Stolen Memories

by Liz Johnson

  “I’m saying, we’ll let you know after you tell us what happened to Kay.”

  “Who?”

  Josh glared hard at the other man. “The missing baby. The one you stole from Emma.”

  “I don’t know. I gave the kid to the woman just like they told me to.”

  Serena and Josh shared a quick glance, and Zach caught Josh’s stare before he said, “We need details. What woman are you talking about?”

  For the first time, Frank’s shell cracked, and he gazed unblinking at his hands. “I don’t know who she was. I was told to just meet her and give her the baby. That’s it.”

  “Who told you where to meet her?” Serena’s tone was even but steely.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? How could you not know who you were dealing with?”

  With a shrug Frank sighed. “I got a phone call. They said Don—”

  Josh interrupted without remorse. “Saunders?”

  “Yeah. Saunders had recommended me. They said they needed a hand, and the money was good. I was just supposed to pick up some kid and deliver it to this motel. And if the mom put up a fight, I was supposed to do whatever it took.”

  Zach’s scowl grew with each syllable. How could a man be so driven by a paycheck to steal a child and beat a woman nearly to death? “Why that baby? Why did you attack Emma?”

  “They said the baby’s mom was some kid who didn’t want her anyway. I saw the mom give the kid to Emma, but a job’s a job, right? I had my instructions, so I just did what I was supposed to.”

  “So why keep coming after Emma?”

  Frank gave another shrug. “Loose ends. Couldn’t have her identifying me, especially if I want another job. Figure there’s an opening after Saunders died.”

  Serena’s careful mask wrinkled right along with her forehead. “Don is dead?”

  “Yep. Seems like someone wasn’t happy with the job he was doing.”

  “And these are the people that you wanted to work for?” Zach couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

  “Hey, man, I’ve got certain skills.” Like a heavy fist and no integrity. “I do whatever I’ve got to to make a living. I mean, I didn’t know I was messing with a cop’s girlfriend or anything, but I needed the money.”

  Zach’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t bother to correct Frank. Emma wasn’t his girlfriend. But not because he didn’t want her to be.

  Frank kept talking—his words all following an incoherent pattern. For all his desire to broker a deal, he didn’t really have much to say. They’d check out the motel where he dropped Kay off with the woman, who Frank couldn’t describe and hadn’t recognized.

  “Hey, it was late and dark, and I was tired.”

  His excuses for not remembering didn’t hold much weight when the reason for his exhaustion was the effort it took to attack Emma. In fact, everything he said just left a more bitter taste in Zach’s mouth, and after another twenty minutes, he was more than ready to send Frank back to lockup.

  As he stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind them, Zach offered his continued help to the marshals. “We’ll keep looking for Kay and Lonnie and will let you know the minute that we have a new lead, but I have a feeling that Frank isn’t going to be much help.”

  Serena pressed her hands to her hips and shook her head. “I can’t believe how little he actually knew. Other than Don’s death, he really gave us no new information.”

  “There’s not a likely plea bargain in his future,” Josh agreed, taking a similar stance as his partner, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants. “But we appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Anytime.”

  Zach shook their hands and watched them walk out of the station’s front door. His case was closed. Emma was safe and the right detectives were working the missing persons cases for Kay and Lonnie.

  As he dropped into the chair at his desk, he stared at the blank computer screen, his mind immediately returning to the first time he’d sat in this same chair, thinking about the same girl. Then he’d thought of her as a case.

  Now he knew her to be a woman who held his heart.

  He’d tried to stay away. He’d tried to keep his distance, to keep from becoming too emotionally attached.

  He’d failed.

  Miserably.

  Maybe if he just saw her one more time, that would quench the thirst to see her.

  Unlikely.

  But somehow it didn’t stop him from calling the hospital to see if she was still there.

  A soft-spoken switchboard operator answered his call.

  “Yes, this is Detective Jones with the Minneapolis Police Department. Can you tell me if Emma Bullock is still checked in?”

  “Well, I’ll just check on that for you.” The wait was nearly as awful as the news. “I’m sorry. She’s checked out.”

  “Thank you.” He settled the handset back into its cradle before scrubbing his hands over his face and shutting his eyes against the throbbing pain behind his eyes.

  This is what they needed. A clean break.

  Funny. It felt more like a broken heart.

  SEVENTEEN

  Zach still favored his right arm as he made his way across the living room to answer the doorbell. Gizmo barked at him to hurry up, wagging his tail and sniffing at the weather stripping along the threshold.

  “I’m coming, boy. Hold your horses.”

  The eager mutt pawed at the door, bouncing with joy when Zach swung it open.

  Julie—he kept forgetting that her name was Emma—stood on the porch, her hands locked in front of her. Her perfect pixie cut was styled to highlight her eyes, which were wide and as soft as melting chocolate. She bit into her bottom lip and lifted a shoulder in greeting.

  He pushed the storm door open. “Come on in.”

  Every fiber of his being screamed that he should pull her into his arms and hold her and kiss her until they forgot everything that Frank Adams had done.

