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“They all look like they hit the same thing at the same angle and speed,” he said slowly.
Pulling at his ear—something he only did when he was feeling uncomfortable—the deputy leaned his other hand on the desk and gave the photos more than the cursory glance he’d afforded them earlier. “Could be,” he said.
It would be pretty difficult, especially after the hard time he’d just given Greg, for the older man to admit he’d missed something that might be important. Greg had no desire to belabor the issue. His eyes moved to the table behind his deputy and the partially constructed jigsaw puzzle there, which gave Burt a moment to himself.
“Let’s not write off the past just yet” was all he said.
“I’ll order some blowups of these….”
Burt didn’t meet Greg’s eyes again as he left the room. Standing over the puzzle, pleased to fit in the first piece he chose, Greg sympathized with his friend and coworker. There was nothing a cop like Burt—or Greg—hated more than to have missed something important.
WHY HAD SHE THOUGHT this was a good idea? With her canvas bag clutched at her side, Beth stood in Bonnie Neilson’s sunny kitchen on the third Sunday in August, watching Ryan and Katie ignoring each other as they played quietly in the attached family room. She longed for the dingy but very organized interior of her rented duplex. Better the hardship you knew than one you didn’t.
The duplex wasn’t much, but for the time being, it was hers. She was in control there. Safe.
“Keith just went to town for more ice,” Bonnie was saying as she put the finishing touches on a delicious-looking fresh vegetable salad. Already in a basket on the table was a pile of homemade rolls. Really homemade, not the bread-machine kind she used to make…
Beth froze. She’d had a memory. A real one. She had no idea where that bread machine was, no picture of a kitchen, a home, a neighborhood, a town or state—but she knew she’d had a bread machine. And she’d used it.
And been chastised for it?
“Can I do something?” Beth asked, probably too suddenly, reacting to a familiar surge of panic. She needed something to occupy herself, calm herself.
Staying busy had worked for months. As far as she knew, it was the only thing that worked.
“You can—”
“Unca!” Katie’s squeal interrupted her mother.
The ensuing commotion as Katie tossed aside the magnetic writing board she’d had on her lap and jumped up to throw herself at her newly arrived uncle—and Ryan dropped the circular plastic shape he’d been attempting to shove into a square opening on the shape-sorter to make his way over to his mother’s leg—served to distract Beth. She was so relieved, she didn’t have nearly the problem she had anticipated with the arrival of Greg Richards.
Instead, she was almost thankful he’d come.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Beth had very mixed emotions about Greg’s presence at his sister’s house. Bonnie and Keith, her husband, had left to drive over to his grandmother’s. Katie was asleep in the new trundle bed in her room. Ryan was also asleep, his little body reassuring and warm against her. He’d climbed in her lap after lunch, when they’d all migrated to the sitting room before trying the new chocolate cream cheese dessert Bonnie had made that morning.
That was when Keith’s grandmother had called and Beth had suddenly found herself alone with a man who launched her right out of her element.
Not that she had any idea what her real element was. These days, all she had to go by was the Beth Allen Rules of Survival. A notebook with frighteningly few memories. Plus the perceptions she’d had, decisions she’d made, since waking up in that motel room.
He lounged on the leather couch, dressed in jeans and a cotton-knit pullover that emphasized the breadth of his chest. He was surveying her lazily, and appeared content to do so for some time to come. Beth didn’t think she could tolerate that.
“Bonnie said you’d explain about Grandma Neilson,” she reminded him. His younger sister had begged that Beth stay, insisting they’d only be gone a few minutes and she’d hate it if their day was ruined.
“She refuses Bonnie’s invitation to join us for dinner on a fairly regular basis, insisting she doesn’t want to impose, and then, inevitably, has some kind of mock crisis that’s far more of an imposition than her acceptance of the dinner invitation would’ve been.”
“Mock crisis?” Soothed into an unusual sense of security, Beth leaned back against the oversize leather chair she’d fallen into after lunch.
“Something that seems to need immediate attention, but that she could handle perfectly well by herself—or that turns out to be nothing at all. A toilet that might be clogged, for example. Or a strange noise in the attic, due to a loose shingle.” Greg was smiling.
