by Delores Fossen, Rachel Lee, Carol Ericson, Tyler Anne Snell, Rita Herron
However, even with all the precautions they’d taken, Jack knew that the safe house information could be breached. Their computer filters were more elaborate than the ones on the laptop here, but someone determined to find Caroline could still get around them. A killer definitely fell into the “someone determined” category.
Caroline groaned softly and pushed her shoulder-length blond hair from her face. “I used to have a life. I’ve read about it,” she added in a grumble. “I came from almost nothing. My prostitute mother was killed by a drug dealer when I was eight, and I ended up in foster care.” She looked ready to tack on more to that recap of her childhood, but then she stopped, paused. “I got through all of that to get a job working for one of the top criminal profiling experts.”
Jack nodded. Yep, all of that was true. She’d had a life, all right, and even though she was alive, she might never get that life back. Would certainly never undo the fallout to her reputation because of the work she’d done with that top expert.
What Caroline hadn’t just mentioned in the rundown of her life was her police record. A sealed juvie rap sheet that she wouldn’t have been able to access without the prime hacking skills that she’d had before she lost her memory.
This woman with the angel face and almost fragile-looking body had been arrested when she was fifteen for hacking into multiple state records to find the dealer who’d killed her mother. Caroline had then stolen a car, tracked down the man and managed to bash him in the gut with a baseball bat before calling the cops to come and get him. The cops had gone easy on her because of the extenuating circumstances, but she’d still spent some time in juvie lockup.
“I saw a picture of Eric Lang,” Caroline went on. She groaned again. “I suppose you know all there is to know about him.” But she waved that off. “Of course, you do. You’re a marshal. You’re Sheriff Buck Slater’s son.”
Jack stayed quiet, but he knew Eric all right. Eric had been the research assistant for Caroline and her boss/friend Gemma Hanson at the college where the three of them had been working on a new computer program for profiling serial killers. The irony was that Eric himself had been a serial killer, and neither Gemma nor Caroline had picked up on it. Eric had hidden it from the women. From everyone. Then, Eric had nearly killed both Caroline and Gemma when he’d taken them hostage. That was what had sent Jack’s father to an abandoned hotel, where he’d been killed.
Gemma had managed to escape that night. Caroline hadn’t. Eric had taken her and disappeared into the darkness with her. No one, not even Caroline, was certain what had happened after that, but she’d shown up in Longview Ridge a year later. Because of her amnesia, though, she hadn’t been able to tell them what’d happened to her.
“Eric is dead,” Jack reminded her. “He was shot and killed three months ago, shortly after you came back to Longview Ridge.”
Of course, he’d already told her that, and she had almost certainly read about it in those internet articles, but Jack wanted to spell it out for her that she didn’t have to be afraid of Eric. He couldn’t come after her again.
“Was I stupid?” she blurted out. Man, the anger had returned with a vengeance, not just in her tone but in her expression. “Was that why I couldn’t see a serial killer was working right next to me?”
Jack hated to see her beating herself up like this. “You definitely weren’t stupid. I met Eric, too, and I didn’t make him for a killer. A lot of people didn’t.”
That didn’t seem to appease her one bit. Her forehead still stayed bunched up, making the scar there even more obvious. A scar that she’d gotten during her captivity. Possibly from Eric, when he’d clubbed her on the head that night she was taken hostage. Of course, until Caroline got back her memory, she wouldn’t be able to confirm if that was what had actually happened.
“And what about us?” Caroline threw out there.
Lucille’s gaze fired to Caroline, then him. Jack didn’t know what to make of the question, either. In the past three months, Caroline hadn’t asked about them as a couple, but that was because Jack had never stayed around for an actual conversation. He visited twice a week, to check if Caroline’s memory had returned. And once Lucille and Caroline assured him that it hadn’t, he always left.
Just as Lucille did now.
The nurse must have thought they needed some privacy, because she mumbled something about needing to get something from her bedroom and walked out. Jack hadn’t even been sure that Lucille knew Caroline and he had once been lovers.
Had been in love, he mentally corrected.
Jack hadn’t talked about that with Lucille or anyone else, for that matter. Still, maybe Lucille had picked up on something or had been doing her own reading about Caroline. That would only be natural, he supposed, since Lucille and Caroline lived under the same roof, and Lucille was partly responsible for Caroline’s safety.
“There was something about us in the articles you read?” Jack countered.
Best not to blurt out any details that Caroline didn’t know or hadn’t remembered. That was what the doctors had told him to do anyway. Keep the interaction between them to a minimum so there’d be no risk of planting memories in her head. That way, when she did recall something, it would be because it was a genuine memory. It was another reason he’d need to let her doctors know about this conversation.
When Caroline didn’t answer, he looked at her. He saw maybe a flicker of recognition, or something, before she turned away. As she’d done earlier, she waved that off.
Jack would have pressed her for more info, pushing just a little, but his phone dinged, and he saw the file his partner, Teagan, had sent. Lucille must have heard the sound, too, because she hurried back into the kitchen.
“Any problem?” Lucille asked.
