Unsanctioned Memories

by Julie Miller

  Twenty-four hours of her life lost in the closed-off fog of a memory, purged by a mind that craved sanity in order to survive.

  All she knew was that she should have been dead. That she’d been violated in a way beyond imagining and had lived to tell about it.

  Only she couldn’t tell about it.

  She couldn’t remember it.

  “Damn,” she muttered, as frustrated now as she’d been last March.

  She came from a family of cops. Her brothers had taught her how to defend herself, had lectured her on how to be more observant than the average citizen. But it hadn’t been enough. Somehow she’d let them down and he’d gotten to her.

  The crunch of gravel beneath a heavy footstep reminded her of the danger at hand. Was he here? Was that him coming closer and closer?

  Burying her nose in Harry’s neck, Jessica could feel the dog’s warmth and strength. She could sense his unwavering loyalty and devotion to keeping her safe. He licked her arm, his long, raspy tongue a gentle request for direction and understanding.

  “I don’t know, boy.” She hugged him tighter, trading comforts. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Hidden in the dining room behind a wall of shelves and an old walnut wardrobe filled with antique dresses and quilts, she could simply lock the doors and hide until the man went away.

  But she had a feeling locked doors and windows wouldn’t stop a man like him. She could hide inside the wardrobe itself or lose herself in the aisles of furniture and collectibles she had for sale—and he’d still find her.

  Paralyzing fear warred with the less certain instinct to survive. Her brothers had taught her to protect herself. And although she had failed then, she was a different person now. One who was a lot smarter about the harsh realities of life. One who had a lot less to lose.

  One who wasn’t done living yet.

  Besides, there was really only one way to know if the man who’d come to her remote cabin was him.

  And more than anything—more than the fear itself—she wanted to know the truth.

  Jessica leaned back and caught the dog’s streamlined jowls between her hands. “You with me, Harry?”

  Uncanny intelligence stared back at her from midnight-brown eyes. He’d had one hell of a past, too, before she’d found the giant mutt on death row at the pound. Maybe it took someone who’d survived the worst the world had to offer to understand what she’d been through, what she had to face every day of her life now. Maybe someone could understand—and love her anyway. The dog’s unflinching support actually coaxed a smile out of Jessica.

  And inspired a sense of calm that allowed her to think clearly once more. “Let’s go.”

  Latching on to Harry’s collar, Jessica pulled against the dog’s weight and stood, quickly unlocking the gun cabinet beside her desk. She pulled out the Remington double-barrel shotgun she used for trap shooting and loaded two rounds. She stuffed two more shells into the front pocket of her jeans, whistled for Harry and headed out the double screened doors onto the back porch.

  Matching the full-length porch on the front of the house, this one wasn’t decorated to show off the cabin’s rustic charms. This was a workspace full of rockers that needed recaning, wagons that needed new wheels, a 1910 buggy that needed one of its traces replaced. Wooden boxes, shutters, a washing machine, stools, barrels, trinkets, gadgets. It was a veritable fortress of camouflage, and Jessica used it to her advantage, keeping the faded green buggy between her and the stranger who approached.

  “That’s far enough,” she ordered, hugging the rubber butt of the gun against her shoulder and leveling the business end at the center of his chest. It was a broad enough target. And she was a better shot than he could ever imagine. Harry bristled to attention at her side.

  The man halted his steps, betraying more curiosity than alarm. “Not exactly the back-door hospitality I’ve heard tell about Missouri.”

  His voice was low pitched, smooth as whiskey and tinged with the barest hint of an accent.

  And completely unfamiliar to her.

  “This isn’t a bed-and-breakfast,” she warned. “It’s private property.”

  He tilted the crown of his coal-black hair toward the front gate. “The sign says you sell antiques.”

  She held the gun steady, making her message clear. “We’re closed.”

