When She Remembered Page 2

  “Ranger Sergeant Kellen Harding, ma’am, of Unsolved Crimes.” He added the extra to break the ice that was taking too long to thaw. It was time he didn’t want to waste, and she might not have.

  “Can we help you with something, Sergeant Harding?” She faced him squarely, her chin up, her gaze direct. She didn’t even bother looking around for a sick child. She knew he was here for her, and because of the recent break in the Sonora Nites Diner case.

  He wondered if she was aware of the crumpled newspaper she held. He gave a nod toward it. “You’ve seen the story?”

  “Of Kass being found?” she asked, her hand tightening around the strap of her bag, her knuckles turning white.

  It was a rhetorical question, but it answered his, and he nodded again just the same. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Privately?”

  “You can use the break room,” the blonde hurried to offer, straightening the headset slipping down one side of her neck.

  “Or there’s a table and chairs on the back patio,” the Hispanic woman added, a stack of folders in her arms. “It’s a covered patio. With a ceiling fan.”

  Kell looked at Jamie. Jamie looked at Kell. It was her call, but he had a feeling no place on the clinic grounds would qualify as private. To tell the truth, he mused as the air-conditioning kicked on and the building’s windows rattled, he had a feeling no place in Weldon would.

  That was the thing about small towns. Folks liked to keep up with their neighbors’ business, even when that business was none of their concern.

  Since authorities had never had a suspect to arrest and bring to trial for the murders, witness protection hadn’t been an option for Stephanie Monroe. Her mother Ruth, now Kate Danby, had taken matters into her own hands, choosing to protect her daughter by changing their names and hiding in plain sight.

  If anyone came after Jamie, the whole town would be waiting. Weldon’s eleven hundred residents didn’t need the details of her past spelled out before they’d come to her aid; she was one of their own and nothing else mattered—a fact Kell was sure Kate had counted on.

  As plans went, it wasn’t a bad one, but Kell liked his better. He was here to put an end to any and all threats this case still posed to her as the only witness to the Sonora Nites Diner murders. He just needed Jamie to hear him out, and then to go along with his proposal.

  Now that he saw her as more than a name in a file, he figured he was in for a fight. She might be rattled, but she was not down for the count.

  Without looking at them, Jamie spoke to the women standing behind her. “Can you two manage the patients and the doctor and the phones for a while?”

  At her question, they both nodded, the blonde adding, “They invented voice mail for a reason, Jamie. We’ll be fine. Go.”

  “And don’t worry if you can’t get back. It’s a short appointment day anyway. We can handle the afternoon on our own.” This from the darker woman.

  Jamie took them at their word, folding the newspaper into her purse, then reaching for her coffee and what Kell assumed was her breakfast in a brown paper bag.

  He followed as she headed for the front door, catching it once she’d shoved at the glass, and returning his hat to his head, his sunglasses to his face, as he stepped onto the front walk behind her.

  She held up one hand to shade her eyes, looking first at his four-wheel-drive SUV, then off down the block. “Can you leave your truck here? And take a walk?”

  He could. “How far?”

  “The Cantus have a covered deck with picnic tables at their market. Have you had breakfast? Juan makes awesome burritos.”

  Kell had poured himself a cup of coffee for the road when he’d left Midland before dawn, but that was it. “A burrito sounds great.”

  Jamie set off toward the sidewalk. Kell fell into step at her side. He was six foot one; he judged her to be about five foot eight and a whole lot of that height to be leg. She matched him step for step as they silently hit the end of one block and crossed the street to the next.

  From behind the sunglasses he wore, he studied her. Her determination—she never faltered. Her focus—she trained it ahead, but that didn’t keep her from paying attention to movement on all sides.

  She was sharp, aware. She wasn’t going to fall apart at the first sign of trouble. No, if Kell was going to have trouble with this case, it would no doubt have to do with the way she filled out the flower-pink bottoms of her scrubs.

