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  “You have anything against spaghetti?” Hayden asked, interrupting her worrisome reverie.

  “What?” Alex shook off the heavy thoughts and tried to focus on the sheriff. He’d taken a jar of spaghetti sauce from a shelf.

  “We’re having this tonight.” He flashed the red sauce and a bag of pasta he’d picked up without her noticing. “Do you have a problem with it?”

  “No. Sorry. I was…somewhere else. Spaghetti is fine.” She had to stay focused, distraction was not a good thing right now. “As long as we have a salad to go with it,” she qualified as an afterthought. “Do you have a problem with that?” she added, tossing his question back at him.

  Hayden smiled, a slow-in-coming gesture that affected only one side of his mouth. If she’d thought him good-looking before, that smile sent him well beyond that description in her estimation. Her heart did a little tattoo and she had the wildest impulse to pull all that blond hair loose and run her fingers through it. Her breath caught at the foolish notion.

  “No,” he said in that deep, smooth voice that spoke of long, hot, southern nights and didn’t help her composure at all. “In fact, I think it’s a great idea. You can make it.”

  Alex couldn’t prevent her own tiny smile. She should have seen that one coming, but she’d been too preoccupied with his handsome face and his voice and all that sexy hair. “Point me in the direction of the produce department,” she said before her mind could wander down another dangerous path.

  “This way.” He headed down the aisle. “I guess that means we’ll have to agree on some sort of salad dressing.”

  There was no point in trying to figure him out, but she couldn’t help herself. Was he being overly nice now because he felt guilty for their heated exchange the night Miller died? Or was he simply trying to make the best out of a bad situation? She supposed that he could just feel bad that she’d had such a lousy day. Her client was dead and a serial killer had attacked her. She was definitely having a bad week. With so many choices it would be difficult to select the lowest point since her arrival in Raleigh County. Dressing, she reminded herself. He’d mentioned dressing.

  “As long as it’s not French, I’ll be happy.” She hurried to keep up with his long strides.

  That pulse-pumping smile eased into a half grin as they reached the main aisle that stretched across the back of the store. “And French is my favorite.”

  “Mitch?” A feminine voice called from a few feet away.

  Alex looked toward the intrusion to find a woman of about fifty staring in their direction. Standing near a produce counter, she held a celery stalk in her hand, her shopping cart laden with the other selections she’d already made.

  Hayden walked straight up to her and gifted her with a light peck on the cheek. “How’s my favorite lady?”

  The instant and fierce pang of jealousy Alex experienced was totally ridiculous. But she felt it anyway.

  The woman who’d lifted her cheek so readily to Hayden stiffened when her gaze collided with Alex’s. “Is that…?” Her words trailed off as if the rest were too unspeakable to utter.

  Alex felt a twinge of trepidation.

  “Alex Preston, this is my aunt Nadine,” Hayden said, hesitation slowing him as he spoke. “Nadine Malloy,” he added when Alex still looked puzzled.

  Phillip’s wife. She remembered now. The woman who’d opened her home to Marija. “Hello, Mrs. Malloy.” Alex offered her hand.

  Nadine glared at her. “You stay away from my family.”

  She’d obviously already heard what Alex had been up to before she’d gotten the knock on the head. “I’m only trying to find out what happened to Marija,” Alex explained.

  Hatred filled the woman’s eyes. “We took that girl in and treated her like she was our own. Don’t you dare come here accusing my husband and me of anything bad. I won’t stand for it. If something happened to that girl after she left our home it had nothing to do with us.”

  Alex instinctively moved back a step from Nadine’s fury. “Then you should be glad that I’m trying to find the truth. Otherwise there will always be suspicion connected to your family.”

  The woman advanced the step Alex had retreated. “The only person casting suspicion is you. If you know what’s good—”

  “Nadine.” Mitch moved between the two of them. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “She’s done nothing but cause pain and loss since she came to this town,” Nadine said coldly. “How can you defend her?”

