She nodded, moved toward the door again.

  He still ignored the cue. “You want me to get it for you?”

  “No.” Her tone was adamant. The way she stepped back, kind of looking down told a different story. “I can do it,” she said, then, still not looking over at the basket.

  Which, of course, made the decision a sure thing for a guy like him. While he appreciated her attempt to make herself stronger, to face fears, and critters outside her comfort zone, this was something he could take care of without a blink.

  “I figure the emotional trauma you’re here to deal with will be enough of a challenge without having to face down an intruder in your space,” he told her, removing the laundry basket.

  “Be careful! It’s huge. And hairy...”

  With one booted foot on either side of the pan, ready to stomp before the thing got even an inch closer to her, he yanked the pan away. And had to stop himself from laughing out loud as he saw the bowl underneath.

  “I had to make sure it couldn’t get away,” she said, from still over by the door. “So I could sleep.”

  Because she was being traumatized by nightmares that wouldn’t let her go. The reminder was sobering.

  “Watch your fingers,” she said as he bent to the bowl. “It’s big and I don’t want it to bite you. I was thinking it was a tarantula, not that I’ve ever seen one before in my life. But I did research before I came and it looks like a picture I saw of one. It’s probably some big ugly friendly thing...”

  Her words stopped him just before he pulled the bowl away. He stood, looking over at her. “It’s really that big?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Too big for me to step on.”

  Finding zero humor in the situation suddenly, Jackson grabbed a magazine off the coffee table—a tourist thing filled mostly with local ads that was complimentary in most of the motels, summer homes and cabins in the area—slid it under the bowl with one quick movement and then, just as expertly, flipped the bowl over, magazine on top, trapping the spider inside.

  Without a word he headed for the door, and as she stepped immediately out of the way, got the possibly poisonous, though likely not lethal, creature out of her living space.

  Carrying it across the few acres of common ground in the middle of the circle of cabins, he headed toward the woods beyond. His reasons were twofold. First, he wanted Aimee to rest assured that the thing wasn’t likely to find its way back inside her temporary home. And second, he needed to be able to get a good look at it.

  Yes, a tarantula could have gotten inside her cabin. Could have come in with the wood. Except that there’d only been a couple of logs—and they’d both been on the fire. And the chances of finding a rattlesnake on the doorstep, and a tarantula inside the cabin within hours of each other were so slim, he wasn’t buying it.

  He tipped the bowl, tossed the spider onto the ground.

  His heart sank as he was forced to confirmed that it was a tarantula.

  Grim-faced, he headed back across the compound. Bullets. Two poisonous visitors. He didn’t like it.

  They could all be explained. A poacher. Snakes did appear on cement doorsteps now and then. And he’d had a tarantula come in on a stack from his woodpile once.

  But all three in one day?

  Had someone followed her from Louisiana? Or, knowing of her travel plans, had someone hired a local to stop her from returning to New Orleans? Maybe there was trouble there. How would he know? She’d said almost nothing about her Louisiana life. Maybe something to do with the shop her aunt had left her? Maybe someone needed Aimee gone.

  Maybe his mind was out of whack for the first time in his life.

  But his gut was telling him that someone was out to get her.

  It was his job to find out who.

  And to stop him before he did more than just scare her.

  Chapter 6

  Aimee was still thinking about the strong uniformed sheriff dumping her bowl of spider as she climbed into the front of his dark blue SUV in the Blooming Bridges parking lot a few minutes later. She’d been in town twenty-four hours and he’d already rescued her twice.

  She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had had to rescue her from anything.

  It couldn’t become habit.

  Still, it felt good. Someone having her back.

  That’s why he was lingering in her mind so much more than any other man she’d ever known. Surreal circumstances.

  He’d called the night before to let her know that her first appointment with the expert psychiatrist was later that afternoon, in her own cabin. Hadn’t expected to hear from him again until afterward.

  He’d said he wanted to run her by a couple of places. Perhaps she should have asked where and why, instead of just blindly trusting him. She would have with any other person in her life—Aunt Bonnie included.

  She’d have asked out of curiosity, if nothing else.

  “Where are we going?” She posed the question a little late. Pushed by her internal dialogue.

  “I’d rather not tell you, if you can trust me for a bit. You’ve been driving all morning to see if anything sparks memories. That’s all we’re doing here.”

  “But you know something. You have someplace specific to go.”

  “I do.” He didn’t look away from the road. “But you won’t know when we get there. I called Kelly a little bit ago, to ask her how best to handle this situation and she suggested just driving around. Some places we stop will have significance. Some won’t. And if none of them mean anything to you, that’s fine, too. We’re just out for a drive.”

  He knew something. He’d found out something! She heard the rest. Somewhat. Eyes peeled now, she was afraid to blink, afraid to miss anything that could be the point of significance in her life. “When we’re done, you’re going to tell me what you found, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Before I meet this Dr. Chase you have so much faith in?”

