Cold Cold Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

know . . . wh-why,” Dana said flatly.
    â€œShe’s having a little trouble with her memory,” Lynda said, stating the obvious. She hovered and fussed around her daughter like a new mother whose baby was just learning to walk. She wanted to catch every fall, to spare her child failure or injury.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Sam said to Dana. “You don’t need to think about that right now.”
    â€œNo. N-ot,” Dana said, moving her head slightly left and right, hindered by the brace around her neck. Still agitated, she pushed her blanket off onto the floor. “Not o-kay. It’s not o-kay.”
    â€œIt’ll all come back to you, sweetheart,” Lynda said, picking up the blanket. “It’s just going to take some time.”
    Her false cheer was almost as hard to listen to as nails on a chalkboard. Nikki’s own level of tension ratcheted up as Dana waved away her mother’s attempts to put the blanket back on her lap.
    â€œDon’t!” Dana snapped.
    â€œYour friends from the station are going to bring some DVDs of you on the news,” Lynda said, still talking to her as if she was a five-year-old. “Remember? Remember Roxanne told you she would do that? That’ll be fun to see, won’t it?”
    â€œN-no. Stop it.” Dana turned her face away, reached up with her good hand, tore the neck brace off, and threw it on the floor.
    â€œDana . . .”
    â€œLyn-da . . .”
    Nikki reached down to retrieve the brace.
    â€œShe hates this thing,” Lynda said, taking it. “She doesn’t want anything around her throat.”
    Nikki looked at the bruising that circled Dana Nolan’s throat.She had been strangled—repeatedly, by the look of it. No doubt a game for Doc Holiday—choking her unconscious, then letting her come back, watching her “die” over and over, feeling the rush of godlike power as she came back to life. He hadn’t intended for her to die of it. If Doc Holiday had wanted her dead, she would have been dead. Anything he had done to her had been just a game to satisfy his sick, sadistic fantasies.
    â€œI don’t like things around my throat either,” Nikki said. “I don’t even like turtlenecks.”
    â€œShe’s tired,” Lynda said curtly, though she was clearly as close to the end of her rope as her daughter was. “We should probably just call it a day.”
    â€œLet’s have Dana take a quick look at those photos first,” Kovac suggested. “Then we can get out of your hair.”
    â€œI don’t have any,” Dana said without emotion. “Hair.”
    â€œYour hair will grow back, honey,” Lynda said. “You’ll be just as beautiful as before.”
    Nikki almost winced. She wondered if Dana had been allowed to look at herself in a mirror. She suspected not.
    â€œWe just want you to take a look at each of these photographs, Dana,” she said, pulling the pictures out of her bag. “And tell us if anything looks familiar to you.”
    She shuffled the images of human teeth and fingernail clippings to the bottom of the stack in favor of the snapshots of individual pieces of jewelry, starting with a silver bracelet dangling with charms.
    Dana took the picture with her good hand and frowned at it.
    â€œDoes that look familiar to you?” Nikki asked.
    Dana stared at it. “N-no.”
    Nikki handed over another, this one of a necklace with a small cross.
    Again Dana stared at the photograph, frowning, suspicious. Her respiration quickened ever so slightly. “N-n-no. Wh . . . why?”
    â€œWe’re just wondering if you may have seen these things before,” Kovac said, ignoring her question.
    She turned her eye on him. “What’s it . . . to do with my . . . ac-cident?”
    Kovac flicked a glance at Lynda Mercer.
    â€œI think you should go