Harlequin Superromance November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Mary Brady

  “You know how after that annexation we’re underfunded and shorthanded....”

  Wasted breath. They weren’t allocating their resources adequately. They needed to teach their men to do the job and do it right. What Bystrom was going to tell the press, the council and the mayor was that the kid’s sergeant hadn’t been authorized to send him out on patrol alone. There had been a failure of communication, which he was going to right. Bystrom wanted that sergeant, and maybe the watch commander, slapped hard for embarrassing this department.

  Colin suggested that this might be a great opportunity to go to the council for increased funding to plug some of the gaps that had left them so vulnerable. Use this as a lesson in what could go wrong.

  Bystrom stared coldly at him and said, “I’m supposed to tell them we can’t do the goddamn job, but they should throw more money at us?”

  The two police captains left the chief’s office and walked together in complete silence downstairs and straight out the station’s front door. They still hadn’t spoken a word when they reached the playground and picnic area half a block away, blanketed with eighteen inches of snow on the ground from this pre-Christmas winter blast. Neither of them was wearing a parka. Neither cared.

  They paused and stood side by side, gazing toward the river running between puffy white banks. Their breath emerged in clouds.

  “That asshole,” Brian said at last.

  Colin made a sound that on a better day would have been a laugh. “No news there.”

  “We could have lost an officer yesterday, and to friendly fire. Bystrom doesn’t give a goddamn about Palmer.” He let loose with another expletive. “But if Palmer had ended up dead, our fair leader would have looked damn fine telling the world how Angel Butte police officers take care of their own, and how he’d be there for the young wife and two preschool children. After which, hell, he’d have probably hit the slopes. Didn’t I hear the summit lift on Bachelor is open?”

  “Yep.”

  After another silence, he asked reflectively, “Do you think he has the new mayor in his pocket yet?”

  To the consternation of the old guard, Linarelli had lost the election earlier this month to a Democrat who’d served only one term on the city council. Nobody yet knew what to make of Noah Chandler, whom everyone remembered had worn his hair in a ponytail when he moved to Angel Butte ten years ago and opened the town’s first brew pub. Still only thirty-five, he now owned three, the one here in Angel Butte, one in Sisters and a third in Bend. He was an entrepreneur who was going places. The ponytail was long gone; nobody could argue he didn’t have finely honed political instincts. Colin had voted for him and celebrated when he won. He hadn’t yet gone out on a limb and taken the problem that was his boss to the new mayor.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Did you see the press conference they did together? They didn’t look real friendly.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Brian agreed thoughtfully.

  A phone rang, and they both glanced down at their belts. “Mine,” Colin said, lifting it to see the number. He didn’t recognize it, but the area code was 206. Seattle. He heard the way his voice roughened when he said, “I’ve got to take this,” and turned away.

  “Later,” Brian said with a nod, and started back toward the station.

  Colin answered the phone. “McAllister.”

  A woman said hesitantly, “This is Nell Smith. You gave me your card. I’m, uh...”

  Triumph roared through him. “Maddie Dubeau.” He’d expected to wait a lot longer than four days for her to decide, however tentatively, to trust him.

  There was a pause. “That’s what you called me.”

  He waited.

  “You said we could talk.” There was restraint in her voice. Maybe more. Fear, at a guess.

  “I meant it. I’ve waited a long time to talk to you,” he told her.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, so softly she was nearly whispering.

  A group came out of the station and turned his way. They were all under him, a mix of people from Records and his own support staff. He nodded and started toward the parking lot.

  “Listen,” he said, “are you somewhere I can call you back in ten minutes? I don’t want to be overheard.”

  “Oh! No! I mean, yes, that’s fine. I’m home.”

  “Okay. Ten minutes,” he promised, and hit End. He called his administrative assistant and said, “Something has come up. You can reach me at home.”

  He made it there in eight minutes and let himself in. He took just long enough to crank up the thermostat and ditch the tie, then pulled her number up on his cell phone and looked at it with wonder that made him feel almost boyish. Maddie Dubeau. Who would believe this?

  She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “This is Colin McAllister.”

  “Oh.” Pause. “Thank you for returning my call.”

  He’d have given anything to be able to see her face. “I’m sorry I scared you that night,” he said.

  “It wasn’t so much because we were alone in the parking lot.” She took a breath he could hear. “It was just because...”

  “I recognized you.”

  “Yes. You’re the first person, in all these years.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “The thing is...I don’t remember.” In a rush, she said, “The first thing I knew, I was in a car trunk. I was unconscious some of the time. Finally the car stopped, and I found a latch that folded the backseat down and got out. It was...it was an ARCO station, you know, with a mini-mart, at a freeway exit in the middle of nowhere. I hid for a long time, and eventually managed to get in the back of a U-Haul truck.”

  Hearing the stress in her voice, he made sure his was soothing. “You ended up in Seattle?”

  “Portland. I stayed there for the first couple of years.”

  “Why didn’t you get help? Come home?”

  The silence this time was so long he almost broke it. Finally, she said softly, “I didn’t remember my name. I didn’t know where home was.”