“But today’s call—a seventy-five-year-old woman who’s lost electricity in half her house, including her refrigerator—sounds pretty legit to me.”
“Most likely a blown fuse.”
“Still, for a woman her age…”
“Baloney,” Greg exclaimed.
Ryan stirred, but settled back against her, his auburn curls growing sweaty where his head lay against her.
“She might be seventy-five years old, but she’s as feisty and as manipulative as they come—and I’ve loved her as long as I can remember.”
“You knew her before Bonnie and Keith got married?”
“She used to be the librarian at the elementary school. Every kid in town knew Mrs. Neilson. And loved her, too, I suppose. She’s been a widow since Keith’s dad was little. She’s also the strongest person I’ve ever met. She’d go to the wall for any one of us if she believed in our cause. Nothing as trivial as a blown fuse is going to get in her way. Lonna Neilson could rewire that whole house if she put her mind to it.”
“Then, why do Bonnie and Keith keep running over there?”
Greg’s shrug drew her attention to the width of his shoulders. Shoulders a woman could lay her head against…
If that woman wasn’t Beth Allen. Or Beth Whoever-she-was.
“In the first place,” he said, “because they never know whether she’s crying wolf or whether it might be the real thing.”
She liked that. A lot. That they didn’t give up on the old woman.
“And more importantly, because what’s really driving her to call is the need to know she’s loved. That’s why Bonnie always goes, as well. It takes both of them to either make her feel good enough to be happy at home, or to convince her to join them here.”
Beth smiled, praying he couldn’t see the trembling of her lips. “So you’re used to being left here with Katie every Sunday?” she asked. Keep talking, don’t think. Don’t envision a vacant future, or, maybe worse, one that isn’t vacant, only intolerable.
“Nah, Grandma Neilson comes over about half the time she’s asked, and then there’s the occasional Sunday when no crisis arises.”
His words were something to focus on. Something to take her thoughts away from the fact that her past held a threat so great she’d taken her baby and run.
“But I’m used to time alone with Katie,” Greg continued lazily. “She’s a big part of my life.”
“Have you ever thought about having kids of your own?”
Beth’s gaze shot down to Ryan as soon as she heard her own words. She’d broken a major Beth Allen rule. Never ask personal questions. Doing so was often taken as an invitation by the recipient to ask questions, too.
Damn. Give her a good meal, a comfortable chair and she lost all sense of herself. Which was scary when one didn’t have much of that to begin with. When one was making things up as one went along…
Lifting an ankle to his knee, Greg slouched down farther. He looked more like a college kid than the head of an entire law enforcement organization. “I used to think I’d have a whole houseful of kids by now,” he said. “You’ve probably noticed that Shelter Valley families tend to be rather large. You don’t have to live here long to figure that out.”
His grin was sardonic, half deprecating, half affectionate, as he spoke about the people he protected day in and day out.
“Especially if you spend any time at Little Spirits,” Beth said, his easy tone allowing her to continue a conversation she’d meant to shut down. “It seems like everyone in Shelter Valley is related.”
“Either by blood or by a closeness of the heart,” Greg agreed. He sounded proud of the fact. “Everyone in Shelter Valley has family of one sort or another.”
It was the perfect opportunity to ask why he didn’t have that houseful of kids he’d envisioned. She badly wanted to know.
Only the very real threats she lived with every second of her life kept her silent. The threat of being found out. And of never finding out. Never learning who she was. What she was hiding from.
And why she hadn’t been strong enough to solve her problems rather than run from them.
The threat that he might ask questions she couldn’t answer. Or find answers she didn’t want him to have.
“Did you and your husband plan to have more children?”
Blank. That was the only way to describe the mental picture his question elicited. But there was nothing blank about the instant panic that accompanied the emptiness. As the dull red haze blotted out her peripheral vision—a reaction she’d long since recognized as her body’s danger signal—Beth again looked down at her son.