  He’d turned from the customer parking lot up the private driveway that bisected the grounds between the cabin and her storage barn. And though she stood three steps above him on the elevated porch, she was almost looking him straight in the eye. And they were the coldest eyes she’d ever seen. Icy gray. Almost colorless behind the squint of his expression. He was a man who didn’t give a damn about anything. It was the best impression he could have made.

  That meant he didn’t care about her, either.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” he asked.

  He might not be a voice from her past, but he was still trespassing. “Yes.”

  “And the dog?” His gaze never shifted off hers.

  “I know how to use him, too.”

  “Look, lady, I don’t—” He raised his hands in mock surrender and took half a step forward.

  It was all the provocation she needed. “Harry, sic.”

  The snarling black powerhouse leaped from the porch and charged the man at a dead run. But despite the stranger’s big size, his reflexes were quick. Before Harry lunged for his forearm, the man whipped the huge pack off his back and wielded it like a shield, absorbing the brunt of Harry’s first blow. One hundred and twenty pounds of charging canine knocked the man back a couple of steps.

  Harry bared his teeth and menaced in a horrible growl as he lunged again. The man used the pack to buffet the second attack. He twisted and blocked, countering Harry each time the dog tried to latch on to something with flesh.

  The man was either trained in self-defense or damn lucky. But he would tire long before Harry ever surrendered. “Lady!”

  Jessica almost smiled. Good boy. If Harry could best this man, she’d have a lot less reason to be afraid of him. “You lie down flat on the ground and I’ll call him off.”

  Harry had a chunk of the backpack between his teeth now, and the attack had turned into a desperate tug-of-war. The man couldn’t surrender his grasp or he’d be defenseless at the next charge. “Fine. Call him off.”

  “Harry, sit!” she commanded.

  The dog obeyed, plopping down on his haunches beside the man’s shoulder as he dropped his pack and threw himself prostrate onto the swath of fading grass at the center of her driveway. The man lay perfectly still beneath the dog’s watchful eye.

  Harry panted from the exertion, licking his muzzle, then letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth. The man was catching his breath, too. But the instant he moved, a big black paw settled onto his shoulder and he went still.

  “Is this how you greet all your customers?”

  “You’re no customer.” Lowering the gun from her cheek and shoulder, she kept it trained in his general direction and left her finger near the trigger. “What do you want?”

  SAM WASN’T READY to answer that question truthfully. He hadn’t expected a warm, trusting welcome when he showed up with his vagrant cover story, but he was a little surprised to be greeted by a backwoods, Hatfield and McCoy, you’s-trespassin’-on-my-land routine.

  Where was the professional businesswoman with an eye for beauty and a penchant for history his contact in Chicago had told him about? Her face matched the newspaper photo of the elegant brunette at a museum exhibition opening he’d found in the Chicago Tribune archives—the same face the attending E.R. nurse had confirmed as his Jane Doe rape survivor.

  He’d spent three weeks piecing together nebulous clues and putting a name to the face of the woman he was searching for. Then he’d run a background profile on her. And now he was here.

  This was Jessica Taylor.

  His Jane Doe had a name. And a definite attitude.

&nb
sp; He suspected that earning her trust wouldn’t be easy. Without the sanction of the Bureau, and with little more than a hunch to go on that she would be the break he needed in order to find Kerry’s killer, Sam couldn’t conduct a normal investigation. He needed to get to know Jessica Taylor better than he knew his own partner. He needed to become her very best friend and get her to start talking. About Chicago. Her attack. How she escaped.

  Who did it.

  Either she’d been too terrified to give a useful report to Chicago PD, or her attacker had been too crafty—too intimidating—for her to recall much. He might even have done a little brainwashing on her. Sam intended to find a way inside her head and learn the truth. Learn enough so he could match up her attacker to Kerry’s and track him down.

  But with that pump-action shotgun pointed his way and this hairy, black beast standing over him, his covert mission would be damn near impossible.

  Kerry had always teased that it had skipped a generation, but Sam wondered if he could dredge up any of his father’s Belfast charm. Lifting his cheek from the scraggly grass and dirt, he tried to restart the conversation. “What kind of dog is this?”