  Mitch knew his unusual treatment of this case—of Alex—was cause for dissension in his family. They felt betrayed, and he understood. But he had to do what he had to do. The realization that he was hurting the people he cared most about for a stranger stabbed deep into his chest.

  “It’s my job to see after her until she regains her memory and we can find out who killed Miller and Saylor. If I don’t do this we might never know.” Mitch knew Alex was listening to and analyzing every word that he said. This little episode would damage the flimsy trust that had started to build between them, but that couldn’t be helped. Nadine was family. He couldn’t turn his back on family.

  Nadine shook the celery stalk at Alex. “You already have your murderer,” she said cruelly. “She should be locked up in a cell not walking around free.”

  He heard Alex’s sharp intake of breath and he wanted to turn to her…to somehow comfort the hurt he knew that comment had dealt her.

  “Let it go for now, Nadine,” Mitch warned softly. “Let’s not make a scene.”

  As if suddenly realizing where she was, Nadine stepped back. “I’m sorry, Mitch.” She turned a watery gaze up to him. “This isn’t your fault. Of course you’re doing the best job you can. You’ll figure this all out and then things can go back to the way they used to be.” She speared one last withering look in Alex’s direction. “Before she came to town.”

  Nadine pitched the celery back onto the produce shelf and rushed away with her grocery cart. Mitch hoped this business wasn’t going to push her back into another bout of depression. She’d suffered with periods of severe depression for so long, but the last couple of years had been better. Mitch didn’t want to be the cause of a relapse. He let go a mighty breath and turned back to Alex.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “Don’t talk. Let’s just get what we need and get out of here.”

  EVERYTHING ABOUT this investigation stunk, Mitch ruminated as he drove toward home. Two good men were dead. His aunt and uncle were devastated by the innuendos obviously floating around. And he wanted nothing more than to console Alex for his aunt’s behavior. It was nuts. Alex was the enemy. A suspect, a witness. The very person poised to do his family harm. The woman who’d betrayed his trust, if only for a few hours that night. The one who seemed to have set all this chaos into motion. Yet he wanted to protect her, to keep her safe and happy as if she meant a great deal more to him than…

  Who was he kidding? She did mean a great deal more to him than she should. Mitch shook his head in defeat. He’d completely lost his perspective. How in the hell was he supposed to be objective when all he could think about was…sex? Having sex with Alex. He’d pretended it was her well-being he was concerned about when actually it was her, plain and simple.

  He wanted her. She challenged him on a level that no other woman had. Though he’d had his share of relationships, none ever stuck. He’d never met a woman who could match him on the job. Until now that is. Simply sharing a conversation with her had aroused more than his intellectual interest. He stole a glance at his passenger. The tiny bandage on her forehead and the mark on her cheek made her look vulnerable, but Mitch knew she wasn’t. Not really. She was tough and smart. She clearly knew as much about the law and investigating crime as he did. And there was something intensely erotic about a woman who could hold her own with him. A woman who knew too much about him before she ever met him.

  Today, when she’d spouted off all that she knew about him, he’d be
en startled. He wondered if she had remembered their dinner together. Not that he’d said those things to her in quite that way. If she had remembered, it definitely had not affected her the way it had him.

  Mitch cursed himself.

  Alex Preston was far from the kind of woman Mitch hoped to settle down with someday. His father had found a special kind of woman in Mitch’s mother. A woman who loved her husband and family fiercely and gave up her career to dedicate herself to that family. Though Alex represented in every way the kind of woman with whom he longed to share a physical relationship, she was not the type who would give up her fancy city job to be a country mother and housewife. She was too focused on doing whatever it took to accomplish her mission. Even lying to him.

  And Mitch wasn’t going down the matrimony road with that kind of woman. He’d watched his brother’s life fall apart because of conflicting goals and interests. Mitch had no intention of following that path.

  As he turned onto the gravel drive that would lead to his house he considered the direction his thoughts had taken. Alex was in his custody—part of a case—and here he was analyzing why they couldn’t spend their lives together.

