by K. L. Donn
Rumbling voices could be heard beyond the closed door she was looking at. Whining, too, from a dog, maybe. She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t recall anything. Her name, where she was, what happened to her.
Pain accompanied every breath she took, but that was all she knew. Did those deep voices cause her suffering? Was she trapped? Kidnapped? How did she even know what kidnapped was when she didn’t know her own fucking name!
Rolling to her side, her chest was pierced with such agony that she cried out. The dog started barking rapidly, causing her head to pound. Rushed footsteps were nearly inaudible between the barking and pounding.
When the door flew open, and a dog came dashing through, she screamed as she scrambled backwards off the bed. Landing on the floor had spots dotting her vision from everything she was experiencing. The bombardment of pain and fear escalated to mass proportions, and she feared a blackout was in her future.
“Whoa there, Snow,” one man crooned, coming around the end of the bed. His dirty-blond hair and light eyes made him seem like he might be nice, but what did she know?
Shaking her head, she hoped he would leave her alone. Instead, he sat down.
The other man crawled onto the bed, sitting in the same spot she’d just vacated.
The dog whined at her feet, her little body vibrating.
Deciding the animal was her safest bet, she reached a hand out to it. It immediately leapt towards her. Bracing for the pain the impact would cause, she was surprised when the other guy with his sexy dark hair, deep chocolate eyes, and brooding demeanor said, “Gentle, Roxie,” in a commanding voice, forcing the dog to halt her forward momentum.
She was amazed when Roxie crawled towards her, laying her head on her knees with big brown and blue eyes begging for love. Taking a quick peek at the two men crowding her room, she gingerly laid her own hand on the canine’s head, scratching her ears lightly.
“I’m glad to see you awake; you’ve had us worried,” the man on the bed spoke.
The other one, the lighter one, cleared his throat, grabbing her attention. “Kinda afraid you weren’t gonna wake up.” His shy smile was magnetic. Clearing his throat, he continued talking. She only half-listened as he told her they’d had a doctor come out to see her. Determine her injuries. But without scans and tests, all they knew for sure was that she was beaten and had bruised ribs along with multiple bruises and small contusions on her body.
She was so lost. They were acting as if they knew her. Did they? Should she remember them? The hammering in her head was starting to make her eyes pulse with pain. Shaking her head back and forth, she buried her it in her knees next to Roxie’s panting face.
Dog breath wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than admitting she had no idea who she was. What if she didn’t belong with them? Or worse…
What if they had done this to her?
Silence surrounded the room as they allowed her to catch her bearings. Her mind was a blank space, there was nothing there but useless information. Nothing to indicate who she was or where she came from.
She was just…empty.
It wasn’t a good feeling to not know what was going on in her life. How she’d let herself become a victim of a crime, she couldn’t even recall.
“Would you like something to eat or drink?” the person on the floor asked quietly, interrupting her inner turmoil.
Gazing up into his apple green eyes, she saw nothing but concern reflecting back at her. Taking a chance, she replied, “Yes, please,” just as her stomach rumbled loudly.
The guy on the bed chuckled lightly at the sound as he got up from his perch. They both offered her a hand up to her feet. Unsure of whether to take their offer, she stared, uncomfortable with not knowing who anyone was.
“It’s alright,” the dark-haired hottie whispered with a smile. “You don’t know us.” Pointing towards the large dresser against one wall, he told her, “There are sweats and t-shirts in there. Help yourself. Come on, Ace.”
She watched as they reluctantly left her alone with Roxie, indecision on both of their handsome faces. Flashing them a reassuring smile, she waited until the door was closed before gingerly getting to her feet. As the blanket slid down her body, she realized all she was wearing was her bra and panties. Embarrassment tinged her cheeks knowing they must have undressed her.
Looking down her body, she was shocked to see so much bruising. Everywhere. There was very little skin untouched by large black and blue marks. Fear coursed through her in waves as she thought of the pain she must have suffered, the fear she would have felt.
How could she have angered someone so much that they’d assault her so brutally? Her thoughts immediately circled back to the two men waiting for her. She didn’t get the vibe that they were those types of people. They appeared genuinely concerned about her.
Which begged the question…
Was her attacker looking for her?
Searching through the dresser, she found a pair of sweats that fit a little snuggly and the legs were too long, as well as a baggy sweatshirt. Tossing them on, she left the room with Roxie on her heals.
Needing answers, she followed the noises down the short hall. Rounding the corner, she saw the two men ladling soup into bowls at the stove.
Without preamble, she blurted out, “Are they looking for me?” Both men spun around.
“Who?” the one called Ace asked her.
Waving her hands frantically up and down her body, she said, “This, all of this. Are they looking for me?”
Ace looked back to the dark-haired man before answering. “Not as far as we can tell.” Clearing his throat, he continued, “No one is.”
That deflated her.
She had no name.
She was beaten.
Of course, no one was looking for her.
Needing confirmation, she asked them, “Did you do this to me?” Remaining steady, she held her breath waiting for their answer.
“Have a seat,” the quieter of the two told her, disbelief in his voice.
