Praise for
B.J. DANIELS

“B.J. Daniels doesn’t fail her readers in this

thrill ride of a tale, in which romance blossoms

between childhood friends.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Keeping Christmas

“Daniels has more than an intriguing suspense

story; she has put together an explosive

tale of love, trust and the twisted ties

among an embattled family.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on

Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch

“B.J. Daniels weaves together past and

present secrets to create intense suspense

and a wonderful, twisting plot.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on

High-Caliber Cowboy

“B.J. Daniels treats readers to her signature

bad guys, an intense, heart-stopping story and an

electric romance between two special characters.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Masked Man

“A suspenseful tale, blended artfully with

a romance that will warm your heart. Fans of

romantic suspense won’t be able to put down

this page-turner. Definitely a keeper!”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on

Premeditated Marriage

B.J. DANIELS

A former award-winning journalist, B.J. had thirty-six short stories published before her first romantic suspense, Odd Man Out, came out in 1995. Her book Premeditated Marriage won Romantic Times BOOKreviews Best Intrigue award for 2002 and she received a Career Achievement award for romantic suspense. B.J. lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, three springer spaniels—Zoey, Scout and Spot—and a temperamental tomcat named Jeff. She is a member of Kiss of Death, the Bozeman Writer’s Group and Romance Writers of America. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards in the winter and camps, water-skis and plays tennis in the summer. To contact her, write to: P.O. Box 183, Bozeman, MT 59771 or look for her online at www.bjdaniels.com.

Shadow Lake

B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

LIKE THE OTHER GREAT tragedy in her life, Anna Collins never saw this one coming.

Just minutes before midnight, a deer bounded out of the rain and darkness onto the isolated two-lane highway directly into her path.

She’d been driving too fast, terrified and already out of control in her panicked state. So when she saw the deer, all she’d been able to do was react instinctively.

She slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel. Through the driving rain and slap of the wipers the doe’s huge eyes caught for an instant in the headlights, then it bolted, disappearing in the pines lining the road as the car skidded across the wet blacktop.

Anna turned the wheel hard, overcorrecting, sending up a shower of puddled rainwater. She caught the blur of pines and the steep face of a rocky cliff an instant before the large, heavy car left the pavement on the opposite side of the road, and plunged down the mountainside.

Mute with terror, she didn’t have time to scream even if she could have made a sound. Nor would that scream have been heard over the crash of the car as it plummeted downward. Branches snapped off, the sound like gunshots, as leaves and bark pelted the windshield, the car gaining momentum.

A limb slapped the windshield an instant after she saw something dark and deep beyond the glow of her headlights.

Water.

The lake came into view a heartbeat before the car went airborne. The tires crashed down hard, the undercarriage shrieking in a scream of metal on rock before the vehicle hit the rain-dimpled black surface of the water.

At some point the air bag had exploded in her face. Before that, her head had slammed hard against the side window. Now everything glittered before going black, then gray as the front of the car pitched forward, inky liquid lapping up over the hood.

Dazed, Anna lifted her head and touched her temple, her fingers coming away sticky with blood. She stared in confusion. Icy water lapped over her feet, quickly filling the floor-board as the car nosed forward at a steep angle, her seat belt cutting into her breasts.

She could hear static coming from the in-car emergency system just before it shorted out in a flash of orange as the car began to sink. Water gushed over the hood to lap against the windshield.

She tried to open the door but it wouldn’t budge against the water already up to the side mirror.

She could hear the motor gurgling and realized it was still running. Would the electric windows still work? Frantically she hit the button as she fumbled with tremulous fingers to unlatch her seat belt.

Her side window hummed down. Ice cold water rushed in. She gasped as the water cascaded over her, filling her lap. The car pitched farther forward, the seat belt tightening painfully as the weight of her body pressed into it.

Hurriedly, she hit the window button. The glass began to whir back up, but a few inches from the top, it stopped. She pushed harder on the button as water cascaded over the top of the window, but the water had shorted out the rest of the electrical system.

Frantic, she grappled again to unlatch the seat belt as the breath-stealing cold water rose higher. The belt wouldn’t unlatch. She tried again and again but it was useless. The seat belt was jammed. The weight of her body seemingly binding it.

The freezing water splashed over her chest to her neck as the car steadily sank. She was going to drown. She gasped, now panicked and choking on the foul-smelling water that flooded her mouth and nose.

She fought to keep her head above water, but it was impossible. The car was sinking too quickly. The interior was almost completely full now, the water only inches from the headliner.

She closed her eyes and sucked in one last breath as the car completed its slow somersault to land on its top with a jarring thud on the bottom of the lake.

For a second, nothing moved. Anna hung upside down, suspended in the icy water by the seat belt, all sense of direction lost. She opened her eyes, still holding the last breath she’d taken. Her gaze followed the eerie dim path the headlights cut through the murky water.

Lungs bursting, mind starting to drift like her hair now floating around her face, she tried the seat belt release one more time even though she knew it was futile.

Her body cried out for oxygen. She had to take a breath. She couldn’t hold out any longer.

A tap at the side window.

Startled, she turned her head as if in slow motion and let out a cry, her last breath rushing from her lips at what she saw pressed against the glass.

CHAPTER TWO

GENE BRUBAKER BOLTED upright in bed. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath and frantically searched the room for whatever had awakened him.

The room was black except for the sliver of moonlight that knifed across the end of his bed through a crack in the drapes. He drew back from the light as fearful of it as the darkness.

He was sweating, his heart pounding too hard, his mouth dry. Another nightmare. The same nightmare. He was left with a cloying sense of dread that clung to his skin.

Lying back, he closed his eyes, opened them again, fearful of sleep. The clock on the bedside table read 11:57 p.m.

Throwing back the covers, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, but had to take a moment before he could stand. He cursed the body that was letting him down. He didn’t feel his age, could hardly remember it, but he recalled looking in the mirror one day and being shocked to see a deeply wrinkled gray-haired man squinting back at him.

Stiffly, he finally rose. The floor felt cold on his bare feet as he padded over to the window. He still felt shaken, his legs weaker than usual, as he drew back the drapes. The rain had stopped. He could see the lake through the trees. The water shimmered in the moonlight, the surface burnished silver.

He lifted the window with some effort and took a deep breath of the cold spring night air, letting it fill his lungs. As if anything could chase away the nightmare. He let the breath out slowly as he looked past the trees along the shore of the lake to the expanse of open water beyond.

The night air chilled his clammy skin. He slammed the window and had started to pull the drapes closed again when he noticed a light up the block.

Although nearing midnight, it appeared someone was still up at the church.

He stared at the light, surprised by the sudden ache of need that overcame him. He’d avoided church since Gladys’s funeral and truthfully only attended before that to please his wife.

He glanced back at the huge bed, the crumpled sheets on only the one side. The ache of emptiness wasn’t new. Nor was the loneliness—or the guilt. He reached for his pants.

Gene Brubaker wasn’t a man who believed in omens. In fact, he wasn’t sure what if anything he believed in anymore. That’s why he didn’t stop to consider what he was doing as he left the house and walked the block down the street to the Holy Rosary Catholic Church.

He walked past the church every day, aware that for the past few months he’d moved to the other side of the street.

Now when he neared the church, the street deserted, his jacket pulled around him as he huddled against the cold, he wondered what he was doing. Possibly just taking a walk to clear his head. The rain had left the night air damp and filled with the smell of the wet street, and he was struck with the thought that it was too cold for late April even for a town in the Northern Cascades of Washington.

Fortunately, there was no one around this time of the night. Or this time of the year in the town of Shadow Lake. Still too early for tourists with Memorial Day weeks away.

The town’s only stoplight flashed yellow down the street as he climbed the broad stone steps to the front entrance of the church, half-hoping to find the door locked. Not that there was much chance of that. Shadow Lake was so small and isolated from the real world that there was no need for anybody to lock their doors. Especially churches.

The door was heavier than he remembered it. But then again he was getting weaker each day. He had to push hard to get it to swing open and when it did, he hesitated. This was crazy. Wasn’t this the last place he should be?

A dim light burned inside. What was it he thought he’d find here? he wondered now. Salvation? Or redemption?

He had started to turn to leave when he heard the rustle of clothing and saw an elderly priest rise awkwardly from one of the pews up front and turn toward him.

Father Tom Bertonelli met his gaze. With the flick of the priest’s arthritic fingers, his old friend motioned him inside.

Brubaker let the church door close behind him, the smell of the rain and night quickly replaced by the familiar scents of his thirty-eight-year marriage. It evoked both longing and sadness. A lump formed in his throat and he felt close to tears again. Christ, he needed to get some sleep. These nightmares were killing him. His life was killing him.

He wanted to laugh at the irony of that as he glanced toward the confessionals, the church feeling too large, too vacuous. The priest gave a faint nod. Like a sleepwalker, Gene moved toward the polished wood of the confessional, his footsteps echoing across the marble floor.

He was glad when the confessional door closed behind him and he was sitting on the worn seat in the dark, the seclusion giving him a sense of safety if not peace.

Tom Bertonelli had been his friend for years. They’d fished together, shared meals up at the house, talked politics. But that had been before Gladys died, before Gene Brubaker had lost all faith.

Leaning back in the shadowy darkness, he closed his eyes as he heard the door to the adjacent confessional open, then close softly as the priest arranged his robes.

Brubaker didn’t open his eyes.

“What troubles you?” Tom asked in a voice dry as parchment.

The lump rose in his throat again. He swallowed. “Father, I have sinned.”

JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT, ROB Nash parked under the wide branches of a large old pine tree along the quiet street next to a pile of dirty snow. Cutting his headlights and engine, he settled in to wait.

Rain dimpled the mud puddles along the unpaved back street. All the houses were dark except for one. The other houses were mostly summer cabins, boarded up for the winter. The seasonal residents wouldn’t be returning until Memorial Day weekend and it was only April.

A drenched cat crept across the muddy street and disappeared into a honeysuckle hedge. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.

It was Tuesday, a notoriously slow night of the week in Shadow Lake, Washington, in the Northern Cascades. Not that there was much trouble in the town this time of year, given that few people wintered-in. The number of residents dropped drastically during the cold months.

It was another story in the summer, though. Tourists flocked to the lake to boat and fish and shop for antiques and curios, causing traffic problems and all the disturbances that came with the increase in population.

Nash hated summers. The town got too hectic, too crowded. That was one reason he wasn’t looking forward to another busy season and wondered if it wasn’t time for him to retire. He had a new bride to think about.

He’d put in thirty-five years and yet he was still young. Relatively. Fifty-five wasn’t that old anymore. He could spend more time fishing. Spend more time with Lucinda, something he wished he had done more of lately.

Headlights flashed at the other end of the street as a car turned and headed toward him. Nash slid down a little in his seat and picked up his binoculars to watch through the half circle in the steering wheel and the low-slung branches of the thick pine he’d pulled under.

He felt like a fool. Worse, he felt disloyal. He’d made a point of letting everyone believe he would be in Pilot’s Cove for a couple of days. He hated this kind of deception and had always believed he was a better man than that. Right now he wished both were true.

The approaching car’s headlights went out just before the vehicle pulled into the driveway of the only house with lights on down the street, a single-level white brick rancher with a two-car attached garage. Nash felt a jolt as he recognized the car—and the driver.

