Bringing Maddie Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “He’s said things.” Chandler gave the faintest of smiles. “Chief Bystrom and I don’t, either. Do what you have to do.”

  They didn’t shake hands again. Colin left, fully satisfied.

  Half an hour later, he had his warrant, which included bank and investment accounts in the names of Gary Bystrom and/or Marcia Bystrom.

  It didn’t take long to determine that Gary Bystrom and his wife had deposited over half a million dollars over a period of about fifteen years, distributed over a number of different bank and investment accounts. Many amounts were small enough not to catch anyone’s attention, but there were too many of them. A decent supplemental income. Colin was going to have to ask his boss what the source of that money was, and then bring a forensic accountant in to verify the truth of his answer.

  If it turned out a trust account had been paying out, Colin was up shit creek without a paddle—unless Mayor Noah Chandler chose to hand him one.

  * * *

  DELIGHT BLOSSOMED IN Nell the moment Colin turned into the parking lot of the Wolf Creek Resort that evening. The elevation was higher than the town of Angel Butte, which meant the ground was still white from the last storm. The outdoor ice-skating rink was surrounded by a two-foot bank of snow. More snow weighed down the branches of small evergreen trees scattered throughout the grounds. The ones around the rink were strung with tiny white lights. The restaurant he escorted her into looked out onto the rink.

  They were seated by a window, and her gaze kept being drawn to the winter wonderland outside.

  “You are planning to take me skating?” she murmured, as she closed her menu, decision made.

  Colin laughed. “There’s a reason I told you to wear pants.”

  “Oh! That’s going to be so much fun.” Her gaze strayed to the window again, and the sight of a man crashing to the ice made her wince. “I think.”

  “You said you knew what to do. I’m counting on you keeping me on my feet.”

  She laughed at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  His expression was appropriately surprised. “Why would I be kidding?”

  “Because you outweigh me by just a teensy bit. Like sixty, seventy pounds? You do know what would happen if we were holding hands and you started to go down?”

  “Huh.” A smile crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. “I’d take you down with me.”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ve never been ice-skating, but I do cross-country ski. How hard can it be?”

  Thus spoke a man arrogantly certain of his prowess. Nell rolled her eyes. “Maybe we won’t hold hands.”

  His smile deepened. “Oh, we’ll hold hands.” His voice had deepened, too.

  She couldn’t look away. The velvety rough tone of his voice gave her quivers and she found herself squeezing her thighs together to try to contain them.

  “I’ll sue you for any bruises,” she said lightly.

  He chuckled. Both were distracted then by the waitress, who took their orders. When she was gone, he asked Nell about her day.

  “It was fun.” She made a face. “First time you’ve ever heard that word out of my mouth, isn’t it? But I really like Felix, and we did have a good time. He told me this was my trip down memory lane. Mostly, it was his memory lane, but that’s okay. I found out where he went skinny-dipping, where teenagers in Angel Butte park to make out—” At Colin’s expression, she mock-glowered at him. “So okay, you could have told me that.” Her voice softened. “He showed me places we rode our bikes, where Mom and Dad took us on picnics. We went out to Arrow Lake. I don’t know if Dad was there or not—we didn’t ask for him. I got to sit on this rock that sticks out into the lake. Wrong time of year, of course, but I remember lying on it for hours at a time watching the minnows and dreaming. When there’s so much I don’t remember, visiting a place I do made me feel...anchored, I guess.” She shrugged, probably a little awkwardly.

  “I’m glad.” He reached across the table for her hand. “That you had a good day, and that some of your memories are happy ones.”

  She squeezed his hand, hoping he couldn’t tell that her reaction to his touch was a whole lot more than friendly. “Thank you.”

  They’d been served their entrees when he became quiet. A couple of lines between his eyebrows made his expression brooding. Beginning to feel apprehensive, Nell waited.

  When he met her eyes, he looked troubled. “Something came up today I’d like to talk to you about, see if it awakens any memories. If it does, they probably won’t be good ones. Damn,” he muttered. “What am I thinking? We can do this later.”

  The too-familiar band around her chest tightened. “Sure, like I’m going to be able to think about anything else now. Tell me.”

  His reluctance was obvious, but finally he dipped his head. “You know some bones turned up in River Park.” He explained how and when it happened, and that the continued search for both evidence and more bones had paused until the freeze let go of the ground. “You heard Detective Vahalik yesterday.”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to hide her sense of foreboding.

  “Here’s what we’ve learned so far.” He explained that they knew the victim was male and likely in his late teens. The exciting part for investigators was the recovery of a backpack with contents preserved well enough they knew the young man carried what might be items deeply personal to him, including a photo of a woman and boy and a Purple Heart. Oddly, he also had a change of clothes in the pack.

  The foreboding had swelled until it hurt to contain. She managed a choppy nod.

  “The clothes could have been because he’d just been to the gym.” He paused. “But the framed photo? The military medal? My first thought was that he was homeless. Carrying what he absolutely needed with him, and some mementos of his parents. Things he wouldn’t have left even if he had a temporary place to stay. The schoolwork complicates that explanation, though. I don’t know what to think now.”

