katerina. How do you like your pressure?”

  The man on the table grunted. Katerina didn’t catch what he said but she guessed she knew anyway.

  “Did you say heavy?”

  He grunted in the affirmative.

  Mentally, Katerina sighed again, and prepared herself for a rougher-than-usual hour.

  She placed both hands on his back and automatically pressed lightly to test just how tight his muscles were. Or at least that was the plan. But the plan was ripped apart immediately. As soon as her hands came in contact with his skin a crackle of electricity rushed up her arms straight to her head. Feeling like she’d been hit in the face with a baseball bat, Katerina took a step backwards, her skull snapping on her neck. With the electricity came an onslaught of images stuttering through her brain that didn’t fade when the electricity did.

  A woman. Her liquid, brown eyes wide and terrified.

  The same woman. Crying. Begging.

  The same woman. Motionless on a table.

  The woman. Naked on the ground.

  Emotions rushed through Katerina with the images. Fear. Lust. Anger. Rage. Relief. Regret. Triumph. Excitement.

  Katerina shook her head, trying to clear the pictures and the feelings. She forced herself to take a step forward and pulled more air into her lungs. The warmth in the room suddenly felt cloying and overwhelming. Her mind tried to swim in confusion, but the pictures flipping through it overlaid everything else.

  She tried to talk herself past it. Pull yourself together, girl, you’ve got work to do. Katerina gritted her teeth and focused all her mental effort on the task at hand. Again she placed a hand on her client’s back in preparation for his massage.

  His skin burned under her fingers. She grimaced, deciding it had to be mental. She pressed harder, determined to overcome whatever issue she was having. It was like holding a live wire. More images seared up her arm and into her brain.

  Another woman. Her blond hair in a ponytail. Smiling nervously in front of a car.

  The same woman. Eyes closed. Motionless on a table.

  The woman. Naked in a stream. Unconscious. Water flowing over her. Rivulets playing with her ponytail.

  Another woman. Bright red lipstick drawing the eye to a luscious mouth
…

  Katerina ground her teeth together and ripped her hands from the man’s body. She overbalanced and stepped back to catch herself. Her head rammed into the wall but she didn’t even feel it. The images kept coming. She ground her hands into the side of her head, trying to stop them. The images, the emotions. They came harder and faster and nausea plowed through Katerina’s gut at the intrusion.

  Katerina leaned against the wall and tried to catch her composure. The images wouldn’t stop. They doubled up on each other and flashed through her brain, tearing at it. The nausea pushed and pulled at her, causing beads of sweat to coat her face.

  Katerina wrenched her eyes open, certain the man was looking at her. But he wasn’t. He lay face-down on the table as if everything was normal.

  But nothing was normal. She was having a seizure. Or an episode. Or dying. Maybe a stroke. That must be it. A blood vessel had burst in her brain and these images she was seeing were just precursors to her neurons and synapses giving up for good.

  Katerina tried to force out some words. The phrase “excuse me for a second,” would’ve been perfect, but she couldn’t find it.

  Instead she wrenched open the door and stumbled down the hallway, dimly aware of Pam staring at her in confusion from the receptionist desk.

  Thank God the bathroom was empty. She staggered inside and had enough energy to turn around and push the door closed, thumbing the lock as she did so. She pressed her face against the cool wood of the door and tried to stay upright. The images continued to flash through her brain, pushing her farther off balance.

  A knock on the other side of the door startled her. “Katerina, are you okay?”

  Nausea flared inside her again. She barely made it to the toilet before losing her breakfast. The toilet seat was even cooler than the door. It felt wonderful on her face. Deep inside her, disgust at her face touching a toilet roiled. She ignored it. She didn’t have the energy to pick herself up.

  Another knock at the door. “Katerina, I’m really starting to get worried.”

  Katerina picked up her head and tried to say something. “I’m sick,” she croaked.

  After a moment’s silence, Pam spoke again. “Should I call an ambulance?”

  The irony of Pam’s question struck Katerina as funny and she tried to laugh. Instead she dry-heaved and stuck her head in the toilet again. When she was reasonably certain she wasn’t going to throw anything else up she turned her head to the door and said, “No. I’ll be okay.”

  “What should I do about Mr. Smith?”

  Mr. Smith? Oh right. Her massage client.

  “I don’t know.” She tried to force her brain to function. The horrible images she had seen had faded somewhat, but they were still there, pressing at the backs of her eyes. “I can’t work on him. Is anyone else coming in today?”

  “Let me check.” Through the heavy door, Katerina heard Pam shuffle away. She pushed away from the toilet and pressed her back up against the wall.

  What in the world was going on? She hadn’t felt this sick since she was eight and spent three days puking after most of the school contracted some sort of horrible stomach bug. Her mom had finally taken her to the emergency room where they had given her a shot to make her stop upchucking any time she even smelled water. She hadn’t been able to eat normally for over a week.

  The thought that she was having a stroke came back to her. Despite all of her medical training, she really didn’t know what a stroke felt like inside the person having it. Suddenly it seemed to her like that was an important thing to know. Hadn’t anyone ever asked a stroke victim what it felt like to have a stroke?

  But she was only twenty-six years old. And in reasonably good shape. And no history of stroke in her family as far as she knew. But if this wasn’t a stroke, what was it?