  She felt his glance, more than saw it. Knew the remark had been beneath her. “I’m sorry,” she said. He was trying to help her.

  Had absolutely no obligation to do so.

  She tried to explain. “I’m just...”

  “Scared.” He said the word like a challenge. Daring her to contradict him?

  Or to agree?

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m scared. And tense, which was what I was going to say.”

  “You don’t have to work with Kelly. She’s rented a cabin on a lake just out of town, said she needed the getaway, so she’ll be around if you decide to cancel, and then change your mind.”

  “I want to work with her.”

  And would he be seeing Dr. Chase, socially, while she was in town? Was that why she’d “needed” the getaway? Was Aimee an excuse for the two of them to spend more time together?

  Feeling deflated, she kind of hoped that Jackson was part of Dr. Chase’s reason for coming to town. Maybe then Aimee could focus fully on her purpose for being there and get the heck back out. All the wasted brain power focused on the sheriff—even lying in bed the night before wondering where he lived—would be better suited to finding out whatever it was her young, suppressed memory was trying to tell her.

  Staring out the window, keeping her mind and heart open to anything that might ring any kind of bell for her, she determined that her focus had to be, not on Jackson, or his possible love interests, but on getting to know what she could about the people who’d created her. Given birth to her. And, through the many accounts her aunt had given her, her mother had adored her.

  They were passing an older white home with a large front porch wrapping around it, and a detached garage with steps up the side, a landing, a door. Second-floor windows.

  Longing filled her. So deep it took her breath away. She wanted that. To have a family big enough to fill that home. And overflow to the garage. A mother-in-law suite, they’d call it back home.

  Her mother hadn’t had a mother-in-law. Neither would any husband she might take on someday. Her mother had come to mind then. Not Aunt Bonnie.

  Feeling at once guilty and somewhat...freed...she continued to watch the landscape pass by—all with no sense of recognition at all—and to think about having had a biological mother. A woman who’d been pregnant right there in that town. Who’d shopped at the grocery store—clearly not the same modern building they were passing—with Aimee in her belly. Who’d named her.

  Fed her. Bathed her. Rocked her?

  Gotten up in the night with her. Changed tons of dirty diapers.

  Played with her? Read to her?

  Loved her.

  She wanted so badly to remember. To the point of tears. Her heart flooded with them, in such force she couldn’t do anything but sit and endure.

  As log cabins and wood-sided houses passed, the despair slowly faded, but as they pulled back into the Blooming Bridges parking lot minutes later, Aimee felt changed.

  Opened and in pain in a way she’d never known.

  And had no idea what to do with herself.

  * * *

  He’d never taken anyone on a potentially psychological journey before. Kelly had told him to remain completely silent as they drove. She hadn’t wanted Aimee distracted by conversation. Rather than having her brought into the moment in his SUV, she needed to be able to look outside and go wherever her mind took her.

  He was no mind guru, but he was pretty sure, judging by the expressions that had crossed her face, the paleness that had come and gone from her skin, she hadn’t gone anyplace good.

  He wanted, quite forcefully, to know what she’d remembered. Wanted to tell her where they’d been.

  And didn’t feel confident enough in his ability to have the conversation.

  She didn’t invite him in. At the moment, he took that as a good thing, though he didn’t much like her silence.

  She didn’t get out of the vehicle, either.

  He glanced at his watch. It would be another half hour before Kelly got there. If Aimee needed someone to sit there in silence with her until then, that was fine. He could be that guy.

  “You said you’d tell me what you found out about my family?” she asked.

  So much for the silence route. One he knew he could handle.

  “You want to wait for Kelly before we go into that?” Please.

  She shook her head, her hair the only lively thing about her as it bounced with the movement. “I didn’t remember anything,” she said.

  That shocked him. “You seemed...bothered...”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, surprising him, though, in retrospect he wasn’t sure why they should have, considering what the two of them were doing there.

  “This is going to sound irrational, but hey, what about me isn’t sounding that way since I arrived in town... I feel like I just met my mother for the first time. Again. See, I told you it sounded weird. How can you meet someone for the first time, again?”

  He didn’t know. But... “It actually doesn’t sound all that irrational. You said you basically wiped her out of your memory—that you hadn’t even known your aunt wasn’t your mother, at least not consciously. In reality, you did know her. For three years. Maybe now, being here, you’re opening up to her existence again. Even if you don’t have specific memories.”

  Great, now he was sounding like he knew what he was talking about. He really and truly didn’t. And started to sweat, wishing the doctor would get there. Hoping she was an early arriver type of person.

  “I’d like to know what you found. Please.”

  She had a right to know. And was under no obligation to seek professional help before or after receiving the information. If she didn’t want to wait for Kelly, that was her call.

