Read Online Forget Me Not: A Novel (Crossroads Crisis Center) by Vicki Hinze - Free Book Online Page A

than she’d deserved to be carjacked. “I don’t know how to brief you.”
    Dr. Talbot seemed disturbed by her response. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps it would be better—”
    Ben lifted a hand and Dr. Talbot fell silent.
    Ben looked straight at her. “Since you arrived, everyone at my tablehas been trying to help you. I’m not asking for a medical briefing. I just want to hear what you have to say.” His voice went tight. “I’d appreciate your answering me because I asked.”
    Be patient with him
.
    Help from his staff didn’t absolve him from offering others common courtesy and respect. The urge to tell him so burned in her throat, but he had eased up a bit, so he was making an attempt not to be obnoxious. Still, she didn’t want to be patient; she wanted to blister his ears.
    But she couldn’t do it. She trusted God more than herself. He had His reasons … and so must the people at the table. Not one of them had challenged Ben Brandt. Odd, because they all had been protective of her. When she’d talked to that police detective, Peggy insisted on being in the room, and both Dr. Talbot and Dr. Harper asked if she was sure she was up to talking with him.
    So if God was telling her to be patient with Ben and these people weren’t challenging the man, more had to be going on here than met the eye. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t much like it. Reading Ben the riot act would alleviate a lot of her stress, but rolling it all together left her with a choice to make.
    Whom did she follow? Her will or His?
    Swallowing a groan of dissent, she made her call. She’d walk in faith. God understood all of this, and He’d make His reasons clear to her in His own time.
    Shifting on her seat, she hoped that clarity would come sooner rather than later, though she’d rather not relive last night’s events for the fourth time this morning.
    Without the massive doses of adrenaline surging through her now as they had been then, this retelling proved the most difficult. Someone wanted her dead.
Dead
. And seeing skepticism written all over BenjaminBrandt’s face didn’t help a thing. Oh, he tried to hide it, but it was there, and it took its toll. Why did he have to fight himself not to be confrontational with her? She’d done nothing to him.
    The back of her nose burned, her eyes stung, and her voice repeatedly cracked, grating and ragged and as raw as she felt inside. The effort was draining, but she kept pushing, relaying everything she remembered from before arriving at his center.
    She finished, rubbed her arms, and willed herself to calm down. “I assume you know what’s happened since I’ve been here and I don’t have to repeat that too.”
    “Thank you, I do. I’ve been briefed on all that.”
    His expression had grown more sober as she’d spoken, yet something subtle she couldn’t pinpoint shifted in him. Maybe he realized his attitude was unfair, or that he’d come across hard, though she doubted it. And, gauging by his grim expression, it would take reaching for the stars to think she’d touched his compassion and his anger was directed at her attackers. So what was that shift in him? What did it mean?
    No sense in speculating on it. Yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. Whatever it was, it chiseled away her resentment until it nearly disappeared. That made no sense whatsoever—at least, not to her.
    “You’ve been very open, and I appreciate it,” Ben said. “I have only one question—curiosity, really.” His tone sounded as stiff as his broad shoulders looked. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
    Oh, she’d really rather not answer that. How could she make him understand something she didn’t understand herself? “I was afraid to go to the police.” She slid her gaze down to the table and focused on its sheen.
    “Why? Are they looking for you for something? What did you do?”
    She worried her lip with her teeth, wrung her hands in her lap. “That’s an absurd