“And to hell with protecting the safety of this year’s innocent victims?”
Burt shook his head, surprised to find how badly it ached. “He told me about the Bloodhounds. But they’d disbanded. There was no way the two sets of crimes were related.”
“He told you the Bloodhounds killed my father.”
Shame was worse than humiliation. Burt would prefer death. “He told me they were responsible for the carjackings.”
“Before or after you told me that my interest in the case was bordering on unprofessional because of my personal involvement?”
“Before.”
“So what was it, some kind of game to them? A pastime? See whose car you can bump on the highway, get them to pull over, and then—like deciding on a flavor of ice cream—choose what you’re going to do to the victim?”
Head bowed, Burt prayed the interview would end soon. Damn Richards for not seeing that he’d only done what he had to do. He was the best damn cop Richards had. He might have damaged some old pictures, but he’d been told no one would get hurt. That there couldn’t possibly be a connection between the crimes ten years ago and these new ones. If he’d had any idea, he never would have listened to Foltz. He’d never have knowingly endangered the people he was sworn to protect.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Did you know that Foltz’s younger brother was a Bloodhound?”
“Colby?” Burt asked. “No way. Foltz was just telling me about him. Kid graduated with honors, went to Harvard. He’s some hotshot law professor at one of them Ivy League schools.”
“I’ll just bet he is—” Greg said.
Burt had never heard such bitterness in his superior’s voice.
“After sending my father straight to hell.”
Culver felt the first nail seal that coffin shut.
BETH COULDN’T SLEEP. The night was too dark. The room was too dark. Her life was too dark. Nothing but black holes and shadows. Everywhere she looked.
The night-light was across the hall in Ryan’s room. She’d wanted to keep the baby with her, but Greg hadn’t budged. The boy needed his own space, he’d said. It wasn’t natural or fair to have him so used to sleeping with his mother.
And it would be harder for Beth to steal away into the night if she had to cross the hall and pass Greg’s open door first.
All their doors were open. Something else he’d insisted upon. Not that he ever crossed the threshold of her room. Or invited her to cross his.
Turning over, she tried to find in the hallway a brief glimmer from Ry’s night-light. It was on a far wall, near the corner. Lighting his crib area but not the hall.
Beth sat up, bunched the pillows on the double bed in Greg’s guest room, lay back down and waited impatiently for her relaxation techniques to kick in. This was her third night at Greg’s house, her third night since she’d learned her own name, and those techniques had been cruelly absent the entire time.
She’d been able to play the piano to her heart’s content, though. Had spent hours letting her soul speak to her without her mind’s intervention.
Greg had never mentioned that he had a piano, too. One that wasn’t as new as Bonnie’s.
Sitting up again in the dark, she wondered what she could do without disturbing her reluctant keeper. She’d spent the past hour, the past three days, trying to remember. Poring over Internet information about Houston on Greg’s computer, hoping to find something familiar.
Her mind was as vacant as the blackness surrounding her.
When it started to close in on her rather than merely surround her, Beth flew out of bed. Quietly she tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. A place where she could safely turn on a light without waking Greg from his much-needed sleep. She’d known he was a busy man, but now that she was living with him—staying in his house, she quickly amended—she saw what an impossible schedule he kept.
Sliding the kitchen drawer slowly out so she could get the pad of paper she knew was inside, she wondered if the citizens of Kachina County had any idea how lucky they were to have Greg serving them—
“What are you doing?”
She dropped the pencil she’d been lifting from a tray in the front of the drawer.
“Getting ready to take notes,” she said, hating how shaky her voice was. Shaky because it was Greg, not because he was a lawman.
Afraid to turn around, to see what he was or wasn’t wearing, she stared at the contents of a junk drawer she’d just cleaned out the day before. She was in sweats and a T-shirt. Looked like she wasn’t going to be needing them as uniforms anymore. Her business had quietly closed when she’d moved in with the sheriff.
“Notes for what?”
He came far enough into the room that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He was wearing sweats, too. Black ones. And a white ribbed tank T-shirt. The kind muscle men wore in ads.
It looked better on him.
Beth turned. “Sometimes I write things down, free associating, hoping that when I read it over, something will make sense.”
He frowned, his big frame dwarfing the small but elegantly modern kitchen. “That’s something you can’t do during the day?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
She’d thought it was hard going from being strangers to lovers. That was nothing compared to the journey back. She looked at his hands, reaching for the refrigerator door, pulling out a bottle of water, taking off the lid, bringing it to his lips—and remembered how intimately she’d known those hands, those lips.
She watched him and wanted to cry. She’d already lost her past. Losing him meant giving up all the fragile new hope she’d had for the future.
Bottle in hand, he faced her. “You often have trouble sleeping?”
“Not often.” She held the notepad in front of her, providing a shield between them—between her and the pain of being this close to him with everything falling apart.
“Is there something wrong with your room? The bed’s too hard? Too soft?”