The front door opened and a young, slim woman rushed out of the house. She’d obviously been expecting her visitor because she wore her red raincoat, the one Nash had bought her for her birthday.

Nash saw her face and the driver’s for only an instant as she opened the car door, the dome light coming on. Lucinda Nash slid into the passenger seat. The door closed and the dome light shut off.

Son of a bitch. Nash sat up with a jerk, throwing open the patrol-car door as he drew his weapon. And just moments before, he’d felt bad for being suspicious and deceitful. Apparently he’d had every reason. Hadn’t he known something was going on with his wife?

His mind racing, he tried to come up with a reason other than the obvious one for why she would have gone out this time of the night—let alone with that particular man.

Nash had witnessed his share of affairs over the years. It’s what a man got for spending a good part of his life on dark streets when good people were in bed asleep. He was no stranger to the uglier side of humankind. He’d seen things he hadn’t wanted to see, the kind of things that left him with a nasty taste in his mouth and a shitty impression of humanity in general.

Now he tried to catch his breath, to still the trembling in his limbs. His radio squawked. He ignored it. He stumbled out into the muddy street, the rain pounding out a staccato beat on the car’s roof as he slammed his door behind him. Fuck retirement. He was going to kill the bastard. Kill them both.

The car in front of his house backed out slowly. Nash stopped and gripped the weapon in both hands, willing the driver of the car to turn down the street toward him.

But the driver turned back the way he’d come, keeping to the dark pines along the edge of town.

Nash raised the gun as the car took off, the taillights disappearing in the rain and darkness before he could get off a shot.

He took a couple of steps after the retreating car before staggering back under the weight of his discovery. His palm came down on the warm wet hood of the patrol car as he caught himself to keep from falling.

For a moment he thought he was having a heart attack. He fought to breathe, his chest heaving. His stomach convulsed. Launching himself toward the dried weeds under the tree, he retched until he was almost too empty to stand.

Behind him, his radio continued to squawk. He caught only snatches of what was being said. The operator from one of those fancy in-car emergency systems had called about an accident on the way into town.

Leaning against the car, Police Chief Rob Nash wiped his eyes, then slowly holstered his weapon before stumbling back to drop into the front seat of his patrol car. He had started to reach for the radio when he heard his second in command take the call.

CHAPTER THREE

ANNA COLLINS TRIED to open her eyes, the weight of her lids like concrete shutters. Light filtered in at the edge of her vision, growing brighter.

“She’s awake, Doctor,” a female voice said nearby.

The room swam in a sea of green and white. She focused on a nurse standing at the end of the bed. A hospital room?

Head pounding, she blinked in confusion, time and sense of place lost, leaving only one thought: She’d been here before. Or had she? She closed her eyes again, preferring the darkness.

“How are you feeling?” said a deep, older male voice next to her.

She forced her eyes all the way open. An elderly man stood beside her bed. His thick gray hair was rumpled as if he’d just gotten out of bed. His face was deeply wrinkled, skin weathered as if from the sun and wind. He wore canvas hunting pants and a flannel shirt beneath the white lab coat that flapped open as he moved closer. He smelled of cinnamon.

She watched him move something around in his mouth. He made a smacking sound, then pushed what appeared to be a round candy into his cheek as he eyed her with pale blue eyes faded by age.

Although he had a stethoscope around his neck, he looked nothing like any doctor she’d ever seen.

“Hello,” he said, giving her a smile, the candy making his cheek protrude on the one side. “I’m Dr. Gene Brubaker.”

She was in a hospital. Anna wet her dry lips as she glanced around the room, her thoughts jumbled, her head aching. The drapes were drawn on the window, but she could see through a slim opening. It was dark out.

She glanced at her wrist. No watch. Instead, she found that her arm was hooked up to an IV. “What…time…”

“Almost three—a.m.,” he said.

She nodded, time meaning absolutely nothing right now.

The doctor handed her a glass of water from the nightstand beside her bed and waited while she drank greedily.

“Easy,” he warned as she choked on the water. “You’re in a hospital, miss. You’ve had a car accident.”

She blinked. A car accident? Her heart began to race. “My son. Tell me my son is all right.”

He frowned, his thick gray eyebrows beetling together. “Your son?”

“Tyler. Where is Tyler?” She tried to sit up, but he rested a heavy hand on her shoulder as he took the empty cup from her.

“Easy now. Let’s just take it a step at a time. Can you tell me your name?”

“Anna…” For a moment, she couldn’t think of her last name. She swallowed, her throat raw, the headache blinding. “Collins. Please, I have to see my son.” Her voice broke. “Tell me he’s all right. Tell me he made it.”

“Try to remain calm,” he said, frowning down at her with grandfatherly concern. “Your son was in the car with you? How old is your son?”

“Tyler’s four. You have to help him!” Her voice rose and she began to sob as she clutched at one edge of his white lab coat. “Just tell me he’s alive. Please.”

She was hysterical now, sobbing and gripping at his coat, crying, “Save my son. Please save my son.”

“Sheila,” the doctor said, and the nurse she’d seen before moved into her line of vision. Anna felt something prick her skin. Darkness moved along the edge of her vision again, that silent black emptiness calling her back.

She’d been in the dark too long. She clutched tighter at the doctor’s white lab coat. “My son. Please.” Her voice rasped as the heavy weight of the drug worked to pull her under.

Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Don’t you worry now. We’ll take care of it.”

Her fingers loosened on his coat, her arm dropping back to the bed. Her eyes fluttered. She felt the dead weight of her body as she was dragged down, back into that dark nothingness.

OFFICER D.C. WALKER SHOOK the rain off like a duck as he entered the small, quiet hospital. He caught his reflection in the window as he passed the empty nurses’ station. He looked like hell. But he felt worse as he pushed open the door to the doctors’ lounge.

Doc Brubaker glanced up from the chair where he was sprawled. It gave Walker little comfort that Doc looked worse than he did.

“Any luck finding the boy?” Doc asked anxiously.

Walker shook his head as he shrugged out of his rain jacket and tossed it onto one of the orange plastic chairs. He helped himself to a stale doughnut.

Without asking, Doc reached for the coffeepot and poured him a cup, then refilled his own.

“Thanks,” Walker said as he took the coffee and plopped down in an empty chair. The coffee looked like black sludge, but as long as it contained caffeine and was hot, he wasn’t about to complain. He couldn’t remember a longer night and it still wasn’t over.

“I called out Search and Rescue,” he said, between bites of the doughnut. “They’ve combed the shoreline and the woods, but so far nothing. It’s so damned steep where the car went off. Water’s deep there and with the spring runoff, real murky. The dive team’s gearing up to go down.”

Doc shook his head. “I hate to think of a four-year-old out there, as cold as it is. I suppose he could still be in the car.”

“If he was strapped in a car seat in back, she might not have been able to get him out.”

Dr. Brubaker rubbed a hand over his face. “The only way the boy might have survived is if there’s a trapped air bubble. Stranger things have happened.”

Walker studied him for a long moment wondering if the doc really put much store in that. “Mac’s gonna get his biggest tow truck up there at soon as it gets light. He’s not sure he has enough cable to pull the car out though. Might have to borrow a newer towing rig from one of the large towns. Your patient say anything else?”

Doc shook his head. He definitely looked older since his wife had died. Walker thought about the rumors he’d heard that Doc was dying. He didn’t put much stock in them though. Rumors were always circulating in Shadow Lake. And just because Doc was getting his affairs in order, so what?

Like the rumor going around about Police Chief Nash’s pretty young wife, Lucinda. But who the hell married a woman half his age and thought she’d be faithful? Walker had learned the hard way about infidelity during his one and only marriage. Not that he was bitter. Much.

Shadow Lake was a hotbed for affairs, especially during the long cold winter months when the population dropped. There was a standing joke that the residents who wintered-in here switched wives and girlfriends and then held a roundup in the spring to divvy up the kids. He used to think that was funny.

“Were you able to reach her husband?” Doc asked. He sounded tired and he certainly hadn’t been looking well lately. But Walker figured that was to be expected given how many years he and Gladys had been together. He imagined it must have been hell for Doc to watch his wife waste away like that and in so much pain.

“No answer at the husband’s house,” Walker said. “I left a message, but for all we know the husband was in the car too. Hell, he might have been the one driving.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Doc said. “All I could think about was the little boy.”

It was too bad Doc had never had any kids of his own, Walker thought.

Fortunately Anna Collins had been in a vehicle with an in-car emergency system that had notified the police department the minute her air bag deployed and tried to raise the car’s occupant on the built-in cell phone.

When no one responded, the operator had given the police dispatcher the location of the car via the in-car global-positioning system and the Shadow Lake dispatcher had radioed the police department where Walker had taken the call.

Walker pulled his pencil from behind his ear, touched the tip of it to his tongue and opened his small notebook. “You said she just stumbled up to the hospital?”

Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Half drowned, good-size knot on her left temple. Sheila was on duty and heard the alarm go off, looked up and saw her collapse just inside the front door. She said the woman regained consciousness, mumbled something about her car crashing into the lake before she passed out again.

“That’s when Sheila beeped me,” Doc said in an exhausted voice. “I called you right away and was told you’d gone out to the crash site.”

Walker had been taken aback when he’d seen where the woman’s car had left the road. “No way could she climb back up to the highway, so I guess it makes sense that she would come out on the beach. That would have put her out with the hospital being the closest building.”

“That’s probably what had saved her life,” Doc said. “Given the temperature of the air and the water, if she’d been out there any longer she wouldn’t have made it. She was already hypothermic when she reached us.”

“Did she mention her son when Sheila found her?”

“No.” The doctor poured himself more coffee. “She was confused and scared.”

Walker nodded. “I called her in-car emergency provider. The car is a blue Coupe de Ville Cadillac registered to her and a—” he consulted his notes “—Marc Collins, presumably her husband. The address is Seattle. No answer at the primary residence, but I had a black-and-white go over to see if anyone was home. She said her son’s name was Tyler, right?”

Brubaker nodded. “She became so hysterical I had Sheila give her a sedative to calm her down. Anything I’d have said would have only upset her more. She just assumed that her son was here at the hospital.”

“You can’t miss the spot where her car went off the road,” Walker said. “Right there by the cliffs. No sign of the vehicle. But lots of small trees down. Couldn’t have gone off at a worse place if she’d planned it.”

Doc looked up. “You don’t think she—”

“Purposely drove off there?” Walker shrugged. He’d long ago given up trying to guess what a woman might do. “There weren’t any skid marks that I could see. But it was raining, so I couldn’t tell if she tried to brake.”

Doc shook his head and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure it was just an accident.”

Walker was never sure of anything. “She didn’t say what she was doing driving up here at that hour of the night?”

“No. She should sleep for a while. I’m hoping her son is found and I will have good news for her by the time she wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Walker said, studying the doctor again. Since his wife’s death, Doc Brubaker had been trying to find a doctor for the town. Few doctors wanted to live in such an isolated town, let alone make so little money and work such long hours. Along with being on call for the town, the local doctor saw to the small nursing home facility attached to the hospital.

Doc hired young interns for the summer months to give him a break, but none of them had shown any interest in staying once the first snowflake fell.