“No,” her voice nearly wavered, “not until you tell me.”
Setting a bowl on the island closest to her, he asked, “You don’t remember?”
Closing her eyes, she tried to picture something, anything that would help jog her memory. Nothing came. Except...
“Oh God!” Bending over at the waist, a horrible thought occurred to her. Maybe they did do this. Maybe she asked them to. “Oh God,” she repeated over and over again.
“What?” They came rushing over, each placing a hand on her lower back. A tingle ran through her where they touched her; it was soothing.
“Did I ask you to do this to me?” She choked the words out.
“Oh, hell fucking no,” the, as yet, unnamed man yelled out, clearly insulted she even asked.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as tears threatened to fall.
“Don’t be sorry, Snow. Better to know than not to,” Ace told her reasonably.
“You keep calling me Snow. Why?” She had to distract her mind. Too many emotions were clawing their way to the surface, and she wasn’t ready to face facts just yet.
They were quiet for a moment before Ace spoke again. “We had to call you something.” Made sense. “And we found you in the snow.”
“You did?” Confusion drew her brows together as she looked between them.
The broody guy answered her. “Two days ago. We were clearing the mountain of hikers when Roxie spotted you. There was a blood trail leading to where you were dumped.”
Her blood ran cold, and she felt all color drain from her face. Dumped. She was dumped. In the mountains. Like garbage.
Plopping down in the seat in front of her, she felt numb. “Christ, Nick, did you have to be so blunt,” Ace reprimanded. At least, she knew his name now.
They bickered back and forth, but she didn’t hear a word of what they said. Her mind reeled with this new information. How could she mean so little as a person that someone would discard her like a pi
ece of trash?
A hand on her shouldered startled her, and she yelped as pain radiated from her ribs when she jumped.
“Sorry,” Nick whispered, hands raised as he took a step back.
“It’s okay, really.”
“How about we eat and figure the rest out after. Sound good?”
Nodding at him, he followed Ace around the island to sit across from her. The soup smelt delicious, but she didn’t taste a thing. Her eyes remained on the floating noodles and vegetables as she spooned each mouthful.
“Two days,” she whispered. “Someone must have hated me.” It was a sad thought. Was she the type of person you could hate on sight? Could it have been that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Suddenly tired, she murmured her thanks as she stood to go back to the other room. Tears silently streamed down her face as she curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, Roxie at her feet.
At least, the dog liked her.
The pain in her dark green eyes sucked the life from Ace’s lungs as she walked away. Things weren’t going quite as he had imagined when she woke up. He was hoping she’d have retained her memory. As it was, he didn’t think she did. Certainly, not about what caused her to be left for dead.
The horror written across her face when she suggested she might have wanted to be beaten was nearly enough to knock the wind from him. He wondered if, perhaps, pain was something she was into. If that’s what she did like.
“Shit,” Nick cursed, slamming dishes into the dishwasher. He echoed the man’s sentiments.
“What are you thinking?” If Ace knew anything about his cousin, it was that he was always strategizing. Formulating a plan.
“She obviously has no idea what happened to her,” Nick thought aloud. “I have to wonder about before. If she remembers anything. We also need to get a photo of her to dispatch so they can begin a search.” They had to find out who she was and where she was from.
“Someone left her for dead, Nick. If we broadcast that she’s been found, who knows what will happen?” Fuck did that thought terrify him.
“And if she has family looking for her?” Reasonable fucker.
“Then we look for them.” He couldn’t bring himself to budge on this one thing. “We can find out who she is, where they are, and what happened to her without anyone knowing. Maybe someone in her family did this to her?” Scary thought.
“Until the storm passes, we’ll keep this under wraps. Deal?”
Being Sheriff had to suck at times. Nick obviously knew what Ace was getting at, but duty always came first.
“Ace?” he prompted again.
Fuck. “Yeah, fine.” He reluctantly agreed.
Nodding, Nick walked to the door. “I’m going to search again. I’ve got my radio with me if you need me. Take her picture, start searching.” Before Ace could say anything, he was gone.
“Stubborn bastard,” he grumbled.
Grabbing his cell off the counter, he tiptoed down the hall to see if she was awake. Finding her curled up in the middle of the bed, Roxie beside her, he decided to leave them be after placing a blanket over her. Roxie opened her eyes and shot him a warning look.
Crazy dog.
Ace watched her for what felt like a lifetime, trying to decipher the draw he felt to her. Never before had he been so enthralled with a woman. He had only ever been with a few, and all of them had been shared with Nick. None had ever elicited this all-consuming need just to be in their presence.
Her, though, she pulled him in. His curiosity had been heightened with his need to know who she was. His body hummed with not only arousal but an understanding of her being his.
Shaking his thoughts off, because he couldn’t even say for sure she would want them or that she was a free woman, he had to wait. Leaving the room, he entered Nick’s office and booted up his Mac. Then he logged into the NCMPUR—National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains—hoping not to find that she was missing from halfway across the country. Thankfully, the list was short but no less depressing. Seeing people still missing from the seventies was discouraging and sad. He could only imagine what their families must feel.
