Flashback

“I have no idea, Chief Reddick.” His sarcasm echoed hers.

“I think you do.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think. I came here because I thought it was my duty to tell law enforcement what I’d seen. What you do with the information is now up to you.”

He rounded the table and walked toward the door. Eden’s gaze automatically followed. The head injury Dean had mentioned hadn’t been obvious, but his stride, though rapid and purposeful, was uneven.

A little less put together than when he left…

With that memory, the rest of Dean’s words echoed in her head, as well. Served his country… Last tour… Hero.

Maybe in her desperation to put an end to the nightmare the Nolans and this community were experiencing, she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. The guy seemed sincere. And sincerely frustrated by the way she’d interpreted his story.

“You have to understand that anybody coming in here claiming to have seen Raine—”

Almost at the door, he turned sharply on his heel. “Oh, I understand. Believe me. Blame my naiveté about how investigations like this are handled for not getting the message before. I stupidly thought those requests for information—any information—were genuine. I guess you were just casting the wider net for suspects. I’m sorry I stumbled into it. You know where to find me if you have further questions.”

He pushed through the narrow doorway without touching the two officers who were still standing frozen on either side. In the silence that fell after Underwood’s pronouncement, the three of them listened as his limping footsteps faded down the tiled hallway. A few seconds later the outside door slammed shut.

Only then did Eden make eye contact with her deputy chief. “I blew it, didn’t I?”

Dean laughed. “I’d say your interrogation skills might need a little polishing.”

He didn’t seem upset about what had just happened, but then Dean hadn’t believed from the beginning that Underwood had any hand in the kidnapping. Neither had Winton.

And reviewing the interview in her mind, she could understand their reservations about considering the ex-soldier a suspect. Despite her own preconceived notions, his reaction to her suggestion had rung true. As Dean had said about Ray Nolan, if Underwood was hiding something, he was a consummate actor. The problem wasn’t that she’d had suspicions. Any law-enforcement officer would have, hearing his story secondhand. The problem was in the way she’d handled the face-to-face.

“I imagine the guys from the Bureau are going to be ticked off,” she acknowledged.

“You gonna tell ’em about this?”

“You think I shouldn’t?”

“I think they’ll react the same way you just did. But if you believe that’s what you ought to do…” Dean shrugged.

“I don’t think I can legitimately keep Underwood’s story from them. Do you?”

“Major Underwood.”

An officer. Something she should have gleaned from his attitude, if nothing else. “Do you?” Even as she repeated the question, Eden recognized that, in this case, calling the Bureau might fall under the category of “covering your ass.” If she didn’t pass this information on to the FBI, and something eventually came of it, she’d be considered derelict in her duty. The same word Jake Underwood had just used, she realized.

I thought it was my duty…

“Up to you, Chief,” Dean said, refusing to let her off the hook. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it makes a hill of beans difference what you do. I don’t think Jake had anything to do with that little girl’s disappearance. But I also think he can probably hold his own with the Feds. After all, he’s been dealing with bureaucratic red tape most of his life. I suspect he’ll be more than a match for the boys from Jackson.”

Dean sounded as if he was enjoying the thought of that confrontation. The realization that he had no doubt how Underwood would handle himself should have been comforting, given that she felt she had little choice about sharing this information with the agents. If the ex-soldier thought she’d hassled him…

Eden blew out a breath, the frustrations of the past two days suddenly catching up with her. She needed a couple of hours sleep to go along with the partially eaten sandwich. Maybe then she could get some perspective back.

They’d done everything they could think of to find Raine Nolan. The feeling that it wasn’t nearly enough was compounded by the realization that, despite the horror she’d felt listening to Jake Underwood’s “flashback,” despite the ridiculousness of even considering the possibility that what he’d seen was real, that vision—or whatever it had been—was the most positive indication they had had yet that Raine might still be alive.

Chapter Three

“I just want to make certain I understand what the term means.” Eden looked up to make sure the door to her office was securely closed, although she had already done that before she’d placed this call.

It was bad enough that her inquiry into Jake Underwood’s medical condition felt like an invasion of privacy, she wasn’t sure how others in the department would interpret her interest. Dean’s dismissal of what the ex-soldier claimed to have seen had been swift and definite. In spite of that, she felt compelled to check with someone who had more expertise in these matters than either of them.

“Brain damage can mean a whole lot of different things,” Dr. Ben Murphy said. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific if you want me to give you a medical opinion.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.

Doc Murphy had been her father’s physician as well as his friend. She trusted both his discretion and his judgment. “Closed-head trauma?”

“I don’t even know that. All I know is he was a soldier.”

The silence on the other end of the line made her wonder if Doc, with his quick intellect and broad knowledge of this town, had already put it all together.

“This an official inquiry?” he asked finally.

“Nope. This is just me asking a trusted friend for some guidance.”

“Fair enough. Generalities, then. That all right?”

“If that’s all you got.”

“Give and take, Eden. Give and take.”

“Well, you got all I can give, so…I’ll take whatever you’ll offer.”

“The brain’s a delicate thing. It can be damaged by cumulative injuries, like a football player who has too many concussions during his career. Then you can get stuff like ALS, maybe years afterward. He doesn’t know his brain’s been hurt until it’s too late.”

“I don’t think that’s the case here.”

“I didn’t figure it was. In war, the injury is usually obvious. A blow or a concussive force from an explosion, resulting in an open or closed wound to the head.”

“Which is worse?”

She could almost hear Doc shrug. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s the degree that matters. And the treatment, of course. In modern wars men survive things that would once have killed them, if not immediately, then within a matter of hours. Now sometimes within minutes, we get them off the battlefield and into a trauma unit that’s as good, if not better, than most of those in our major hospitals. They relieve the pressure on the brain, maybe by removing a piece of the skull so it’s got room to swell. Maybe with drugs. Whatever we’d do here, they can do there.”

“And after that?”

“Depending on the damage, rehab to recover function.”

“Function?”

“Mental and physical. I could do a better job of explaining this, Eden, if I had some clue as to what kind and degree of injury we’re talking about.”

“I can’t help you with that. Just keep it general. So with this quick treatment, do most of them recover?”