“No, wood. Like these only wider and there were rails on both sides instead of just one.”

  “What color wood?”

  “White.”

  “And what about your mother? What was she wearing?”

  Aimee shook her head. “I don’t remember. Just a sense that she was holding my hand.”

  “What did her hand feel like? Was it soft? Or more rough, like a working man’s?”

  “No, her fingers were soft. I liked to rub my thumb against her thumbnail when she held my hand. It was short, but smooth. It was my mother. I don’t know how I know that, but I have no doubt about it.”

  Again, Jackson only had Kelly’s expression to go by, but the doctor seemed pleased.

  “You want to close your eyes, keep going?” Kelly asked then, and when Aimee nodded, they continued on up to the door leading into the apartment. Jackson had the key and leaned around Aimee to let her in, his arm brushing hers as he did so. He felt the warmth of her skin, wanted to linger, glanced at her to see if she’d noticed, but she’d already stepped away, inside, and he felt like a clod out there, thinking that a simple touch could possibly matter to her in the midst of such a traumatic time in her life.

  They spent several minutes in the apartment. Walked down and back up the stairs. And in the car, Kelly had Amy close her eyes again and try to go back, to get more of the brief moment she’d remembered, but to no avail.

  Still...he had something. A good possibility that after moving from the garage apartment, the Coopers had lived in a house with stairs up to the deck. Just a few stairs. Front steps. Made out of white wood. Could be hundreds of places that would have matched that description thirty years ago. No guarantee those steps had even been in Evergreen. But it was a start.

  More than he’d had.

  And something he and Aimee could talk more about as they shared Sunday dinner at his kitchen table. He invited Kelly to join them. It was the right thing to do.

  She declined, saying she had a friend from Phoenix driving up to spend some time at the cabin with her.

  He shouldn’t have been so pleased about that.

  But he was.

  Chapter 12

  She’d remembered her father’s voice. Her mother’s laugh. And the touch of her mother’s hand! Such an incredible gift. Who’d ever have thought such a small thing could feel so incredibly life changing. Giving her life, her entire existence, added depth. It was like she’d been black and white and suddenly her picture contained a little color. And with each addition, Aimee became more driven to find the treasure trove she’d become certain was locked inside her. To feel her true colors, to wear them naked, not just in the clothes she put on her body.

  Thoughts of naked bodies were definitely prevalent in her psyche since coming to Evergreen. And the types of naked thoughts she’d been having didn’t go hand in hand with parental thoughts. At all.

  So like her to challenge herself on opposite ends of the spectrum at the same time. She’d been doing it with her artistic expressions all of her life—deeply emotional and bright and flowery at the same time. With her fight for independence, getting a place of her own, at the same time that she’d officially gone into business with her aunt...

  Add in a little possibility of death threat and she was really tipping the barrel.

  But still standing. In Jackson Redmond’s great room—a huge two-story space, directly inside the front door that contained both living room on one end and kitchen on the other. With the whole evening stretching out before them. She couldn’t leave. He wasn’t going to leave.

  And as off-kilter as she was, she wanted nothing more than to walk into his arms and ask for a hug. A long one. A really, really long one. That might entail offspring hugs, in various positions...

  “I’m calling The Monkey Bar for take-out dinner,” he said, pulling out one of about twenty drawers in the huge kitchen with a double-sized counter island in the middle of it. “Here’s a menu—just tell me what you want...” He handed her a well-used, straight from the pub, based on its leather jacket, listing of Monkey Bar offerings. Including an impressive array of salads she’d like to try.

  But... “You don’t have to pay for dinner.” And, with his fingers having just brushed against hers, she was suddenly in desperate need of something to do. “I brought all that food over from the cabin. We can make something here.”

  We. Him and her. In the kitchen together. She should have thought things through a bit better...

  “You must have noticed my refrigerator when you made your deposits,” he said, with a bit of a shrug. “You had the sum total of my culinary skills this morning.”

  An incredibly delicious breakfast burrito. And yes, she’d noticed the bareness of his refrigerator shelves, but she’d glimpsed a freezer in the garage when he’d given her the tour of the place, and there were all those cupboards...

  He was grimacing at his lack of cooking skill. She smiled at him...

  “So, I’ll make dinner,” she said, looking away abruptly, as she forced her brain to a mental tally of the meals she’d planned to fix for herself—New Orleans’ specialties that she didn’t actually consume all that often at home, but had wanted to have to remind her of home. “You want a po’ boy sandwich or red beans and rice with sausage?”

  She couldn’t just sit with him and wait for a delivery. And was fairly certain she couldn’t trust herself to remain upstairs in her room. Not without driving herself silly.

  “Kelly said I should relax as much as possible, and I find cooking relaxing.” Truth.

  “Then go for it. I’ll have whatever you prefer.” He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. Held one up to her, and, when she nodded, opened it for her.

  One beer. She could have one. Any more than that could push her struggling inhibitions beyond their limit. He asked if he could help. She needed him out of the immediate space. No more smelling his outdoorsy scent or feeling his hotness. She was overheated enough as it was.