  She looked just like his Julie, but she wasn’t that woman anymore. There was a certainty in her eyes that had never been there before, a certainty about who she was and what she wanted.

  Emma stepped into the living room, kneeling before Gizmo and scratching behind his ears. “Hey, boy. I’ve missed you.”

  Zach would have given everything he owned to hear her say that to him. Instead he fabricated a smile and responded, “He’s missed you, too.”

  “Really?” She looked up from her position on the floor, and he crossed his arms over his chest, another barrier. Anything to keep him from reaching for her.

  “I was just going to get a cup of coffee. Do you want one?”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  He traipsed toward the kitchen, and Gizmo’s clicking nails on the hardwood floor followed right behind him. He had to keep himself from looking directly at her. If he didn’t, there was no telling what he’d say or how he’d embarrass them both.

  Pulling two blue mugs from the cabinet, he poured steaming liquid into them. “How are you feeling?”

  When he turned, she had a hand up to her left cheek, her fingers shielding half her face. “Fine.”

  Which really meant that she was still covering the bruise from Adams.

  He handed her a mug, and she took it, immediately pressing it against her lips. Taking a tentative sip from his own cup, he tried to come up with something to say. It hadn’t been this awkward before. And he didn’t have a clue what had changed.

  “So where have you been staying?”

  “At the Holiday Inn off the interstate. My parents are here while I give my statements, and then they’re taking me back to Grand Forks.”

  He’d heard about her parents being in town. In fact, he’d purposely stayed away because he was sure that she’d want to spend her time with reminders of her real life and not the one that she’d fabricated with him.

  Except their weeks together had sure felt real to him.

&nb
sp; “So, you remember everything?”

  She nodded slowly, never taking her eyes off her jostling coffee. “Almost. Some things are a little hazy—like everything after Frank hit me over the head until I woke up in the hospital and saw you.”

  Her cheeks turned a soft shade of pink, and he leaned his hip against the edge of the counter, a slow smile crossing his face. He’d remember that day for a long while, too.

  “You probably saw the rest in my police statement.”

  “No. I haven’t seen it.” Actually, he didn’t want to see it. When Ramirez had asked if he wanted the video of her statement, he’d turned the other detective down flat. No way was his last visual of Emma going to be an out-of-focus recording in an interrogation room. He’d gotten the highlights from the file, but the memory of her hovering over him, her hands gentle and eyes wild—that was the image he’d planned on carrying with him for the rest of his life.

  This one—this twitchy, nervous version of Emma—didn’t fit with that other memory.

  He just had to get them to line up. “You want to tell me about it?”

  From beneath long lashes, she glanced up and nodded. “I grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It’s a pretty big town for North Dakota, but really small compared to the Twin Cities. It’s one of those places where everyone knows everyone else’s business. You know?”

  He smiled, hoping to keep her talking. Just the familiar sound of her voice set his heart on a faster rhythm.

  “Well, I’d been dating my high school sweetheart. I thought we were going to get married. And then right before Thanksgiving last year, he told me he was in love with my best friend.”

  Zach grunted. That had to hurt.

  She grimaced. “Yeah. It was awful, and it didn’t help that he was the quarterback of the high school football team that almost won state. Eight years later he was still revered, so everyone wanted to know what I had done to lose him. My parents were great, but they couldn’t save me from all the rude questions and sideways glances. Even a couple people at church felt free to ask me probing questions to the point that I just stopped going.”

  He rested a hand on the counter, leaning toward her, drawn by the gentle cadence of her words. “So how did you end up in Minneapolis?”

  “I’m a nurse—just like I remembered—and I worked for a pediatrician. This one day one of my old classmates brought her son in, and she thought that gave her permission to grill me about why my boyfriend had dumped me.

  “And that’s when I decided I needed a change of pace and a change of place. I applied for a job at the Amplatz Children’s Hospital, and they asked me to come down for an interview. Mom has a tendency to worry, so in case I didn’t get the job, I just told my parents I was going to visit a friend.”

  “Oh, I bet they were scared out of their socks when you didn’t come home.” Just the thought made his head spin. He’d been nearly out of his mind with worry when she’d been taken. How much worse was it for her parents when they didn’t have a clue where she was or if she was in danger?

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “Were you just checking out the city when you met Lonnie?”

  “I was leaving the hospital after my interview.” Her gaze roamed the ceiling as she sought the details. “Lonnie was sitting on a bench outside, and I stopped to get a bit of fresh air. One thing led to another, and she was telling me all about her baby, and how she was afraid that Kay was in trouble.” Emma’s lip trembled, and she took a quick swig out of her mug to cover the tell. But she couldn’t block the tears that pooled in her eyes. “Lonnie was scared. I kept telling her to take Kay to child protective services, but she was afraid of something. She just kept saying it wasn’t safe and it wasn’t right.”

  “What wasn’t right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her gaze was lost somewhere over his shoulder, and he prodded gently. “How did you end up at McNulty’s then?”