“No.” And then, because she’d decided three days ago that she was going to trust him, tell him everything in case there was some important detail that she might miss, and to prove to him that she was never going to keep anything from him again, she admitted the embarrassing truth. “Since the…accident…I haven’t slept without a light on.”
“Oh.” The answer seemed to shake him. Pulling out a chair, he sat at the table he hadn’t shared with her since she’d been there. He’d eaten all his meals out. She’d had hers alone with Ryan.
She wondered if she’d be around to see Ryan graduate from a baby spoon to the real thing.
Greg didn’t say anything. Just sat there. Beth sat down, too.
He seemed different, suddenly. As though she’d caught a glimpse of the man she’d known…
“I know you said it would be a few days before we hear anything, since your police contact is camping with his family for the weekend, but is there anything we can find out on our own?”
“You’ve done the people search on the Internet.”
“It just gave me an address and phone number.”
“Even if Gary wasn’t on R and R, we probably still wouldn’t know much. The clandestine kind of checking we’ll be doing takes time. At this point I don’t want anyone to be able to trace anything, not even a phone call.”
“So nothing can be traced back to you.” She understood and fully supported that decision.
“So nothing can be traced to you,” he said, his eyes soft as he looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time in three days. “Until we figure out what you were running from, I have no way of knowing what kind of danger you might be in.”
Beth was so glad to be able to talk to her friend that she almost cried. “What if you find something terrible?” She was trusting him when she didn’t trust her own judgment.
He shrugged, seemed to be considering something, and then said, “I don’t know.”
<
br /> Her stomach churned. She looked away. “After we made love the other night, I had this strange sensation that I’d…done well because I did what I’d been commanded to do. I seemed to accept quite naturally that that was something I did. Had sex on command.”
When she glanced over, he was watching her broodingly, his expression somber. “Maybe you’re running from an abusive husband.”
Instantly, Beth shook her head. “I can’t be married.”
“If you don’t remember anything, how can you be so sure?”
“I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”
“A point, but not a conclusive one.”
“I don’t feel married.”
“Did you feel like a mother when you woke up in that motel room?”
She didn’t want to answer him. “No.” And when he remained silent, leaving her case full of holes, she said, “I can’t be married, Greg. Not after what we—” Beth broke off. Embarrassed. And far too sad when she thought about what might have been.
He left her words hanging there, too, and she had no idea what he was feeling.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I’M AFRAID I MIGHT HAVE BEEN A PROSTITUTE.”
Greg just couldn’t remain immune. For better or worse—fearing it was only going to get worse—he was connected to this woman.
“You were not a prostitute,” he said. Criminal she might be; a whore she was not.
“It would fit,” she said, her beautiful blue eyes huge with anguish. “Sex on command is a way of life. Maybe my pimp was beating me. Maybe he was threatening to do something to Ryan and I had to escape to save him. Or maybe he refused to let me stop and I had to run to get Ryan away from that life. Makes sense about the money, too. Clients would pay in cash, wouldn’t they?”
Greg sat there calmly while his mind raged. She’d obviously given this a lot of thought. Seemed truly distressed by the ludicrous idea. Surely, if she were faking the amnesia…
“Sex is instinctive,” he said, trying to convince himself that he could talk to her about her nakedness and not feel the burning of desire. “An animal drive. The way you respond is also instinctive.”
And oh, she’d been so sweet. And hot. And… “You did not respond like a woman to whom sex was a job.”
Her eyes were fixed on the pad of paper she’d set in front of her.
“Maybe I forgot that, too. That sex was a job.”
In spite of himself, he thought of all the months they’d spent together, getting to know each other—not the things they’d done, necessarily, but the spirit he’d come to know. He remembered the time he’d kissed her right there, out by his pool, and the way she’d stopped him. Because she couldn’t make love lightly. And he thought of their one incredible night together.
“Beth, take my word for it, you didn’t have anything to forget.” And then he tried to concentrate on business because, contrary to his admonitions, his blood was running hot. “This ‘on command’ feeling you had—were there other feelings that accompanied it? Fear, maybe? Or disgust?”
She thought for a moment, still concentrating on that blank pad of paper and the little pieces she was ripping off the top page. “No.” She peeked up at him and went back to the business of making confetti. “It was odd. Just a sense of having done what I was supposed to. But in a positive sense. Like what I’d done was right and good.”
Greg was so focused on trying to analyze every clue, he didn’t immediately notice that something was wrong. Beth had stopped talking, but she’d finished her previous sentence, so that wasn’t particularly striking. She didn’t fall out of her chair. Didn’t make any sound at all.
She just stopped. Her hands froze, a dime-size piece of paper pressed between her thumb and index finger. Her entire body was stiff, unmoving. Her eyes alerted him first. They were focused on him, but it was as though she were blind, staring sightlessly through him.
“Beth?”
Greg leaned forward, tension gathering as he tried to assess her condition.
She didn’t even seem to hear him.
