Shaking her head, she backed away. “Please don’t apologize. That only makes it worse.”
Dr. Javadi bustled into the room, and Emma spun away.
Liam instantly developed a strange fascination with the gridwork ceiling tiles.
While he waited impatiently, the doctor rattled off instructions and then presented his tablet to Emma. “Signing here states that you understand the instructions of release. If you have worsening headaches, vomiting, seizures, loss of short-term memory, dizziness or increased confusion, return to the emergency room immediately.”
A strange emptiness invaded Liam’s chest. In Redbird, people knew him and remembered him. Counted on him. Personal relationships made everything more complicated. What was the point of being an invisible man if he didn’t have an invisible heart, as well?
“If there’s no more paperwork—” Emma gathered her meager belongings “—can we leave now? I need to find out who I am. The sooner the better.”
Dr. Javadi smiled, and his features softened. “You know who you are, Ms. Lyons. Your memory simply can’t access all the information at the moment. Your brain needs to remake the connections to the past. Nothing about this is going to be neat and tidy.”
After reminding Emma once more about the warning signs, the doctor finished up the paperwork and left them alone together.
Liam set his jaw. “Did I mention this was a bad idea?”
After that searing kiss, he wanted more than ever to keep things between them sterile and impersonal, with lots of other people around and the doctor to interrupt if things got too heated.
“You may have alluded.” Her topaz eyes took on a faraway look. “Even though I want to go home, I’m not even sure what that is. Not entirely. I wouldn’t mind pretending that everything is normal. Except I don’t know what normal is anymore.”
Normal.
What did that even mean? For either of them. His life back in Dallas was real. Everything that happened in Redbird was a lie. Or was it the other way around? He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
He was playing a part, just like he always did. Or was he?
She waved her hand in a vague circle. “We can just forget about all that other stuff.”
He kept thinking of things to say to explain the kiss they’d shared, but all his ideas started with the words “I’m sorry,” and she’d said his apology made things worse, which left him without a lot of other choices.
While he hovered in indecision, she reached for a small, wheeled overnight bag that looked vaguely familiar.
He focused his gaze before asking, “Where did that come from?”
“From my car, evidently. Bishop brought it by a day after the accident. Thank goodness he did.” She unzipped the shallow front pocket and frowned. “I’d still be wearing the same clothes I had on Friday if he hadn’t. The staff made sure everything got washed and dried after the soaking.”
She pulled a sheaf of papers from the front pocket and gasped. “Oh, no.”
Her fingers went limp and the papers scattered across the floor.
Liam automatically knelt to help her retrieve them. “What is it?”
“Look,” she said, scuttling backward.
Fanned across the tile floor were glossy 8 by 10 photographs in perfect condition. No water damage in sight, which meant they’d been placed there after the accident. The images played out like a story. Emma leaving her house, her face blurred through the rain. She was wearing the same navy cardigan and sneakers she’d been wearing the night of the accident. In one photo, she faced the camera, her eyes staring unseeing at the lens.
There was something scrawled across the bottom of the last picture in the stack, and he leaned closer for a better look. His blood turned icy.
Emma whispered the words out loud. “‘We aren’t finished yet.’”
SEVEN
Emma was numb.
She felt nothing. Not the sunlight she’d desperately craved only hours before. Not the chill spring breeze after the stale hospital air. Nothing. She was detached from the shock of current events. Blissfully, completely numb.
Liam walked beside her, the envelope of photos swinging in his hand. He was taking her home. They’d agreed.
“Do you mind if we make a stop?” he asked. “Won’t take long.”
A wave of nausea punched her in the gut. “Sure.”
She was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’m starving.”
She didn’t know if she was starving. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
He was staring at her too closely, and she had to think of an answer. If she didn’t say something that made sense soon, he was going to haul her back inside and insist the doctors run more tests. He’d been fussing over her since that kiss. Since the photos.
“Sure,” she managed to say, settling on a less-is-more approach.
“How do you feel about Mexican food?”
His words generated a faint stirring of interest. “Okay, I guess.”
“There’s a great little place in town, and they make the tortillas fresh every morning.”
He was waiting for a reply. That’s how conversation worked, after all.
She reached for the correct, polite words in return. “That sounds nice.”
All Emma wanted to do was curl in a ball and sleep until the pounding in her brain stopped. She wanted only blessed, healing silence.
“Great,” he said.
She wasn’t hiding her distress very well, and he was clearly worried about her. He was making small talk to nudge her, to see if she was going to crack. She had to put one foot in front of the other until she was miles away from here.
“Great,” she repeated blankly.
He slid the envelope with the photos inside his jacket. “Okay.”
She didn’t protest when he took her bag. All of the items connected to the night of the accident were toxic. Everything—the overnight bag, her totaled car, the hospital. Her memory was spotty at best. She was filling in the edges, but a giant, blank space remained at the center. The blow to her head had left her cruelly handicapped with only random dribbles of recollection surrounding the events leading to the accident.