  He’d always been an ass man, and he’d never seen a tighter one than Jamie Danby’s. Combine that with the rest of what she had going for her, and it was going to take a whole lot of discipline to keep his eye on the prize.

  He pulled his lingering gaze away, catching the quirk of her mouth as they crossed one last intersection into the parking lot of the Cantu Corner Store. She didn’t admit to knowing he’d had his eye on her backside, but then she didn’t have to. That wicked half grin was her tell.

  They stepped up onto the raised cedar deck; he let her take the lead and choose the table farthest from both the store and the street. She left her coffee and her bag behind and went inside. Again, that kind of town. One where she didn’t have to worry about purse snatchers or identity theft.

  Instead, she had to worry about a killer following the media coverage of his handiwork discovering who and where she was and hunting her down.

  While Jamie heated what turned out to be a muffin in the small store’s community microwave, Kell ordered two breakfast burritos and doctored a large coffee as they were being made. Once he and Jamie were back outside and settled at their table—and out of earshot of the curious onlookers inside the store—Jamie pounced.

  “You’re here because finding Kass’s body reminded you that there’s still a killer out there. Is that right?”

  Kell stopped with his first burrito halfway to his mouth. “I’ve never forgotten there’s a killer out there. Not once in ten years.”

  She met his gaze, hers not so much disbelieving as challenging. He knew it would take more than words to dispel her feelings that she’d been alone all this time, on her own, abandoned.

  “You know I don’t remember anything about the killer, so whatever you’re hoping to find out, you can stop.” She broke her muffin in half. Wisps of banana-scented steam rose, and she broke one of the halves again. “There’s nothing there. My noggin broke. It didn’t retain a thing about what he looked like, what he wore, nothing. You may have found Kass and solved the mystery of what happened to him, but the mystery of who’s responsible remains.”

  She paused, frowned, stared at the chunk of muffin she was ready to eat. “Unless that’s why you’re here. To tell me you have a suspect. To warn me you have a suspect, and that he knows where I am.”

  “No suspect,” he said to set her at ease, biting off a quarter of his burrito while she calmed enough to eat the mangled muffin square. But she was wrong.

  Just because she didn’t remember anything about the killer didn’t mean her noggin had broken, or that nothing was there. It was there. That much he knew, just as he knew it was hiding. He’d come here to get inside her head and coax it out.

  She nodded thoughtfully as she ate, and he figured it was best to let her stew while he filled the hungry hole in his stomach. He was happy to answer any and all of her questions before getting to the reason he was here. But since he’d shown up unannounced, he didn’t imagine she had many ready and waiting on the tip of her tongue.

  She surprised him by having one, and with the way she took him in, her gaze causing the hair at his nape to stir. “Why did no one let us know about the identification before it hit the papers? Did you people lose the list of contact numbers you’ve had for us all these years?”

  He’d only been assigned the case after the ID had been made and the files had been transferred from storage to the UCIT. The case was one he’d been aware of at the time of the killings, but he’d been in training academy then, and not yet a state trooper, much less the Ranger he was now.

  Until the UCIT had been put in charge, he’d had no authority over how things were handled. He did now, and she was right. Jamie and her mother should have been informed.

  He pulled his phone from its holster at his waist, punched up her contact information, and showed her the screen. “I have all of your numbers. You’re in the loop from here on. I promise.”

  He hadn’t really answered her question, only guaranteed a similar lapse wouldn’t happen on his watch. Whether or not that satisfied her, he couldn’t say. She’d dropped her gaze and was back to picking at her muffin.

  It was hard not to watch her fingers at work, so precise, so nimble. So sure. “If you’d like to eat something besides crumbs, I’m happy to buy another round of burritos.”

  She shook her head, her eyes coming up, searching, soft, a little bit sad. “Go ahead if you want. I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  He breathed deeply, hurting because she did. “Another coffee then?”

  “No thanks.” She pressed her fist to her sternum. “I think all that acid and caffeine was a mistake. It’s going to take an Alka-Seltzer or Tums to get me through the rest of the morning.”