“Video from the security cameras.” He motioned for her to come closer so she could take a look. When Caroline moved in, too, Jack had to consider which would upset her more: if she saw a would-be killer or if he kept her from seeing one.
He decided to let her watch.
It put them in close contact, with Lucille on one side of him and Caroline on the other. Caroline still didn’t touch him, even though her arm was less than an inch from his.
Jack sped up the feed, going through minutes of what the cameras had recorded. Minutes of nothing.
And then there was something.
He slowed down the speed and then paused it when the man came into view. The guy was just as Lucille had described him—dark hair and jeans, and he was indeed by the pond. Too bad the guy was turned away from the camera so that only the side of his face was visible.
The man didn’t have a drawn weapon, but Jack didn’t like the way he was just standing there. If this was someone who’d just wandered onto the property, he should have been firing glances all around. Or leaving.
Jack touched the screen, moving it frame by frame until he finally got a shot he wanted. The guy turned to face the camera. Jack paused it again, enlarging it so he could run it through facial recognition software.
Caroline gasped. “Oh, God. Jack, I know him.”
Shaking her head, she stepped back and pressed her fingers to her mouth. But only for a moment. Caroline’s eyes widened when she saw that she’d gotten his complete attention. He could also see that she quickly tried to shut back down to that flat expression she’d worn for the past three months. But it was too late for that.
For that mask.
Because Jack had seen the recognition in her eyes. Better yet, he’d heard it in her voice.
Jack.
“You remembered something?” Lucille quickly asked, maybe not picking up on the sudden slash of tension between her patient and Jack. “Do you really know who that man is?”
Caroline didn’t even look at the nurse. She kept her gaze fastened on Jack. Recognition, definitely. And some defiance. She hiked up her chin, an
d her mouth went into a flat line.
“Yes, I know that man,” Caroline said, her stare drilling into Jack. “And I know you.”
Chapter Two
Caroline’s heart had gone to her knees at the exact moment she’d said Jack’s name. Mercy, what had she done?
She wanted to take back the last handful of seconds, wanted to fix her expression so that Jack wouldn’t see right through her. But she couldn’t. The lid was off Pandora’s box, and it wasn’t going back on. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now she had that face on the security video to worry about.
Caroline swallowed hard and looked at Lucille, who immediately took hold of her arm. “You need to sit down,” Lucille instructed. “You look like you’re about to pass out.” She tried to lead Caroline back into the living room, but she held her ground. “Did your memory really come back?” Lucille asked.
“Yes,” Caroline managed to say.
Lucille let out a huge breath of relief. Of course, the nurse didn’t know how dangerous the man she’d recognized was. She also didn’t know something Jack had already figured out.
That she’d regained her memory days ago.
As if celebrating and relieved by the progress, Lucille hugged her. “I’ll need to call your doctor. Maybe we can drive out to see him?”
Even though Caroline liked her doctors and she’d had no trouble on the previous trips to San Antonio for her exams, she definitely didn’t want a doctor right now.
“No. Could you give me a moment alone with Marshal Slater?” Caroline asked. It probably seemed petty or insulting to Jack that she’d call him by his surname now, but saying Jack seemed too, well, intimate.
Considering all the other intimate things they’d done, it would be so easy to slip back into that. After all, she had only told one man that she loved him, and it was the same man who was now glaring at her.
Lucille continued to give her a long, concerned look. “Should I get your meds?”
“No,” Caroline repeated. “I’m not going to have a panic attack.” She thought that was true, anyway, and even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t deal with the haze that the meds created in her mind. “I just need a moment with Marshal Slater. It’s...personal.”
“Oh.” Lucille seemed relieved, which meant that maybe she knew or had guessed that Jack and Caroline had once been involved.
Jack knew it too, of course. There was nothing wrong with his memory. Or his glare. He stood there, all lanky and lean, looking more cop than cowboy now—though he was both. He’d come from a long line of Texas cowboys, and it fit him as well as his jeans and his ice-blue shirt.
No ice in his eyes, though. There was so much fire and heat in the depths of all that gray. The color of a dangerous storm cloud ready to shoot some lightning bolts her way. His hair was even darker than that. Midnight black. And right now his clothes, his expression and everything else about him made him seem more than a little dangerous.
Caroline waited until Lucille was out of the room before she said anything else. She turned to Jack, and she answered his question before he could even ask it. “Three days ago. That’s when I regained my memory.”
Muscles stirred in his jaw, and she doubted his eyes could narrow even more. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Oh, he was so not going to like this, and worse, she wasn’t going to have time to smooth it over. No time to try to make him understand. “I don’t know who killed your father. That’s the truth.”
“And I’m just to believe that after you’ve lied to me for three days, or longer?” Jack snarled.
Good point, and Caroline conceded that with a weary sound of agreement. It hadn’t been longer, but she doubted she could convince him of that.
“The night Eric Lang kidnapped me, he did injure me,” Caroline continued. “He bashed me on the head with his gun.” She idly rubbed the scar on her forehead that she’d gotten from that attack. “And when that wasn’t enough to render me unconscious, he pumped me full of drugs. Then he hid me and Gemma in one of the rooms of the abandoned hotel, Serenity Inn.”
