The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  His heart plummeted when she shook her head. “I’m not ready for emotional risk, Greg. If I don’t open up to people, I can stay safe.”

  “Just tell me where you’re from.”

  She peered at him above the pillow, her eyes moist. “I came here from Snowflake.”

  Instantly at attention, Greg forced himself not to budge from his relaxed position. “You lived there with your husband?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Is that where you grew up?”

  “No.”

  “So where did you grow up?”

  “In the south.”

  “Alabama? Louisiana? Georgia?”

  She nodded.

  He could sense how hard she was trying. And he didn’t want to push her. “Did you have brothers and sisters?” he asked mildly.

  Beth shook her head for the third time. Greg wondered if it was merely reaction to being questioned or an actual answer.

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  Another brief shake of the head.

  God, it was worse than he’d realized. He couldn’t imagine how horrendous it would be to face life knowing you were so totally alone. Even in the worst of times, he’d always had Bonnie. And Shelter Valley.

  “You can trust me,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I want to help.”

  “Then, please be my friend, Greg. Be my friend until I can work through this.”

  Her words brought him a surge of joy. Yet he couldn’t take a chance on being mistaken. “You’re sure that’s what you want?” he asked, his gaze direct, probing.

  “Yes.”

  “You wouldn’t rather I just disappeared and let you get back to the business of surviving?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Beth grinned; her eyes filled with tears that pooled but didn’t fall. “I’m afraid I’m going to freeze to death and not even know it.”

  He had no sense of what he should say. What he should do.

  “You make me feel, Greg. For the first time in six months, I’m feeling.”

  He needed her to continue. To explain herself. He waited.

  “And the feelings are…good.”

  “I’m attracted to you.” He wasn’t going to pretend.

  “I know.”

  “And I think you’re attracted to me, too.”

  “I know.”

  She knew she was? Or that he thought she was? Somehow it didn’t matter. Either way, they’d just established something important.

  “I’ll be your friend for as long as it takes.” The words were a promise. One he was determined to keep.

  “Thank you.”

  Her tremulous smile was beautiful. And young. Almost innocent. It planted itself in Greg’s heart.

  “I’d like one thing, though,” he said.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “I’d like you to be my friend, too.”

  “Oh.” Her brow clearing instantly, Beth met his gaze with clear eyes. “I can do that.”

  He felt hopeful. Capable. Strong. “Does a friend get to do any touching?”

  The frown was back. “What kind of touching?”

  “Any kind,” he said. He was willing to take anything. “A hug. Maybe—” he paused, reached over and took her hand “—just this.” Her hands were slim, feminine. And had elicited such intense and powerful music from Bonnie’s piano that it still reverberated in his head.

  Looking down at their joined hands, Beth smiled. There was hesitation in the tentative way she turned her hand, taking hold of his. “This is okay,” she said.

  Then, he’d leave it at that. For now.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DEPUTY BURT CULVER SHUT HIS OFFICE DOOR when the number popped up on his caller ID. It was Wednesday. He’d been waiting since Monday morning.

  Picking up the receiver, he leaned against the edge of his desk, staring out at the Native Reservation that stretched for miles on the other side of the road. “It’s not good,” he said in lieu of hello to the retired sheriff on the other end of the line.

  “Tell me.”

  “Richards is looking at those photos from ten years ago.”

  “There’s nothing for him to find.”

  Culver relaxed slightly at the lack of hesitation in the older man’s reply. Everything he cared about—his job—was at stake. And for once, he wasn’t in complete control. He was being driven to do things, make choices, he wouldn’t ever have thought he’d make.

  But he couldn’t lose his job. Being a cop was his only reason for living.

  “We’re talking about the magic man here,” he reminded his ex-superior, tugging on his ear. “Richards is always pulling stuff out of thin air.”

  “Only if it exists. Richards is a great cop. He won’t waste taxpayers’ money looking for something that’s not there.”

  “He’s studying the front ends.”

  “Don’t wimp out on me now, Culver. I’m telling you there’s nothing for him to find.”

  “You’d better be damn sure about that.” Culver didn’t usually talk to his mentor like that. Remorse silenced the rest of what he’d been about to say. “I’m a good cop,” he said instead, by way of apology.

  “You’d give your life to see justice upheld. Same as me. And Richards, too. Relax, Deputy. You’ve done nothing wrong. You have nothing to fear.”

  Culver nodded, gritting his teeth. All he’d ever wanted was to be a cop. If he loved anything at all, it was his work. With a dissatisfied grunt, he dropped the phone back in its cradle.

  Reaching behind him, he yanked out his top drawer, grabbed the bottle of antacids and gulped down a couple.

  All he’d really done was plead the Fifth. He wasn’t going down for that.

  BETH WOKE UP SWEATING. Her eyes immediately went to the night-light by Ryan’s crib, then to the mattress where her son lay sleeping. His breathing was even.

  Thank God.

  Heart pounding, shivering, Beth stumbled from the bed. Scrambled for the notebook in her underwear drawer, but couldn’t make herself do more than hold on to it.