  Damn, but he was really losing it. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d had her brains scrambled. Or maybe Roy was right, Mitch just needed to jump-start his social life. Roy had been urging Mitch to get back into the nightlife scene for months. But he’d worked too many hours this past year and didn’t see that routine changing anytime soon.

  Mitch parked the Jeep in front of his house and made a decision. From this moment on he would not think of Alex as a woman. She was a suspect, a witness, part of an ongoing case. He didn’t have time for a social life. Especially not until this case was resolved.

  “Unless you’re in a hurry for that salad,” Alex said, jerking him back to the present, “I’d like to take a long hot bath. I’m beat.”

  The image of her naked body, all long legs and curves, lounging in a tub filled with hot water and frothy bubbles filled his mind. His entire body reacted instantly, going rock hard. “Sure,” he croaked. “Take your time. I’ll make the salad.” The last thing he needed right now was Alex in the kitchen with him trying to help.

  He needed distance to get his act together.

  HAYDEN BARELY SPOKE to her during dinner. He rushed through the meal and into his study as if being in the same room with her made him ill somehow. Alex guessed it was because of his aunt’s reaction to his taking Alex in.

  Flipping her freshly washed hair over her shoulders, she turned and retraced her steps across the kitchen. She supposed Nadine was right to some extent. Things had gone down hill since Alex came to town. Marija was still missing. Jasna was dead. Two deputies had lost their lives. She pressed her hand against her waist when her stomach knotted with a mixture of fear and regret.

  She muttered a curse and pivoted on her heel. Why couldn’t she remember what happened that night? Or anytime since her arrival in Shady Grove? She needed to figure this out. Whoever had done these horrible things couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. Her casebook had helped. She knew when she read the entries that they were correct. She had done those things. She could remember them in a strange kind of way. Sort of like when her grandmother told her things she did as a child. Although Alex had no actual memory of doing them, it felt right, like her brain somehow knew she had done them whether she could recall the acts or not.

  But this was much, much worse than not recalling a childhood caper. A murderer was going to go free if she couldn’t remember these incidents. Instinct told her that he, whoever he was, intended to take her out of the picture just to be sure she didn’t ruin his perfect crime spree. A shiver raced up Alex’s spine. How could she not remember the face of the man who wanted her dead? Who was determined to make it look as if she had committed murder? The ski mask flashed, leaving no hope of remembering his face. But the eyes. She should remember the eyes. His size. His voice. Surely, she could recall those things. She did remember one voice but it didn’t seem to belong to the man in the mask.

  “Dammit.”

  She plowed her fingers through her hair and massaged her skull. Thankfully, her head didn’t hurt anymore. She’d exchanged the bandage on her forehead for a couple of Band-Aids. The bruise and Waylon Gill’s handiwork were almost gone from her cheek she’d noticed while drying her hair tonight. She still sported a few scratches and bruises on her back and side. But the worst of the soreness was gone. And her scraped knees were healing nicely.

  If only her memory would heal as quickly.

  “Think, Alex,” she demanded crossly as she pressed her fingertips to her temples. “What did you see?”

  Nothing came.

  “This is ridiculous.” She stalked over to the sink and leaned against the counter to stare out at the night. Why couldn’t she recall just one more thing from that other night? It had been dark, just like now. She’d been in an unfamiliar environment—also like now. Alex closed her eyes and strained to remember just one thing. Nothing.

  She snapped her eyes open and swore. She had to do something to occupy herself or she would surely go nuts. Hayden was doing paperwork and didn’t want to be disturbed. She had no interest in television or reading. She could only replay the day’s events like some kind of twisted short film. The evil in Gill’s eyes. The fear she’d felt when he attacked her. Jasna’s lifeless, unblinking gaze.

  Enough.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the casebook lying open on the table. She’d been over it and over it, but too many strategic pages were missing.

  The cool autumn breeze wafted through the open window momentarily drawing Alex from her troubling thoughts. She inhaled deeply. This was the one good thing about living in the country. Everything smelled so fresh.