  “Um…Lonnie told me that she needed to run an errand, but she couldn’t take Kay with her. I should have said that I couldn’t, but when she asked me to take Kay and meet her outside McNulty’s near the park an hour later, I couldn’t refuse.”

  The pain of that night was visible in the lines around her mouth as she continued. “I waited for over an hour, just like Melinda said. And I started thinking maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe we were going to meet in the park, so I set out.” She sighed loudly. “And then there were these footsteps.”

  “He’d been following Kay.”

  “I figured that.” She pressed her lips into a tight line, eyes still unfocused. “He hit me so hard. It felt like my head was going to explode, but I just kept thinking that I had to protect Kay. I had to keep her safe.” She didn’t keep going, only hung her head low.

  He stepped toward her, putting a hand under her elbow. “Hey, this isn’t your fault. You did the best you could to protect her. And we’re going to find her.”

  “I know that, but it’s hard to know—” she thumped her chest twice “—that.”

  His arms itched to pull her close, to comfort her pain and remove the worry that wrinkled her forehead.

  Instead he shoved his hands into his pockets.

  She stared into the dregs of her mug. “I’m going back to Grand Forks this afternoon.”

  “That’s fast.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, wishing it was enough to clear the pain away with it.

  “Well, since Frank confessed to everything, you don’t need me anymore.”

  That wasn’t even close to the truth.

  But how could he ask a woman who had known the pain of losing her family so acutely to stay? No matter how much he cared for her, it was still a selfish request. If he asked her to stay, he’d take her away from the stability she most longed for.

  Dear Lord, he wanted to be selfish.

  She plunked her mug down on the counter, giving him a soft smile and resting a hand on his arm. “I’m going to miss you, Zach. I can’t thank you enough for everything.” Her gaze seemed to bore into his chest, right at the black-and-blue bruise that still covered his sternum.

  “Just doing my job.” That wasn’t even in the same state as the whole truth. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  “Please tell Samantha, Keaton and Reese that I’m so thankful for them, too. Keep in touch. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help find Kay.” Her glance swung to the door and then back again. “I wish I could stick around and help.”

  Strolling with her toward the front of the house, he put a hand on her shoulder. She tilted her chin up, and he couldn’t help himself. He pressed a quick kiss to her cheek before pulling away and staring out the far window. That had been a very stupid idea. He couldn’t go around kissing her just because he wanted to. Because now he wanted to so much more than he had before.

  A soft blush pinked her cheeks, and she clasped her hands in front her, her elbows locked at her sides. “Will you keep me updated on the case?”

  “You know I can’t discuss ongoing investigations, but yes. As much as I can. We won’t give up until they’re found. I promise.”

  Emma swung toward the door, then back toward him. All of the certainty that had been in her eyes was now gone. “Really. Thank you. You know, I was lost. I told myself that I wanted to leave Grand Forks because of the busybodies and rumor mill, but the truth is that I felt like God had given up on me, that He’d abandoned me. He’d taken away everything I thought I’d wanted, and I let myself pull away from Him.”

  She paused, and his heart stopped right along with her. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the simple beauty of her face.

  “And then, when I really didn’t have anything, I realized that God was still with me. I knew His words and the songs of praise that I’d been singing for years. It was like He’d written those words on the deepest part of my heart, so no matter how much I couldn’t remember, I would always know the truth. God didn’t abandon me. He just had something different in
mind for me.”

  Her eyes were bright, glistening in the rays of sunlight dancing through the window, and he had no words. He longed to hear her say that she wanted to stay with him, to see what might grow between them, that God had brought them together for a reason.

  When she didn’t say anything, he hugged her quickly and said his goodbyes.

  As he closed the door behind her, he smacked his forehead against the frame.

  What kind of idiot let a girl like that go? If he thought for a second that she wanted to stay half as much as he wanted her to, then he’d have gotten on his knees and pleaded with her to never leave. But she’d said she had a life, a home to get back to. Even when she hadn’t known where her home was, she’d missed it.

  “Man, you’re stupid.”

  He turned around with a start at his sister’s words. “What? Why?”

  “She was practically begging you to ask her to stay.” Samantha pranced down the last few steps and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Emma hadn’t implied any such thing.

  Had she?

  *

  Emma trotted down the steps in her parents’ modest Grand Forks home. She’d grown up here, and most of the pictures on the wall and nearly all the stories they told were connected to an actual memory from her childhood. The curtain had been pulled back until there were only a few dark spots in the recesses of her mind.

  Her parents had insisted that she stay with them for a couple weeks, and she’d been glad not to be alone in her apartment—not because she was afraid. Frank was locked up and she was safe.

  But just like it had at the hospital that first night after the showdown on the farm, a bittersweetness threatened to choke her. She had so much to be thankful for, yet knowing that she’d likely never see Zach again made her hands shake and her lungs burn.

  Her cell phone rang. Another unfamiliar number with a Minneapolis area code. It was probably the hospital again. They’d offered her the job at the children’s hospital—the one she’d interviewed for right before meeting Lonnie. And the head of nursing was eager for her response.

  She stared at the bright screen but let it go to voice mail. Their third call that week.