“I remembered something...” The tone was still her, with a note of vulnerability creeping in. And with that tone, understanding dawned on him. The fear he’d read in her, the shock...wasn’t immediate.

  “Tell me about it,” he said softly, still down on his haunches in front of her. While he spoke he gently took hold of her left hand, then removed the dress from around her finger to get a look at the wound. It was clean. And just deep enough to bleed like a son of a gun.

  Antiseptic and a Band-Aid would take care of it.

  Aimee hadn’t responded to his statement. “Did someone get cut?” he asked, following the procedure he’d witnessed from Kelly Chase.

  “No.” The word was a little thick, as though her throat was dry. She licked her lips. Took a deep breath that ended on a shudder. “The cut didn’t trigger the memory,” she added then, sounding more like herself. “I cut myself when I got the flash of memory. I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing...”

  Did he press her to tell him? He had to know. Where was Kelly when he needed her?

  At her rented cabin on the lake enjoying a Sunday evening with a friend, he hoped. He could call her.

  And would if he had to.

  “The smell of the shrimp... I’ve smelled it my whole life... I don’t know why it would get to me...but it wafted over and... I had this flash... I tried to stay with it as long as I could. I can still feel it. I just can’t...”

  She leaned over, her arms resting on her knees, dropping her head.

  Jackson stood. Turned off the heat under the well overfried shrimp. Didn’t look like those puppies would be sitting on any bread anyone would be eating that night. Collecting a first aid kit from the end cupboard above the long counter by the sink, he quickly tended to Aimee’s wound.

  The way she let him take her hand, tend to it, without saying a word, touched a chord deeply within him. He had no idea why. He just felt kind of choked up for a second. And quickly recovered. Then taking her elbow, led her over to the couch.

  He’d wait as long as it took, all night if that was what she needed. He wasn’t going to push, but he wasn’t leaving her to sit in her darkness alone, either.

  Didn’t matter if it was the best way to the answers he sought. Didn’t matter if it was professional. All that mattered was sitting with her.

  So she didn’t have to face demons alone.

  Chapter 13

  Aimee needed more. So much more. And couldn’t seem to help herself. What kind of life hack made it so that you had all of the answers you needed, but wouldn’t give them up to yourself?

  It was like a horror movie. Only worse, because it was real.

  She stayed in the space between past and present—feeling the past while not fully reentering the present—as long as she could. Afraid that if she didn’t hang on to the feelings she’d been experiencing over by the counter, she’d lose something she might never regain.

  If she hadn’t cut her finger, she’d have had more. She was sure of it. For a second, it had been like she’d been transported back in time. The memories had been so strong it was as if she’d actually been there.

  Which she had been, of course. So long ago.

  If she’d just had another second to look around...but she sliced herself with a knife.

  Because she wasn’t ready to know what had been waiting for her to see?

  The idea had occurred to her almost immediately, which was part of the reason she’d tried so hard not to let go.

  The couch sank beside her as Jackson sat down—not too close, but not a full seat away, either. She shuddered. A residual from the way the voices in that other kitchen had made her feel. It was almost as though, with Jackson close by, she could more easily let go of the hold her mind was keeping on her past.

  But was her heart, already aching from the loss of Aunt Bonnie, ready for onslaught? It wasn’t all going to be laughter and bubbles. She’d known that from the beginning. Her father’s voice had been angry—unusual for her to hear, she now knew, but still angry.

  And the nightmares...they’d always been awful.

  But she wasn’t going to stop reaching. She had to know...

  Maybe whatever she was hiding hadn’t been all that terrible. She’d been three. Minutia could seem catastrophic to a toddler. She’d already figured that one out on her own before Kelly had mentioned it to her.

  “My mom was making fried shrimp. It feels like she was making po’ boys, but I’m definitely not saying she was. Makes sense, though, since she was from New Orleans. And maybe wanted to bring a piece of home into our home.” It was what Aimee had done. Buy New Orleans fare to prepare in Evergreen. When she didn’t even do it at home.

  Because her mother had done it there?

  Could her little-girl brain have known such a thing? That the food was from her mother’s hometown?

  She just didn’t know.

  “I’m sure it was fried shrimp,” she reiterated, as much to herself as anything. “The scent is very specific, and the spices in the po’ boy fried shrimp—the combination of cayenne pepper, black pepper and garlic...puts off a strong odor...and it’s just something I know.”

  Enough with the shrimp already. He didn’t need to know about the shrimp.

  “I like shrimp,” she said. “It’s the only kind of po’ boy I ever order.” Uh huh. “Not that I order them all that often. They have pickles on them.” The jar she’d purchased was sitting out on Jackson’s counter behind her. She’d needed some pickle juice for the remoulade sauce. “I’m not all that fond of pickles.”

  Good Lord. She was cutting off her nose to spite her face. Shooting herself in the foot. And kicking that hand that fed her all in one. What in the hell was the matter with her brain? She wanted it to spill so why did she keep prevaricating?

