Watch Me (4 page)

“Why?”

“He probably threw it down to free his hands for digging. Then he heard the dogs.”

“So what does it matter if I touch it? I can’t get prints off a log.” Crouching, she plucked a long, black strand of hair from the bark and held it up.

The sight of Sheridan’s hair and blood on the end of that club called to mind the sight of her lying on the ground—and the feel of her against his bare chest, so limp in his arms. “It would carry his scent.”

“As well as hers,” Amy argued. “How can the dogs distinguish between the two?”

“The same way they distinguish between all other scents.” Kneeling beside her, Cain called his hounds over and gave them each a good sniff. Then he told them to “find” and sent them into the woods.

Koda started tracking right away. He led the others uphill, which surprised Cain. He’d expected them to go east, toward the road.

He hurried after the dogs, with Amy jogging behind him. She caught up only when he stopped to examine several footprints on the muddy bank of Old Cache Creek. “He crossed here,” he said, and ordered the dogs to do the same.

Maximillian didn’t like the water. He hung back until the last moment but plunged in when he saw that even Cain was going to wade through it.

“What was he doing way up here?” Amy called after them.

Cain didn’t respond. He was scanning the area as he cleared the creek, trying to think like the man who’d used that club.

“Maybe he’s some vagabond who’s been camping out in these mountains,” she suggested, answering her own question.

No, it was someone from Whiterock. Cain’s gut told him that. The shooting, the rifle, the beating—there was some connection. “He isn’t a camper. He ran this way because he thought I might come after him.”

“
Did
you?”

“No, I went for help. When he figured out I wasn’t
coming, he probably wound back to the road and drove off.”

“Maybe he fell and got hurt and is still out here,” she said.

Cain cringed to think that Amy was the best the Whiterock police had to offer. “He wouldn’t have come back for his shovel if that was the case.”

The color in her cheeks camouflaged some of her freckles as she wiped the sweat from her temple and moved farther up the bank of the creek they’d just crossed. “Then this is a waste of time. I say we head over to the road and check for tire imprints before too many other vehicles go through and destroy our chances.”

When she started off in that direction, he called to the dogs, but only Maximillian and Quixote joined him. Cain whistled, giving Koda a second command, but the black-and-tan didn’t return for another minute or two. Head and tail lowered apologetically, he finally came to a stop about five feet from Cain—but Cain realized there’d been a reason for the delay.

“Whatcha got, boy?”

Creeping forward, head still down, Koda dropped a shiny object at Cain’s feet.

Cain glanced over his shoulder at Amy’s retreating figure. For once, she wasn’t watching him. She was leading Maximillian and Quixote toward the dirt road that led past his place to Levi Matherley’s.

Keeping his back to her, Cain bent to retrieve the shiny object. He hoped it was a piece of jewelry belonging to the man who’d attacked Sheridan, and that it could eventually be traced to its owner.

But the reality made his jaw sag. It was his watch. The one he’d left on
his
nightstand before bed last night.

“You coming?” Amy called.

Cain shoved the watch into his pocket. The man who’d nearly killed Sheridan had been in his house while he was driving to the hospital.

S
heridan couldn’t open her eyes. The light was too blinding, too white. But she was fairly certain she wasn’t having a near-death experience. There was no tunnel, no loving Christlike figure waiting to embrace her. The air was cold, she could hear distant movement and voices, and she could smell antiseptic and just a hint of…
cologne?

Raising her eyelids slightly, she looked through her lashes to see walls covered with blue-and-yellow wallpaper. Judging by the IV tube going into her arm, the TV suspended from the ceiling, the rails on the bed and the rolling metal tray down by her feet, she was in a hospital. Which hospital, she had no idea. But that seemed less important at the moment than the fact that she wasn’t alone. A man stood at the window, gazing out. She was pretty sure he was the source of the cologne.

There was something unsettling about that scent, about this man’s presence….

Did she know him? He seemed vaguely familiar. But she couldn’t recall a time or a place or a name. He had unruly dark hair and a lean, muscular build with broad
shoulders and golden tanned skin. Well-toned arms showed beneath the short sleeves of a white T-shirt, and—she tilted her head for a clearer view—he looked better in a pair of jeans than any man she’d ever seen.

She doubted that detail would’ve occurred to her if she were lying at death’s door.

He shifted, seemed to catch sight of her from the corner of his eye and turned.

She knew him, all right. She would never forget
that
face. It was Cain Granger.

“Thank God,” he breathed and came immediately to her bedside.

The relief and concern in his manner made her wonder if she’d missed the chapter where they’d become friends.

“What…happened?” The words had to be forced from a tight, scratchy throat, but she didn’t hurt anymore. The pain had been replaced with a sort of weightless euphoria that suggested she was under the influence of some very strong medication.

He took her hand and toyed with the tips of her fingers as if they knew each other much better than they did. “You don’t remember?”

Sheridan couldn’t put the whole story together, but fragments of various scenes flitted through her mind—a pair of muddy boots, a shovel, the rain. Those were the bad memories. Then there were some that, except for the pain, wouldn’t have been bad at all: a rock-solid chest and sinewy arms cradling her, a soft bed and the same scent she’d identified when she woke up a moment ago. “You… I was…in your bed.”