  A glass of water might help. Might bring reality into focus, chase away the demons of a darkness she didn’t understand.

  She’d had the dream again. Not that she remembered it. Ever. But it always left her with this debilitating sense of impending death. She carried around a fear she couldn’t conquer. Couldn’t even identify.

  The dime-store plastic tumblers were neatly arranged in two colorful rows on the bottom shelf of one of the three kitchen cabinets. She would’ve preferred glass, but wasn’t going to waste money on purchasing two sets. And Ry needed plastic. She supposed this told her something about herself—that she didn’t like mixing and matching, craved complete sets. Something to write in her notebook.

  A half bag of ice remained on the shelf she’d designated for ice in the freezer. She’d have to buy more in the morning. It seemed odd to her, this practice of buying ice. She was pretty sure that where she came from, they just used the ice most freezers produced automatically. And those who were in less financially advantaged situations, like hers and didn’t have a newer refrigerator, made ice by filling trays with water from the kitchen faucet and freezing it.

  In Shelter Valley the water didn’t taste right for drinking directly from the tap.

  Ice in the glass, water from the gallon jug she’d purchased at the grocery, a sip. Then two.

  And still, book in hand, Beth found her limbs were shaky, her skin tingling with unease. She could only take one sip at a time, needing to stop between swallows for air.

  “Nights are the worst,” she said aloud. Sometimes hearing a voice helped bring her back. Even if it was her voice. “In the morning, when the sun’s shining and the sky is blue, you’ll be okay.”

  She wanted to believe herself.

  Except…did the light really make a difference to anything other than her sense of total isolation? It didn’t change the loneliness
, the fear and the uncertainty. Daytime only made it easier to be distracted from them.

  Rubbing her arms, Beth stood barefoot and nearly naked in her kitchen. She couldn’t afford to turn the air-conditioning up very high and although it was the second week in September, the heat was still unbearable. So were the shivers.

  She’d watched an action-adventure movie once where the hero was thrown into a dungeon crawling with bugs. She had no idea when, where or with whom she’d seen that movie, but she remembered the scene, the character’s horrific panic. His inability to cope.

  That was how she felt. Surrounded by stone walls crawling with black things. And the walls were moving in on her, getting steadily closer.

  No one could help. She’d done a lot of reading on memory loss and she knew there was nothing anyone could do. Her assumption was that she was suffering from some kind of retrograde psychogenic amnesia. There was a combination of factors; the damage was organic in nature due to the blows to her head and psychosomatic in reaction to acute conflict or stress. Retrograde in that “events preceding the causative event” were forgotten.

  Slowly sipping water she didn’t want, Beth silently recited the words she’d read in the Encyclopedia Britannica many times over the past months. Causative event. Scary words.

  The imaginary bugs started to fade as she concentrated on the things she’d read. Her type of amnesia was reversible. But it had to happen in its own time. Amnesia was a coping mechanism, the mind’s way of giving her time to heal or grow strong enough. When her mind was ready to cope with whatever it was hiding from, she would remember.

  In the meantime, she was supposed to keep her life as stress-free as possible. To fill herself up with as many positive feelings and “events” as she could.

  A tall order for someone living all alone, in fear, not knowing if she was in trouble with the law, if she belonged in prison. Or if there was a maniac out there looking for her. Wanting to hurt her or Ryan.

  Not knowing who she was or where she came from.

  And not sure she wanted to know. As much as she hated the darkness, she wasn’t sure it was any worse than what she’d left behind. It must’ve been something pretty terrible for her mind to have resorted to such drastic measures. She couldn’t escape the instinctive thought that she should just trust her own mind and leave things alone.

  But could she?

  After washing the cup, Beth dried it and put it back in the cupboard. How much longer was she going to be able to cope if she couldn’t sleep a full night? If the nightmares continued? Every morning now, she got up exhausted—in mind and body.

  It had been just over a week since she’d played that piano at Bonnie’s house, and Beth still hadn’t recovered from the traumatic emotions the incident had stirred inside her.

  She didn’t understand the emotions. Didn’t know why they were so disturbing. But they were eating away at her insidiously, mostly at night when she was trying to sleep. Driving her slowly insane…

  What if she lost her mind completely? What was going to happen to Ryan then?

  Sitting on the floor of the bedroom by her son’s crib, her knees pulled up to her chest, Beth opened the notebook and read by the dim glow of the night-light.

  And forced herself to think.

  SHE KNEW NOTHING about finding missing persons. There was the Internet. And in Phoenix, birth records. But the first thing asked at either of those places was Name, Last. It was a piece of information she didn’t have.

  Still, Beth was desperate enough to try. There had to be a reason she’d used the name Allen; maybe it would lead her to her past.

  Leaving Ryan at the Willises’ on Thursday afternoon, the second week in September, she finished her last cleaning job and drove over to the university. The place had become like a favorite vacation spot during the past few months. A second home of sorts, as she searched for answers to unending questions. The shelves of books seemed like a lifeline, offering information her mind withheld from her.

