Scene of the Crime: Deadman's Bluff (7 page)

She leaned heavily against him, the top of her head fitting neatly beneath his chin as her body continued to shiver against his. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, as if he could somehow absorb whatever darkness flowed through her.

She didn’t cry and finally the shivering that had swept over her halted, but still she remained in his embrace as if he were her lifeline in a sea of the unknown.

And wasn’t that just what he was right now for her, he reminded himself. But she did feel good against him, her feminine curves melting into him as her arms reached around his neck.

He tried to maintain his objectivity. He tried to think of her only as a victim who needed comforting, but it was as a man he smelled the sweet fragrance of her hair, felt the press of her breasts against him, and he felt himself responding as a man. Fearing that she might notice, he released her and stepped back from her, needing some distance before he completely embarrassed himself.

As good as she felt, as much as he might want her as a man, he needed her more for what was locked inside her head. Somehow, someway, he had to crack her memories open as quickly as possible, before another body wound up buried in the sand.

They returned to the table where once again she sat and cupped the mug in front of her, her gaze not quite meeting his.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you right now,” she said softly.

She finally looked up at him and once again in her eyes he saw a haunting fear. “I want to help you, but there’s a small part of me that’s afraid of my memories. I’m afraid that if I remember who put me in the sand and why, if I remember every sensation, every moment of my time with my killer, I’ll go crazy. There’s a part of me that’s scared that by helping you, that by remembering, I’ll lose myself to complete madness.”

* * *

T
ODAY WAS THE DAY SHE
might face the person who tried to kill her, the monster who had buried her in the sand dunes. Tamara checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror, grateful that Samantha had a generous spirit and an awesome wardrobe. Today Tamara was clad in a pair of jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt. She’d hoped that by wearing the color of beautiful sunshine some of her nerves might calm, but so far it wasn’t working.

She turned away from the mirror, knowing that Seth was waiting for her in the living room. They’d all eaten breakfast together an hour earlier, then Samantha had left with friends and Linda had gone to bed after her night of working. Now it was time to leave the safety of this house and venture out on a treasure hunt for her memories.

She reached for the bathroom doorknob to leave, but paused for just a moment, remembering the brief, but wonderful time the night before that she’d spent in Seth’s embrace.

He’d told her she’d been married, but she couldn’t remember ever feeling so safe, so secure in a man’s arms as she had last night with Seth. In fact, whenever she thought about her marriage, a knot of new anxiety formed in her stomach.

What kind of a man had she married? And why had they divorced? And why did thinking about it all make her feel so anxious and unsettled? She gave a mental shrug and left the bathroom. Until she remembered her past, there was no point in speculating about anything. All she knew about herself were the facts that Seth had managed to discover.

He rose from the sofa as she entered the living room. As always, her breath caught in her chest at the sight of him. He was so handsome, and as his gaze flicked over her from head to toe, a warmth grew inside her and she remembered how quickly he’d stepped away from her last night, but not before she’d realized he was aroused.

“Yellow is definitely your color,” he said. “You look bright and cheerful.”

“Good, then my disguise worked,” she replied drily.

“Nervous?”

She nodded. “I want my life back, the memories of who I am, but when I really think about remembering the minutes before my near death, the back of my throat closes up and I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“Trust me, there will be no suffocation in your life while I’m around.” He pulled his truck keys from his pocket. “Ready for the town tour?”

“I wish I could say I was looking forward to it.”

He frowned. “But you want to get your memories back. You need to know your past, to know who you are and what your life consisted of before all this. Without your past I’d think it would be difficult to have a future.”

“You’re right, of course,” she agreed as they stepped out the front door and into the warm June sunshine. “I just hope that when I do get my memories back I don’t discover that I was a thief or something terrible.”

He opened the passenger door for her and grinned. “Tamara, if you were something terrible we’d all know it by now. If you were a criminal, it would have come up in my background search. If you were a mean, hateful woman, your true colors would have bled through by now.”