“That’s right. Briefly.”

“But…it wasn’t you who…who did this to me.” She struggled against the confusion that nearly overwhelmed her.

A dark scowl brought out the stormy green of his eyes. “No. I found you after you were hurt, after whoever did this ran away.”

“Oh.” That made sense. She’d definitely seen his face at some point. And heard a helicopter.

“Do you remember now?” he prompted.

He seemed anxious for reassurance, but before she could piece together the separate images floating around in her brain, a shorter, stouter man appeared in the doorway wearing a police uniform.

“Look at this. She’s up!” he bellowed, removing a cowboy hat as he entered the room.

A cowboy-hat-wearing cop wasn’t something she’d expect to see in California, but it wasn’t so unusual here. She might’ve smiled, except the muscle that flexed in Cain’s jaw told Sheridan he wasn’t pleased about the interruption. Dropping her hand, he stepped away.

In the few seconds it took her new visitor to reach her bedside, Sheridan realized she knew this man, too. She’d gone to high school with him, the same as Cain. Unlike Cain, however, he’d lost a lot of hair and gained a lot of weight.

“Ned?” she said uncertainly.

“Hey.” Holding his hat in one beefy hand, he rested the other on her bedrail and smiled, revealing the gap he’d always had between his teeth. His twin sister had
one just like it—for being fraternal twins, they looked surprisingly similar—unless she’d had it fixed since Sheridan had seen her last. “How ya feelin’ little lady?”

She glanced at Cain, but he wasn’t watching them. He’d taken up his post along the wall and was once again staring pensively out the window. She could see his profile, the long sweep of his dark lashes, his bold, prominent chin, straight nose and well-shaped lips—

“Sheridan?”

She dragged her attention away from Cain. “Yes?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better. I think. What’s wrong with me?”

“Not much now. Doc says you’re healing nicely. The swelling in your brain has gone down. You had some internal injuries, but that’s all going to be fine, too.”

“How long have I been in the hospital?”

“A week.”

That sounded like an eternity. “Where’re my parents?”

“I don’t know. We’ve tried to reach them, but the phone at their place in Wyoming—it is Wyoming, isn’t it?”

She managed a careful nod.

“No one answers.”

Why not? she wondered. They were always there, as reliable as rain.

And then it occurred to her. They were on a two-week cruise to Alaska. They wanted to get some traveling in before her younger sister had her baby, which was due… She’d lost track of time; she didn’t know when. “They’re on vacation,” she said.

“That explains it.”

A man’s hand, holding a piece of wood, flashed
through Sheridan’s mind. But that had to be part of a dream…. “What happened to me?”

“Someone attacked you. That’s why I’m here. I’m Whiterock’s chief of police.”

Attacked
her?

The figure with the club reappeared in her mind. Evidently he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. She’d been attacked before, years ago, but the situation had been different back then. How was it that this kind of violence had visited her again?

Maybe this time she’d see justice done. “Do you know who did it?” she asked.

Ned’s lips formed a hard, flat line. “Not exactly. But we have our suspicions.”

That was no solace. They didn’t know, which meant more of what she’d experienced twelve years ago—more wondering, more waiting, more fruitless hoping. “Who do you suspect?” she asked, but Cain interrupted.

“The wrong man. He’s wasting his time, that’s all he’s doing.”

“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” Ned said. “Surely she saw more this time.”

They were relying on
her?
A strange panic set in because Sheridan couldn’t identify the man who’d attacked her. She couldn’t recall anything about the incident. At least nothing clear or sequential. Nothing that made sense or hinted at reasons and names. Just those bizarre, upsetting images. “I don’t think so,” she said helplessly.

“Tell me everything you remember since you first drove into town, darlin’.”

Her mind searched for a starting place, a string to follow to the point where everything went wrong. She was currently living in Sacramento, working with The Last Stand—a victims’ charity she’d founded five years ago with Skye Willis and Jasmine Stratford. No, not Stratford. Not anymore. Jasmine was married and living in New Orleans with her husband these days.

Her thoughts were so tangled….

“Why’d I come back to Whiterock?” she asked. With a bit more information, she might be able to put it all together….

“You wanted to come after I called you about the rifle,” Ned said, but that elicited nothing.

“I did?”

“You said you’ve learned a thing or two about investigatin’ crime since you moved and wanted to help me solve Jason Wyatt’s murder. That was three weeks ago.”

She couldn’t remember three weeks ago, but she could remember Jason. That part of the past came rushing back like a horror video on fast-forward: Cain’s stepbrother putting his arm around her in that steamy truck, trying to kiss her. Her unwillingness to let him. The way she’d wiped a spot on the window with her hand, hoping for a glimpse of Cain. Then the door being wrenched open—

She squeezed her eyes shut as the barrel of the rifle materialized in her mind.
Stop. Stop. Stop!
She wasn’t ready to relive that nightmare.

“Sheridan?” Ned pressed.