  It was in that library, browsing the business shelves, that she’d discovered she had more than a passing knowledge on the subject. She’d recognized titles and authors. She’d found, upon pulling out some books and reading a bit, that she was familiar with many of the facts and theories.

  She’d done most of her amnesia research at the famous Montford University Library, too.

  Today, canvas bag tucked securely on her lap, she was there to use the computer. To log on to her free Internet account, set up with bogus personal information, trying to find out if there was a Beth Allen living in Snowflake, Arizona.

  She got 144 hits when she typed in the name. But when she perused all of them, none of the corresponding addresses meant anything to her.

  She wasn’t really disappointed because she hadn’t expected much.

  She just knew that, safe as anonymity was to her, she was no longer sure it was completely safe for Ryan. As long as she was here to protect him, he’d be fine. But what if she wasn’t?

  There were ways of providing a guardian for him in case something happened to compromise her life or stability, but to be legally effective they had to be filed.

  And without a name or a background—without a legal identity—she couldn’t file.

  The red haze had been with her almost constantly since that afternoon at Bonnie’s house, more than a week before.

  Beth looked up from the computer screen, needing to connect with the life around her for a moment—to remind herself that life was going on. She experienced a moment’s respite from her panic when she saw the couple who’d just come into the library. Ben and Tory Sanders. She’d never actually met them, but she knew who they were. She had, in fact, made it a point to find out who Tory Evans was when she’d first come to town. It was the article about Tory that had brought her to Shelter Valley, Tory’s happy ending she had held on to all this time.

  She watched as the couple chose a table and sat down together, and took comfort from the intimate smile they shared before opening the books they had with them. And then Beth returned her attention to the computer screen in front of her. The news hadn’t gotten any better.

  Frustrated, she closed the people-finder screen. She knew someone who could help her. Who’d know just where to turn next.

  She’d seen him a couple of times since that Sunday night after her impromptu piano concert. Once they’d run into each other at the day care. And he’d stopped by for an hour this past weekend.

  Both times she’d felt a confusing onslaught of comfort and unease. She needed his unconditional friendship more than he’d ever know. And yet she feared everything about having him in her life. Feared his job. His intelligence. His desire to know about her. His affection.

  His sexuality.

  Snowflake. She should look up newspaper articles on Snowflake, Arizona. Maybe her advent, while apparently unnoticed, hadn’t occurred without incident. Quickly typing, clicking and searching through files, Beth read carefully, diligently, looking for any mention of a car accident, an attempted rape or murder, a robbery, a domestic disturbance. Anything that might have occurred about the time she’d found herself alone in that motel room.

  Searched, too, for any mention of a woman named Beth. And ran a search on the names Allen and Ryan.

  All turned up nothing relevant.

  So, how about a missing person report? Either an article or a mention in a police log. On a woman. A child. A kidnapping.

  Hits flashed up with links. Glancing at her watch, Beth grimaced, her sweaty palm tightening on the mouse as she clicked on the first one. She was running far later than she’d meant to, but she couldn’t stop now.

  “What’s a woman like you doing in a place like this?”

  The wireless mouse flew from her fingers and landed on the carpeted library floor.

  “Greg!” Beth said, seeing red everywhere as she pushed keys, removing words from the computer screen before the Kachina County sheriff had a chance to read them and start asking questi
ons.

  Greg was a smart man. Who was already suspicious.

  Picking up the mouse, he set it on the pad and sat down at the computer beside her. He was in uniform. Which always made her just a little more uncomfortable around him.

  “I didn’t realize you’d discovered our hidden treasure here at Montford,” he said, surveying the library.

  The entire facility incorporated many floors and separate areas, which included meeting rooms small and large, conference rooms, a couple of different computer labs such as the one she was sitting in, group study areas, no-conversation areas, and rows and rows of books on every subject imaginable.

  She nodded. Had he seen the child custody article she’d been perusing? “I’ve been coming here for months.”

  It was because of far too many sleepless nights that she couldn’t come up with a plausible reason for her library visits. “To find myself” didn’t work.

  But it was the truth.

  While most people were there to learn new things, Beth had been visiting to find out what she already knew.

  “We’ve got a state-of-the-art computer lab at the SO,” he said.

  He couldn’t have seen what she’d had up on the screen. He wouldn’t be making small talk otherwise.

  “SO?” she asked.

  “Sheriff’s Office.” He grinned at her, a devilish light glinting in his eyes. “I have a system in my shop, too.”

  “Your shop.”

  “My place of business,” he said, nodding at an older woman dressed in a skirt and blouse, who walked by with her hands full of folders. “In other words, my car.”

  “So what are you doing in here?” she asked him. There were no reference books in the computer lab.

  “I was returning a book and I saw you.”

  His eyes were warm. Familiar.

  “Oh.”

  She loved that look. As though he had a right to know her, to ask questions, to be with her. As though they belonged together. And she was deathly afraid of it, as well. The tightrope she was inching her way along was getting more and more frayed, and she was afraid the person who’d really be hurt when it broke was a little boy who had no ability to help himself.