Striking Distance Read Online Free PDF Page A

the shouted questions that chased after her. The trial was closed to cameras and all but a handful of reporters, who’d been selected at random from a pool of news organizations, the solemn quiet inside the lobby a stark contrast to the chaos outside.
    But Tower’s attack, so unexpected, had Laura’s heart thrumming. The bastard didn’t know when to quit. He’d been harassing her for weeks, insisting that it was
her
fault she’d been abducted. What did he think he was doing feeding those allegations to a reporter, making them public? Did he really think that dragging her down could somehow make his company look better?
    Forget him. It’s not important.
    She didn’t have time to think about that now. Not now. Not today.
    A uniformed DUSM motioned her forward. “Put your purse in the plastic bin. Empty your pockets of keys, change, or other metal objects, and pass through the metal detector.”
    She moved quickly through the security checkpoint, relieved to find Marie Santelle, one of the assistants with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, waiting for her. Dressed in a tailored black pantsuit, her dark hair done up in a sleek bun, Marie smiled, took Laura’s hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “How are you holding up?”
    “I’m fine.” What else could she say? That she hadn’t slept last night? That her stomach was tied in knots? That she felt terrified?
    Today, two years and three days after the SEALs rescued her from a living hell, she would see Al-Nassar again. She would face him in a courtroom, look him in the eyes, and denounce him to the world.
    It was the day she’d been waiting for. It was the day she’d been dreading.
    It was nearing the end of the second week of his trial, and his face had been all over the news, together with hers. It made no sense to Laura. The crimes he’d committed against her were the least of his offenses, nothing but a footnote in a criminal history that included terrorism and mass murder. And yet the press was obsessed with what he had done to
her
. Reporters had staked her out, called her at work, asked her questions that went beyond the public’s right to know, hoping to titillate their audiences with her worst memories, the ordeal she’d been fighting to put behind her fodder for public discussion on every channel, in every newspaper, on talk radio.
    Allt kommer att bli bättre med tiden.
    Everything will get better with time.
    Her grandmother’s reassuring words came back to her.
    Yes, it would all get better with time. It was already better.
    Laura was no longer the terrorized, shattered woman the SEALs had rescued, a woman who barely remembered her own name. A year and a half of living with her mother and grandmother in Stockholm, together with intensive daily therapy, had helped her begin to heal. She might not feel like her old self, but she was slowly defining her
new
self. Or so her therapist had said when she’d burst into tears of frustration one afternoon, angry at herself for still being so pathetically weak, so fearful, so broken.
    Her time as a captive made up only eighteen months out of thirty-two
years
of her life, and yet it seemed to define her. There were still days when the pain inside her was so strong she feared that if she started to cry, she would never be able to stop.
    Still, she had so many reasons to be grateful.
    She’d regained all the weight she’d lost and was no longer anemic. She was sleeping at night—most of the time. She was back in the States and had a nice loft in lower downtown Denver, or LoDo as locals called it. She had a seat on the I-Team—the award-winning Investigative Team at the
Denver Independent
newspaper. She’d even been on a few dates, though nothing had come of them.
    It was a new beginning even if it wasn’t the life she’d planned for herself. And yet no matter how good her life was now, she didn’t feel whole.
    One precious, important piece was still missing.
    “Sorry about the mob outside.” Marie gave