Walker knew Brubaker had talked about retiring even before his wife had died. He figured it wouldn’t be long and Shadow Lake would be without a doctor. “You all right?”

Doc opened his eyes, seeming surprised by the question, then uncertain as he glanced toward the darkness beyond the windows. “It couldn’t have been a suicide attempt. Not if the boy was in the car with her.”

Obviously the doc didn’t read the papers. Not having any children of his own, Doc Brubaker had no concept of what parents could do to their children.

Walker stood and noticed he’d left a puddle of rainwater on the floor in front of the chair where he’d been sitting.

“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said, following his gaze. “I’ll get someone to clean it up. Find the boy. I don’t want to tell that young woman that her son is out there in that lake.”

BRUBAKER CLOSED HIS EYES as Walker left. Sheila would come for him when he was needed.

But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Well, he thought ruefully, it wouldn’t be long and he’d get plenty of rest.

He got up and made another pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night and making the coffee gave him something to do. Not that it could take his mind off the woman down the hall. He was worried about her. The cold of the lake had caused heart rhythm disturbance. Sheila had said the woman seemed delirious when she’d been found, suffering from hypothermia.

But he suspected that was the least of it. He’d seen a look in Anna Collins’s eyes that had been painfully familiar.

He hated to think how many times he’d seen that look in his patients’ eyes over the years. More recently, he’d seen it in his wife’s. Defeat. Surrender. A lack of will to live.

With Gladys it had been the pain and knowing what the future held for her. He squeezed his eyes shut remembering the feel of his wife’s hand in his as she met his eyes that final night.

He shoved away the memory and considered the woman down the hall, bothered by the fact that she couldn’t be more than thirty. He realized he could have had a daughter her age if Gladys had been able to carry the baby they’d conceived to term.

Another painful memory to be shoved to the far corner of his heart.

He wondered what had happened to the woman down the hall that had put that look in her eyes.

Most patients were surprised to wake up in a hospital. She hadn’t appeared to be. He could only assume it was because she’d been in a hospital, not that long ago, from what he would guess had been a severe head injury given the sizable older scar that ran from her forehead up into her scalp.

And now she had a cut and goose egg on her temple from her car accident tonight, along with water in her lungs.

He could only guess what this woman had been through. Or what she’d been doing on the lake road this time of year, late at night in a rainstorm. He just hoped she’d been alone in the car, and confused due to her two recent head traumas.

Brubaker couldn’t stand the thought of what it would do to the woman if her son had been in that car.

WHEN ANNA OPENED HER EYES, she found a man about her age slumped in the chair next to her bed. Her heart began to pound as she saw that he wore the blue uniform of a cop.

He had removed his hat. It now dangled from the fingers of his left hand. His dark hair was too long at the nape and his features were rough, his nose obviously having been broken more than once. And, even though his eyes were closed and his breathing deep in sleep, there was a scowl on his face.

Blinking in confusion, she touched her temple and found a small bandage. A mixture of fear and hope filled her as her fingers quickly rushed to touch her forehead, praying that the horrible scar wouldn’t be there.

It was. Tears sprang to her eyes, all hope gone that this was the first time she’d awakened in a hospital, leaving her body like a ghost, her mind and heart again in agony.

As quietly as possible, she turned toward the window, not wanting to rouse the police officer. She’d awakened before with a policeman next to her hospital bed. It had been the worst news of her life. She couldn’t imagine how it could be worse this time.

Daylight spilled through the large first-floor window. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, clouds hung in the pines. Past them, she could see more pine trees and what appeared to be rocky cliffs rising out of the rainy mist.

She had no idea where she was. All she knew for certain was that she’d never seen this place before.

She closed her eyes. Earlier she’d fought the bottomless sleep of the dead, thinking there was hope.

Now she knew better and gladly welcomed oblivion.

“Mrs. Collins?”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Mrs. Collins, I know you’re awake.”

She slowly parted her eyelids to find the cop had walked around the bed and was now standing over her. She hadn’t heard him and suspected he’d wanted it that way.

As she looked up into his face, the warm brown eyes startled her. They didn’t go with the hard leanness of his face.

“I’m Shadow Lake Police Officer D.C. Walker. I need to ask you a few questions.”

She tried to remain calm as she watched him take a small notebook from his breast pocket, pluck a pencil from behind his ear and pull the chair closer to her bed.

He flipped to a page in the notebook and squinted down at it as if he couldn’t read his own writing. “Your name is Anna Collins?”

She nodded, then realized her mistake. “No. Drake. It’s Anna Drake.”

He frowned. “You told the doctor it was Collins and your in-car emergency service has the car’s primary driver listed as Anna Collins.” His attention went to her ring finger and the large diamond next to her gold wedding band.

“I was Anna Collins. I’m only recently divorced. I just haven’t taken off the ring yet or changed my name on the car.” She felt her face flame and cringed at the way she sounded. Pathetic. And still wearing the ring. A woman unwilling to accept reality. That was her.

The cop looked as if he would doubt anything she told him after this. “I understand your car went off the road last night and into the lake?”

She felt a jolt. “Is that what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

She started to shake her head but stopped herself. Any movement caused excruciating pain. She ran the tip of her finger along the scar from her forehead into her hair, then retraced the line as she had a habit of doing whenever she was trying to remember.

“No, I do remember being in the lake.” She shuddered as she had a flash of memory—water rising over the hood of the Cadillac.

He studied her, then asked, “Who was in the car with you?”

She swallowed and straightened the covers. “No one.”

“What about your son? You told the doctor your son was in the car with you.”

Her throat closed. “I was confused. He wasn’t in the car.” She touched the old scar again then, realizing what she was doing, quickly brushed her bangs back down over it and curled her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking.

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re saying. Ms. Drake?”

She hadn’t been Anna Drake for almost ten years. Why had she insisted on taking her name back? She could no more go back to being the woman she’d been before she’d married Marc Collins than she could change the past.

“My son wasn’t in the car with me.”

“Tyler, right? You’re sure he wasn’t in the car?”

“Yes. I told you I was confused earlier. I thought—” She turned her face away. “I was wrong.” Tears burned her eyes. “Please, I’m really tired.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “Where were you going when you had your accident last night? Were you headed to Shadow Lake to visit someone?”

She shook her head, the pain almost comforting compared to the fear that quaked through her. History was repeating itself. She couldn’t remember last night. Nothing.

“I don’t know where I was going. I…I don’t remember.” She closed her eyes. “Please, I just need to be alone.”

“Where is Marc Collins?”

“I don’t know. I told you. We’re divorced.” She squeezed her eyes tighter, her fingers gripping the sheet until they ached. She heard the cop swear under his breath and could sense him still sitting there watching her. After a few moments, she heard him close his notebook. But he didn’t leave. Please, just go away.

“Is there someone I can call? Family? A friend?”

“No,” she said, without opening her eyes. “There is no one.”

She waited until she heard the door close behind him before she let it out, the anguish, the tortured grief. Tyler. My baby. Oh God, Tyler.

CHAPTER FOUR

POLICE CHIEF ROB NASH bolted upright in the bed in an unfamiliar motel room, his clothes sweat-soaked to his skin and a cheap synthetic second-rate motel pillow clutched in both fists as if he was trying to strangle it.

His heart raced as last night came back in a wave of nausea. Hands shaking, he threw the pillow across the room and fell back on the bed to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.

It all came back like a swift kick to his gut. His cheating wife. The wild drive to Pilot’s Cove. The rain and darkness and falling-down-drunk pity party he’d thrown for himself.

He’d awakened a motel clerk demanding a room sometime after four in the morning and been forced to show his badge to keep the clerk from calling the cops on him for disturbing the peace. Kind of like the run-in he’d had at the Past Time bar and liquor store where he’d gotten the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

The memory made him as sick of the smell of fear and alcohol permeating the motel room.

Nash had heard about men hitting bottom. He’d seen his share that were certainly on their way if not already there. He’d just never thought he’d be one of them as he reached for what was left of the Jack Daniel’s and plotted how to kill his wife and her lover.

OFFICER WALKER OPENED the door to the doctors’ lounge to find Doc Brubaker nuking a frozen beef burrito. On the way in, he’d passed Sheila leaving. She’d gone off duty, leaving the elderly Connie Danvers at the nurses’ station monitoring the small hospital’s only patient.

“I thought doctors ate better than that,” Walker said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

Doc shrugged. “She told you?”

He nodded. “She swears she was confused when she woke up earlier and thought her son was in the car with her, but that he wasn’t.”

“You don’t believe her?”

Walker shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I’m not even sure she knows.”

“Which wouldn’t be unusual given her head trauma.”

“Which is why I haven’t called off the search.” He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “I called the Seattle Police. They’re canvassing her neighborhood to see if they can get some information. But it’s one of those neighborhoods where the houses are a quarter mile apart and the neighbors don’t know each other. I’m also trying to find out if maybe there was a custody problem with the kid. So far nothing. I’m afraid her son is out there somewhere in that lake and she knows it and just doesn’t want to face it.”

“Understandable. That’s a hell of a thing to have to face.”

“Especially if she panicked and left him down there to drown.”

The doctor grimaced. “Maybe she couldn’t get him out of his car seat. Or maybe he’s with family or friends or even his father, alive and well, and nowhere near Shadow Lake.” He sighed. “Let’s hope that’s the case.”

Walker glanced out the window toward the cliffs, unable to shake the bad feeling he had. “What I’d like to know is what the hell she was doing on that road at that time of the night. The divers found the car, but the water down there is so murky they couldn’t see shit. Even if the kid’s car seat is in the back, it doesn’t prove he was with her—or that he was even strapped in.”

“Still no luck reaching the husband?”

“Ex-husband. She says they recently divorced.” Walker took a sip of the horrible coffee. If anything the coffee was worse than the cup he’d had earlier, and the smell of the burrito as the microwave dinged was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

“She’s still wearing the ring though,” he said. “There’s something there that’s not right. Did she say how she got that awful scar?”

“I haven’t asked. But I think whatever pain the woman is in isn’t necessarily visible,” Doc said.

“Yeah? Well, we’re all in pain, aren’t we.” He finished what he could of the coffee, needing something to keep him going. As he rose to rinse out his coffee cup, he said, “The towing crew should be getting to the site any time now. See what you can get out of Anna Collins, Drake, whatever. But I gotta tell ya, she’s lying about something.” His cell phone rang. He apologized and took the call.

DOC BRUBAKER WATCHED WALKER pull out his notebook to jot something down, worried. He felt bleary-eyed. His lack of sleep was starting to hamper his ability to think clearly. Only his concern for his patient was keeping him here.

An added concern was Walker. He’d delivered Walker, had watched him grow up in Shadow Lake, seen him change into the cynical, angry man he’d become after his wife left him and his best friend died.

It saddened Brubaker, even though he knew that life shaped a person. Walker had been through a lot, but nothing more than other people faced every day. Brubaker worried that Walker was taking this case too personally, that he’d seen similarities between his ex-wife and this woman and that ultimately, it would cloud his judgment.

Doc finally got up to retrieve his burrito from the microwave, hoping it would be cool enough to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew if he didn’t keep something in his stomach, he’d regret it.