  “I’m actually not all that fond of them, either,” Jackson said. “Though I like dressing with pickle relish in it.”

  “Or pickle juice,” she concurred. “I put it in the mayonnaise dressing I make for coleslaw.”

  “I’ve never made coleslaw in my life. I like it, though. On barbecue pork sandwiches. The Monkey Bar makes a killer pulled pork sandwich.”

  Were they seriously going to sit there and talk about food? She glanced over at him, sitting there so proper in his uniform, the gun he’d pulled over at the table back in his holster.

  “My mom was cry-ing.” Her throat caught as she said the words aloud. And emotion slammed through her with a force that took her air. Just as it had over at the counter. She tried to stay with it. To let it take her. The wave knocked her so hard she couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Fear. Hurt. She was crying, too.

  And then... “I ran,” she said, her eyes closed as she relived another small tidbit of her life. “I hid. Under something. In something. I didn’t open a door or anything. I just ran. I hid. It was dark.”

  “Was it cold?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Can you still smell the shrimp?”

  She huddled there in the darkness. “Yes. But not very much.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “My mother. Those dirty hands. She just keeps saying that. Or I just keep hearing her over and over having said them once.” She couldn’t be sure. Were they reverberating in her little-girl brain? Had they really been said over and over?

  “Who was she talking to?”

  “My dad.” Oh. Her dad. She hadn’t known that. Hadn’t asked. Her mother’s tears had been so...devastating.

  “I don’t think I’d ever heard her cry before.”

  Which made sense. And could that be all it was? That her little-girl self had been knocked so far off-kilter because she’d heard her mother cry? She looked over at Jackson. His vivid green eyes vibrant as they focused on her, that thick short reddish hair of his giving him a safe aura even while his gaze touched her too intimately for a sheriff and a victim.

  “Was your father’s voice loud?”

  With her eyes closed again, she remembered being huddled in the dark. Was sitting on something hard.

  “No. His voice was soft.” She could remember that particular tone. It resonated and she knew it. Soft. Gentle. It was how he’d always spoken to her. And to her mother. “Normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “It was normal. Like how he always talked to us. I feel like he’s kind. And... I’m sitting on something hard.”

  “What’s your father saying?”

  She tried to listen. To remember. “I don’t know.”

  “Because you can’t hear it? Or can’t remember?”

  Her shrug, the shake of her head, was the only answer she had.

  “Was your mom angry with him?”

  “She was upset. It doesn’t feel like mad. It feels like...it made me cry.”

  “Upset with him?”

  “Maybe. It kind of seems that way, but not completely. She was mad at those dirty hands.”

  And there she was, right back where she’d started. The nightmares. Faceless, nameless dirty hands that could never get clean.

  “Whose dirty hands?”

  “I don’t know.” She could feel the despair and frustration roiling up out of her and opened her eyes, staring at her hands. Why wouldn’t she let herself have the information she so desperately needed? She could be holding information inside that was putting her life in danger. She wasn’t ready to believe that. It was all so bizarre. And someone who wanted her dead wouldn’t have bothered with a snake and a spider. Would they?

  “Is anyone else there?” Jackson’s tone calmed her. She closed her eyes. Tried again. Could quickly access what had already been given to her. Made herself feel the full force of emotions, hearing her mother cry, but, as Kelly had taught her, trying to focus on other little things in the picture her mind was presenting to her. The color of the floor. She didn’t know. Was anyone else there?

  “I don’t think so,” she said aloud, inanely. “It seems like we’re at home. And it’s just us. It’s that feeling, you know, when you’re where you live and it’s just who you live with.”

  “So do the dirty hands belong to your father?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Are they yours?”

  “No.” She opened her eyes with the emphatic response. Stared at Jackson. “They’re not girl hands,” she said. “I can’t tell you how I know that, but I’m certain of that. They’re male hands.”

  “Adult male?”

  Frowning, she wanted so badly to give him the clue he needed to figure it all out. “I wish I knew. In my dreams, they’re not little kid hands, but they aren’t, say, as big as yours.”

  How the comment could have any sexual charge attached to it, she didn’t know, but suddenly, sitting there with him, so exposed, and trusting, having just come through such an incredibly intimate experience, just the two of them...she looked at his hands and felt a flood of desire down below.

  Segueing to the safe fantasy she was allowing herself to get through what was turning out to be the toughest time in her life. She understood the reaction almost immediately.

  And would have excused herself to the kitchen to make some kind of dinner out of the mess she’d left there, if Jackson hadn’t chosen that exact second to take her hand in his.

  * * *

  The sight of Aimee’s smaller, smoother, softer hand in his muddied Jackson’s emotions. He’d reached for it with good reason. And for that first second, lost view of what that was. He wasn’t just a cop experiencing normal cop emotions. He was a man who was drawn to a woman in a way he never had been before. Not even close.

