Running on Empty

Yeah, mine, too, he thought, trying like hell to keep his eyes above her neckline. Which was even worse, because then he had to look at those eyes. Round, innocent and full of uncertainty, they made him want to pull her into his arms and soothe away her fear. It was against his better judgment, and unprofessional, and wrong for about a dozen other reasons he didn’t even want to consider, but darn it, he couldn’t shake this irrational desire to protect her. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Want me to go with you?”

With her free arm, she hugged herself. “You think I’m a flake, don’t you?”

The truth was, he admired her spirit. She was tough, but not afraid to show her vulnerabilities. And if she was faking her apprehension, she was one hell of an actress. “You’ve been through a lot. You’re holding up better than most people would in your situation.” He nodded toward the bathroom, holding out a hand to her. “C’mon. We’ll do it together.”

She looked at his hand, then over to the bathroom door. “If I pass out, do you promise not to look at my butt? I mean…I don’t know what it looks like yet.”

It looked okay to me. He caught himself before the words tumbled out of his mouth. He had no right to be talking about her butt. Or looking at it for that matter. She could be someone’s wife, someone’s mother.

“I promise.” He walked to the bathroom and switched on the light. “You’ll feel better if you just get it over with.”

She shuffled over in bare feet, her face twisting into a grimace as she neared the doorway. He extended his hand, startled by the zing of awareness he experienced when she slipped her cold fingers into his. His first reaction was to yank his hand away, but it was too late to back out now.

Her fingers trembled in his. He tightened his grip, pulling her into the room. “You won’t see much with your eyes closed.”

“I’m working on it. Just give me a second.” She took a long, deep breath, blew it out, and opened her eyes.

She stared at her reflection for the longest time, while Mitch waited for recognition to set in, for a flood of memories to erase the uncertainty so clearly written in her eyes. With her free hand, she reached up and touched her cheek, ran a hand through her disheveled hair.

If he hadn’t believed her amnesia story before, it would be tough to refute it now. There was no doubt, she was looking at a total stranger.

“Well?” he asked.

“If it weren’t for the fact that you’re standing behind me, and I recognize you, I wouldn’t know this was me in the mirror. This is so…weird.” She frowned at her reflection, sticking her tongue out. “At least I’m not a troll. If I had to deal with losing my memory, having an abusive husband, giving birth to children I don’t remember and being ugly, it would be too much. Oh, and the fact that someone tried to kill me. Can’t forget that.”

He gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. “We’ll figure out who did this.”

She looked up at him in the mirror, then down at their clasped hands. “We?”

Poor choice of words. The glimmer of hope in her eyes hit him like a sucker punch. “We as in, the Twin Oaks P.D.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “Still planning on dumping me somewhere, eh?”

Christ, could she make him feel a little more guilty? He was only doing his job. “I do need to take you to the precinct to get your prints, and I’ll take you back to the scene if you feel up to it. Maybe it’ll jog your memory.”

“Hate to break up the party,” someone said from behind them.

They simultaneously jerked their hands free and spun around to see a nurse standing there with a pile of clothes in her arms.

“The doctor signed your release. Try these and see which ones fit. I’ll send an orderly in to take you downstairs.” She walked over and dropped the clothes on the bed, glancing with unmasked curiosity one last time before she left the room. Mitch was sure he looked guilty as hell. What had possessed him to take Ms. Doe’s hand, and even worse, to keep holding it?

Okay, it’s not like he didn’t have a distant history of this, of letting himself get sucked in emotionally. He had to keep reminding himself, she could be married. Never in a million years would he consciously consider touching another man’s wife.

Never again. But it hadn’t been a conscious decision then, either, had it?

“I’ll wait while you get dressed,” Mitch said, when the nurse was gone. He walked over to the window, leaving a reasonable distance between them. He looked down at the already crowded parking lot. The rising sun cast a golden glow over the city streets, warming his face through the glass. It would be a beautiful weekend, a weekend he would much rather spend fishing, or working on his yard. And sleeping. God knows he could use a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep.

“Detective?” Ms. Doe said softly.

He turned. She was standing in the bathroom doorway, the clothes stacked in her arms.

“I just wanted to say thanks, you know, for everything. You’ve been really sweet.”

Sweet? He nearly cringed. “I’m only doing my job.”

She smiled. She seemed to know as well as he did, he’d gone far above the call of duty.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Mitch watched the video monitor with a deep sense of unease as the man in the hooded jacket stalked Ms. Doe through the store. He carried a basket, taking items from the shelves every so often to appear less suspicious, never getting close enough to be discovered, yet always keeping her in his line of sight. “He keeps his head down, so the camera never gets a shot of his face.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Marco, the video tech, said.

This was no crime of opportunity. As Mitch had suspected, this had been a cold and calculated attack. But why? “How long does he follow her?”

“About twenty minutes. I spliced the tapes together so we could track their movements.” Marco fast-forwarded the tape. “When she leaves the grocery area, he’s right behind her. When he’s getting ready to strike, he puts the basket down in the middle of the aisle.”

“Because he knows we’ll eventually be watching the tape, and if he stashes it on a shelf somewhere we’ll find it.”

“So why not wear gloves? Then he wouldn’t have to worry about leaving prints.”

“Why attack her in a well-lit store when he could have done it in a dark parking lot? He’s arrogant. He’s showing us how cunning he is. He knows that if he puts the stuff in plain sight, some employee will probably see it, pick it up and put the stuff back on the shelves, thus removing any fingerprint evidence.”

“And one did. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First we have our victim walking down the toy aisle, our suspect is right behind her. Now look, see what he pulls out of his jacket?”

The fluorescent lights glinted off the object in his hand, making its shape clear for several seconds. Mitch mumbled a curse under his breath. “A gun.”

He watched as Ms. Doe stopped to pick up a toy. With her back turned, she didn’t see the suspect behind her. In a flash of movement, the man coldcocked her in the back of the head, sending her reeling forward. With swift efficiency, he checked her back pockets, then rolled her over to search her jacket. Within seconds, he’d searched her, shoved her small purse in his jacket, and disappeared through a stockroom door.

This was no robbery. He was looking for something specific. And something about the way he searched her disturbed Mitch. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“This isn’t good news.” He rubbed at a kink in the back of his neck. This was going to be a really long weekend.

“It’s about to get worse. Remember your basket theory?” Marco turned to a different monitor, running a second tape. “Here’s your basket, sitting there minding its own business, and here’s your reliable employee picking it up.”

“Tell me she takes it and drops it on a shelf somewhere where we can find it and get prints.”

“She drops it all right. Along with any evidence you might have had.”

Chapter 4

Mitch watched the monitor as the store employee carried the basket by the toy section, stopped dead in her tracks at the doll aisle, and seconds later dropped the basket on the floor. To the right of the screen he could see his own cart, and himself where he knelt beside Jane Doe.

Aw, hell, the basket she’d dropped had belonged to the suspect. Not half an hour later he’d told Greene it wasn’t part of the crime scene, which meant someone had probably picked it up and put all the evidence back on the shelves. “Son of a—”

“There’s more.”

Mitch sunk lower in his chair. “Great.”