  Kell was pretty sure any stomach issues she was having had less to do with what she’d put in it than with what she’d had to swallow when she’d seen the paper’s front page. His showing up couldn’t have made the news go down any easier.

  And what had he done since but make everything worse?

  He got up from the table and returned to the store to refill his own coffee and get Jamie a roll of antacids. Seeing a stack of Reeves County News copies in a rack next to the door helped him decide how to resume the conversation.

  Once outside, he handed her the Tums and settled across the table from her again, folding his sunglasses into his shirt pocket before asking, “What’s the first thing that went through your mind when you saw the headline?”

  She peeled back the paper from the end of the roll. “There wasn’t a first thing. It was more like a tumble of one thing on top of another.”

  Kell was good with going slowly, taking his time. “Such as?”

  “That Roni’s and Honoria’s behavior made sense. They’d been going through all sorts of machinations to keep me from reading the news.”

  Roni would be the blonde, Honoria the Hispanic woman. Jamie had obviously shared some of her background with them. He made a mental note to add the info to the file before prodding again. “What else?”

  “That I needed to call my mother. That it wasn’t going to be long before the media figured out Jamie Danby used to be Stephanie Monroe. This is the first movement the case has seen since it went cold, and investigative reporters these days are able to ferret out just about anything they want to know.”

  She shrugged, thumbed one of the tablets free and put it in her mouth, her fingers worrying the roll the only indication that her nerves weren’t as calm as her voice. “My mother is the one who changed our identities. Once she realized we were on our own, she packed us up, sold the few head of livestock still on the ranch, filed for divorce, and we vanished. But her resources were way more limited than those available to whatever government agency handles witness protection. So I figure if reporters can find me after this break in the case, then the killer can, too.

  “Except…” She paused, frowning as she gouged a thumbnail into the paper between the antacid tablets. “I’ve always assumed he knows. That he’s left me alone because my amnesia means I’m not really a threat. That coming after me when it’s clear he’s gotten away with murder would be the stupidest move he could make.”

  The stupid ones didn’t stand a chance. The smart ones, well, they could take longer to track down and bring to justice. But Kell would bring this one to justice. Jamie’s family, Kass’s family, the families of the other victims—they weren’t the only ones who had suffered because of the killer who’d rampaged through the Sonora Nites Diner.

  There was another man, the man who had taught Kell what it meant to be a Texas Ranger, who had lived and breathed the investigation, who had wept at every brick wall. As much as Kell was here for Jamie and Kate Danby, he was here for the man who had sworn to see this case through to the end, but who’d been hit and killed by a drunk driver while pulling over another on a long solemn stretch of Interstate 10.

  This was Kell’s job to finish now.

  “On the other hand,” she continued, popping a second antacid before closing the bits of paper around the roll’s open end and tucking it into a pocket of her purse. “How smart could he possibly be to have left the diner that night without making sure there was no one still alive?”

  Kell returned his cup of coffee to the table, holding it in place between both of his hands. “You’re the one who outsmarted him by playing dead. You saved your own life, Jamie.”

  “Too bad I couldn’t do the same for anyone else.”

  Her voice was flat, almost unfeeling. It didn’t break with sadness over the loss of life or sting with survivor’s guilt. Though she’d walked out of that diner covered in blood, she spoke of the experience as would an outsider.

  Locking away her emotions with her memories was a coping mechanism. Kell reached for the key. “What if you could do something now? For those who are left?”

  Her eyes snapped, her breathing quickened. He’d hit the nerve he’d hoped for. “I told you. I told the cops and shrinks who questioned me then. I told the counselors I saw for months after. I can see splatters of color, and fractals of light and shadows as he moved through the diner. But I don’t remember him. The last thing I see clearly is parking in the lot behind the diner before work. I barely remember opening the door and going inside.”