Walker snapped his phone shut. “The divers are going back down to hook up the cable from Mac’s tow truck. I need to get up there.”

“Let me know what you find. As soon as I eat, I’ll go down and see our patient.”

Walker nodded, frowning. “I’ll be at the accident site if you need me.”

Doc ate part of the burrito, forcing what he could down before tossing the rest in the trash. When he pushed open the door to Anna’s room, he found her awake and staring up at the ceiling, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She didn’t seem to hear him come in. He studied her for a moment before approaching her bed.

“How are you feeling?”

She said nothing when she looked at him, her eyes hollow as he drew up a chair.

“Do you remember your car going off the road and into the lake?” For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. There was a frightening dullness to her eyes.

“It was raining,” she said in a distant tone.

He watched the pupils of her eyes and saw that she was starting to recall the accident.

“I lost control of the car.” He could see the fear, hear it in her voice. “Water was coming over the hood, filling the car…” She shuddered. “That’s all I remember.”

He nodded but wondered if she hadn’t remembered more than she was saying, from the way her eyes filled with tears.

“That must have been terrifying.” As he put his stethoscope in his ears and moved closer to check her heart and lungs, she brushed back her bangs to run her finger along the old scar on her forehead.

When he was finished, he stepped back and she pulled her hand away from the scar almost guiltily.

“That’s a lonely stretch of highway to be traveling, especially that late at night alone,” he said. “I doubt there was much traffic with it being off-season and raining. Were you on your way to Shadow Lake or leaving town?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him, the admission clearly painful. “I’ve tried to remember, but…”

“Don’t worry about. You’ll remember when the time comes.” He reached over to brush back her bangs. “How did you get the scar?”

Instantly, she looked self-conscious. “I’ve been told it was from a car accident eight months ago.”

He weighed that information. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced memory loss then. “Were you unconscious for long from the accident?”

“I was in a coma for six months.”

He tried not to let his surprise show. Six months was a long time, but probably not for a head injury of that magnitude. He asked, although he already suspected the answer, “And you’ve never regained your memory of that accident?”

“No.” Her tears boiled over. He noticed she had hazel eyes. “I only know what I’ve been told about it.”

He could see the pain of whatever burden she bore in her face and reached for her hand and squeezed it.

She turned her face toward the window but held tightly to his hand, as if anchoring herself for a moment.

He followed her gaze to the window. It was still raining; the dense fog that had enveloped the lake and shore earlier had lifted. Walker would be up on the road with the tow truck getting her car out of the lake. What if the boy was inside the car?

“Do you want me to close the blinds?” Brubaker asked.

She shook her head as she turned back to him and let go of his hand to touch the bandage on her temple. “Is this why I can’t remember now?”

“Probably. Because of your earlier head injury, it’s possible to have some memory loss even if the second injury wasn’t nearly as severe. I would suspect the memory loss this time will only be temporary.”

“I will remember everything then?” she asked, and his heart fell at the sheer terror he heard in her voice.

IT SURPRISED HER WHEN the doctor didn’t leave. She was used to people keeping their distance. Doctors at the hospital, after she’d come out of her coma, had seemed to have little time for her.

Even complete strangers gave her a wide berth, as if they could smell the misery on her. Just as she could smell their fear that if they got too close they might catch it.

She wiped at her tears, surprised that she still had tears to cry. She felt raw inside, but then she had since the moment she’d awakened from her coma two months ago. The memory was like a knife piercing her already bleeding heart.

What was new was the terror whenever she thought of last night. Hadn’t the worst that could happen to her already happened? And yet she still felt as if something horrible was going to occur.

“You’re fighting to keep your eyes open. Try to get some rest,” the doctor said quietly. “You’ve had quite the ordeal.”

He had no idea.

“You’ve never had memory loss, have you?” She hadn’t meant for the words to come out so sharply, and she instantly regretted them. “I’m sorry. It’s just…difficult to have huge chunks of missing time. Black holes in which you have no idea what happened to you. What you did. What you could or should have done differently.” No, she thought, you just wake up to the consequences. And to people demanding explanations when you had none.

“No, I haven’t,” he said quietly. But she could tell he thought there were worse things than not being able to remember.

“When can I leave the hospital?”

“I want to keep you at least overnight for observation,” the doctor said quickly. “You need to get your strength back.”

She closed her eyes, suddenly just wanting to be left alone. She would have prayed for sleep but she knew her prayers were no longer answered. Her weakened body and mind were exhausted. But lately sleep evaded her or was fraught with pieces of memory that churned in her thoughts giving her no peace or answers.

She couldn’t even remember what had happened last night. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.

So why couldn’t she hold back the nagging thought that she had to remember? That there was something she desperately needed to recall?

How could she not be worried? She couldn’t imagine why she’d been on that road last night. She’d never even heard of Shadow Lake. Why would she come up here at that hour of the night in a thunderstorm?

What she did remember only made her anxious. The bitter, numbing cold of the lake water, the bite of the seat belt into her breasts, the horrible metallic taste of her own fear. Air. Her lungs had been bursting with a need for air when—

Her eyes flew open. Heart pounding, her mind veered away from what she told herself couldn’t be a memory.

“Are you sure there isn’t someone I can call for you?” Dr. Brubaker asked in concern, surprising her that he was still in the room.

“Yes.” Her voice broke. “I’m sure.”

He glanced toward the window again where a sliver of the lake could be seen through the rain and pines.

“Just ring the call button if you need anything.” He seemed hesitant to leave her alone, but finally started toward the door, and, just as quickly, she didn’t want to be left alone.

“Where did my car go into the lake?” she asked.

He stopped and came back to point to a spot through the trees in the distance. “See those cliffs up there on the mountain? You went off right before the road drops down into town.”

Anna gasped. How had she survived? “How did I get to the hospital?”

“I can only assume that when you surfaced, you swam toward the shore, which would have put you out just down the hill from the hospital,” he said. “It’s the first building on this side of town. The nurse found you barely inside the door. Given the temperature of the air and water, you were lucky the hospital was so close.”

She felt a chill and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.

“You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”

Why didn’t she believe that?

“Rest. I promise you it’s the best thing you can do to regain your strength—and your memory.”

Anna glanced out at the lake. How had she survived last night? Why, she wondered, as hot tears scalded her cheeks.

The six months in the coma were completely lost to her. The two months since she’d awakened had been a living hell. The panic attacks had started the minute she’d gone home from the hospital. Without warning she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath. She would start shaking, her heart pounding so hard she was sure she was having a heart attack. Hoping she would.

Like now when she looked at the lake. Her pulse raced, her mouth went cotton-ball dry. There was something she desperately needed to remember.

DEPUTY WALKER MOVED TO THE edge of the road to watch as the wrecker crew snaked the steel cable down the steep mountainside to the lake.

He’d already been warned that the crew would have to inch the car up the mountainside since they didn’t have enough single cable to reach the car and would have to use an extension. The town wrecker was old, the winch outdated.

When he’d reached the site, he’d been informed divers had gone back down to run a strap through the interior of the car. The car had come to rest upside down in about thirty feet of water.

“No sign of any other passenger?” he asked the head of the dive squad on the shore via the tow truck’s radio.

“Not in the car.”

“Was there a child’s car seat in the back?” Walker asked.

“Negative.”

“You’re sure?”

“Affirmative. There’s a suitcase that had been in the backseat but is now resting on the headliner. That’s all.”

Walker rubbed his jaw. Why wasn’t the suitcase in the trunk? “What about the trunk?”

“Don’t know. It’s resting in the mud.”

“Thanks.” He handed the radio back to the tow-truck operator.

Where had this woman been headed? he wondered as he waited. He told himself the answer might be in the car.

Walker had the town’s two other officers handling traffic. Not that there was much this time of the year. But word had spread and since this was probably the biggest news all spring, the locals had come up to get in the way. Shadow Lake residents, especially those who’d just gone through a long boring winter, weren’t about to pass up free entertainment.

As Walker looked down the path the Cadillac had taken, he couldn’t help wondering what had happened last night up here on this mountain. Anna was recently divorced. When he’d talked to her she’d been more than a little despondent. Had she purposely driven off here? Panicked once the car hit the water and changed her mind?

Or had she picked this spot, knowing that the hospital was close by, as some ill-conceived plot to get her ex’s attention. That’s something Walker’s ex would have done. If she’d wanted him back, that is.

He hated the bitter taste in his mouth. But he’d noticed some things about Anna Drake Collins that were just like his ex. Anna clearly came from money, lived in Seattle in a posh neighborhood, had that air of privilege about her and was model attractive—just like his ex.

What worried Walker was how far a woman like that would go. And if she really wanted to get back at her ex, Walker feared the kid had been in that car.

“We’re ready to bring her up,” Mac called from the tow truck. “Did you hear me?”

Walker looked up, startled to find the wrecker operator standing in front of him frowning.

“We’re ready.”

“So bring her up.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t stand there. If that cable should—”

“Just pull her up,” Walker snapped, anxious to see what was inside that car.

Below him, the emerald lake lay in the tree-lined basin, the surface dimpled by the drizzling rain. There was no warmth, only wet and cold as the motor on the tow truck revved. He stood next to the wrecker, wanting a clear view when the car broke the surface.

He’d found a business number for Marc Collins and left a message to call the Shadow Lake Police Department. That the man’s ex-wife had been in an automobile accident but was fine.

Walker hoped the boy was with his father, but from the way the mother was acting, he had a bad feeling that wasn’t the case, and his cop instincts were seldom wrong.

His cell phone rang. He stepped away from the whine of the wrecker to take the call.

“Walker?”

He almost didn’t recognize the voice. “Chief?”

“Just wanted to let you know I won’t be back for a few days.”

“Is everything all right in Pilot’s Cove?”

“Yeah, I just need to take care of some things over here.”

Before Walker could tell him what was going on in Shadow Lake, the police chief hung up.

Walker snapped his cell phone shut, telling himself he had to be wrong. The chief had sounded drunk.

As Walker started back toward the tow truck, his phone rang again. This time it was the dispatcher. She had Marc Collins on the line.

“Put him through,” Walker said.

“What’s this about my wife being in another accident?” the man demanded the moment Walker answered.

“Don’t you mean ex-wife?” Walker asked, instantly irritated with the man’s tone.

“Is that what she told you? We’re still married.”

“Why would she lie?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Collins said.

Walker explained about Anna’s so-called accident. “She was lucky.”

“Anna wrecked another car? But she’s fine. Another hit-and-run or can’t she remember?” Marc Collins asked with sarcasm. “Isn’t it just Anna’s luck.”

Walker bristled. “She almost drowned,” he snapped, beyond irritated with the man. Surely Anna Drake hadn’t wanted to get back with this man. “Look, I just need to be sure that your son Tyler wasn’t with her.”

Marc Collins let out a brittle laugh. “Didn’t she tell you? She killed Tyler eight months ago.”

THE MEMORY CAME IN A RUSH. Rain, the narrow dark highway, in a hurry for some reason, then a sudden movement as something sprang out onto the pavement. A deer? It had been a deer, hadn’t it?