  “You’re asking if he was my boyfriend,” she whispered.

  Regret darkened his eyes to charcoal. “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. He was buried so close to where you were assaulted, the coincidence has been nagging at me.”

  She pushed against the darkness that separated her from all the things she should be able to remember, and was paid back by pain stabbing through her temple. Thinking at all became a struggle, but she made herself.

  “I was wearing a shirt that I don’t think was mine when I came to in the trunk.” Filthy. Bloody, but still comforting even though she didn’t know why. It was the only thing she’d had to hold on to...something. Someone. “The sleeves come down to here.” She held her hand six or eight inches from the tips of her fingers on the other hand. “The patch on the shoulder says ‘Airborne’ and has a feathered wing holding a sword. I looked it up online and learned it’s from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. They took heavy casualties in Vietnam.”

  “Which means lots of Purple Hearts were awarded,” he said slowly.

  She nodded.

  He let out a heavy breath. “It’s not sounding good, sweetheart.”

  Her heart took a little hop. Did he realize what he’d just said? The way he’d reverted to brooding made her suspect it was a slip.

  The moment of hope was only a blip in the dark cloud of anxiety that had her clasping her hands on her lap to hide her shaking from Colin.

  “I have the shirt with me. I mean, back at the apartment. It’s...” Precious? No, that wasn’t right. “I wore it a lot those few first years. It meant something to me. I just don’t know what.”

  “If your parents didn’t know you had a boyfriend, you wouldn’t have dared wear that shirt where they’d see it. Or run it through the wash at home.”

  “No. He might have let me wear it sometimes.” The pain in her head splintered
until she saw black spots before her eyes. “That night...” Her voice broke.

  Colin leaned forward, his intensity a force field. “Maybe you weren’t running to Emily. You were running to him.”

  Nell had to close her eyes. She pressed fingers to her temple, pushing hard, harder. A whimper escaped her.

  The next thing she knew, a big, warm hand captured hers and lowered it. Then he began to massage, far more gently, almost a caress. Her temple, her forehead, her cheekbone. The pain subsided slowly, ebbing like a tide sweeping all debris with it.

  The tension gradually left her neck and shoulders, until she felt so weak her head fell back. But not far—it rested against him. His belly, rock-hard but moving with each breath he drew. He was standing behind her, she gradually came to realize, both hands now squeezing her shoulders until she moaned softly.

  “Ma’am?” she heard someone ask. “Sir? Is there a problem?”

  “Migraine.” Colin bent forward so his lips had to be close to her ear. “Do we need to go home?”

  She felt weirdly relaxed, and she wasn’t sure she could stand. The relief was huge. Somehow she shook her head slightly and slitted her eyes open. People at neighboring tables were watching them. Belated self-consciousness had her straightening.

  “No, I...feel better.” To her astonishment, she did. The pain had to have been purely psychosomatic. Am I just a little crazy, or a lot? She blinked a few times. “Thank you, Colin. You saved me.”

  His worried gaze not leaving her, he returned to his seat. “God, I’m sorry, Nell. That was entirely my fault.”

  “No.” Her head still felt a little wobbly when she shook it. “I’ve...had that happen before, when I tried too hard to remember. It’s one reason I quit trying.”

  His frown deepened. “Does it happen only when you try to remember certain things?”

  Nell bit her lip. “I think so. Not school or friends or Felix. Not even my parents,” she admitted. She stared at him, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God. You don’t know what a relief that is. It never was them.”

  “You did remember their faces.”

  “Yes!” Her ebullience didn’t last long. “I can’t picture Beck at all, if that was his name. When I try, I get filled with this...this horrible pressure that makes me think my head is going to explode. The minute Emily mentioned him, I had this ominous feeling and I didn’t want to talk about him.”

  “Because he hurt you?” His jaw flexed. “Or because you saw someone hurt him.”

  She stared at him, hating this sensation of dread, hating whatever blocked her from remembering.

  At whatever he saw on her face, Colin half rose to his feet, then closed his eyes and sat again. “Okay, that’s it,” he said, voice raw. “No more, I promise. Thank you for trying, Nell. We’re not doing this again tonight.” The strength of his concern for her made her tremble.

  “It’s okay. Really.” Seeing his expression, she reached for his hand. “I came back to Angel Butte to remember. I have to keep trying. So I want you to tell me what else you found in the backpack. If any of it was important.”

  His expression closed. “I wanted you to have a good time tonight.”

  “I will, once we get this over with.”

  They conducted a silent battle, gazes clashing. At length his breath gusted out. “Fine. There was a framed picture of a woman and a boy, maybe nine, ten years old.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Dark hair, brown eyes.”

  “Can I...can I see it?” Inside she recoiled. I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.

  “Damn it, Nell!” Colin said explosively.

  “Please.” She would not listen to the fear.

  He groaned. “Maybe. Probably.” After a moment he continued. “A couple of other odd things. He had a key card from your dad’s resort. Looked like he or someone else was taking snapshots there, too. There was one of two men at your dad’s airfield.”