Logging into the British Columbia RCMP Missing Persons website, that list was staggering. Nearly overwhelming. Narrowing the fields down to a woman in her twenties with brown hair and green eyes eliminated enough of the list that he could search.
With nearly three hundred women to shuffle through, he made a pot of coffee and filled Roxie’s water and food dish, knowing full well he’d be at it for a while.
Quickly absorbed in more than searching for their sleeping beauty’s identity, he began reading some of the stories of women that were almost identical matches to her. Lost in those women’s torturous worlds, he didn’t hear Nick come in the front door until he plopped down in the chair in front of the desk.
“Shit!” He nearly spilt his coffee. “I didn’t hear you.”
Nick’s laughter was silent. “That much is obvious, cos’.” Composing himself, Nick asked, “Find her?”
Sitting back, Ace’s back cracked from his slumped position all afternoon. “Not yet. There’s nothing Canada-wide, and I’m only about halfway through BC.”
“Fuck. She woken up yet?” His cousin’s eyes were glued to the closed door across the hall.
“No. Nothing from Rox, either, so I figure that’s probably a good thing.” She’d alert them to anything amiss, he knew.
“Right,” Nick said, absently rising from his seat to walk out the door. Ace watched as the guy stood staring at the closed door before turning to the bathroom. The shower turned on in his wake.
Giving himself a break, Ace decided he’d try to entice their sleeping beauty to consciousness with the aroma of a good home-cooked meal. If there was one thing his mama had taught him before she passed, was that the way to a woman’s heart was consideration. Also, a passable meal. Which meant he didn’t burn shit.
Usually.
Clearly, cooking to impress wasn’t his thing as the smoke detector went off not long after he started. Roxie was ready to blow a gasket, and Nick was running from the spare room in nothing but his boxer-briefs as Snow came out rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Dude!” Nick yelled, waving the smoke away with a towel.
He could hear Nick cursing at him, but his eyes were riveted to Snow as she watched his cousin. Her eyes followed his arms waving the smoke away, travelling down his chest to watch his abs ripple. She was in a trance at his movements.
“Ace!” Nick scolded him again, shocking him and Snow out of their own personal perusals.
“What?” he finally snapped back.
“What the fu– fudge were you doing?”
It took everything he had in him not to burst out laughing at Nick’s near curse in front of their guest. He highly doubted she’d have cared, but Nick would have apologized for hours anyway.
Glancing back to the stove, he hesitated in answering. “I, uh, was cooking.”
“You cook?” Snow asked at the same time Nick scoffed. “Since when do you burn sh–stuff?”
It was getting humorous watching Nick curb his language.
“I got distracted,” Ace finally responded lamely. An understanding light entered Nick’s eyes at the same time he stopped waving the smoke away.
“Come have a seat.” Holding out his hand for Snow, he hoped she would take it.
With a shy smile, she thanked him and grabbed his hand.
“What were you making?” Her quiet question startled them both. Her voice was like silk, smooth, welcoming. Unused to hearing it, he smiled back to her.
“Nothing fancy,” he answered, “just chicken alfredo.”
“And you burnt it?” Nick’s shock was clear as a bell.
He couldn’t blame the guy, really, it was one of the easiest dishes Ace had learnt to make. “Maybe you should put some pants on, Nicky-boy.” He wanted the attention taken off himself.
“What?” his cousin a
sked. Looking down, he cursed a string of words that were incoherent to the untrained ear. Apologizing, he left the room to get dressed.
Returning his gaze towards their company, her eyes were once again riveted to Nick’s ass as he walked away. Ace couldn’t help smiling.
Chapter Three
Sitting in an over-sized chair in front of the window, Snow couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the falling snow. It was thick like wool but fluffy like a marshmallow. The pristine shine from the sun beating down made it seem almost magical. Only it wasn’t. She wasn’t a princess in a castle awaiting her prince. She was broken, beaten, and left with no memory.
The crackle of the fire startled her every time a log moved.
She was always nervous.
She was nobody.
She, she, she.
No name. Or life. She was a black pit of nothingness with no hope for finding out more unless she remembered. There was only one problem… She was void of any memories. The doctor suggested that being around familiar things might help jog her mind. All they had to do was figure out where she was from.
Nick had left to check the mountains again. She’d learnt he was the sheriff in Golden and was very dedicated to his job. So much so that she felt as if he held back from the rest of his life. He was the quieter one of the two, not having much to say and always watching what she and Ace were doing. Always alert.
She felt a distance between the two of them. Like maybe Nick resented her presence in his home. She had taken over his room, but when she tried giving it back, he’d damn near thrown a hissy fit. She had also come to find out that he was as stubborn and bull-headed as a mule. He didn’t like to curse in front of her, which from all indications was harder than he thought. More often than not, he was curbing the urge to say what she presumed was fuck on more than a dozen occasions.
His relationship with his cousin was…unique. The two of them almost seemed more like one person instead of two. They confused her and fascinated her at the same time, reminding her of night and day meeting at sundown. Nick was the more serious of the duo, while Ace loved to laugh and tell jokes.