Who had put them there—and when? They’d been placed there after the accident, that much she knew. She hadn’t noticed the zipper pocket before today. She wasn’t even certain why she’d checked it beyond a natural curiosity.
Someone had been watching her and wanted her to know she was exposed.
Stumbling, Emma glanced down. The asphalt parking lot was pitted and in need of repair.
As Liam led the way to his truck, he paused to retrieve his sunglasses from his breast pocket.
She brushed past the deputy, picking up speed. She needed distance between her and the envelope. The photos were like a live, breathing thing—a telltale heart thumping beneath his jacket.
“Stop.” He jogged to catch up. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she snapped bitterly without turning around. “I’m fine.”
He let go of the bag and easily caught up to her, then blocked her path. “You’re not fine. Talk to me.”
Glancing behind her, she blanched. She was caught between those photos and that awful, suffocating hospital room.
“I’m sorry,” Liam said, his expression awash with guilt. “You have every right to be angry. We were supposed to keep you safe, and we didn’t.”
“I don’t blame you.” The empty and emotionless words came by rote. “Everyone did their best. I’m here, aren’t I? I survived the accident. I survived the attack.”
She’d survived because someone out there wanted her to. He wanted her alive because he had worse things in store for her. This was all part of an elaborate, cruel game, and she was pl
aying right into the killer’s hands.
The bullets and the photos were merely parlor tricks designed to scare her. They were the work of a cheap sideshow carny. Her stalker was giving her sly nudges to let her know she wasn’t safe. Not here. Not now. Maybe not ever. He was letting her know there were no gaps in his memory of her. How much more did he know about her than she knew about herself?
A surge of anger sputtered to life inside her.
Liam was blocking her path to the truck, and she scooted around him. “I’m not going back into that hospital.”
“Okay.”
“He had photos of me.” She pivoted on her heel and violently gestured with one arm. “He was watching me.”
“I know,” Liam said, his arms raised in a supplicating gesture, the corner of the envelope visible beneath his jacket. “I’m sorry.”
Staring at those pictures slammed home the reckless danger of her situation. She didn’t remember that night.
He remembered, though.
He was hunting her.
“I feel violated.” The air was too close, and her clothing was smothering her. She clawed at her sweater and tossed the material to the ground. “He knows where I live. How can I go home? He was right outside, and I never saw him.”
The chill air washed over the bare skin of her arms. What else had she missed? Where else had her stalker followed? She scanned the parking lot, the tree-lined railroad tracks in the distance, the reflective windows of the hospital and the highway rumbling past. Was he watching her now?
Liam took a cautious step toward her, and hysterical laughter bubbled in the back of her throat. He must think she was crazy. She felt crazy. She was out of control, careening toward a danger she didn’t recognize and couldn’t identify.
Her stomach pitched, and her skin grew clammy. “I don’t feel good. I feel like I’m shaking on the inside. I don’t feel right.”
No, no, no. This wasn’t happening.
She stumbled away, but he was too quick.
He tenderly hauled her against him. Slipping his thumb beneath her jaw, he tipped her face up and bent his head until their foreheads were touching.
“You’re all right,” he murmured gently. “He’s not here. Let it go.”
His deep voice vibrated against her skin, and his arms were strong and safe. She wanted nothing more than to sink into the comfort of his shelter, but he couldn’t be trusted. Not entirely. His beard brushed her cheek as she turned away. He thought that four walls and a door might keep her safe, but she knew better.
She jerked away from him, her face white, as much from shock as anger at the situation. “I’m not going back inside there.”
Liam didn’t turn a hair at her outburst, further stoking her rage. She’d rent a motel room. She’d go to the next town. She wasn’t going home, and she wasn’t going back to the hospital, either.
“No one is taking you anywhere you don’t want to go,” Liam asserted. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
He took her hands in his. The rough pads of his thumbs smoothed back and forth over the delicate bones, distracting her from her terror. She still felt strange—achy and unsettled—and she had to do battle against an inexplicable urge to scream her frustration.
“Do you promise?” She stared at the corner of the envelope, and a suffocating rage consumed her. “Don’t lie to me.”
Whatever he was about to say caught in his throat. He glanced away but not before she saw a look she knew too well. Guilt.
“I’m not lying to you about this,” he said finally, letting his hands fall away.
The look of guilt worsened, and the implication landed like a wall between them. Alarm bells rang in her head, and she took a cautious step backward.
“Then you’ve lied to me already.”
“Not about this,” he repeated, and his mask of detachment slipped. “About my past.”
His admission drained all the fight from her. There were things he couldn’t share with her; he’d said that already. She barely remembered her own past. How could she fault him for withholding his? None of this was his fault. She’d done this to herself. Somehow or another, she’d unleashed a monster.
