by Linda Ladd
“First things first, Claire. You’re completely safe, that’s the most important thing for you to remember right now. And you’ve got to trust me. I’m a doctor, your doctor. I’ve been taking care of you right here in this room since a few days after the accident. What you’re experiencing right now is called retrograde amnesia. It’s completely to be expected after a head injury like yours.” He stopped then, took his own deep breath, and looked upset. “Just don’t worry. Trust me, just for now, and I promise you that your memory will come back. The most important thing at the moment is for you to remain calm and quiet and let me take care of you.”
Not sure yet whether she could believe him, she did lie still and listen to what he said. She just felt so weak and queasy inside her stomach. She kept the pillow between her and him as he picked up her hand and took her pulse. Then he asked her to remove the pillow so he could listen to her heart. She did, but she didn’t want to. He put a stethoscope inside the neck of her hospital gown and listened to her heartbeat and then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Then he nodded at the nurse and they started unhooking all the tubes and wires attached to her body. He smiled the entire time. So did the nurse. Claire frowned.
But she did feel more in control, now that the lights were on. She was inside a normal, regular bedroom, a very nice one, large and spacious with beautiful furnishings, not a hospital room. There were no people tied to chairs and nobody held a gun on anybody. Nicholas Black said he was a doctor and he acted like a doctor, and he wasn’t going to chop off anything on her person with a meat cleaver so her first wave of panic receded. She watched him pick up a plastic pitcher and give it to her. Her hands were still trembling so much that she had to hold it between her palms, but she took a little sip through the straw. She didn’t look at him again, trying to get her thoughts and emotions in order. She still felt uneasy, as if she was in danger from these people.
When she looked up at Nicholas Black again, he was still standing close beside the bed, smiling as if he was very happy to see her awake. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions, Claire?”
Claire? Yes, that was her name. Or was it? She nodded. Something was off with that name, Claire. It didn’t ring the right bells. Panic began to well up inside her again, but she mentally forced it back down. She felt mixed up and ill and afraid. But he was trying to help her remember, she knew that, and she wanted to believe that. “I’m not sure if that’s my name, or not, doctor.”
The tall, dark-haired doctor smiled. “You don’t remember your name?”
Something jabbed through the wall of darkness erected inside her head. “You called me Claire, but I’m not so sure about that.” Another glimpse came through, thank God. “A name just came to me. Annie, I remember the name Annie.” She grimaced, trying to force up more about it. “No, wait, it is Claire. Claire Morgan, I think. Tell me what happened again. I still don’t understand what happened to me.”
“Your name is Claire Morgan, and it’s a very good sign that you remember that. The car you were in went off a bridge into a river, and on impact, you hit your head on the windshield. You’ve been lying here in a coma for going on three weeks. Eighteen days, to be exact. Do you remember what state you live in?”
Now her mind seemed to be reacting, more things coming back, fuzzy, fleeting, but they were definitely trying to break out of the dark fog. “California. Los Angeles.” She thought hard for a few seconds and recalled something else. “I’m a detective. LAPD.”
The doctor and the nurse exchanged a quick but significant look that pretty much told her that she’d screwed up that answer. Somehow that scared her, and she shut her eyes to block the uncertainty out. She didn’t want to talk to them anymore, didn’t want to listen to the questions he was asking, or anything else he said. She wanted them to leave her alone, and let her figure out things on her own.
His deep voice came back, down close beside her ear, and then to her shock, he kissed her cheek. “That’s okay, Claire. You just rest. We’ll talk later. And in a little while, when you feel stronger, we’ll see if you can eat something, and then we’ll get you up and walking.”
The unknown doctor named Nicholas Black sat back down in the chair beside her, and the nurse named Monica glided out of the room with the kind of silent footfalls that only nurses commanded. Claire Morgan kept her eyes tightly closed after that, and tried to remember who the hell she was and what kind of life she’d had before she’d gone off that bridge and ended up tied to a bed.