  “Your father did work as a miner. In the Oracle Copper mine. He worked there from the time he was out of high school until the date you gave for his death. He owned a small truck free and clear and there’s no record of it after the time of the accident. Perhaps that’s what they were driving and it was totaled. Your mother had a smaller car, with a lien, and it was repossessed not long after the date you say they died.”

  She went white.

  He stopped. Sensing the weight of emotions roiling inside her, almost as though he could feel them, too. His ability to do that was because he had compassion, empathy, one of his criminal justice professors had told him. In his job, it was good in terms of interrogation. And could be lethal if he didn’t keep a handle on it.

  For the first time in his career, he was struggling to keep that emotional distance.

  And wasn’t going any further until, or unless, Aimee demanded that he do so. A kid didn’t just wipe out memories of her parents unless there was reason to do so—Kelly had told him the night before. Could just be having been taken away from her home, without her parents, had been enough to suppress those memories, considering Aimee had only been three at the time...but something had driven her to seek out answers, to travel across the country to Evergreen in an attempt to find them. Kelly was taking Aimee’s journey seriously.

  “Go on,” she said after not enough seconds had passed.

  “I found their marriage license. It’s dated two years prior almost to the day you were born.”

  “Did it contain an address of where they were living?”

  He shook his head, and said, “I found utility bills for both of your parents, separately, your mother’s under her maiden name, from before they were married, and for a few years afterward.”

  “And then nothing? They must have had a power bill. You think they moved away from here?”

  “His Oracle records still listed him as an Evergreen resident and he paid county as well as state and federal taxes, but there was no address on record for him.” Which in itself had been odd. In a bothersome way. What employer, even then, didn’t have an address on file for an employee? But he’d seen copies of Oracle tax records regarding his pay so he knew the man had been paid. Helped to know everyone in high places in the area.

  She stared out the front windshield, though he wasn’t sure she saw the cabin door in front of them.

  He waited for the next question. Hoped it didn’t come, but knew it would.

  “That’s where we drove this morning, wasn’t it? By their places?”

  Yep, there it was. He nodded.

  “And I didn’t know them.”

  “No real reason why you should have. They lived there before you were born.”

  She nodded. He wanted to ease her distress.

  Was frustrated that he couldn’t.

  He was the fixer. The problem solver.

  “Which places were they?” Her gaze turned on him, piercingly.

  Something about the intensity of that look... “You have a particular reason for asking?”

  “Which places were they?”

  He watched her for a moment, then said, “An older motel, across from a gas station...used to be a rent-by-the-month apartment setup, that catered to miners.”

  “My father lived there.”

  “Yes.”

  She was frowning. “Had redwood trim along the roof?”

  “The eaves are redwood, yes, but they’re new. The place has been re-sided and there didn’t used to be a motel sign out front, but the basic structure and parking lot frontage are the same.”

  She nodded. “I remember seeing it today, but, beyond that, feel zero connection to it.”

  “But you did feel something, somewhere, didn’t you?” He’d always been a good interrogator. Good at reading others, his old man used to say. One of the nibblets of praise that came so sparingly, but were always completely sincere.

  “There was this house... I’m sure they couldn’t possibly have lived there...but...” She shook her head.

  “You recognized it?”

  “Not at all. I just felt this longing...” She shook her head a second time, reached for the door handle.

  “Which place was it?”

  Hand still on the door handle, but not pulling it open, she shook her head again. “I don’t know. I’m sure I’m just oversensitized at the moment.”

  “Describe it to me.”

  He knew every single residence in the city and surrounding area. And needed to know if something resonated so he could investigate, find out if either of her parents had any history with the place.

  “It had a place over the garage...”

  “Off-white, ranch-style house, set back from the road, an acre of grass out front, trees, stream running behind it...” He tried to keep his tone neutral as he described it to her.

  “I didn’t see the stream, but yes. The garage was set back, on the left. The driveway was gravel. Just as we turned out of town...”

  He was nodding. “The White house. We drove by it specifically.” He’d been watching, but hadn’t noticed any reaction from her at the time. “Your mother rented that garage apartment. She didn’t move out until almost a year after you were born.”

  “I lived there with them?”

  Mouth left hanging open, she stared. Then, as he nodded, she closed her mouth.

  Said nothing. Her eyes teared up.

  Her hands were trembling.

  And, thank God, Kelly pulled up beside them.

  Chapter 7

  Dr. Chase looked younger than Aimee had expected. With loosely curled blond hair that graced her shoulders down to midback, and kind blue eyes, the woman seemed like a bizarre cross between angel and rescue worker as she stood outside the passenger door of Jackson’s SUV, waiting to greet her.

  “How’d it go?” the woman asked before introductions had even been made, glancing first at Aimee, and then across the hood to Jackson, where her gaze lingered.

  “That’s for you to determine.”

  It was obvious, by the quick, abbreviated exchange of words between the two professionals that they’d spoken that morning as Jackson had indicated.