She could do this, get through whatever life required, for Ryan. Without a single memory, she knew he was the reason she’d run. And she’d keep running forever, from her memory, her needs, her heart, if that was what it took to keep him safe.
“I’m perfectly happy with Ryan,” she said.
“So you’d planned for him to be an only child?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Did your husband spend a lot of time with the boy?”
I don’t know! “What’s with the inquisition, Sheriff?” Guided by survival instincts, she stared at him, chin raised, as she offered the challenge.
And then turned quickly away. Those dark green eyes scared her with their intensity. When he looked at her, Greg Richards saw more than she could allow. She didn’t know how or why; she only knew it had to stop.
“I’m just trying to get to know you, Beth, but for some reason you make that very difficult. I can’t help wondering why.”
Because if she told him the smallest thing—truth or lie—he’d be able to find out more. Because she couldn’t afford to trust. Not even him. No matter what her heart said.
The red haze was back. “I notice you didn’t answer my earlier question about your own empty house,” she said, making a quick amendment to Beth Allen’s Rules of Survival. Avoiding personal questions was no longer the issue. Sidetracking him was.
“A couple of things happened to change my plans.”
“What things?” The fact that she really wanted to know made the query a dangerous one. But she had to keep him talking—about him. And not her. It wouldn’t be much longer before Bonnie and Keith returned. “You haven’t met the right woman?”
It was a common enough excuse.
“I met her.”
Oh. Beth frowned. “Was she from Shelter Valley?” Had the woman died? Why hadn’t Bonnie told her?
“Born and raised,” Greg said, his thumb tapping a rhythm on the couch beside him. “Shelby and I met in grade school. Dated all through high school. I think I always knew I’d marry her someday.”
“What happened?” And why was she taking this so personally?
“I asked her to marry me, but I wanted to wait until after I graduated from Montford and the police academy.”
Beth didn’t think she’d have agreed to wait—and was bothered by that thought. Did it mean she was impatient by nature? She certainly hadn’t had any indication of that up to this point. But she’d been so busy surviving, self-discovery hadn’t been much of an option.
As life in Shelter Valley grew more routine, things were starting to slip out from her hidden past, her hidden mind. She wanted that so badly.
And yet…she didn’t want it at all.
Ignorance allowed her to stay safe in Shelter Valley and raise her son.
Of course, maybe the reason she wouldn’t have agreed to wait had nothing to do with her; maybe it was just because of Greg. She couldn’t imagine having him in love with her and agreeing to wait a week, let alone years.
“During my last year of college, Shelby went to Los Angeles to visit a girl who’d lived with her grandparents in Shelter Valley during our senior year in high school. Shelby met some guy in California and was married within a month.”
“What?” Beth sat forward, completely forgetting that Ryan was sound asleep. Disturbed, the child lifted his head, eyes unfocused as he opened them. He fussed for a second and then settled against her and went back to sleep.
“She wanted out of Shelter Valley. Didn’t want to be trapped in this small town, raising a bunch of kids. She just hadn’t bothered to tell me that.”
“She was an idiot.” The words weren’t conciliatory or polite. Beth honestly couldn’t think of any dream better than a real home in this town, shared with a loving man. One who’d love Ryan, teach him the things a son should know. One who’d give her another baby or two…
But was it the real Beth thinking these thoughts? Or were they simply the desperate longings of a lost woman on the run?
“I like to think so,” Greg said, grinning at her. “Anyway,” he added, growing more serious, “that kind of put a kink in my plans for home and family.”
The softly spoken words lured her further into the dangerous conversation.
“That must’ve been at least ten years ago,” she said. “I can’t believe there haven’t been opportunities since then.”
“I spent the past ten years taking care of my father.”
“Bonnie told me,” Beth said, compassion welling up so strongly she wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I’m so sorry.”
Tight-lipped, Greg didn’t say anything. Beth could almost feel his frustration…and pain.
Which was ridiculous. She barely knew this man.
She adjusted Ryan, moving him to her other shoulder. His sweaty hair had left a damp spot where his head had lain.
“So you didn’t date for ten years?” The superfluous words were probably all wrong, but what else could she ask?