She climbed into the truck seat and watched as he rounded the front of the vehicle to get to the driver’s side. She didn’t know what kind of evil wind had blown her into the sand dunes and to her near death, but fate was definitely smiling on her when it had been Seth who had found her.

She wasn’t sure where she’d be at this instant in time if not for Seth and his family. The fact that they’d taken a risk allowing her into their lives without knowing anything about her wasn’t lost on her.

“Just relax,” Seth said as he climbed behind the steering wheel and started the engine. “I have a feeling this is something that the harder you work at, the less success you’ll have.” He cast her another one of his killer smiles. “The sun is shining, you’re healthy and safe and best of all, you’re with me.”

A bubble of laughter escaped her at his obvious stab at mock conceit, but the laughter quickly faded. “Samantha told me yesterday while you were on the phone that you’d come here for vacation. I guess I screwed that up for you.”

“Vacations are highly overrated,” he replied easily as he backed out of the driveway. “I like my work and really had only decided to take a vacation because I wanted to spend some time with Linda and Samantha.”

“They’re wonderful. Are your parents alive?”

“No. They died in a car accident eight years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, at the same time wondering when her parents had died. If she’d mourned deeply for them. The fact that after speaking with her neighbors he couldn’t even come up with the name of a friend pierced her with sadness. “Surely I had a cell phone. Can’t it be pinged or whatever to locate it?”

“If you had a cell phone it must have been a pay-as-you-go, and without a phone number we have nothing to ping,” he replied.

As he turned onto what was obviously the main drag of the small town, Tamara focused her attention out the window and tried to relax her mind.

Amber Lake was a quaint small town that displayed touches of community pride here and there. Trees had been planted in the sidewalk at regular intervals, providing shade to the shoppers who found themselves out in the heat of the day.

There were the usual stores—hardware, grocery, a discount apparel shop as well as a dress boutique—some fast-food places, a café and a fancy restaurant called the Golden Daffodil.

Yes, it was a nice, quaint little town, but nothing looked even vaguely familiar, nothing jogged a single piece of her memory.

“Nothing,” she said dispiritedly after several minutes.

“Don’t be so impatient,” he replied easily.

“I’m trying not to be, but I was hoping that something that I saw would at least spark a tiny piece of memory.” She sighed in frustration.

Seth pulled into a parking space at the south end of Main. “Why don’t we get out and take a little stroll. It’s a nice morning and maybe you’ll see something in a shop window or somebody you’ll recognize.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. Moments later they walked together down one side of Main with the intention of returning to the truck by walking on the opposite side of the street.

They walked at a leisurely pace, small-talking about the weather and Samantha and the newest member of the household as Tamara took in each store window they passed, every person who nodded and smiled as they went by.

“I’m assuming you aren’t married,” she said after they’d walked for a few minutes.

“You’ve got that right,” he replied.

“What about a significant other?”

“Nope, nobody. All I’ve had in my life for the past couple of years is work. Besides, after watching what Linda went through with her divorce from her husband, I decided for sure that I never wanted to get married.”

“Bad divorce?”

“Terrible,” he replied. “I didn’t like her husband, Mark, when they married and I liked him a hell of a lot less by the time the divorce was finalized.”

“Does he live here in town?” she asked.

“Two blocks away from Linda.” He drew a deep sigh. “As much as I find him an arrogant, controlling ass, I have to give him props for being a good father to Samantha. She spends most of her weekends at his place and she adores him.”

“That’s important. Girls need their fathers in their lives.” She frowned. “But you shouldn’t allow your sister’s experience to deter you from having a family. I’ve seen how you are with Samantha and you’d make a great dad.”

He laughed, a deep, full-bodied sound that swept pleasurable warmth through her. “It’s easy to be a favorite uncle, but I’m not so sure that I’d be good dad material, and in any case it doesn’t matter. I have no intention of ever getting married.”