  A panic attack? She didn’t know what one of those felt like either. Katerina took a deep breath and pressed a hand experimentally to her stomach. The nausea seemed to have passed, for now. At least she knew she wasn’t pregnant. In order to be pregnant you had to have some sort of contact with a man, which she hadn’t for way too long.

  She closed her eyes and tried to blank her mind, shut out those images. She didn’t even want to think about them. They seemed like something out of a horror movie. Or something criminal.

  But she could still see them even if she didn’t want to. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. The harder she tried the brighter the images became.

  Just think of something else. Her mind cast about wildly, then seized on something. A candle.

  She tried to imagine a candle in her mind. A white candle. No too boring. A purple candle. Long, in a crystal holder. A flame gently burning at the top. A smile crossed her face as she thought she was succeeding. But then the pictures of the women flashed back stronger than ever, flipping through her mind like a stop-motion movie. She realized something. They were a progression. She stopped fighting and allowed the pictures to flow through her mind, where they became an unbidden memory.

  The woman smoothly gazed at her in terror, then her face crumpled into soundless crying and begging. Katerina’s own hand shot out and fastened over the woman’s throat.

  Nausea rolled back over Katerina and forced a small groan from her lips. No no no. She couldn’t allow the images to play in her mind. They were horrible. She fought them with all her strength and crawled back to the toilet, suddenly wishing she could throw up again.

  Chapter 2

  Katerina woke up, groggy, sweaty. She looked around her room, the familiar sights and sounds bringing her no comfort. A knock sounded again at her front door. She groaned and rolled over in bed, her eyes searching out her alarm clock. 6:30. a.m.? p.m.? The soft light from the window suggested p.m. She remembered her plans with Jordan and cursed herself internally for not canceling.

  Sure enough, Jordan’s voice filtered through the door. “Katerina, come on!”

  She swung her legs out of the bed and padded down the hallway, not totally sure how she felt yet.

  She unlocked the front door and pulled it open an inch, then plodded to her couch and sat down, scrubbing her face with her hands.

  Jordan bounced into the room, put-together and gorgeous. Her long blonde hair cascaded in waves over the shoulders of a killer black dress.

  “Hi Jordan.”

  “Katerina! You’re not dressed. And your hair! Did you forget we’re going out tonight?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I can’t believe you. You always do this to me. Well not this time. You’re going out and you’re going to have a good time.”

  “I got sick today, Jordan. I didn’t give any massages. I don’t have any money to go out.”

  Jordan put her hands on her hips and clucked her tongue at Katerina in a scolding gesture that reminded Katerina so much of Jordan’s mother that she laughed.

  “You weren’t paying tonight anyway. I’m paying. It’s not every day that my best friend becomes a paramedic and lands a job at the fire department.”

  Katerina smiled weakly. “I appreciate that, Jordan, but I don’t feel good.”

  Jordan’s face crumpled with compassion. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m nauseous,” Katerina said, at the same time realizing it wasn’t actually true anymore. In fact she was hungry. “Well, I was nauseous, and I puked a bunch this morning, but I might be okay now.” She got up and walked to the kitchen.

  Jordan followed. “What do you mean you might be okay now?”

  “I don’t know. I slept all day but now I think I might be hungry.”

  “Perfect! I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  Katerina pulled open the refrigerator and glanced inside. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. It wasn’t like some magical food fairy came and filled it just because she’d had a crappy day. The same half eaten bowl of Ramen and Tupperware full of leftover rice were there that had been there when she left this morning. And that was it. What was she going to do? She hadn’t m
ade any money today, and didn’t know how long it would be until her next paycheck. Well, she’d be getting her last check from the massage clinic in a few days. About $180. But the rest of her rent was due on the 1st and after she paid that she’d only have $20 left. She grimaced at the thought of eating three meals a day of Ramen until she got paid again. But then she reminded herself she’d be eating nothing until then, and she should be grateful for Ramen.

  She closed the fridge, turning around to face Jordan.

  “It’s not that simple. It wasn’t just nausea. I had –” as Katerina thought of the terrifying, disjointed images that had tortured her that morning, they sprang into her mind again. No – that wasn’t quite correct. They had been there, running in the background, since she’d woken, but now they jumped to the forefront. No – that wasn’t quite correct either. It hadn’t been since she’d woken up. They’d been with her even in sleep. She’d dreamed about them. Her dream came rushing back to her and she put a hand on the counter to steady herself. It was fuzzy, the way dreams were, but she knew it was unpleasant. She pushed away from the counter and walked quickly into her living room, casting her glance around, looking for anything that would take her mind away from the dream. She didn’t want to see it. She didn’t want to let it play out in her mind. She didn’t want to know exactly what had happened.

  Jordan followed again. “What’s going on, Katerina? Tell me.”

  Katerina spun around and looked at Jordan. When she had left work, she hadn’t said anything to Pam about the images, assuming they would fade and that they weren’t relevant. If she talked about them, would they lessen? Fade? Fall apart? She had to try.

  “Something weird happened. Before I even got to give my first massage.” Katerina shook her head, not sure how to convey just exactly how distressing these false memories had been. “I thought I was having a stroke. It’s like I couldn’t control my own mind. These… pictures were forced into it. Like I was watching a movie. A scary movie. And then I was puking. And I was trying not to think about the pictures but they just kept coming and they just got worse and worse.”