“I dated,” Greg answered with a dim version of the grin he’d given her earlier. But he looked relieved, too, to have been rescued from whatever thoughts had been hounding him. “I just couldn’t find a woman willing to take on a paraplegic senior citizen.”
And Greg was not a man who would put his father in a full-time care facility unless there was no other choice.
Beth had never wished more than she did in that moment that she was free to like this man—and maybe let something develop between them. Something more than liking…
DR. PETER STERLING and Houston prosecuting attorney James Silverman faced each other in the elegantly furnished waiting room of Sterling Silver Spa, in the newly incorporated town of Sterling Silver, Texas. The spa’s last client had just left for the evening.
“Damn, it’s hot.” Dr. Sterling pulled at the collar of his pristine white shirt. He’d just walked over from visiting a new resident in the apartment complex a couple of blocks away. “August has got to be the worst month of the year.”
Silverman didn’t agree. He thought January’s cold was pretty miserable. But it wasn’t worth an argument to say so. Loosening his tie, he unfastened the top button of his dress shirt. How did Sterling do it? Just keep going every day, always looking perfect?
Didn’t the man ever get tired?
And what did it say about Silverman that he was damn exhausted?
“It’s time to hire someone new,” Sterling said, his eyes black points of steel as they pinned Silverman. “Winters isn’t working out. We should’ve heard something by now.”
“I know.” James undid a second button. He’d been unhappy with the private investigator for weeks. But he didn’t know whom he could trust. There was too much at stake.
“Every day that goes by puts us all in more jeopardy.”
“I know.”
“We can’t think only of ourselves,” Sterling reminded him, as he did in just about every conversation the two men had these days. “We have many, many good people relying on us.”
“I know.” No one knew that better than James Silverman. He didn’t need Sterling reminding him, pressuring him. He carried the burden of his mistake every waking—and sleeping—moment of his life.
He wasn’t going to fail his new family, his friends. If nothing else, he believed in the cause. In them. He might have lost his faith in most things, but he still believed in a better tomorrow, a world free of negative energy and aggression.
They’d worked too hard, for too long, and come too far to let a traitor ruin everything for them now.
“Beth’s dangerous.”
“Yes.” James felt sick.
“There’s no telling what she’s capable of.”
Silverman nodded.
“She has to be stopped,” Sterling said, his voice colder than any of his patients had ever heard. “At all costs.”
“I know.”
Satisfied, Sterling got to his feet. The meeting was over.
“We’ll get through this together,” he said, his tone softer. “Together we always find the cure, don’t we?”
James nodded, more because it was expected of him than because he was in a trusting mood that night. As he locked up, he wondered if the doctor’s cures were losing their effectiveness. For him, anyway… And that made Beth’s defection more dangerous than ever.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS HE LOCKED THE DOOR of his office, Greg thought about how he couldn’t lock away the impressions that continued to bombard him. There were puzzle pieces that definitely fit together—as clearly as the myriad jigsaws he’d worked on over the years. If only he could figure out how… Culver was right, there’d been many carjackings in the past ten years. No reason to believe that this year’s series had anything to do with the ones that had happened ten years ago. Except that in both cases, there had been a series.
Of course, Burt was also right in his claim that the occurrences near the border had been a series, too.
But…
The pieces floated in and out, settling, moving around, changing location without offering him a single answer.
He was outside Beth’s nondescript apartment on one of the older streets in Shelter Valley. Greg chuckled to himself. Considering where he was, his thoughts seemed fitting. Because, judging by past experience, he wasn’t going to find out any of the hundred things he wanted to know here, either.
And just as he did with any other puzzle, he kept looking at all the pieces. Turning them this way and that, trying to fit them here or there to create the whole picture. When something mattered enough, when the feeling was strong enough, there wasn’t any other choice.
“Greg. Hi.” It wasn’t the most welcoming tone as Beth opened her door to him that Wednesday night. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since she’d left his sister’s right after dessert, late Sunday afternoon.
She’d blamed her early departure on Ryan’s grumpiness on waking, but Greg wasn’t convinced that was the only reason.