  “That...sounds like something I would have done.”

  “What?”

  “I think...” This didn’t make her head hurt. “I went through a sort of Nancy Drew phase. Why do I remember this?” There wasn’t any answer to that question. “I had a camera, not a good one, but I remember sneaking around spying on guests. If he’d caught me, my father would have killed me.” Appalled, she stopped.

  Colin’s expression remained gentle. “You don’t mean that literally.”

  “No, but...”

  He shook his head. “You know that’s not what happened, don’t you?”

  Nell sucked in a deep breath. “Yes.” She couldn’t picture any more of that evening than ever, but...she knew. “Yes. It was someone else.”

  “Okay.” He smiled at her. “Now we’re going to let this go.”

  He was careful to keep conversation light while they finished eating. When he asked if she wanted dessert and she declined, he took care of the bill. Then they walked out, hand in hand, going to the open window by the rink, where rental skates were handed out.

  After they’d both donned theirs, Colin produced fleece hats from his parka pockets. She snatched the navy blue one so he had to wear the white one with a small pom-pom, laughing at his expression.

  Either he’d lied about never having ice-skated, or he was right that expertise at Nordic skiing translated well, because he moved with reasonable assurance on the blades. The rink wasn’t huge—nowhere near the size of the indoor one in Seattle where she’d skated before. But she loved this, with the black arch of sky above them, the smell of snow and pine needles in the air, the sparkle from strings of white lights the only illumination except for the golden windows of the resort and restaurant.

  Nell didn’t let herself think about anything except this moment. Her mind muted the voices and laughs of the other people on the rink with them. Mostly she heard the scrape of blades on ice. Felt the comfort of that big gloved hand holding hers, even as she half wished for skin-to-skin contact. Colin laughed when he faltered, pretended he was going to fall, coaxed her into showing him how to skate backward. He kept her on her feet when she tried a leap.

  Inevitably, his blade caught on a rough spot and he went down. He tried to let go of her first, but she didn’t let him. Which meant she crashed to the ice next to him, their legs tangled, both laughing as they slid to thump against a snowbank.

  He rose on one elbow to look down at her, flat on her back.

  “Told you,” she teased.

  “You did.” His expression was utterly intent, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. Only her. Slowly he lowered his head.

  Nell’s heart pounded hard as she waited.

  “I shouldn’t do this,” he said.

  “I wish you would.” She hoped she didn’t sound as if she was begging. I want to know what it’s like.

  Shock and understanding transformed his face.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered. She’d said it out loud.

  “I want to know, too,” he said, low and rough. And then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HER LIPS WERE COLD. As cold as his. Each breath either of them released hung in a white cloud. He loved the quiver of her lips as he brushed one soft kiss against them after another. Once he had to lift his head to look at her again. In that moment, with her eyes closed so that her lashes fanned above those extraordinary cheekbones, she was so beautiful he felt awe.

  This time, when he lowered his head, he nibbled at her plump lower lip, drinking in the small, ragged sound she made. Then, smiling, he made himself roll off her.

  Nell squeaked and began to scramble to her feet. He gripped his hand and stayed her.

  “Give me a second.”

  “You can lie there as long as you want.” Her voice was stiff. Affronted—or was she hurt? “My butt is fr
eezing. I can skate a lap while you stargaze.”

  “There are too many people here for me to kiss you the way I want to.”

  “Oh.” He hadn’t thought her cheeks could get any redder, but they did. She sneaked a sideways look at a mother with two giggling children who were passing. “I’m sorry. I thought...”

  “I know what you thought,” he said, angry that she had so little confidence in her appeal. “You were wrong. I’ve wanted to kiss you since you showed up in Angel Butte.” He levered himself into a sitting position and decided to be honest. “Maybe before that. I’m not sure. I was fixated on you being Maddie even when I watched you in the library that night and loved the way you smiled at people. But from the minute you got here, I’ve had more trouble seeing the kid. You’re Nell,” he finished simply.

  She lowered herself to her knees in front of him. “Thank you.” Her voice was small and husky. “Thank you. Everyone else sees Maddie. I hate it. I’m not her! Except sometimes, and then...I don’t know if I want to be.”

  He nodded. He’d seen her conflict, which was more heavy-duty than his. “I understand,” he said. “You are both, Nell, and my guess is you’ll get more comfortable with it as you integrate the returning memories.”

  “What if I don’t remember much more?” Her shadowed eyes beseeched him. “What if I’m stuck?”

  “Then you are,” he said practically. “You’re a full and complete person, sweetheart. Now you know where you came from. That’s got to settle something in you.”

  Her head bobbed after a moment. “Yes. Of course it does. But complete—I don’t know if I am.”

  “Sure you are.” He grimaced. “And now if you don’t mind, I think my entire backside has gone numb.”

  She giggled, a happy ripple of sound that made him happier than he could ever remember being. “Okay,” she said. “Need a hand?”

  “Remember what happens if I’m going down and have hold of you?” If his voice was a little hoarse, he hoped she didn’t notice.

  “Trust me,” she said, the smile still playing on her mouth.