Sweat dampened the valley between her breasts. “I—I’m not myself yet,” she murmured. “Maybe…maybe you should come back later.”

Cain turned. She could feel him observing her closely, assessing the situation in that silent, watchful way of his. He’d changed some, filled out, grown harder around the edges, more rugged. But his mysterious, aloof air was vintage Cain.

Ned let go of the bed rail and began rolling the sides of his hat toward the crown. “When?” he said. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but this hospital’s seventy miles from Whiterock, darlin’.’”

“Stop calling her ‘darlin’,” Cain growled. “And so what if waiting means you have to make another trip? She doesn’t need any pressure from you. She’s had it hard enough.”

She was relieved to have someone stand up for her. Right now, she needed that buffer. But she could also understand Ned’s impatience. He had an investigation to run, and he expected her to react like the professional she’d promised him she was and not the victim she’d become.

Somehow, frightening and painful though it was, she had to delve into the half memories that shrouded this most recent incident. But she couldn’t create clarity that wasn’t there. “Can you tell me more, some detail that might remind me?” she asked.

“Cain found you next to a half-dug grave in the forest near his old cabin. You were so beat-up he thought you were dead.”

His words reminded her, all right. She could barely breathe. “I—I…”

Cain cut in. “Damn it, Ned, give her a break.”

The rest of Ned’s good ol’ boy veneer disappeared.
“So you can get to her first?” he snapped, the twang of his accent growing more marked. “Plant thoughts and memories that aren’t her own? Hell, no!”

Had Sheridan been more herself, she would’ve argued that no one could play with her memory that way. The truth was there; it was just temporarily locked inside her mind. But she felt too uncertain to argue about anything. “I’m going to need some time,” she said.

Ned wasn’t happy with her response, but most of the tension in the room existed independent of her. There was some kind of feud going on between him and Cain. Why? They’d known each other in high school. But they hadn’t hung out together. They’d barely—

“You married her,” Sheridan said, finally piecing one small mystery together.

Cain knew exactly who and what she was talking about. She could see it in his face. But Ned was still caught up in trying to get his own answers and didn’t clue in quite so fast. “Excuse me?” he said, wearing a scowl.

“Amy,” she explained. “Tina Judd wrote me a year after I left town.” Before her mother demanded she sever even that relationship. “She said Cain had married your sister. You two are in-laws—”

“
Were
in-laws,” Cain interrupted. “Amy and I are divorced.”

That didn’t surprise Sheridan. Amy had never been right for Cain. She was far too grasping. Sheridan wasn’t sure
anyone
was right for him. He held too much power in every relationship, or at least those she’d seen.

“You weren’t made for marriage.” As soon as she said it, she realized that was probably something she
shouldn’t have spoken out loud, but with the medication, her brain hadn’t stopped her mouth in time. And once it was out, it was out.

Cain quirked an eyebrow at her as Ned laughed. “I guess she knows you better than I thought,” he gibed.

Whether the remark was appropriate or not, she was relieved to be able to reach into the past, even if it wasn’t the part she most needed to remember. “Dogs. That’s what you really loved, wasn’t it? Animals?” He gave his heart to his pets, but his body had been a whole other story. He’d gotten an early start with the girls….

And yet…Sheridan could still remember how gentle he’d been with her that night in the camper, how sweet. He’d been seventeen years old, only eighteen months older than she was at the time, but he hadn’t bumbled his way through an experience she found awkward at best and painful at worst.

Odd that she could recall so clearly how hard he’d tried to hold himself back when she could barely come up with her own name.

“Considering we barely knew each other, that’s more than I expected you to remember about me.” Cain’s voice was so clipped and his body language so indifferent, she figured he’d forgotten about those few minutes in the camper. Or the memory didn’t mean anything to him.

Most likely the latter. He’d been with a lot of girls. What was thirty minutes with a naive little virgin?

“I guess there are some things a girl never forgets,” she said, the words, as well as the memory, bittersweet.

She saw something in his eyes, something that
seemed to indicate he remembered every detail as well as she did. But she refused to let herself care one way or the other. He obviously hadn’t changed. Why was he even in her hospital room? Ned had said she’d been unconscious for a week. What could Cain Granger possibly want that would keep him around for so long?

“I hope the details concerning your attack are some of those things,” Ned said, single-mindedly bringing the conversation back to the original topic. “We have to find the guy who did this to you.”

Sheridan curled her fingers into fists. “Why did this happen to
me?
” she asked Ned. “Why me
again?
”

“That’s what I want to know,” he replied. “The only answer I’ve got is that this has some connection to Jason’s shooting.” He continued talking, but what he said had no meaning to her. She couldn’t deal with what’d happened to Jason, not in conjunction with this. She cringed every time she heard his name. That memory had always been painful, but today it created an emotional overload like she’d never experienced before.

Instinctively, she turned her face into her pillow, trying to avoid his words, to avoid any thought of Jason, but he kept talking, saying things she didn’t want to hear.
Go away
. She’d awakened to so many questions. Questions that left her feeling lost and disoriented.

She needed an anchor—and looked up to find Cain.