  A flapping sound startled her. Alex jumped back from the counter. It came again. She frowned and inched back toward the counter. She leaned over the sink and peered out the window. It was too dark to see anything, just vague outlines. The noise seemed connected to the breeze, whenever it kicked up the flapping started again.

  Curious now, she padded quietly to the back door and stared through the glass panes. She still couldn’t see anything. Alex moistened her lips and flipped the switch for the porch light. A yellow haze of light spilled over the wooden porch casting the yard beyond it in eerie shadows.

  Alex studied the items on the porch for a moment. A couple of old rockers, and on the far side of the porch stood a metal garbage can, the lid haphazardly pressed over the top of it. It wasn’t the old beat-up can itself that caught Alex’s eye, but a piece of paper flapping in the late September breeze. The page was one torn from a spiral notebook, one edge ragged. The same kind of notebook she used to record the details of a case. The same casebook she now had with missing pages.

  Her gaze never leaving the fluttering piece of paper, Alex unlatched the screen door and moved across the porch toward the can. Her heart pounding, her hand shaking, she reached for the trapped paper. She tugged it loose and turned it right side up so she could read the words written there.

  Tuesday, September 3rd, 7:30 p.m., meeting with Deputy Miller.

  “Oh, God.”

  Alex pushed the lid off the can and a couple more loose pages flapped like the wings of birds just released from their cage. Alex grabbed the pages. Both displayed her handwriting. She shook her head in denial. Mitch Hayden had lied to her. He had taken those pages. He had…

  Her breath fled her lungs.

  What else had he lied to her about?

  The pages slipped from her suddenly lax hands and drifted off the porch to the grass, flipping end over end out of her reach. Startled into action to save her notes, Alex rushed down the steps into the darkness. She snatched up one page, rushed the few feet to the next and reached for it.

  A strong hand clamped down over her mouth. An arm belted around her waist. Panic exploded inside her chest.

  Alex tried to scream but the sound died in her thro
at.

  Her assailant jerked her against his body. She had to get away. He held her tighter. She felt the scratch of his wool ski mask. She dug her heels in trying to slow his movements as he dragged her toward the woods beyond the yard. Terror roared through her veins.

  She had to stop him!

  She kicked backward, aiming for his shins. She connected. He grunted. She slammed her left elbow into his abdomen, and kicked again. He growled a savage sound. Alex twisted violently, kicking and flailing her arms. She bit down on his hand with all her might.

  She was free!

  She scrambled to her feet and ran screaming toward the house. Her lungs burned for oxygen. She had to move faster. She slammed head-on into a hard body. She jerked back. She had to run. He reached for her. She pivoted from his grasp.

  Run! her brain commanded.

  Strong arms locked around her waist. She hit the ground, kicking and screaming.

  “Stop fighting dammit! It’s me.”

  Hayden. Alex stilled, her breath shuddering in and out. Her chest burned for more air. Her entire body trembled as the adrenaline receded leaving only the fear.

  “It’s okay.” He murmured soothingly. “Let’s get you in the house.”

  Trembling so savagely she could hardly move, she allowed him to pull her to her feet. The unsteadiness of her limbs forced her to lean on him as he ushered her back into the house. She sank into a ladderback chair the instant she reached the table. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart. Her body strummed with fear. Every place her assailant had touched stung with the remnants of terror still plaguing her. He’d almost gotten her. Then she would be dead just like Jasna.

  She clamped her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. She remembered Jasna’s worry for her sister, her tearful gratitude when the agency accepted her case. And now she was gone.

  “What the hell happened?” Hayden locked the door and slid into a chair next to her. “What were you doing outside?”

  She swallowed and tried to moisten her dry lips, but her mouth was too parched. Her mind was whirling with too many images and sensations. “It was him. He tried to…” She closed her eyes and sucked in another quaking breath. She searched for calm, tried to imagine it embracing her. “I found the—” Her gaze collided with his.