  “The very protective kind.”

  Idly, Sam wondered if she’d always sounded this hard. Judging by the resonant tone and sultry pitch of her voice, Ms. Taylor could sound downright sexy if she softened up her articulation and dropped the sarcastic wit. It was probably an unfortunate byproduct of the attack. He’d be curious to know what other feminine attributes she was trying to hide.

  Irrelevant, a stern inner voice warned him. Though curiosity was not the same as attraction, he wanted to argue, Sam wisely ignored the deviation from his quest. He turned his nose to the ground and inhaled the dank, musty smell of the dirt that reminded him of Kerry’s funeral—reminded him of why he was here. “So I gathered. He looks like a black shepherd, but his muzzle is broader. And obviously he’s bigger than any German shepherd I’ve seen.”

  “He’s a German shepherd, Irish wolfhound mix.” Irish, huh? Maybe the hairy beast had some redeemable qualities, after all. “He was too big and too smart for his previous owners. But he suits me.”

  Sam tried to move his head so he could actually look at Jessica, but apparently the dog didn’t feel the connection of their Irish roots. The growl in his throat became a deafening bark and a flash of sharp, white teeth. Sam forced his body to relax and resumed his prone position on the grass. “He seems well trained.” He’d worked with K-9 units before, but had never been on the receiving end of such training. No wonder the perps usually surrendered without much of a fight.

  “He is.”

  “I didn’t show up by chance, Miss Taylor.” He heard her feet shift their solid stance on the wooden floorboards, the first flinch in her protective armor. He’d called her by name. Better retreat a step. Even up the playing field. “I’m Sam O’Rourke. The clerk at the convenience store up on the Highway 50 intersection gave me your name and directions. If you let me have a chance, I can explain why I’m here.” Silence. Damn, she was a hard nut to crack. “Do you need the dog and the gun both?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  It was hard to be charming with his face pressed to the dirt and a wolfhound-shepherd beast sitting on his shoulder. Kerry had been right. He’d always done better with a more direct approach.

  “Look, I can see this was a mistake. The guy at the store said your regular help wasn’t able to put in enough hours and that you were desperate for an extra hand around the place.” He looked around slyly and noted the overgrown patches of grass taking over the gravel parking lot and driveway, the dead branches of stately elms that needed trimming, the rust on the red-and-white metal storage barn, the tarp-shrouded load in the back of a pickup truck waiting to be unloaded. The man hadn’t lied. “But he must have been mistaken. If you let me up, I’ll go back into town and find work somewhere else.”

  “You’re looking for a job?” She sounded skeptical. She might be stubborn, but she was smart. Deceiving her wasn’t going to be easy. “Why didn’t you call first? Where’s your car?”

  Technically his Kia was in a garage back in Boston. But the junker he’d picked up in Chicago had been easy enough to abandon at the side of the road outside Kansas City to establish his cover. “Until I earn enough money to fix it, it’s sitting in the shop. I’m driving cross-country from Boston to San Diego. Sort of a sabbatical. It broke down on the highway.”

  “What kind of sabbatical?” she asked, her voice still filled with doubt. “You don’t look like a professor.”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Not if you want to work for me, it’s not.” Was she considering his proposition? “I’ll let you sit up if you explain who you are and don’t make any sudden moves.”

  It wasn’t much of an offer, but he’d take it. “Deal.”

  She whistled—a bold, brassy tomboy whistle. Unexpected. Interesting. Irrelevant. “Harry, come.”

  A tremendous weight lifted as the dog immediately obeyed her command. The jet-black beast trotted up the steps onto the porch and cuddled at his mistress’s side as if he thought he was a lap dog. Minding her warning, Sam slowly rolled over and sat up. He spun around on his bottom to face her, brushing bits of grass and gravel dust from his shirt and jeans. His arm had actually started to go to sleep beneath the dog’s lucky guess at pressure points. Sam massaged at his shoulder and arm, easing the tingling rush of reawakening.