  “Damn,” he whispered. He sank down on a bar stool in his kitchen. “Maddie...”

  “Nell.” She sounded upset, maybe even angry. “I’m Nell.”

  “Nell.” He cleared his throat. “When did you remember?”

  “I didn’t.” Now her voice was small and tremulous. Oh, yeah, she was all over the emotional map. “I still don’t. Exactly. That’s why you scared me.”

  Stunned, he said, “But when I said your name, you knew.”

  These pools of silence had such emotional density, he had trouble surfacing to draw a breath. Her distress was nearly unbearable when he couldn’t read her expressions, couldn’t touch her.

  “Yes,” she said. “But not until I heard you say it. It was like...something I already knew slipped into place. See, I do have memories. Jumbled ones. When I went online and saw pictures of my parents, I knew their faces.”

  “You were scared because I could identify you.”

  “I’ve always been scared. I never wanted to remember. I know I was abducted, but...I think I was running, too. I think I knew someone was after me. Maybe even that...whoever it was might kill me.”

  A chill crawled up his spine, one that reminded him of that night, when he’d stood in the dark staring at that bike and the blood that had pooled in the red dirt.

  “You don’t think your parents could protect you.”

  “No. Or else...”

  The chill spread, lifting the small hairs on his forearms. “You’re afraid of them, too.”

  “Maybe,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

  Now he was the one to let the silence grow while he tried to think.

  “Why did you call?” he asked at last. “Why are y
ou admitting this to me?”

  “I thought maybe I could trust you. It’s been hard, never telling anyone. And not knowing if I’m really crazy.”

  “I don’t know a lot about amnesia,” he admitted. “I’ll tell you this. I encourage my officers to listen to their instincts. When we feel unease, or fear, there’s a reason. We notice things our conscious minds don’t acknowledge. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

  Nell was quiet for a minute. When she said, “Thank you for saying that,” she sounded calmer.

  “What is it you thought you could trust me to do?”

  A hitch of her breath told him her anxiety had kicked up again. “I don’t know! I don’t know what I want!”

  “Maybe,” he said, “it’s time you came home.”

  Silence again. “Do you know them? My parents?”

  “I’ve seen your mother. Never talked to her. Your father I have occasional dealings with. They seem like decent people, Nell. I’m pretty sure not a day goes by that you’re not on their minds.”

  She was panting now. “I need to think about it.”

  “Okay,” he said, making his voice gentle. “That’s good, Nell. There’s no hurry. I won’t pressure you. I promised.” He couldn’t have even said where he was; he had never been focused so intently on the tiniest whisper of sound coming through a phone receiver. All he could see was her face. Not the one in the photo, but the woman in the parking lot. His chest felt bruised. “Maybe I can call you tomorrow. We can talk. Not about this. Just to get to know each other. If you have to trust me, you should know me.”

  The small sound she made might have been a laugh, or a sob. “Yes. Thank you. I’d like that. I work until five....”

  “In the evening, then. I’ll call.”

  “You’ve been...very kind. Thank you, Captain.”

  “Colin.”

  “Colin. Goodbye.”

  He said goodbye, too, then sat where he was, trying to understand why he felt so much.

  Damn it, he had to think like the cop he was. He wasn’t twenty-two anymore with a hero complex.

  On the face of it, her story was unlikely. He’d never believed in the kind of amnesia that gave someone an excuse for having walked away from a failed life. Short-term memory loss, sure. After trauma, people often lost the previous day, say, although usually only temporarily.

  In her case, if she were telling the truth, she sounded as if she’d wanted to forget. The head injury had helped her along. Given her subconscious justification to ditch memories that were too painful to hang on to.

  He didn’t know if that made sense, but it was the best he could do. He was confident she wasn’t a con artist who’d learned that the Dubeaus were well-to-do and thought she’d get something out of them. Nell Smith was Maddie, no question. It wasn’t just her features that made him so sure; it was what was in her eyes. Big and brown and beautiful, those eyes had been hiding so much. They still were.

  There in the quiet of his own kitchen, Colin made a harsh sound. The only explanation for his own credulity was that there was simply something about her. There always had been.

  And that would have to do until he figured out the rest.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I’M NOT SURE you’d recognize big parts of town even if you hadn’t lost your memory,” Colin said. “Twelve years is a long time.”

  Transfixed by the quiet rumble of his voice, Nell clung to her phone. She’d silenced it earlier when she went to her book club, but hated the idea of missing a call from him. She had become so hungry for his calls, she felt pathetic. How embarrassing if he ever knew she had put his photo on her refrigerator door where she could see it when she paced through her small apartment talking to him. This call had started with him wishing her happy birthday—Maddie’s birthday. She was still reeling from knowing when she was really born. The fact that he’d remembered and wanted to call today of all days had brought her close to tears.

  “I checked the town out online,” she told him. “To see if anything looked familiar.”

  “Did it?”

  “Maybe the river. And...and a park.” She had started breathing hard when she looked at those pictures.