  He was a man with a job to do—a job that had to take priority. He had a life to protect.

  “Feel my hand,” he told her, out on a limb, but following a hunch. “Close your eyes and feel my hand like you did Kelly’s this afternoon. Put yourself back in that memory. Or the nightmare.”

  He wasn’t a psychiatrist and while he’d sat in on a seminar teaching law enforcement about cognitive interviews, he hadn’t done enough of them to be anywhere near adept at it.

  She closed her eyes. Left her hand hanging loosely in his against the seat of the couch between them. Sat quietly. He could feel a slight tremor in her fingers, but the rest of his assessment came up blank. Was she ready? Had she accessed the memories?

  How much time did he give her?

  How long could he hold her hand without clasping his fingers more firmly around hers, linking them together as nature was prompting him to do?

  She’d remembered her mother holding her hand while taking her mind back to the past. “The dirty hands. Did you ever hold them?”

  No answer.

  “Is there any sense that they’re as big as mine?”

  Again, nothing.

  Glancing from their clasped hands back up to Aimee’s face, he started as his gaze locked with hers. Eyes wide open, she was looking at him.

  Aimee pulled her hand away and said, “This is going to be completely inappropriate, but the feeling I get when you hold my hand precludes any chance of slipping back to the past. I’m sorry. I know you’re trying. I know you need me to get on with it and figure this out, especially now that there’s an actual incident with me being run off the road, but... I’m sorry.”

  She was sorry?

  And...the question battling for release, “This feeling you get when you hold my hand, can you describe it to me” couldn’t happen.

  “Aimee, first and foremost, don’t be sorry.” Holding her gaze, he gave her an intent look as he added, “For anything.” Most particularly for not getting a feeling when she held his hand.

  It could mean that she was feeling the same intense connection to him that he’d been feeling for her. Analytically, it could mean that. Made sense, considering that whatever was happening to him where she was concerned was so extreme and quick and completely new to him that she’d be feeling something, too.

  But for the moment, he had to stay on track, no matter how hard his lower body tried to sabotage him. Her life could very well depend on him. Based on the memory she’d just shared with him, they could be on the verge of something and he needed information. Some real-time information.

  For once, he was thankful for the supreme sense of self-control his father had instilled in him as he continued. “I’m asking about the hands for specific reason.” He had to swallow. Look away. Those big brown eyes of hers were swallowing him in. He needed to take her in his arms, to hold her while she received information.

  And that wasn’t his role.

  Just as taking her into his bedroom, shutting out the world and spending the rest of his life in his bed with her sounded fabulous.

  But wasn’t realistic.

  Though if they went in and never came out, it could keep her alive. If neither of them pursued their current course where her life and past were concerned, it might all just go away...

  The thought was there, and as he dismissed it, he was reminded of who he was. A man who put the law, his city and the safety of the people in his care first.

  It had never been harder to do.

  “The dirty hands seem to be a key to whatever you’ve locked away,” he told her. “Them coming up again tonight...for you...it’s probably just more of the same...but to me...”

  He looked her in the eye again. She held his gaze, her expression filled with interest—and trust. He valued that trust even more than Leon’s.

  Did it come with the hope that he’d find her truth?

  Or that he wouldn’t let her get hurt?

  Because he didn’t think it was going to be possible to do both.

  Either way he looked at things, he was setting himself up to lose. But only hesitated a second before saying, “I need to know the exact details regarding your reservation at the Blooming Bridges.” From scratch. Her version without any preconceived notions. If what he was thinking was true, not only was Burley’s life being ruined, by Burley himself, admittedly, but the town was going to feel painful reverberations for a while to come. Randall Burley was a member of their year-round family. So many people knew him, trusted him. Had grieved right alongside him when his wife had passed away.

  Dirty hands. Not dirt from the earth, as Aimee had assumed from her dreams, but from gambling? Had Randall Burley known her father? Was that their connection between then and now? Had Aimee’s father had a gambling problem?

  Something like that, those dirty hands—his hands for holding the cards, the hands of cards themselves—would easily make a wife cry. And could require a man to speak softly, reassuringly, if he was trying to save his marriage...

  Looking a little confused now, Aimee said, “I filled out a form on the visit Evergreen website,” she told him. “It’s for lodging in the area...”

  “I’m familiar with it,” he said, his heart sinking. “Many of the locally owned places formed a consortium and arranged with the city council to have the form added to city’s official site.”

  And every consortium member received copies of all forms as they came in. Conceivably, all visitors filling out the form would receive lodging offers from every member who had something to offer that fit their particular specifications. It made things somewhat competitive among members in town, but it also seemed to have improved everyone’s business overall as it made the process of coming to Evergreen much easier from a visitor’s perspective. It was first come, first served. Whoever grabbed the reservation first was the only one who saw it. Unless the deal didn’t go through, then it went back up on the portal.

  “In the summertime, you’re lucky if you get any offers at all,” he said aloud, already seeing how things could have played out.