Anna saw it happening in her mind’s eye. Her losing control of the car. Skidding along the highway through the deep puddles, blinded by the spray until…

She felt the start of a panic attack as she remembered crashing down the mountain and into the water. The car had sunk so quickly. She was breathing hard now, remembering the freezing cold water rising around her and the seat belt… There was something…

Her heart pounded harder and harder. She tried to push away the memory that seemed to crush her chest, as she tried to catch her breath.

In a panic, she reached for the nurse’s call button, but her fingers were slick and she was shaking so hard it slipped from her fingers. My God, she was dying.

Deep breaths. Think about anything else. Anything but last night.

She flopped back, gasping, tears running down her face. The panic subsided slowly, her rapid pulse roared in her ears.

She’d tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter how she’d ended up in a hospital room in Shadow Lake.

But her mind wouldn’t let it rest. She hated driving at night, especially in the rain. What had forced her to do it?

Sitting up, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The movement sent a wave of nausea through her, forcing her to grip the bed until the wooziness passed.

As she stood, she was half surprised to realize she’d completely forgotten about the IV in her arm. She rolled the stand along with her as she shuffled to the closet, practically leaning on the flimsy thing, shocked by how weak she felt.

At the closet, she gripped the door frame, fearing she was going to pass out. She slid open the closet door and drew back in surprise. This was what she’d been wearing last night?

Dread filled her as she touched the slinky black dress and lacy black undergarments draped over the hangers, her fingers brushing her good gray wool coat. Where had she been going dressed like this?

There was a small puddle of water beneath the still sopping-wet coat. Next to the puddle on the floor was a single strappy black high-heeled sandal. What struck her was that the black dress was Marc’s favorite.

Like a splinter under her skin, the thought of why she would have worn it worried at her.

To make matters worse, she could think of no reason she would have driven to Shadow Lake dressed for an evening out. And driving in those shoes? What had she been thinking? No wonder she’d ended up crashing into the lake.

Leaning against the closet door frame for support, she searched a pocket of her coat, hoping for some clue.

Given where the doctor said her car had gone into the lake, how had she been able to get out, let alone swim in what she’d been wearing? Especially in apparently only one high-heeled sandal. Had she literally stumbled out of the lake and into the hospital?

What kind of luck was that?

Unbelievable luck.

A memory tugged at her. She felt another panic attack coming on and quickly shielded herself from the memory.

She stuck her hand in the other pocket. Her hand froze as her fingers found something soggy and hard. She pulled out the contents and frowned down at four balled-up twenty-dollar bills and a credit card with what appeared to be a wet receipt stuck to it and…

Her frown deepened. A folded scrap of paper. It appeared to have some writing on the inside but the ink had run some and the paper was still wet and fragile. She gave up trying to unfold it while it was still wet.

She tried to peel the receipt from the credit card. The thin paper started to tear. It was impossible to read what had been printed on it anyway.

Why had she stuffed all of this into her coat pocket? Where was her purse? Still in the car, no doubt. Just the sight of what she’d found in her coat pocket proved she’d been upset about something. It wasn’t like her not to take the time to put her credit card back into her wallet in her purse. Or maybe she’d lost her purse even before she’d crashed into the lake.

That thought made fear quake through her. What in God’s name could have happened that she would have lost her purse?

Her body suddenly felt too heavy for her leg muscles to hold her any longer. Dragging the IV cart, she stumbled back to the bed, taking the items she’d found in her coat pocket with her. She dropped everything into the nightstand drawer. Her legs felt like water. It was all she could do to climb onto the bed and draw the covers over her.

Sleep dragged her down like the lake had taken her car to the bottom. On the edge of sleep, she saw herself going into the lake again, the car sinking, panic taking hold of her as she saw herself upside down under the water, trapped in the car.

As exhaustion finally pulled her under, she had one fleeting terrifying thought: There’s something out there in the murky water. Someone.

CHAPTER FIVE

WITH MORE THAN A little relief, Dr. Brubaker checked his only patient and found her sound asleep. Telling the nurse to beep him when Anna woke again, he left the hospital to go home, shower, shave and change clothes.

As was his routine, he turned in the gate to the cemetery on his walk home and headed for his wife’s grave.

Gladys had picked out the two plots, saying she wanted to be able to catch the morning sun. She’d always loved that about her kitchen window. He’d so often see her standing in front of the sink, her face tilted up to catch the morning sun, that sometimes even now when he came into the kitchen he caught glimpses of her for just an instant.

Better to see her there, in the sunlight, rather than the hospital bed where she’d spent the last months of her life. Gladys had wanted to die in their home so he’d moved one of the hospital beds into the living room.

She’d been so small lying there. He’d watched her grow thinner and thinner, disappearing from his life with each passing day. At the end, he’d feared that he would wake from the bed he’d made next to hers and find that she had wasted away to nothing as if she’d never existed.

As it was, she’d been nearly child-size by the time she’d died, way too small for the casket he’d picked out for her.

He recognized the names on the gravestones as he walked through the rain-soaked cemetery. A light drizzle fell, the clouds gray and dark over the lake. He’d known a lot of the people buried here.

Some of them he’d brought into the world, a lot of them he’d kept alive as long as he could before they’d passed on. The thought gave him little comfort.

Through a weathered iron fence and veil of pine boughs, he caught a glimpse of freshly turned earth. The wind must have blown off the green tarp the funeral home used until it quit raining long enough to lay the sod. Or had the tarp come off when Big Jim Fairbanks started rolling in his grave, Brubaker wondered.

Unlike Gladys, Big Jim had fought until the very end. He’d wanted to live and had said he was too damned young to die even though he was older than most, Doc included. Big Jim hadn’t gone peacefully. Nor did Doc suspect Big Jim Fairbanks rested easy, either.

Brubaker realized as he stared at Big Jim’s grave that he believed in retribution, if nothing else. There was a price to be paid for what was done on this earth. A man had to pay for his sins. And a man like Big Jim Fairbanks would be paying dearly about now.

And soon so would Gene Brubaker, he reminded himself.

Turning, Doc went to spend time with his wife as he had done every day since her death.

“OH DEAR, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

Anna woke with a start as an older gray-haired nurse rushed to her bedside. “Pulled out your IV, have you?” Her name tag read Connie. “Must have really tossed and turned in your sleep to do that.”

Anna said nothing as the nurse reattached the IV. She’d lost the scrap of memory she’d had just before she’d been awakened. In frustration, she looked toward the window, saw the lake and closed her eyes to keep from shuddering.

“There, that should hold this time,” the nurse said. “How are you feeling?”

Anna could only nod.

The nurse studied her. “You want me to call the doctor?”

“No. I just want to sleep.” She really just wanted to be alone, not sure she wanted to call back the memory. She could feel an uneasiness and knew that if she tried to force the memory it would turn to anxiety, then panic.

“I’m fine,” she told the nurse and closed her eyes, waiting for her to leave.

The moment the nurse closed the door behind her, Anna sat up, feeling desperate and scared.

Calm down. Calm down. She heard her husband Marc’s voice. Calm down. Only he was no longer her husband. The divorce was to be final yesterday. Was that true? Only yesterday?

Her hand was shaking as she picked up the phone and dialed. Gillian Sanders had been her friend since college and was now a successful lawyer. Anna knew she wouldn’t have made it through the past two months without Gillian.

Gillian’s cell phone rang four times and voice mail picked up. “It’s me, Anna.” Her voice sounded panicky even to her. She considered leaving the hospital number but knew that would scare Gillian. “I’ll try back later.”

She hung up, disappointed she hadn’t reached her. Right now she needed Gillian’s logical calming influence. Gillian had a way of seeing to the heart of things. Like when Anna had come to her for advice about Marc.

“Don’t fight the divorce, honey,” Gillian had advised. “He’s a bastard. Have you ever really been happy with him?”

“Yes, when Tyler was born…”

“Come on. You were happy because of Tyler—not Marc. Admit it.”

Anna had started to cry. Admitting that her marriage had been anything but happy from the beginning was devastating.

Gillian had pressed a business card into her hand.

“What is this?” Anna had asked through her tears.

“A damned good divorce attorney. But you didn’t get it from me.”

“I want you as my lawyer.”

“Anna, I’m not a divorce lawyer and I know both you and Marc. You want someone who is impartial and tough as nails. Believe me, Marc will get the toughest lawyer money can buy.”

“But I want someone who will protect my interests.”

“I am, sweetie,” Gillian had said, taking her hand. “Divorce the asshole before he can file first. You can do better.”

But Anna had waited and let Marc serve the papers on her. The divorce lawyer Gillian had recommended had taken care of everything. All Anna had to do was sign the papers and wait for the dissolution of her marriage to be final. She’d only managed to get through it by pretending it wasn’t happening. She’d lost her son. Now her husband.

Coward that she was, she’d also pretended that she didn’t know why Marc had wanted the divorce.

As of yesterday, she was no longer Mrs. Marc Collins.

She realized she was still gripping the phone. She needed to talk to someone. If not Gillian, then Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen was a mutual friend of Anna and Gillian’s, a college sorority sister. Blond, buxom, a bit scatterbrained, but a talented interior designer, Mary Ellen had gotten through life on “cute” and good taste.

Anna dialed Mary Ellen’s number trying to get into the mood to talk to her always bubbly friend. She was tired of calling her friends crying and desperate. She was tired of being depressed and morbid and scared. And she knew they were even more sick of it than she was.

The phone rang four times and Anna was about to hang up when Mary Ellen finally picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Oh, hello.”

Anna was momentarily taken aback by Mary Ellen’s blasé reaction. This was not like her. “Is everything all right?”

Silence. “Yes, I’m in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?”

Anna sat up a little straighter in the bed at Mary Ellen’s overformal tone. “Okay, I mean, no. I…” She glanced at the phone, unsure of the hospital number. “I’ll call you back later.”

“That would be fine.” Mary Ellen hung up, but not before Anna heard a man’s voice in the background.

She stared at the phone as she replaced the receiver. What had that been about? The voice she’d heard definitely hadn’t been Mary Ellen’s husband, David.

The voice had sounded like…

Anna felt a wave of nausea wash over her.

Marc. The voice had sounded like Marc’s, but that wasn’t possible. Marc didn’t like Mary Ellen. He’d never liked any of her friends. But while he made fun of Mary Ellen, he was much harsher when it came to Gillian. He could barely be civil to Gillian—and vice versa.

So it couldn’t have been Marc’s voice Anna had heard in the background.

She fought her disappointment in not being able to talk to Mary Ellen. She needed to talk to a friend. Gillian and Mary Ellen were the only ones she still saw. The rest of her so-called friends had disappeared.

She thought about calling Marc, just to prove to herself that it hadn’t been his voice she’d heard at Mary Ellen’s. But she had nothing to say to him. Gillian was right. Tyler had been the reason Anna had stayed with Marc. She’d so desperately wanted Tyler to have a father even if Marc had been a disappointing one. She’d hoped that as Tyler got older, Marc would get better.

Her throat closed at the thought of Tyler, her chest aching as tears again burned her eyes, blurring everything.

You have to stop this, Anna.

Marc’s voice again and a memory so clear it hurt. “You have to stop, Anna, before you drive us both crazy. I can’t take any more.” Possibly his last words to her before he moved out of their house. Or maybe more recently. They’d had so many fights she couldn’t remember the last one.

She dried her eyes and dialed Gillian’s cell again. Still no answer. She hung up without leaving a message.