  She had gone inside. She had punched the time clock at 5:52 p.m.—eight minutes before her shift began. She had completed her six hours and—this was where Kell’s imagination kicked in—had been joking around, maybe blowing off steam with her coworkers when the killer had slammed through the front door and opened fire.

  Behind the register, Jamie—she’d been Stephanie then—had fallen to the floor. The killer had kicked her body out of the way to get to the cash register. Her ribs had been bruised so badly, the impression of his shoe’s heel was visible in the blues and purples marring her skin.

  She hadn’t even moved when the killer had dragged away her boss. When the authorities arrived, she’d been lying exactly where she’d fallen, covered in her own blood and that of the others, her wounds, fortunately, no threat to her life.

  What the crime scene photos and mock-up staging revealed, however, was that Jamie’s position had her facing the front windows and the parking lot. If she’d opened her eyes even once, she might have seen… something. Car color, make or model. Numbers on the license plate. Killer’s clothing, height or build. Age or ethnicity.

  She might not have seen anything, but there was a very good chance that she had—and that she knew she had. Not consciously; the Jamie she was now wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s why Kell needed to ask Stephanie.

  But he had to tread carefully to get from here to there. “I know you don’t remember. Your mind is doing what it’s supposed to do.”

  She gave a sharp snort. “It’s supposed to fritz out? Really?”

  “Not fritz out. Protect you. Amnesia is a coping mechanism.” Just like her sarcasm.

  “So it’s all there. I’m just not thinking hard enough, or trying often enough to find it? Is that what you’re saying? Because if you’ve come all this way for that—”

  He cut her off before her accusations grew more strident, and got in the way of her listening to him. “That’s not what I’m saying. Not at all. The memories are there, yes. But thinking hard or trying often is not how you’ll find them.”

  She didn’t believe him; he knew she was humoring him at best. “And I suppose you have the magic touch to make that happen?”

  “Not me,” he said softly, “but I know who might.”

  She waited, silent, expectant, as if bracing against him throwing a bucket of cold water in her face.

  He got it over with as quickly as he could. “I’d like you to see a forensic hypnotist.”

  THREE

  HE WOULD LIKE. HE WOULD like. Well, she didn’t give a rat’s ass what he would like. He wasn’t the one whose head would explode if those memories ever came back.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to call you. Sergeant? Ranger? Trooper?”

  “Call me Kell,” he said with too much twinkle in his green eyes for the subject at hand.

  Murder needed to be looked at with serious intent. And if he was hoping to soften her up, to win her to his side with that sparkle, well, it was time he had his hopes dashed.

  She started to do just that but was stopped by the squeal of tires as her mother’s Suburban took the turn into the Cantus’ at a speed that would have scared a stunt driver straight. Jamie flinched, bracing for the SUV to ram the front of the store.

  But the vehicle skidded to a stop, fishtailing to the left and throwing gravel, causing the Texas Ranger to surge to his feet with a deep curse of, “Holy hell.”

  “It’s my mother,” Jamie told him, enjoying the way his eyes went wide as much as she appreciated the width of his shoulders beneath his sharp white shirt. He was, in a word, hot. Disturbingly so. Big and intoxicating and lusty. Okay, more than a word, she thought, and cleared her throat. “I forgot to call her back.”

  Kate jumped out of the cab and came at them, waving her arms and yelling the very same thing. “You were supposed to call me back. Jamie. What’s going on?”

  On her feet now, too, Jamie made the introductions. “Mom, this is Sergeant Kell Harding with the Texas Rangers. Kell, my mother, Kate Danby. Dr. Kate.”

  Jamie’s mother looked at the man in the Western-cut dress shirt, white hat, boots, and jeans, then turned an inquiring gaze back on her daughter to wait for more than an exchange of names—a gaze filled with as many fears as questions.

  Her own heart aching over the worry her mother had suffered all these years, Jamie took her hand and pulled Kate to sit on the bench beside her. “Kell came the moment he was given the case files. He came in person. He wanted to make sure we were okay. To answer our questions.”