He tried to remember everything he’d said. Everything she’d said. And drew a blank. An uncomfortable occurrence in itself for a man who depended on close observation to do his job.
“Beth,” he said again, more firmly.
Oh God. Horror descended as the thought struck him. She’d taken something. Pills. Liquor. Both. Gulped them down when she’d come to the kitchen, and they were only now having their effect. He grabbed her hand, started to haul her out to the pool if that was what it took to rouse her from that catatonic state.
“No!” The shriek that filled his house was a sound he’d never heard before. “No!” The cry was terrifying, high and shrill and animalistic.
Pulling her hand away, Beth jumped up. The crashing of her chair went unnoticed. “No!” she shrieked a third time.
“Okay!” Greg spoke loudly enough for her to hear, but also as soothingly as he could. “It’s okay, Beth,” he said over and over, moving as she moved so that he stayed in front of her, trying to catch her gaze with his own. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”
It was a wonder Ryan wasn’t awake and calling out to them. Greg hoped the little guy managed to sleep through whatever the next moments were going to bring.
Beth was turning in circles on the tile floor, not particularly fast but not slowly, either, as though she were looking for something.
“No, no, no, no, no…”
It seemed to be the only thing she could say. But she’d quieted down considerably. Was speaking more than shrieking.
“Okay, we won’t,” Greg said. He needed a doctor. Wondered who he could call in Shelter Valley in the middle of the night. It wasn’t like they had a twenty-four hour emergency clinic downtown.
Phyllis Sheffield. Greg landed on the name.
Phyllis would know what to do. He reached for the phone. Beth stopped turning and stared at him, the look in those blue eyes hard, determined.
And then, in one blink, as she really saw him, they softened.
“No.”
What he suspected had begun as a shriek came out more as a wail.
“No,” she said again, tears in her voice, as her shoulders fell, defeated.
“Sweetie?” Dropping the phone, Greg grabbed her, gently but quickly, under the arms, afraid she might collapse onto the floor. Like a rag doll, she sagged against him, her limbs uncoordinated. She was far too skinny, and yet became dead weight in his hands.
Thinking of the wireless handset in the living room—from which he could call Phyllis—Greg lifted Beth, one arm under her knees, one behind her back, and carried her out of the kitchen. He’d meant to lay her down on the couch, but unable to let her go, sat with her instead.
Cradling her like a baby, her head against his shoulder, he pushed the hair from her face. “Beth?”
She was crying. Silently. Tears dripped slowly down her face. Her eyes, when she opened them, were dull but no longer vacant. She looked ill. Exhausted. Shadows seemed to form under her eyes even as he watched.
“Beth?” he said again, battling an unfamiliar panic.
“Oh, Greg, it’s bad.”
That was when tears choked the back of his throat.
SHE WAS SHAKING SO HARD her teeth were chattering. Phyllis Sheffield had told her that was normal under the circumstances. Beth wasn’t in physical shock. Her vital signs were okay. Phyllis had had Greg check them when he’d first called her, and she’d checked them herself when she arrived and again right before she left.
There were rough times ahead. But nothing she couldn’t handle, the compassionate psychologist had assured her. Her memory wouldn’t be returning if she wasn’t ready to face whatever her mind had been hiding.
Beth still didn’t know much, only vague recollections of feelings, but disconnected thoughts and flash visions were attacking her from every angle.
“Phyllis told you to relax and let them come, sweetie,” Greg said softly, holding her. She had
n’t left his couch since he’d first brought her in from the kitchen almost two hours before. It would be dawn in another few hours.
“I know,” she said, her jaws vibrating. The way it had some winter, when she’d been locked out of her house. She was in New York. She’d forgotten her key….
Beth tried to grasp the memory. To see more. She was young. Junior high, probably.
And…
It was gone.
She was tired. So damn tired.
Phyllis had also said that if they could get through this without medication, it would make things easier. She’d said that, then told Greg to call a doctor in the morning to get a prescription, just in case.
“Whenever you’re ready to tell me, I’m here to listen,” Greg said.
Phyllis had suggested he say that. Beth had heard them talking quietly by the door.
So far she hadn’t told either of them anything. Except that she was having flashes. Of severe pain. And of pictures she recognized but that didn’t go together.
She didn’t know how to make sense of anything. Not really. But…
She was going to trust Greg. She couldn’t trust herself, so she’d decided to trust him. She’d made a promise to herself three days ago. Couldn’t let herself down. She had to trust him.
Trust him.
Don’t keep secrets.
“I’m afraid.”
“I know. But we’ll get through this, Beth.”
“It’s bad.” Worse than an abusive husband. She had a feeling it was even worse than being a prostitute.
“We’ll handle it.”
Phyllis had told him not to pressure her. She wondered if it was hard for him not to ask questions. She’d had her eyes closed when he and Phyllis were talking by the door. They’d probably thought she’d fallen asleep.
The Sheriff of Shelter Valley Page 21