Had it only been yesterday that she’d had Gillian and Mary Ellen over for lunch? Mary Ellen and Gillian had made a point of not mentioning the divorce or the fact it was to be final later that day.

Needless to say, the lunch had been strained. Anna frowned as she recalled how distracted Gillian had been. Even Mary Ellen had been unusually quiet. At the time, Anna had thought it was just her pending divorce causing it, but now she recalled she’d picked up an undercurrent. Mary Ellen and Gillian had seemed upset with each other.

Funny she would realize that now. She’d thought she was doing so well yesterday, but apparently she’d been numb to what had been happening around her.

She felt a sliver of anxiety burrow under her skin. Since she’d come out of the coma she’d been picking up weird vibes from everyone, especially Marc. But often Mary Ellen and Gillian, as well. Either they were all walking on eggshells around her, or they were keeping something from her.

When she’d mentioned this to Marc, he’d accused her of thinking everyone was plotting against her—especially him. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that from the moment she’d opened her eyes two months ago in another hospital, her husband and friends had some secret they didn’t want her to find out about.

She knew that was crazy thinking. No secret was as horrible as the reality of what she’d awakened to.

Closing her eyes, she lay back on the bed. Her head ached and she felt sick to her stomach. She pulled the sheet up to her chin. It felt cool and smelled fresh from the laundry. Her stomach did a slow sickening roll as she recalled her friend’s stilted part of the conversation. Mary Ellen hadn’t even used Anna’s name during the call.

Because Mary Ellen didn’t want whoever was there to know it was her?

Marc would say this was just another case of her imagining things. What did she think Mary Ellen and Marc were doing? Plotting against her? It might not even have been Marc’s voice she heard.

She was acting irrational. She battled the urge to call Mary Ellen back and demand to know what was going on. She could feel another panic attack coming on. Marc had told her she was delusional enough times. She felt delusional.

She tried her friend Gillian’s cell phone again. Still no answer. Gillian always had her cell phone with her. It wasn’t like her not to answer unless she was in court.

Anna didn’t leave a message. Instead, she tried Mary Ellen again.

Mary Ellen answered this time on the first ring. “Anna?” Apparently she’d been waiting by the phone. “Where are you? Are you all right? We’ve been worried sick about you.”

Hearing the concern in her friend’s voice, Anna started to pour out her story about the accident, but she heard herself say “We?”

Mary Ellen’s voice softened. “Honey, Marc is really worried about you.”

Anna closed her eyes. It had been Marc’s voice she’d heard earlier in the background. Just as she wasn’t mistaken about the recrimination she now heard in her friend’s voice.

“I’m sure Marc has better things to do than worry about me,” she said. “We’re divorced. I’m not his concern anymore.”

An odd silence then, “Honey, Marc didn’t go through with the divorce. The papers were never filed.”

“What?” Hadn’t that been her hope, her prayer? Losing Marc had made Tyler’s death more real somehow. Anna had clung to the marriage because it was all she had.

“He changed his mind,” Mary Ellen was saying. “But, honey, I was sure he told you that last night.”

“Last night?”

AFTER OFFICER D.C. WALKER disconnected his call with Marc Collins, he had started to dial his boss when he noticed Mac was having a problem with the winch. He walked back over to the side of the mountain and saw nothing in the mist but water.

“Hook came undone,” the wrecker operator yelled to him. “Divers are down reattaching the cable.”

Walker stared at the lake with the rain clouds mirrored in it, still shocked by what he’d learned from Marc Collins. The gloomy gray day did nothing to lift his spirits. Where the hell was spring?

The news he’d received had left him angry and upset. What else was the woman in the hospital keeping from him?

One thing was for sure: he needed to let Chief Nash in on what was going on. He started to call him, but stopped as the divers reappeared below him on the shore and signaled to the wrecker operator that the car was ready again. Mac gave Walker a thumbs-up and the tow motor revved once again.

What worried Walker was how the chief had sounded earlier when he’d called. Was there some kind of trouble in Pilot’s Cove that his boss wasn’t telling him about? Or had the chief gone to the county seat to pick up the paperwork before he announced his retirement?

Walker brightened at the thought. He’d been waiting for twelve years for that job to open up. He couldn’t stand the suspense. He stepped away from the wrecker to call the Pilot’s Cove office.

“I was hoping to catch Chief Nash,” he told the woman who answered.

“Chief Nash from Shadow Lake?”

“Is there another Chief Nash I don’t know about?” He instantly regretted the sarcasm. “Sorry, it’s important I speak with him.”

“We haven’t seen Chief Nash in about four months,” she said, her voice as chilly as the lake below him.

“He was over there yesterday doing something with your department.”

“Afraid not. Maybe he was at Dam City or—”

Walker hung up when the engine on the tow truck let out an ear-piercing whine as the cable to the Cadillac began to grow taut again. The huge steel cable hummed.

Walker walked back over to stand next to the wrecker, still a little stunned. Chief Nash had lied. Walker couldn’t have been more shocked by that. He had great respect for the man. Nash was from the old school of justice, tough as nails, but fair and straight as an arrow.

There had to be another explanation.

The rear end of the overturned Cadillac broke the surface of the water. It looked like a blue turtle flipped over on its shell.

Walker stared at the path the Cadillac had taken down the mountain, a path of broken saplings, tire tracks and carnage. The same path the car would have to take this time, only on its top.

It was a miracle the woman had gotten out of the lake alive. Since talking to Marc Collins, Walker was even more convinced Anna Drake Collins hadn’t planned it that way.

Suddenly the whine of the wrecker’s winch intensified and then the cable snapped.

Walker watched the long snaking link of steel shoot like a rubber band back up the mountain—headed straight for him.

DOC STOOD IN THE DRIZZLE, unaffected by the cold and the rain while he talked to his dead wife the way he always did. It didn’t seem to matter what he talked about, just that he did.

Today he told Gladys about his latest patient.

“She’s pretty. She has hazel eyes that remind me of yours,” he said as he bent down to pull a weed that he hadn’t noticed before beside his wife’s headstone.

“I’m worried about her, but you know me,” he said with a laugh. “You always said I took on everyone’s worries because I didn’t have enough of my own.” His eyes misted over for a moment and he had to bite his lip before he could continue.

“Her four-year-old boy might have been in the car with her when it went into the lake. I’m just sick at heart at the thought. I don’t think she’s strong enough to take that news.”

He cleared his throat. “Walker is on the case.” Gladys had always been fond of Walker and his friends. She’d made them their favorite cookies and would call the boys up on the porch whenever they passed by. She liked to watch them eat a half-dozen cookies each, washed down by the homemade lemonade she kept for just such a visit. She’d ply the boys with treats in exchange for conversation.

It still hurt that he and Gladys had never been blessed with their own children. Gladys had loved children so. She would have been like a mother hen with Anna. Gladys could sense need in people. Gene had always thought it was one reason she’d married him.

“Walker’s afraid the woman tried to kill herself. I don’t believe it. Especially if her son was in the car. She wouldn’t do that. Not this woman.”

He brushed off rainwater that had puddled on top of Gladys’s stone. “I miss you.” He stopped, unable to continue. There was more he wanted to say, but he couldn’t find the words. Just as, for a long time, he hadn’t been able to tell Gladys she was dying.

But she’d known. She’d suspected it was cancer. Still, it had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, to tell her it was inoperable, to tell her she had only a short time left.

She’d taken it much better than he had. But then that was Gladys. She’d never worried about things she couldn’t change. He wished he could be more like her.

He looked down at his wife’s grave again. “Can you ever forgive me?” But it wasn’t Glady’s forgiveness he knew he was seeking. His wife had been the most forgiving person he’d ever known.

He brushed a hand over her headstone, tears blurring his eyes, his nose running. He made a swipe at his eyes, nose, looking to the lake. Summer felt a long way off. Doc had no plans to see it.

He cleared his throat. He needed to get on home. Soon he’d have to return to the hospital and make sure Anna was all right. She needed him. At least for a while.

CHIEF ROB NASH HAD TO take a piss. He’d lost count of the beers he’d drunk in an attempt to fight off last night’s hangover. It wasn’t working.

But as he passed the bed, he saw that he had another message on his cell phone from Walker. Nash picked up the phone, those old habits so conditioned it took everything in him not to return the call.

Walker could handle whatever it was, he told himself as he tossed the phone back on the bed and proceeded to the bathroom. He knew Walker wanted his job. And soon, he would get it.

Nash realized he should have retired a long time ago. He was past his prime and clearly couldn’t trust his instincts anymore. Marrying Lucinda proved that.

As he stood in front of the toilet, he caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked as if he’d aged overnight.

He was fifty-five years old. Most cops his age had quit a long time ago. He had his years in. He could retire on his pension. He’d worked hard his whole life, saved all his money, never really given retirement much thought. Because he knew he would go crazy within a week.

Standing there bent over the motel-room toilet, sick and tired and hurting like hell, he admitted he didn’t know what he was going to do. Which was strange because he couldn’t shake the feeling that a decision had been made for him the moment he saw his wife get into that car with that man.

CHAPTER SIX

OFFICER D.C. WALKER didn’t have time to see his life flash before him as the wrecker’s cable shot upward directly at him.

The cable passed so close he felt the hair rise on his forearms. The steel wrapped around one of the trees behind him, snapping off leaves and limbs like the hurtin’ end of a whip, then made a loud popping sound right next to him as the end smacked the hood of the wrecker, leaving one hell of a dent before dropping to the ground as harmless as a dead snake.

Down the mountainside the Cadillac, dragging a piece of frayed broken steel cable, slid back into the lake.

Walker let out a curse as he watched the car disappear below the surface again.

When Mac, the wrecker operator, quit swearing and crossing himself, he gave Walker the bad news. Another wrecker, a newer larger one with a longer cable, would have to be called in. It might have to come from as far away as Seattle, though. That was if Mac could find a towing service that could spare a rig that size.

But one thing was for certain. The car wasn’t coming out of the water today. It was too late in the day now to get another wrecker here even if one could be found within a hundred miles.

Walker swore. “Do the best you can and let me know when you find one.” He turned, still shaken as he climbed into his patrol car and headed for the hospital. He was on his own with the chief gone. It was time he had a talk with Doc Brubaker’s patient.

POLICE CHIEF ROB NASH WOKE to darkness. He stumbled out of bed and into the ratty motel bathroom. His head hurt like hell and his stomach rumbled, the taste of alcohol in his mouth rank enough to make him want to vomit.

He glanced at his watch, shocked to see that he’d lost the entire day. Lucinda was expecting him home tonight. He swore as he turned on the shower, stripped down and stepped under the stinging water.

Lucinda. He tried to force away any thought of her. He’d never known this kind of pain, let alone such fury. It left him light-headed, sent his blood pressure soaring and made him feel as if he was shaking from the inside out. The sensation had him wondering if he wouldn’t come apart at the seams. Worse, made him fear he would follow through with his first instinct and kill Lucinda.

It was why he’d called Walker and told him he was taking a few days off. He wasn’t firing on all four cylinders and he knew it. A dangerous place, given his feeling.

But Lucinda and what he’d seen last night was like a tooth-ache that wouldn’t let him forget it. Eventually he would have to deal with it.

