Detective? Not just a cop called for a disturbance. The nurse had said “investigation,” hadn’t she? So it only made sense that detectives would be involved.
“But she didn’t die,” James said, his voice tight. God, what had happened?
The nurse started to say something, but the look the doctor sent her shut her up.
James grabbed her arm.
“I have to know,” he said, his voice a rough whisper. She gazed pointedly at his gripping fingers, and he dropped his hand.
Monroe’s face was hard, cut in stone. “The police will tell you—”
“Screw the police! I need to know!” He pushed upright, swung his legs over the edge of the bed as a bolt of pain shot through his chest.
“Mr. Cahill,” Monroe said firmly, “I’d advise you to take it easy.” His manner had gone stiff. “And don’t touch Nurse Rictor or any of us again. The police will tell you what you want to know.”
“Call them,” James ordered.
The doctor nodded. “Already done.”
Dread stirred inside James, and his jaw clenched at the thought of facing the police. He’d never liked cops; he remembered that, and he never would. He’d had more than one run-in with the law, back in his hellion-of-a-teenager days, when he was a hot-headed youth who’d rebelled against his parents, his scandal-cursed, wealthy family, and the whole damned world.
So why all the trouble now?
What had landed him here? He fought to recall, but came up empty. Whatever had happened, it had been bad. Very bad. He forced his thoughts to earlier in the week, what he could remember of it: the snow that was still falling outside the hospital windows, the coming of the busy season with the approaching holidays.
He’d been brought here Thursday, the nurse had said. What had he been doing? The last thing he recalled was that he’d been working on an order for one of the tiny houses . . . right? And there had been some kind of glitch, but he couldn’t remember what. He’d gone from the shed, where the house was being constructed, to the inn . . . like always . . . right? Picked up dinner at the restaurant and . . . and . . . and driven home. He remembered stepping inside, his dog greeting him, and then headlights in the driveway. Then?
Damn if he could recall.
Monroe was speaking again, bringing him back to the here and now.
“—a call in to Detective Rivers.”
“He’s the cop I need to talk to?” James asked.
“Yes.”
So be it. No one here was going to give him any answers. He read it in Monroe’s staunch professionalism. James was being stonewalled. Either the doctor didn’t have any answers or had been instructed to keep his mouth shut. And Sonja Rictor had clammed up. Grabbing her had been a mistake. She was now as tight-lipped as Dr. Monroe, saying only, “I’m sure you’ll sort it all out once you remember.” She injected something into his IV. “This should help take the edge off.”
“I need to get out of here,” he said.
“Not tonight.” Monroe was firm, and James had trouble concentrating, probably from whatever it was that had been slipped into his IV.
“If you don’t let me out of here—”
The doctor cocked his head in unspoken question: Then what? Where do you think you’ll go? What do you think you’ll do?
“At least give me my phone.”
“We don’t have it,” the doctor said, looking at the nurse for confirmation. She gave a quick shake of her head.
Blinking to stay awake, James said, “It must be at home . . .”
“I’ll check on you tomorrow,” Monroe was saying, and James watched him leave the room, the nurse at his heels.
James lay back on the pillows, his eyelids heavy as the meds kicked in, and he suddenly didn’t care that he was being held here in the hospital or that his cell wasn’t with him. He thought he heard the swoosh of the door to his room opening, and he tried to waken, but his eyelids were so heavy. He managed to crack one eye and caught a movement, then the back of someone he didn’t know, someone in scrubs scuttling away, a rope of jet-black hair falling between her shoulders as she hurried out of the room. He blinked, and she was gone.
If she’d ever really been there.
His mind was playing tricks on him, and the person quickly exiting the room could well be just a wayward image his mind had created.
But had he caught a waft of some perfume?
It didn’t matter. Not now. Not when he was so damned tired, grateful for the sleep pulling him under.
As he slipped away, a woman’s face floated for a second before his eyes—a beautiful woman with even features, a quick, wry smile, dark auburn hair, and a suspicious glint in her gold eyes—but he didn’t know if she was real or a figment of his imagination. Someone he knew or had just seen in passing. Her name—did he even know it? It eluded him, and he remembered the nurse’s assertion that his girlfriend had been Megan. But that didn’t seem right. He felt his eyebrows slam together as he tried to conjure her to the surface of his faulty memory, only to fail. Who the hell was she? he wondered, before drifting away on a soft, welcome cloud of relief.
CHAPTER 4
“Amnesia? Can you believe that?” Detective Brett Rivers didn’t. Not for a second. He shot a skeptical look at his partner over the snow-covered hood of his Jeep Cherokee before climbing inside. He’d woken up in a bad mood hours before, and as the day had worn on, it hadn’t improved much.
Wynonna Mendoza slid into the passenger seat and buckled up. A petite woman in her mid-twenties, she was whip smart, smooth-skinned, and not afraid to speak her mind. Her usually unruly black hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her head, and large hoop earrings dangled