Linda Ladd is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Remember Murder marks her exciting return to the Claire Morgan series. Linda makes her home in Missouri, where she is at work on her next novel featuring Claire Morgan.
Visit her on the web at www.lindaladd.com.
With Every Turn in the Case …
After moving from Los Angeles to Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, homicide detective Claire Morgan has at last adjusted to the peaceful rhythms of rural life. Until a grisly celebrity murder at an ultra-exclusive “wellness” resort shatters a quiet summer morning …
With Every Twist of the Mind …
One of Dr. Nicholas Black’s high-profile clients, a beautiful young soap opera star, has been found dead, taped to a chair at a fully set table … submerged in the lake. Back in L.A., Claire investigated the rich, famous, and the deadly—but she never expected the problems of the privileged to follow her to this sleepy small town. Just as she never imagined crossing the line with her prime suspect …
With Every Beat of the Heart …
Immersed in the case, Claire finds herself drawn to the charismatic doctor, spending more and more time in his company—and in his bed. Now, to catch a killer, Claire will have to enter the darkest recesses of the human mind. But is Black leading her there to help her … or luring her ever deeper into a madman’s grip?
Missouri detective Claire Morgan is eager to get back to work after recuperating from injuries sustained on her last job. But the missing persons case that welcomes her home in the dead of winter soon turns more twisted and treacherous than Lake of the Ozarks’ icy mountain roads …
The man’s body is found suspended from a tree overlooking a local school. He is bleeding from the head, still alive—but not for long. Someone wanted Professor Simon Classon to suffer as much as possible before he died, making sure the victim had a perfect view of his colleagues and students on the campus below as he succumbed to the slow-working poison in his veins …
Frigid temperatures and punishing snows only make the investigation more difficult. And then the death threats begin—unnerving incidents orchestrated to send Claire a deadly message. Now, as she edges closer to the truth, Claire risks becoming entangled in a maniac’s web—and the stuff of her own worst nightmares …
Die Young
Hilde Swensen is a beauty pageant queen with a face to die for and a body to kill for. But by the time Detective Claire Morgan finds her in a shower stall—posed like a grotesquely grinning doll—Hilde is anything but pretty. She’s the victim of a sick, deranged killer. And she won’t be the last …
Die Beautiful
Brianna Swensen is the beauty queen’s sister—and the girlfriend of Claire’s partner, Bud. She tells Claire that Hilde had plenty of enemies, including a creepy stalker, an abusive ex-boyfriend, and a slew of jealous competitors. But what she doesn’t say is that they both shared a dark disturbing secret. A secret that refuses to die …
Die Smiling
From the after-hours parties of a sinister funeral home to the underworld vendettas of the Miami mob, Claire follows the trail with her lover Nicholas Black, a psychiatrist with secrets of his own. But it’s not until she uncovers evidence of unspeakable acts of depravity that Claire realizes she’s just become a diabolical killer’s next target …
When the Mind …
His doctors are the best in the world, his father one of the most powerful men in the state. But they couldn’t stop Mikey from succumbing to his darkest dem
ons—the ones inside his head. The ones who told him it was time to end it all.
… Plays a Deadly Game …
It should have been an open-and-shut case, especially since detective Claire Morgan’s lover, Dr. Nicholas Black, recognized Mikey as a troubled former patient. Then Claire finds another body in Mikey’s home. Curled inside an oven, charred beyond recognition, the method of murder mind-boggling …
… of Murder
Claire’s only lead is a beaded bracelet, believed to ward off the “evil eye,” around each victim’s wrist. But by the time she discovers what the dead were afraid of, she’s trapped in a mind game of her own—with a brilliant sadistic killer. And this time, there’s a method to the madness …
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Copyright © 2013 Linda Ladd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eKENSINGTON is a trademark of the Kensington Publishing Corp.
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First electronic edition: December 2013
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3051-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-137-8
ISBN-10: 1-60183-137-4