  “There are only two large parks within city limits.” A new thread in his voice was hard to single out and identify. Compassion? Pity? “Angel Butte and River Park, which combines a couple of picnic areas, a playground, a boat landing for canoes and kayaks, and maybe fifteen acres of old ponderosa forest.”

  The always-hovering panic clutched at her throat. “That’s where you found my bike.”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t know why her hands were shaking. Whatever happened was a long time ago. Of course she knew it was that park. And didn’t she want answers?

  I don’t know. No. Maybe.

  She focused on his face in the newspaper photo she could have seen clearly even with her eyes closed. Those watchful, penetrating eyes made her feel safe.

  Which didn’t mean she wanted to talk about this anymore.

  “You’ve never said where you grew up.” He had promised—hadn’t he?—to let her get to know him so that she could trust him. He’d been keeping that promise, although in their four previous conversations he had mostly told her about his job and some of his frustrations. Otherwise, they’d talked about unimportant things. Their plans for Thanksgiving, the way they celebrated holidays in general, national politics, music, movie and book tastes. It had occurred to her they’d had the kind of conversations that newly dating couples had.

  “I grew up right here,” he said simply. “If I didn’t think of Angel Butte as home, I’d have looked for another job a long time ago.”

  “But you said your sister is here in Seattle.”

  He was silent for a moment, making her wonder if this were more personal than he wanted to get.

  He promised, she told herself stubbornly.

  “My parents divorced when I was sixteen and Cait was only ten. My mother has moved around some. Cait ended up going to Whitman College, and she’s now in grad school at the UW.”

  Nell nodded; she’d finished her B.A. at the University of Washington, which also had one of the nation’s top graduate programs in library and information science. She had been saving, but the idea of not being able to work more than part-time for the two years it would take her to earn her master’s degree made her cautious.

  “The divorce was bitter,” he said, before she could ask an innocuous question, like what his sister was studying. “I didn’t see much of them after that.”

  He’d closed up, as if he were reluctant to betray emotion.

  “Why?” she asked, then flushed with shame. “I’m sorry. That’s really nosy of me. I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, and it really isn’t any of my business.”

  “That’s not true, Nell. I want us to be friends. The fact that I know so much about you has got to make you uneasy. I’ve been hoping we can find a better balance.”

  Uneasy? What a weak word to describe this complex brew. It bubbled in her chest, sometimes barely simmering, sometimes reaching a furious boil that splattered her painfully and threatened to overflow.

  He didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he went on.

  “I haven’t spoken to my mother in, oh, seven or eight years and not often before that. I hated my father, and she chose to take my sister but not me when she left.”

  “You hated your father?” And he had lost his mother, too.

  “He abused my mother and beat me. I...tried to protect her, and most of all Cait, but it wasn’t always possible. I was as big as he was by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, and I quit taking it. We fought, sometimes physically. Punched holes in the walls, threw furniture. I suspect that, by the time my mother worked up the nerve to leave him, she asso
ciated me with the violence as much as she did Dad.”

  “So she saved herself and not you.”

  “That’s what she did,” he said flatly. “I forgave her in one way, because she did save Cait, too.”

  “I can’t imagine abandoning my own child.”

  She could hear him breathing. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he managed a wry chuckle. “By that age I was hairy, six feet tall, uncommunicative and angry all the time. Probably didn’t bear much resemblance to her little boy.”

  “Still.” Nell pictured boys she’d gotten to know at SafeHold. Rebellious, obscene, angry and, yes, violent, but also bewildered—the vulnerable boys still visible beneath the troubled teenagers.

  “Still,” Colin echoed, and she heard that same bewilderment in his voice, although she doubted he was aware of it.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t run away.”

  “Crossed my mind, but I was too proud. I vowed never to back down. If he beat me bloody every day, I wasn’t going to surrender one iota of defiance and hate.” Colin was all man now, sardonic and almost amused at the idiot boy who had set himself up for such brutality. “Kept my vow, too.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Finally left for college—none too soon—at Portland State University. Started out thinking I was pre-law, but after a few courses in criminal justice, I was sucked in. The couple of times cops came to our house, I saw that Dad was intimidated by them. I guess there’s nothing subtle about my choice.”

  Nell found herself smiling. “No.”

  “Fortunately, I got over the swaggering ‘I am armed and more powerful than you’ phase quickly. I hadn’t been home in four years. I’m sure I took the job in Angel Butte because I wanted to face down the monster from my childhood, but...”

  Nell didn’t say anything, only waited for him to think through how much he wanted to share, or perhaps choose the right words to describe how he had felt.

  “While I was gone I’d grown, or he’d shrunk, I was never sure which. No surprise, he was a heavy drinker and was showing the effects by that time. He owned a tavern when I was growing up, but he’d lost it. Angel Butte was changing, brew pubs were already hot and his place was dimly lit, unwelcoming to women, homey only to intolerant sons of bitches like him. Business declined and he had to give up. Ended up bartending for someone else—finally lost that job, too. He was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer four years ago.”