  He pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the island, facing the kitchen, apparently intending to watch her work. Aimee’s lower belly gave another flood of sexy wanting.

  “Can you go back to the white wooden steps leading up to the deck?” His question, a definite splash of cold water in the face, zipped her right back where he wanted her. Where she most needed to be. In the memory. Funny how she didn’t lose them once they’d presented themselves to her. She could remember exactly what she’d seen and how she’d felt in the snippet she’d relayed to Kelly outside the White house.

  And was trying so hard to do as the psychiatrist had said and not get discouraged over the complete and utter failure of the rest of the outing. Lest she block her progress with negativity. She had to trust her mind. Give it safe space in which to reveal itself. And the patience her toddler self apparently needed.

  “I already described everything I’ve got to Kelly,” she said, flooding with disappointment in spite of the admonition, the reminder, she’d just given herself.

  “You described steps up to a deck. In trying to narrow down what kind of place we’re looking for, as property records from thirty years ago haven’t been digitized, I’d like to know more about the deck. Doesn’t have to seem significant to you. Anything you can give me might ring a bell here.”

  She went over the memory again in her mind. Looking around the action in the forefront as Kelly had encouraged her to do with her questions. Didn’t notice anything different from what she’d already given them.

  “So, for instance, we basically have three kinds of decks here that would have steps leading up to them—the kind that come with manufactured homes, which aren’t ground set, but rather sit up on jacks that are actually set underground on the foundation. Second, the kind that are added to mobile homes, trailer homes, that kind of thing. And third, the kind that are added to the fronts of homes that are built into the terrain, like mine.”

  His house was set into the mountain terrain. There were three steps leading up to the deck, and yet the house itself was built on solid ground, not up off the ground.

  Up off the ground...

  She’d been cutting shrimp, getting it ready to dip in the premixed seasoning she’d bought and then into a cornmeal mixture she had yet to make. She’d make the remoulade sauce while the shrimp was frying...

  Up off the ground...

  “What?” Jackson was looking at her. His question brought her an awareness of the fact that she’d just been standing there, knife in hand, over an overlarge piece of shrimp.

  “The house. I think the whole thing was up off the ground,” she said, talking fast lest the words steal the memory away. “I remember something being underneath the floor once. There was scratching...” Closing her eyes, she tried to see more. To know more. And saw nothing but the darkness behind her lids.

  “A raccoon could have burrowed a hole in the dirt...”

  She shook her head. That wasn’t right. Because... “Someone went under there...a person...”

  “To get the animal that was scratching...”

  Nothing. She got nothing.

  “Who went under there?”

  More nothing.

  “Was it someone you knew? Your father, maybe?”

  “No.” She had no proof of that. No way of knowing. And yet, “It wasn’t my dad.”

  “Did they get the animal out?”

  “I’m not even sure it was an animal.”

  “Did the scratching stop?”

  Shrugging, she stared at him, feeling inadequate. And hating it. “No clue.”

  He must think her unstable. Definitely not a woman he’d find in any way attractive.

  It shouldn’t matter.

  It did anyway.

  Mostly what she hated was that regardless of what he thought about her, she felt like a head case.

  Kelly had said to expect snippets to return over the next hours and days. The doctor had assured Aimee that what was happening to her, while understandably disturbing, was also completely natural. The mind had a way of protecting itself—and releasing information when the protection was no longer needed—or somehow ripped out of place. Kelly had also warned that everything could return all at once if a dam burst inside Aimee. She’d warned Aimee to be prepared. As though the sudden burst would be devastating.

  Standing there preparing dinner for the sheriff, a man she found utterly beguiling, one who’d been born in the same town, the same year, and delivered by the same doctor as her, Aimee prayed for the dam.

  She wanted to be as whole as he was.

  She wanted her life back.

  * * *

  Leon called just as Jackson was heading out to the front deck to call his second in command. He didn’t want to taint Aimee’s memories with his suppositions, but at that point, with so little to go on, he had to follow up on every single one of them.

  “I got something, Jack,” Leon said, his tone as unflappable as always, and yet with an uplifted sound Jackson had come to covet, just the same.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Burley...he didn’t just used to gamble. He ran a card game over in Halston...one that was fairly popular.” Halston, another one of the many small northern towns that dotted the top half of the state. And it sat apart—a good hour’s drive from the closest town to it. “From the way I hear it, that old aggravated assault charge wasn’t him being beat up by a bookie, but him maybe being one, going after someone who owed him. Either way, charges were dropped, and there’s no record of who he hit...”

  Instinct perking up, Jackson let his thoughts go wherever they wanted to take him. Trusting they’d get him where he needed to be. At the moment, he wasn’t getting that upbeat note in Leon’s tone. How did a regular card game from a decade, or even two, ago, or a past arrest of a local business owner, have anything to do with anything they currently cared about?

  “Some of the guys from the mines used to play,” Leon continued, laying it all out clearly, in his time. As was his way.