He’d set his wife up.

And she’d taken the bait.

That’s what a man his age got for marrying a woman too young and pretty for him, he thought as he stepped from the shower.

Just the thought of facing Lucinda with what he knew made him break into a cold sweat. He clenched his fist, slamming it into the mirror. Glass shards and blood went everywhere.

He wrapped his hand in a towel. There were only a few small cuts. He wouldn’t bleed to death.

He stared at his reflection in what was left of the mirror. Hair graying, shoulders slumped, gait shuffling and unsure. Hell, he looked just like his old man right before the poor son of a bitch blew his brains out.

ANNA DIDN’T REMEMBER DROPPING off to sleep after her call to Mary Ellen. She’d been upset and had gotten off the line, promising to call back.

Now she shot straight up in bed and reached for the call button, fumbling with it, afraid she would lose the memory that she’d dragged to the surface. When the nurse named Connie had come hurrying in, Anna asked to see the doctor.

“I’ll call him,” she said. “Eat some of your dinner while you wait.” She sounded worried. “Doc won’t be long. He only lives a couple of blocks from here.”

Anna looked over at the tray next to her bed. Her stomach growled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She vaguely recalled a breakfast and lunch tray, but didn’t remember touching either. She hadn’t been hungry for so long.

Now, though, she felt ravenous. She dug into the food, not tasting it, but knowing she needed the nourishment. She knew that after Tyler’s death, she’d lost her will to live. There didn’t seem to be any reason to get out of bed in the mornings. No wonder Marc had felt so abandoned. No wonder he’d wanted a divorce.

Her need to remember what had happened last night was driving her not to fall back into that dark depression. Last night was like a puzzle that she needed to solve. That she could solve. Not like the alleged hit-and-run that had taken her son. The pieces to that puzzle had been lost forever.

But this accident she might be able to unravel, and she still felt as if she desperately needed to.

She was anxious to tell the doctor what she remembered. Unlike Officer Walker, the doctor seemed to believe her and want to help her remember. She didn’t need any more mysteries in her life. Any more secrets.

Her dinner was lukewarm, but she ate the roast beef and mashed potatoes and canned corn as if it was a gourmet meal from her favorite four-star restaurant. She’d downed the glass of milk after polishing off the apple crisp just before Dr. Brubaker stuck his rumpled gray head in her doorway.

She shoved the tray away. “I remember going into the lake,” she said excitedly. “I mean I remember being in the water. I remember almost everything.”

He smiled, seeming pleased as he pulled up a chair next to her bed and lowered himself into it. “That must be a huge relief to you.”

“I swerved to miss a deer and lost control of the car.” She could see it now, the darkness, the rain, the deer bolting out of the trees. Her heart began to pound as she saw the car skidding toward the small saplings in her memory, crashing down the mountainside, plunging into the lake.

Oh God, the lake. The water. She shuddered as she recalled the water.

“I couldn’t get the seat belt to release.” Suddenly her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t catch her breath, but she also couldn’t stop. She could feel the panic attack coming on. And then she felt his hand cover hers.

“You’re safe now. It’s all right. It can’t hurt you.”

She nodded and lay back against the pillows, tears of fear blurring her eyes. “I remember being underwater, thinking I was going to die.”

“Do you remember getting out of the car?” he asked.

“No.” She made a swipe at her tears with her free hand, not wanting to break contact with the warmth of his hand covering hers. Her mother had died when Anna was nine. Her father when she was seventeen. She’d been so disappointed that neither had lived to see their grandson born. Marc’s parents were both still alive but had no apparent interest in grandchildren.

“I was trapped in the car,” Anna said, refusing to let the memory slip away again. “I remember thinking I was going to drown. I had to breathe.” She stopped, her gaze locking with his. “I heard a sound at my side window.” A slice of pure ice cut through her, but she didn’t force the memory away. “There was someone in the water.”

“Someone else was in the lake?” the doctor asked. “Your son?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Tyler is…wasn’t there. The person in the water was a man. At least I think it was a man. His face…” Anna shuddered at the memory and heard a sound at her hospital-room door. She looked up with a start to find Officer Walker framed in the doorway.

The expression on his face was almost as terrifying as the memory of being under the water and seeing something—someone—floating on the other side of her window.

“You say there was someone else in the lake?” the cop asked as he stepped into the room, his brow furrowed. “Your memory coming back, Mrs. Collins?”

Was it her imagination, or did the doctor look alarmed by the policeman’s tone?

“I need to ask your patient a few more questions,” Officer Walker said, never taking his eyes off Anna. “You’re welcome to stay, Doc, if you feel it’s necessary.”

Dr. Brubaker looked from the cop to her. “Do you want me to stay?”

She nodded even though it hurt her head. She didn’t trust her voice.

“I talked to your husband,” Walker said.

“Marc?” She wasn’t sure why the thought of Marc talking to the officer upset her, but it did. “He knows I’m here?”

The cop frowned. “Is that a problem?”

“No. Of course not. I just didn’t want him…worried.”

“Why would he be worried?” Walker asked.

She said nothing, feeling confused, head aching.

“You are still Mrs. Collins, aren’t you?”

Anna opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I didn’t know Marc hadn’t gone through with the divorce until I talked to a friend earlier. I had no idea.”

He studied her openly then asked, “You don’t remember your husband telling you last night?”

“No.” Her voice sounded small, scared.

“But you were just saying that your memory has come back,” he reminded her.

“Not all of it.” Her fingers went to her scar.

“Why don’t you tell the officer what you told me,” the doctor suggested.

She swallowed, her throat dry and scratchy. Her head ached and she felt tired again, her earlier excitement about getting back some of her memory replaced by fear.

She told Officer Walker about the deer, losing control of the car, going into the lake and seeing someone on the bottom.

The cop gave her an unbelieving look. “Your husband told me you were upset when you left home last night. Can you tell me what that was about?”

So she had seen Marc last night at the house? “No. That is, I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing my husband last night or what I might have been upset about.”

The cop’s look said he found that a little too convenient. “Your husband said you might have been upset because he told you he hadn’t gone through with the divorce.”

She frowned. “Why would I be upset about that?”

“Why don’t you tell me,” he said.

She shot a look at the doctor. He looked worried as if he feared—as she did—that something had happened to make Officer Walker more suspicious of her. She knew she didn’t have to answer his questions, but she had nothing to hide. At least she hoped that was true. And at this point, Officer Walker seemed to know more than she did about what had happened last night.

“I was the one who didn’t want the divorce in the first place,” she said.

“You don’t recall seeing your husband at all last night?”

She shook her head slowly, a vague memory pulling at her. An ugly argument. But she’d had so many arguments with Marc… “I can’t be sure.”

Walker sighed and looked at the doctor.

She felt dread settle in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. She knew she should stop the police officer now, not answer any more of his questions. But she desperately wanted to know why he was asking them, why his manner was even more suspicious than it had been earlier. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Your husband said he not only saw you last night, but that the two of you argued. When you left, he said, you were threatening to kill someone.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “You don’t know Marc. He…” She thought of something Gillian had once said about Marc. He likes drama in his life. It’s his drug of choice. He gets high on it. And when he doesn’t have enough drama, he makes it. Or forces you to.

“Marc overreacts sometimes,” she said simply.

“Have you been under the care of a psychiatrist?”

“No, I mean, I was but I stopped going.”

“Mrs. Collins, did you purposely drive your car into the lake last night?”

“Of course not!”

“Were you even in the car when it went into the lake?” he asked, sounding aggravated with her.

She felt close to tears. “Why would I lie about something like that?”

“You tell me.”

She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Maybe for the same reason you threatened to kill someone? To get your husband’s attention?”

She wanted to argue that even if she was stupid enough to pull a stunt like that, she no longer cared enough about Marc to even threaten to kill herself—let alone try. Nor did she believe Marc would care.

That thought rang so true she was momentarily stunned by it.

“If you’re telling the truth, Mrs. Collins, then you don’t remember what you did last night, isn’t that right?” the cop asked.

She blinked, focusing again on him and his question before she slowly nodded. She’d lost the hours before she’d swerved to miss the deer. Just as she’d lost the reason she was on that highway to begin with.

And the truth was, in the state she’d been in since coming out of the coma, she couldn’t swear to what she might have done. Maybe she had tried to kill herself last night. But she had to wonder what would have pushed her to that point.

“I suppose you also don’t remember being so upset that you forgot about getting a speeding ticket about thirty miles outside of Shadow Lake.”

She shook her head.

“Or telling Dr. Brubaker to look for your son?” The cop sounded angry.

“No.” A headache was building. “I told you. I was confused when I first woke up. Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

“Why didn’t you tell us, Mrs. Collins, that your son Tyler is dead?” Walker snapped. “That he was killed eight months ago in a hit-and-run accident. The same one that left you in a coma.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

DR. BRUBAKER’S GAZE shot to Anna’s at the cop’s words. The sympathy Anna saw in his eyes made her want to weep. She felt awash in confusion, her emotions running too high.

“Why were you driving to Shadow Lake, Mrs. Collins?” Walker asked.

“I don’t know.” She heard the hysteria rising in her voice again and tried to tamp it back down, but it was impossible.

“It’s her head injury, Walker,” the doctor said quietly. “The loss of memory is normal. It’s a form of retrograde amnesia. Memory of the traumatic event is not the only thing lost, but often minutes or even hours leading up to the event.”

She looked at the doctor with gratitude. Clearly Officer Walker didn’t believe her memory loss. Or anything else she’d told him.

The cop glanced at the doctor, then at her, before taking out his notebook. After a moment, he removed the pencil from behind his ear and held it over the paper. His gaze rose again to hers.

“You have a global-tracking device in your car, Mrs. Collins?”

She frowned. “Yes,” she said hesitantly.

“When your car went off the road and the air bag deployed, a call went out to the police station here. I talked to your in-car system provider. It seems your last communication to them was a request for a route from Seattle to Shadow Lake.”

This town had been her destination? “I have no idea why I would have done that.” She could hear the apprehension in her voice. “As far as I can remember, I’ve never even heard of Shadow Lake before.”

“There was a suitcase in the backseat of your car,” he said.

A suitcase? She had a flicker of memory and saw herself packing furiously. “Maybe I was going on a short vacation.” But the clothes hanging in the hospital room closet certainly didn’t go with that theory. She feared what she would find in her suitcase.

“It’s a little early for a vacation in Shadow Lake,” the cop said. “Most of the motels and cabins aren’t even open yet.”

She sighed, exasperated by his inability to accept that she couldn’t remember. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know?”

“You also asked for directions to the Shadow Lake Police Department,” Walker said.

Out of the corner of her eye, Anna saw Dr. Brubaker swing his attention to the cop in surprise.

Anna tried not to let her own shock show. She couldn’t imagine any reason she would be interested in where the police department was located in Shadow Lake. Maybe someone had programmed her car. Even as she thought it, she knew how ludicrous that sounded.

For some reason she’d come to Shadow Lake—and thought she was going to need the police.

“I have no idea why I did any of those things. Please, tell me why you’re asking me all these questions.”

“Why don’t you tell me, Mrs. Collins?” Walker said. “Why drive up here in the middle of the night?”