  Using the massage as an excuse, he didn’t say anything for several moments, giving himself his first opportunity to size up the woman who was going to make his mission a success. The stock of her Remington rested on the generous curve of one denim-clad hip. The woman up on the porch was a far cry from the sophisticate he’d seen in the new-paper’s black-and-white photograph.

  A hole in one knee broke the long line of leg that might be the most distinctive feature of her tall, subtly masked body. While the woman in the photo had worn a strapless evening gown that managed to look classy and seductive at the same time, this woman on the porch was a nature girl. No upsweep of long hair. No jewelry beyond a watch. And not much skin to catch the late September sun. Her modest blue Taylor Construction T-shirt looked as if it belonged to one of her brothers that had shown up in his research. The short sleeves hung past her elbows, and the collar rode high at the neck. The hem was loosely tucked into the waistband of relaxed jeans.

  Body camouflage. She could be plump or thin or anywhere in between, but the outside world would never be able to tell. Sam wondered if Kerry would have hidden her fair-skinned attributes in the same way if she’d survived her rape. Damn. He didn’t need to go off on a tangent like that.

  Suddenly the enormity of all he had lost seized his throat. Sam squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to choke the emotions back down. He couldn’t let Jessica Taylor see how much he had at stake in this at-gunpoint job interview.

  When he was in control of himself again, he turned back and lifted his gaze up to hers. He knew most of her stats by heart. Age: twenty-nine. Height: five-eight. Weight: 140. But the stats didn’t do her bright-blue eyes justice. And to say her hair was brown was to miss the whole point of subtle auburn highlights and a loose, face-framing style.

  Stats couldn’t tell him word one about what was going on inside that head of hers. And whether or not she could help him.

  “Okay, Mr. O’Rourke.” She nudged the air with the point of her gun. “Talk to me.”

  “I’m looking for some work to tide me over ’til the end of September, maybe mid-October. I like to get a feel for a place. And, hopefully, make enough money to fix the car and pay my way until the next stop.” He braced his elbows on his bent knees and nodded back toward the road. “The clerk in Lone Jack said you were looking for some help. Seven miles straight down the road didn’t seem like a terrible hike. So I took a chance.”

  “Ralphie, the clerk, likes to look out for me. My regular hand is one of the neighbor kids. Now that school’s
back in session, he can only work Saturdays and some nights after football practice.” Was she opening up to him? She might be talking more, but the gun made it hard to tell whether or not he was making progress. “He’s the one who almost ran you off the road on the way in. Derek Phillips. He’s a sweet kid.”

  “He’s a road hog.”

  “He’s eighteen years old. What do you expect?” Okay, so clearly she was protective of her hired help. Or teenagers. Or this one in particular. Did that mean he could rule out a young man as her attacker? She did have a younger brother. Maybe the kid was just a reminder of him, and therefore she considered him safe.

  She definitely didn’t consider him safe.

  Sam thought the conversation had died with his speculation. She stood in silence long enough for him to become annoyingly aware of the sharp gravel digging into his backside. “Can I get up now?”

  “No, I—”

  He got up anyway, slowly unwinding his legs and pushing to his feet.

  “I said no!” She lifted the shotgun to her shoulder and had her finger on the trigger guard again.

  Sam put up his hands in surrender and slouched his weight to the side. But he didn’t retreat. He didn’t want to scare her, but he wanted her to know he meant business. He had no intention of leaving Log Cabin Acres without this job. He had no intention of leaving, period. He’d let his hair grow out, and hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, hoping his vagrant look would earn him an offer of room and board. Even if it meant bunking on a cot in the barn.

  “I have a cramp in my leg,” he said to explain his moderate show of defiance. “Believe me, you still have the advantage.”

  She had good form, he’d give her that. Steady, too. He could see one blue eye, clear and focused, as he looked into the over/under barrel of her gun and on up to the sight. She might have him lined up between the crosshairs, but the fact she didn’t sic the dog on him again made him think she wouldn’t actually shoot.