No need for her to get into too many specifics on the location. Jack had almost certainly searched every inch of that old hotel and gone over all the details of the investigation that followed. He knew that Eric had indeed managed to escape with her, and Jack had likely found her blood or some other evidence in that crumbling, smothering room that had once been part of a Victorian mansion.
“Eric didn’t kill your father,” she went on. “Eric was with me, holding a gun to my bleeding head when I heard the shots. And yes, I know it was the shots that killed your dad, because I also heard Gemma scream. I could hear the chaos that followed.” She had to pause and gather her breath. With her breath, though, came the images.
Mercy, the images.
Caroline had to try to rein all of that in. If she had a panic attack, Lucille would force her into taking those meds, and that couldn’t happen. She needed to finish what she had to say.
“Eric got away with me,” Caroline went on several moments later while Jack stood there and drilled holes in her with his intense stare. “By then, I was barely conscious, but he talked to someone on the phone. A cop or some kind of lawman. And that person helped him escape. I know the caller was in law enforcement because there was a police radio in the background.”
She didn’t expect Jack to buy that, and even if he did, it still wouldn’t justify her withholding the information that she’d regained her memory or the fact that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.
“Before I got my memory fully back, before I remembered us, I thought the person talking to Eric that night was you,” she said. That didn’t come out right, so she shook her head. “Or rather, someone you knew, because the other words I heard were ‘Longview Ridge Sheriff’s Office.’ I heard dispatch codes. I thought it could be someone you wouldn’t believe would help a serial killer, and that your disbelief would allow him to get to me or someone else.”
Now he cursed, and those jaw muscles went to war with each other. “I’m not dirty, and I don’t know any marshal or cop who is. I sure as hell wouldn’t have helped Eric.”
“Maybe not. But someone with a badge did. And I decided that if I wanted to stay alive, I couldn’t trust you, the other marshals or anyone in your family.”
He opened his mouth as if to blast her with verbal fire, but then he stopped, and it looked as if he’d done some reining in of his emotions, as well. “Yet you let me put you here. You let me come here to visit you.”
She lifted her shoulder, tapped her head. “I didn’t know, not when I came here. Three days ago, when the memories came, I decided I was safe as long as you and everyone connected to you thought I wasn’t a threat. Or as long as you believed that I could eventually tell you who killed your father.” Caroline took his phone. “But he’s a threat. I don’t have to guess about that.”
Jack’s glare got even worse, and she could tell the last thing he wanted to do was switch subjects. But he was also a lawman, and he’d seen the way she’d reacted to the man. Of course, maybe he thought she had faked that fear, too.
She hadn’t.
“His name is Kingston Morris,” she continued when Jack didn’t say anything else. “And he was friends with Eric. The fact that he’s here means he knows where I am and that he could have come here to kill me. Maybe to tidy up loose ends for his old friend.”
“Kingston Morris,” he repeated, not just once but several times as if testing to see if it rang any bells. “His name didn’t come up in the investigation.”
“It wouldn’t have. I only remember Kingston coming in one time to the office where Eric and I worked.”
“The office at the college.” There was plenty of skepticism in his voice. “And yet you remembered him after just one meeting.”
She shrugged. “He gave me the
creeps.”
That was an understatement. The guy had made her skin crawl, and because Kingston had seemed to worship Eric, that was the first time Caroline had started to look at Eric in a different light. That was the beginning of her seeing the monster crouched just below the facade he put on as a research assistant. Too bad she hadn’t seen it a whole lot sooner. If she had, Jack’s dad might be alive. Many others, too.
“If Eric and he were friends, Kingston’s name should have come up,” Jack concluded.
“Eric had erased all of his contacts. Or rather, he only left contacts and info that he didn’t mind being discovered. He just used burner phones for getting in touch with anyone who was important to him.”
“And this Kingston was important?” Jack asked while he typed something on his phone. She then heard the swooshes of outgoing texts. Maybe he was reaching out to his marshal friends to do a quick background check on Kingston. She hoped he hadn’t mentioned that she’d regained her memory.
She nodded in reply to his question. “After Eric managed to get me away from the abandoned inn, it was Kingston who helped Eric get some money. I heard their phone conversation, too, and Kingston was like a groupie. He idolized Eric, would do anything for him.”
This time Jack said a single word of profanity. “And you didn’t think you should give this info to someone?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Even if you didn’t trust me, you could have told the cops.”
“I didn’t know if I could trust them, either.” She had to pause again. “And I really did have amnesia until three days ago.”
He made a sound that conveyed a whole boatload of doubt.
“I was in a hospital in Mexico,” Caroline went on. “I’m not sure how I got there, but I think Eric took me across the border, and then I escaped. Or he could have left me for dead. Someone found me in a ditch and took me to the hospital. I had injuries other than just to my head. Broken bones, and I’d been beaten. There were lots of cuts and bruises on my face.”