“Don’t you think I would tell you if I knew?” Anna said, hearing the panic in her voice. “None of this makes any sense to me. You act as if I’m hiding something from you. I’m telling you everything I know.”

“But you didn’t tell us about your son,” he said.

“I think we should give Mrs. Collins a chance to rest,” Dr. Brubaker said.

“Just one more question,” Walker said, without looking at the doctor. His eyes were locked on Anna. “I want to hear about this person who you say was in the lake with you.”

“Not with me. In the water outside the car.” She swallowed, afraid that when she told him what she’d seen, he really would believe her a liar. She took a breath and let it out slowly, reassuring herself that she’d seen the man. He had to have saved her life. How else had she gotten out of the car?

Maybe more important, the man would be able to back up her story. He must have seen her lose control of the car and go into the lake. He could prove she was telling the truth.

“I saw a man at my side window,” she said, knowing her story would be met with more than skepticism. “I couldn’t get my seat belt to release. I thought I was going to drown.”

The cop was waiting patiently.

“The car was upside down and I was under the water. I remember thinking I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I heard what sounded like someone tap on my side window. I turned and…” She faltered. “I saw a face.”

“A face?” Walker asked.

“It was a man’s face. He had black hair that floated around his face and—” She grimaced. “His face was badly scarred.” She turned her own face away for a moment, jarred by the memory of the man’s monsterlike appearance. She was reminded of her own scar, her own shame that went with it.

“Scarred how?” Walker asked, his voice sounding oddly strained.

Her fingers trembling, Anna touched her face, starting at just below her left eye and swinging over the bridge of her nose and down under her right eye across her cheek to her jawline.

“And his eyes,” she added quickly. “I’d almost forgotten about them. They were a pale smoky gray reminding me of a wolf’s.” She saw the doctor exchange a look with Walker.

“You know someone with a scar like that?” she said. “It’s a small town. If he’s from here—”

“You’re telling me that you saw all of this on the bottom of the lake in the dark,” Walker demanded, now clearly angry.

“There was a light coming from somewhere,” she said, uncertain, though. “Maybe he had a flashlight or I saw him somehow in the glow of my car’s headlights. But I saw him.” She had, hadn’t she? She couldn’t make something like that up.

Obviously the cop thought her capable of making up just about anything—including being in the car at the bottom of the lake.

Her fingers went to her scar again. She traced its path nervously as she caught another exchanged look between the two men.

“I saw a badly scarred man under the water. He saved my life,” she said as she looked from the cop to Dr. Brubaker and back, confused by their reactions. “Don’t you see? The seat belt was jammed. He must have gotten me out and brought me here. I can’t imagine how else I survived. If you find him, he’ll tell you—”

Walker let out a curse. His face was crimson, his brown eyes wild with anger and something she’d hadn’t seen in them before—pain.

The doctor clasped a hand on the cop’s arm. “Walker, I need a word with you in the hall, now, please.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Anna demanded, her voice rising as high as her emotions again. “You keep looking at each other. Do you know this man I described? Is that it? If you just find him, he’ll tell you—”

“Please, Mrs. Collins,” Dr. Brubaker said as he forcibly ushered the cop out the door. “Let me speak to Officer Walker a moment and I will be back.”

Before the door closed, Anna saw the brief heated exchange before the cop said something that silenced Dr. Brubaker. The doctor glanced back at her. She saw his expression as the door swung shut.

Fear made her fingers tremble as she reached for the phone and tried her friend Gillian’s number again. She needed more than a friend now. She had a bad feeling she needed a lawyer.

And she had no idea why.

Or why Marc would tell the police she’d been threatening to kill someone last night.

Gillian didn’t answer her cell phone this time, either. Anna left a message to call the Shadow Lake Hospital in Shadow Lake. “It’s urgent.”

When she tried Gillian’s office, she was told that her friend had taken a few days off. She’d left no forwarding number. Odd. Gillian hadn’t mentioned anything about it when they’d had lunch. Nor was it like Gillian to take any time off. Anna couldn’t remember the last time her friend had gone on vacation.

Something was terribly wrong.

WALKER ONLY MADE IT AS far as his patrol car. He sat in the darkness, his head swimming, anger eating him up inside. All he wanted to do was storm back into the hospital and make that woman tell him the truth.

She’d lied.

But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any reason she would do that.

He ran a hand over his face.

“You need to get control of yourself,” Dr. Brubaker had told him as he’d led him down the hallway away from Anna Collins’s hospital room.

“You heard her in there. She’s lying.”

“You don’t really believe that woman in there killed anyone last night, do you?” Doc had demanded.

“Her husband seems to think she might have.”

“Go home. Get some rest. You aren’t thinking clearly. Give her some time to get her memory back. I’m sure all of this can be sorted out.”

Walker had seen the way Doc was with the young woman. Protective, as if she were his own daughter. Who wasn’t thinking clearly? he’d wanted to demand, but he’d had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and get out of the hospital before he did something he’d regret.

He didn’t need Doc to tell him that he was running on emotion right now. A lot of loss of his own.

Maybe he’d pick up a six-pack and drop by Billy’s. He went off shift over an hour ago.

Walker dialed the police chief’s cell. It rang four times before Rob finally picked up.

“Yeah?”

Nash sounded funny.

“Sorry to bother you, but I thought I should give you a heads-up on this case I got last night around midnight,” Walker said.

“The car that went into the lake,” Chief Nash said.

“Yeah.” He wondered how the chief had heard about it. “Anyway, I suspect it was an attempted suicide. The woman’s over at the hospital. Doc seems to think she’s going to be fine. But she swears she can’t remember a thing including an argument with her husband when she threatened to kill someone.”

“People make threats all the time, you know that,” Nash said.

“Yeah. I just have a gut feeling about this one,” Walker said, a little thrown by the chief’s response. Nash always had questions, convinced the answers were always in the details. “How are things over in Pilot’s Cove?”

“Fine. I got through sooner than I thought. I’m on my way back to town now.”

“Anything you need help on?” Walker asked, still wondering why Nash had let him believe it had something to do with the Pilot’s Cove Police Department.

“No.”

“We tried to get the car out, but Mac had to find a larger, newer tow truck,” Walker said, just for something to say since clearly the chief wasn’t interested. “Once we get the car out, maybe we’ll know more.”

“Sounds like you have everything under control. So if there’s no problem…”

He bristled at the chief’s irritation. No problem except for who she said saved her life last night. The chief was probably just tired and trying to get home to his young new wife. “I got it covered.”

“Good.”

Walker hung up, wondering what the hell was going on with the chief. Something, that was for damned sure. Nash had sounded like he had more important things on his mind. Like what? Walker wondered.

The chief’s job had been all that Rob Nash had had for so many years Walker couldn’t imagine the old man giving it up. But maybe the position would be coming open. And sooner than Walker had even hoped.

ANNA HAD NEVER FELT SO alone. Everyone in her life had abandoned her. Even Gillian, the one person she’d depended on the most since Tyler’s death. She’d finally reached rock bottom. What did it matter if the cop didn’t believe her story? Nothing mattered. It hadn’t from the moment she’d awakened to find that her son was dead.

But Anna found herself getting angry. She was tired of just lying down and taking it. Then she picked up the phone and called Marc’s number, planning to demand to know why he had told Officer Walker all those awful things about her—and find out what she’d done last night to make him say them.

But when Marc’s voice mail came up, she hung up and dialed Mary Ellen back.

“Anna.” Mary Ellen sounded relieved to hear her voice. “Where are you? I tried to call you back—”

“Tell me why Marc didn’t go through with the divorce.” Anna felt anger bubble up inside her. “He’s the one who wanted it so badly.”

“You don’t know how hard it’s been on him,” Mary Ellen said. “For six long months he didn’t know whether or not you’d ever wake up. He’d already lost his son—”

“I lost my son, too,” she interrupted.

“Yes, but Marc had months of not knowing if he was going to lose you, too. Then when you came out of the coma and didn’t even know what had happened…”

Anna couldn’t help but bristle at the words. She’d tried so hard to remember the hit-and-run accident that had taken Tyler and nearly killed her as well. The driver of the car that had hit her and her son was never apprehended because Anna couldn’t provide a description. With what little the police had to go on, they hadn’t been able to find out who had hit her car, killing her son and putting her in a coma. She’d never known if she had been somehow partly responsible.

“Marc had to relive it all again with you,” Mary Ellen was saying. “He was dealing with all of it and then…”

Yes, Anna had come back from the darkness to make Marc’s life even harder. She’d often gotten the impression he’d wished she’d died along with Tyler at the scene.

“I think Marc thought divorce would put an end to the pain by distancing himself from you and the memories,” Mary Ellen said.

Anna sniffed and wiped her eyes. She wasn’t insensitive to Marc’s pain. But she had also overheard him question the doctor about whether or not it was possible she’d stayed in the coma because she couldn’t face the truth. “I know it was harder on him than it was on me.”

“But you can put things back together again,” Mary Ellen said brightly. “That’s really what Marc wants. To start over, no more secrets between the two of you.”

Anna had wanted that, too. She just hadn’t expected Marc wanting to come back to her to be so bittersweet.

“He said he told me all of this last night?” Anna asked.

Silence, then Mary Ellen said hesitantly, “Yes. Are you saying he didn’t?”

Had Marc told her? Then why had she taken off to Shadow Lake alone?

Anna had a flash of memory. A nasty argument. Had it been last night? She couldn’t be sure.

Maybe it was last night, because she had a strong feeling that something had happened. Last night. And while she was in a coma. Something that Marc and her friends were keeping from her.

Marc’s change of heart made her suspicious, given what he’d told the Shadow Lake police. Not that she was about to share that with Mary Ellen.

She’d learned that Marc was very deliberate in his decisions. Maybe that was why the outcome always benefited him the most.

If Marc had told her last night that he hadn’t gone through with the divorce, he would have been expecting her to fall to her knees in gratitude. So maybe the argument she vaguely recalled had been last night, because she doubted she’d indulged him in that fantasy.

In fact, she suspected she hadn’t been even gracious. If anything she would have been angry.

You scare me, Anna.

His words came back to her so clearly that they could have been from last night.

Not as much as you’re scaring me, Marc.

She frowned. Why had she said that to him? And had it been last night? Lately, it seemed all the days ran together.

“Anna, are you still there?”

“Yes.” She recalled Mary Ellen’s words from earlier. That’s what Marc really wants. To start over, no more secrets between the two of you.

Secrets?

“Did something happen while I was in the coma?” Anna asked, a trembling in her voice she couldn’t control.

“What do you mean?” Mary Ellen sounded wary now.

Anna wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. “Marc is so different.”

“Anna, of course he’s different. How could he not be different after everything that has happened?”

She looked toward the hospital-room window. She knew she should stop, but it was as if too long, pent-up emotions had burst loose inside her.

She knew she should be talking about this with Gillian, not Mary Ellen. Gillian would understand. She wasn’t so sure Mary Ellen could, especially given her recent “friendship” with Marc. But Anna couldn’t seem to hold it back any longer.

“He’s like a stranger, Mary Ellen. I don’t know him. He…” She choked, unable to say the words out loud, even though she’d been thinking them for a long while now. She’d woken up after six months in a coma to a complete stranger who frightened her.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.