His expression flattened, and she sensed he was bracing for her anger. In an odd sort of way, his brutal honesty had put them on equal footing. Whether by accident or by design, they both had parts of their past they couldn’t share with each other.
“Don’t worry.” Her voice shook so much she could barely speak, and the words came in a ragged whisper. “I don’t even know my own secrets. How can I be critical of yours?”
A wave of exhaustion rippled through her, and her hands found their way across the space between them. Her world had been filled with danger and fear and so much uncertainty that she’d spent her last waking hours in a constant state of panic. There was nothing wrong with seeking a moment of peace, and that was one thing Liam had always provided.
He didn’t protest when she wrapped her arms around him, inhaling his spicy male scent and the memories associated with it. That first night, he’d refused to give up even when saving her life meant risking his own. If he withheld parts of himself from her, that was a price she was willing to pay.
For now, she trusted him. If he said he wasn’t taking her back to the hospital, then he wasn’t.
“Why?” She lifted her head and gazed at him, her face wet. “Why is this happening?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
His honesty comforted her more than false platitudes. She slumped against him and he pulled her closer, wrapping her tightly in his embrace.
“He could be anywhere.” As long as he was out there, she’d never be safe. She needed to take back her power. She needed to feel in control of something. She needed Liam to understand what was happening to her. “He knows me.”
“He doesn’t know you.” Liam brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “He doesn’t know anything about you.”
Her body spasmed with uncontrollable shivering. “He could be watching right now. How do we know he’s not?”
“Don’t give him the edge. He wants you distracted because that makes you an easier target. Don’t let him inside your head.”
“How can I stop him?” she asked in a voice that wasn’t quite as steady as she would have liked. “I can’t even get into my own head. There are so many gaps.”
“And you’re filling in those gaps all the time.” He held her slightly away from him, forcing her to meet his silvery blue eyes. “He’s shattered your trust. He’s taken away the things that make you feel safe. You can’t change that, but you have a decision to make. You can be a victim, or you can be both a victim and a survivor.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘or’?” She felt wretched—defensive and angry and oddly guilty over her loss memory. “You can be a victim or a survivor?”
“It’s never that easy, is it? No one can take away what he’s done to you, but you can survive this. You’ll be different, but that’s okay. Different doesn’t have to be better or worse. We survive, or we surrender.”
“I remember looking in the mirror that first morning and being comforted by the thought that God knew who I was even if I didn’t, but my faith has been shaken since then.” A dart of panic lanced through her. “Do you ever wonder if God is blind to our suffering?”
“All the time.” His mouth quirked in a lopsided grin, and he sighed. “When I have doubts, I remember that it’s times like these when we strengthen our bond with Him. Because if we don’t have faith, what else do we have?”
Faith was a matter of trust, and her trust had been chipped away these past few days. “What about those eighteen unsolved murders in the Killing Fields? All that needless misery. The victims. Their families and friends. There’s so much grief, I can’t even wrap my head around the loss.�
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Their faces crept into her dreams. They were searching for answers she didn’t have. The task she’d set for herself was impossible.
“God never said there’d be no suffering,” Liam said. “He only promised to fill our suffering with purpose.”
She wanted to give the victims of those crimes a voice. She wanted them to be more than faceless names and statistics. She wanted to give their suffering meaning. Was that even possible?
“Do you really think so?”
He dropped a kiss on her mouth before cupping the back of her head with his enormous hand and holding her tightly against his thundering heart. “I know so.”
They were only words, but she was glad to have them. Grateful for something to hold on to besides the fear and uncertainty.
Liam rocked her gently, murmuring soothing words, his warm breath rustling against her hair. She teetered on the edge, afraid if she let herself cry, truly cry—not these tears leaking from her eyes—if she truly gave in, she might never return.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that or how long they might have stayed that way if the deputy’s stomach hadn’t rumbled.
The sound drew a reluctant grin from her. He was hungry. With everything else happening around them, there were practical matters to consider. The mundane tasks of eating and sleeping went right alongside living and dying.
For days, a dangerous stranger had left her feeling as though she was prey—that she was being hunted. No more.
“I’m sorry,” she said shakily, acutely embarrassed by her loss of control. “I don’t know what happened just now. I guess I sort of lost it. You brought me back. Thank you.”
“All I did was remind you that you’re a strong person. You’re a survivor. You don’t need your memory to know that. You don’t even need me to remind you. You’ll get through this.”
Her chest tightened. Their time together was temporary; he’d made that clear. There were things in his past he wasn’t willing to share. He had responsibilities in another town. He’d set the boundaries, though they’d both broken the rules.
Not that she regretted the kiss. On the contrary, she was grateful to know him, at least for the short time they had together. Some people were like that, she supposed. Some people drifted into a life on the tide and left the same way, but that didn’t mean they weren’t important.
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