Flashback

Flashback
Gayle Wilson

A wounded warrior was facing the toughest mission of his lifeThe battlefield had taught Jake Underwood just how much could be lost in a single moment. So when he returned home, scarred and grieving for those he'd left behind, the last thing he needed was to be responsible for another person's life. Especially that of a missing little girl. But one look in police chief Eden Reddick's tear-fi lled eyes and Jake couldn't help but feel her frustration…and share her pain. Jake knew Eden was grateful for whatever investigative skills he could offer– until he uncovered a connection to her mysterious past. Now, as a heartbreaking case turned even more personal when Eden became a target, Jake realized that all he'd lost in his past was nothing compared with just how much he had to lose now…

The arm that snaked around her waist lifted her off her feet.

As she was crushed against a chest that felt as solid as oak, her gun was stripped from her hand. She kicked back with her right foot, the heel of her boot making satisfying contact with the shin of whoever held her. At the same time, she twisted, trying to free herself.

“Stop it,” the man who’d captured her growled against her ear. “It’s me. Underwood.”

Intent on her struggles, it took a second for that identification to sink in.

Before it did, as if to emphasize his command, he shook her, hard enough to make her teeth snap together. “Stop it or you’re going to get us both killed.”

His breath was warm on her cheek. The stubble she’d noticed the night he’d come to the station moved against her skin. As unreasonable as it seemed, given the situation, she felt that same rush of sexual awareness she’d experienced this afternoon.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

Flashback

Gayle Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Denise, with much gratitude for the opportunity

to write another Intrigue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gayle Wilson is a two-time RITA

Award winner, taking home the RITA

Award for Best Romantic Suspense Novel in 2000 and for Best Romantic Novella in 2004. In addition to twice winning the prestigious RITA

Award, Gayle’s books have garnered more than 50 other awards and nominations.

Gayle was on the board of directors of Romance Writers of America for four years. In 2006 she served as the president of RWA, the largest genre-writers’ organization in the world. She has written for Harlequin Historicals, Harlequin Intrigue, Special Releases, HQN Books, MIRA, and Mills & Boon.

Please visit her website at www.BooksByGayleWilson.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Eden Reddick —The unsolved disappearance of her sister shattered Eden Reddick’s childhood. When a little girl is kidnapped in a manner that eerily echoes that long-ago mystery, Eden, now the chief of police of Waverly, Mississippi, has an opportunity to prevent that same tragedy from destroying the lives of another family.

Jake Underwood —The ex-special forces major paid a heavy price for his service to his country, a sacrifice Jake thought he’d made peace with—until a terrified child inexplicably shows up in one of his flashbacks.

Raine Nolan —Raine is taken from her own bed and from the same room in which her sister is sleeping—exactly as Eden’s sister was kidnapped more than two decades before and in a place hundreds of miles from this small Southern town.

Margo Nolan —Raine’s mother has no choice but to cling to the belief that Eden has the skill and determination to find her daughter—because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

Ray Nolan —Raine’s father is the prime suspect in his daughter’s disappearance. Is Eden’s faith in his innocence colored by her love for her own father?

Dean Partlow —Eden’s deputy chief, who has been not only her mentor, but also her friend, brings his expertise in police work as well as his knowledge of the area to the investigation, but will it be enough to find the missing child in time?

Dr. Benjamin Murphy —Nobody knows Waverly and its people better than Doc Murphy, but it is questions about Jake Underwood that bring Eden to his door.

Prologue

The aura was like how people describe a migraine. Except it wasn’t. There was no pain. And nothing he could take to prevent what he knew was about to happen.

He leaned against the side of his truck, waiting for the inevitable—that burst of light or energy or whatever it was that marked the disappearance of the present and the return of the sights and sounds and smells of the day his life had changed forever.

What he smelled mostly was the diesel fuel. Smoke. And the blood, of course, but that came later.

What he heard—immediately and until the very end—were the screams. Those echoed and reechoed in his nightmares as well, but never with the intensity they had in the flashbacks.

This time the force of the transition was so strong it battered him physically. Although he wasn’t conscious of the movement, his knees buckled, throwing him to the ground beside the pickup.

Bile rose in his throat as he waited for the rest. Carter’s shrieked profanities, intermingled with pleas to the Virgin, as he tried to stuff his intestines back inside his body. The sound of the second RPG striking the vehicle behind them.

After that came the smells. All of them. Everything that signified agony and death and loss.

This time, however, there was an almost eerie stillness. He opened his eyes—although he’d never been able to ascertain if they really closed during these episodes—and found not the monochromatic sameness of the desert landscape that had always been there before, but a pit. A hole. Something dark and sinister, although he couldn’t identify anything else about it.

And instead of Carter’s screams, all he heard was water dripping. The slow, steady pulse of a leak or of condensation off the overwhelming dampness that now surrounded him. He shivered against its chill, fighting a primordial response to its blackness.

He had no idea where he was. Or why he was here. All he knew was that he was terrified, a gut-level fear his extensive combat experience didn’t alleviate.

He wanted to close his eyes again. To hide from the cold, terrifying darkness. To deny its existence.

As his lids began to fall, he caught a peripheral glimpse of something else that shouldn’t be here. Not in this cave, this hole, this wherever it was.

Not in his flashback.

Before he could fully open his eyes again, it was all gone. He was suddenly back in the present, kneeling in the dirt beside his truck, his mouth dry as old bones, his hands trembling.

He knew from experience that the episode had lasted only seconds. Despite its short duration, his entire body was drenched with sweat. His chest heaved as he tried to slow his racing heart before it exploded.

After a moment, he leaned his forehead against the comforting heat of the metal beside him. His pulse finally nearing something approaching normal, he stifled the sobs that tore at his chest.

Always the same reaction. An urge to shed the tears he hadn’t shed then. Or consciously since.

He denied them now, finally lifting his gaze to the branches of the massive oak that stretched above his head. Concentrating on controlling his breathing, he watched the Spanish moss draped over them sway in the breeze off the Gulf.

Something about its motion helped ground him in reality. In the present.

That’s why he’d come back. Back to what had once been home. Although there was no one here now who constituted family, this place was as close to the feeling of safety that word connoted as he had ever found.