Maybe he should’ve taken time this afternoon to stop at home and change out of his uniform.
“I knew that if I asked you to dinner or a movie—or anything else, for that matter—you’d say no, so I decided to just come by.”
Face softening, though not quite into a smile, Beth leaned against the door. She was wearing a black tank top and black sweats cut off just below the knee. One of the sexiest outfits he’d ever seen.
“If you know I don’t want to go out with you, why bother?” she asked.
She hadn’t shut the door. Nor did her question seem nearly as off-putting as it could’ve been. As a matter of fact, she sounded curious.
Good.
“I don’t think we’ve established that you don’t want to go out with me. Only that you’d say no if I asked.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Glad he’d come, Greg shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He paused, pretending to consider. “Nope, not at all.”
She straightened. “Well, it seems like the same thing to me,” she said.
She’d tensed again.
“It would be a good idea to ask me in,” Greg said quickly, before she had a chance to dismiss him. “You know, before the neighbors see a uniformed officer at your door and start to talk.”
Beth grinned, looking out at the street in front of her house where he’d left his car. “Oh yeah, like that thing with the big ‘Sheriff’ emblazoned on the side isn’t going to raise any suspicion?”
“Hell, no.” He grinned, too, hands in his pockets as he stood his ground. “They’ll just think the sheriff’s sweet on you.”
“And that won’t cause talk?”
“Well, not the kind I was referring to. You know, the kind where everyone whispers about the possible secret life you’re living and they start to weave fantasies about bank robberies or jewel thefts and lock their windows and doors at night and give you a wide berth anytime they run into you at the grocery store.”
“Oh, that.” Beth started to pale at the ridiculous situation he was describing, but then she laughed. “Yeah, that’s about as likely as the sheriff being sweet on me.”
“I sure hope not,” he said, almost under his breath. And then wished he hadn’t. That was good for a slammed door in his face.
Because he didn’t know what else to do, Greg met her eyes. And that was when it always happened with them. From the first time he’d met her, he’d recognized something in that deep blue gaze. And until he knew what it was, what it meant, he had to keep coming back.
She didn’t shut him out or close the door.
“May I come in?”
Beth just stared. Her eyes were trying to tell him something…if only he could decipher what it was.
“I won’t stay long.”
Still without a word, she stood back, holding the door wide. Greg quickly stepped inside and followed her into the small living room. It was as neat as it had been the last time he was there. Neat and bare.
“Where’s Ryan?” he asked. He’d expected the boy to be playing quietly on the floor, had expected to see some toys out, stacked along the wall, something.
As far as he could tell, Ryan Allen hadn’t discovered the terrible twos yet.
“He’s asleep already. Normally bedtime isn’t until seven-thirty, but I had a cancellation today and we spent the afternoon at the day care. He was beat.”
“Did he and Katie acknowledge each other?” Greg asked, taking a seat on the edge of an old but relatively clean tweed couch, elbows on his knees.
“Nope.”
“Your son doesn’t like my niece?”
“More likely, your niece isn’t interested in giving my son the time of day.” She had a challenging glint in her eyes.
God, he loved it when she was feisty. And wondered why he saw that side of her so infrequently.
“No way,” he said, shaking his head as he grinned up at her. “Katie’ll make friends with anyone.”
“You make it sound like she shows no discrimination at all.”
He shrugged. “She’s a day care kid,” he said. “She really will play with anyone. So the problem has to be Ryan. The boy’s stuck on himself.” He was being outrageous and didn’t care. He’d made her smile.
“Or maybe Katie thinks since she’s so much older, it would be beneath her to play with a two-year-old.”
“Were you that way in high school? Too good to go out with the younger guys?”
“Probably not.”
“Why just probably?”
She looked away, her shoulders hunched as she rested her arms along the sides of her chair, an old but sturdy rocker. “Oh, you know,” she said, “you never see yourself in quite the same way other people do.”
True enough. “Tell me what you think you were like in high school.”
It took her a long time to answer. “Not one of the stupidest kids in class, but not one of the smartest, either.”
“I’ll bet you never failed a single test.”