“I wonder why I got divorced?” Tamara asked, although she knew he had no answer. She found it difficult to imagine herself a married lady, but then she found it impossible to know exactly what kind of a woman she’d been before Seth had dug her out of the sand.

“Hopefully you’ll know soon,” Seth replied.

Although he said it easily, Tamara felt the pressure to remember, the need to help him find the person who had already killed two women and had tried to kill her, a man who could at any moment decide to claim another victim.

“How about an early lunch?” Seth suggested when they reached the Amber Lake Café.

“Sure,” she agreed.

As they walked into the front door of the restaurant a jingle of wind chimes sounded and Tamara had a visceral sense of déjà vu.

She said nothing as she followed Seth to a booth and slid across from him. The chimes sounded familiar, like a musical echo in the very back of her brain. She didn’t want to get his hopes up, didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

She might have heard the same kind of wind chimes in another place, she might even possess some herself in her apartment in Amarillo. A single noise wasn’t enough to indicate that at some point in the past she’d visited this particular café.

“Hey, folks,” a blonde waitress with a name tag that read Lucy greeted them, with two menus. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“I’d like a diet cola,” Tamara said.

“And a glass of iced tea for me,” Seth replied.

“Be back in a jiffy,” Lucy said as she left their booth.

Tamara opened her menu and made her decision, then looked at Seth as a thought occurred to her. “Since we know who I am and where I live is it possible I can access my bank account and get out some cash?”

“I don’t see how that can be done without us driving into your bank branch and somehow explaining the situation to them. You don’t have a bank card and I’m assuming you wouldn’t know your pin number. Is there something you need?”

“A loan?” she ventured. She felt the warmth of a blush fill her cheeks. “I’d like to buy some clothes for myself instead of borrowing everything from Samantha. I’d just feel better if I had a few things to call my own.”

“I should have realized how difficult it has been for you.” Seth smiled at her. “Just tell me how much you want and I’ll get it for you when we pass by the bank.”

“Maybe a hundred dollars?” she said tentatively.

“We’ll make it two hundred and if you need more than that I want you to come to me.” He leaned forward across the table, his eyes like a gray bank of calming fog. “And it’s not a loan. We’ll consider it living expenses for a material witness in a murder investigation.”

“A material witness who can’t remember anything,” Tamara said dispiritedly.

At that moment the waitress returned with their drinks and they placed their orders. “So, I guess if we’re going to small-talk over lunch we’re going to have to talk about me,” Seth said teasingly.

“Actually, I’d like that topic of conversation,” she replied lightly. “You can tell me all about your work for the FBI and about your life in Kansas City.”

“I don’t have a life in Kansas City,” he said drily, “but I love talking about my work.”

And he did. While she ate a club sandwich and he wolfed down a double cheeseburger he talked about the cases he’d worked in the past and the evil he’d seen over the years working as a profiler.

Tamara found everything about him fascinating, from what he did for a living to the way the left corner of his mouth moved upward to begin one of his sexy smiles. She found it fascinating the way his eyes went from soft dove-gray when he talked about things he cared about to a cold steel color when he spoke of things he didn’t like.

It would be easy for her to develop a little bit of a crush on FBI Special Agent Seth Hawkins, even though she knew it would also be foolish.

For all she knew there was a man somewhere in Texas worried sick about her, a man who loved her, a man she loved to distraction. But, if there was such a man, then why couldn’t she even remember him? And why wasn’t he looking for her? Surely she would have some sense of loving...of being loved.

Why when she tried to remember her former life, before the sand dunes, before Amber Lake, did a tight squeeze of anxiety grip her stomach? Had she fled her apartment in Amarillo because of something bad? Because of something sad?

She was attracted to Seth but when she looked into his eyes she not only saw a man’s attraction, but also an FBI agent’s need...the need for answers she didn’t have at this time.

As they finished up the meal she once again cast her gaze around the café. It was like a hundred cafés that the Midwest sported, homey and warm and filled with people who had grown up together, who were friends and neighbors and gathered here on a regular basis.