  “And someone knew Mason Cooper.” They were going to find the guy in a roundabout way? Through someone they knew who knew someone who knew him.

  “I’m not sure. The guy I talked to had never heard of him. But he’d only joined the game later. Wasn’t exactly sure when it started. But I was figuring this was enough to go at Burley again. I’ll head over now, with your go-ahead.”

  “Go. But...hold on just a second. See if you can find record of a fatal wreck near Halston thirty-years ago. And also, have Sandra or someone run a report on mobile and manufactured homes titled in the area thirty years ago. Give me a three-year span, both sides. And, obviously, it can wait until morning.” Mobile homes were as common as stick-built-from-the-ground-up ones in Evergreen and other towns like her, with so many people being summer residents, but owning homes elsewhere. And the way Aimee had described the deck she’d been walking up to with her mother, not like the stairs leading to a deck at the White place...added to the fact that the Coopers hadn’t been well-off, wouldn’t have likely been able to afford more expensive real estate...

  “And when you get a chance, will you do a search of old case records...flagging anything that has anything to do with a perp hiding out, or dead body being found, underneath a manufactured or mobile home?”

  “She remember something else?” Leon asked.

  He’d had to let Leon in on what was going on when he’d asked the man to guard Aimee that afternoon.

  “Yeah, but just enough to further convince me she’s got more in there. And that we need to know what it is.”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Leon said, probably unaware of just how much that we meant to Jackson. Leon was a great cop. Had been a great partner when they’d both just been deputies for the Evergreen Sheriff’s Office.

  Jackson’s second in command, who’d been in Evergreen a couple of decades and was ten years older than Jackson, had been hired by Redmond Senior, but had sided more often than not with Jackson when father and son were at odds. He’d also been the only one who’d ever seen how autocratic Jackson’s father had been with him. How impossibly high the standards had been set.

  Standards which had made him into a good, decent, hardworking man, he reminded himself as he headed back inside to the mouthwatering smell of cooking shrimp.

  And reminded himself that the woman cooking in his kitchen was not there for personal reasons. He couldn’t stem the flow of disappointment that followed the thought. He’d had women in his home before. Had never had any sense of even an inkling of wanting one to cook in his kitchen.

  Or a single thought of how sexy it might be to have any woman cooking in his kitchen.

  With a firm command to keep his libido in check, he still couldn’t stop the thrill of anticipation that charged through him as he glanced over to the kitchen, to see her and...

  The woman wasn’t cooking in his kitchen. A thread of condensation came up off the pan on the stove. A glass bowl that had been a gift and had only ever held popcorn was sitting on the counter with some orangish-looking batter or sauce, with some condiment bottles sitting out with their lids still on them.

  His gaze took it all in...even as his focus was on the woman sitting on a pulled-out chair at the kitchen table, slightly hunched, her blue-and-white tie-dyed dress filled with big spots of blood.

  He got to her in seconds. Knelt down, bending his head farther and at an angle so he could get a look at her face. The eyes turned toward him, but didn’t give him anything. They were shell-shocked.

  “What happened? Where are you hurt?” The way the blood dotted her dress, he couldn’t be sure. There weren’t any holes, any stab or bullet rips. How bad was it? How had someone gotten to her when he’d been right there?

  Why in the hell had he stepped outside? Was the threat still on the premises? Thoughts flew without allowing answers. He pulled out his phone—911 was his first priority.

  “I’m so sorry. It got on the floor before I realized. I tried to stop it...”

  Aimee was speaking. The voice didn’t sound like hers. He didn’t like the way she was shaking. Put his hand to her cheek. Her forehead.

  She was clammy.

  “What’s your emergency?” The voice played into the room. He’d put the phone on Speaker and dropped it to the table to grab his gun, ready for whoever might attempt to reenter the room.

  “No.” Aimee blinked. Met his gaze head-on. Shook her head. “There’s no emergency. I cut my finger.”

  “Sheriff?” He recognized Corrine’s voice, the dispatcher who’d been hired straight out of Evergreen high school.

  “We’re good,” he told her, ringing off, sure he was going to be embarrassed in a moment or two at his supreme overreaction. But still assessing Aimee. Something was off about her.

  And all that blood all over her dress...

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, sounding more like herself than when she’d said those same words moments before. “Your beautiful wood floor...” She nodded toward the spot in front of the cupboard directly below where the bowl sat. “I was trying to mince garlic with the chopping knife you had and I sliced my finger...”

  He noticed as she said the words that she wasn’t just clenching her dress. She had the material wrapped around the index finger of her left hand.

  “As soon as I saw a drop hit the floor, I used my dress to catch the rest of it, but...”

  “I don’t give a damn about the floor.” He couldn’t hold back the emotion coursing through him, no matter what position he held. He’d thought she’d been stabbed. A shot he’d have heard unless there’d been a silencer and...

  He’d been truly scared.

  Fear hadn’t been a part of his life since long before his father died. Fear weakened a man.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he told her. Was she one of those who lost her stomach at the sight of blood? He wanted to get a look at her finger, but didn’t want to make things worse.