Amnesia

by Beverly Barton

  Lieutenant Norton and Griffin Powell came in behind Quinn. Griffin removed the unused gun from Quinn’s trembling hand.

  “How bad are you hit?” Griffin asked.

  “Hurts like hell,” Quinn said as he clutched his shoulder, blood dripping between his fingers. “But I’ll live.” He glanced at Jace, whose crumpled body lay on the floor.

  Lieutenant Norton inspected Jace’s body. “Would you look at that? He’s your spitting image, Cortez, with that black wig on.”

  As Annabelle struggled unsuccessfully to free herself so she could go to Quinn, he came toward her. He walked around Jace’s lifeless body, giving him only a quick glance, before hurrying to the bed.

  “Quinn, you’re hurt.” Tears blurred Annabelle’s vision.

  He reached up, untied her hands and took her into his arms, then winced when she pressed against his injured shoulder.

  She jerked away from him. “I’m sorry.”

  He circled the back of her neck with his big hand. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Because of me, you nearly died.”

  “And because of you, I’m still alive.”

  He pulled her to his uninjured side. She wrapped her arms around him gently and laid her head on his good shoulder.

  “He—he told me he was your son,” Annabelle said. “His mother was Kelley Fleming. He had to be telling the truth. With that black wig and brown contacts, he looks so much like you.” She lifted her head and her gaze locked with Quinn’s. His eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Quinn, I’m so very sorry. I couldn’t let you kill your own son, not even to save me.”

  “I never knew. I swear to God, I had no idea I’d ever fathered a child.”

  She caressed his face. “Don’t you think I know that? Despite all your faults, my darling, you would never have deserted a child the way your father deserted you.”

  Lieutenant Norton cleared his throat. “Let’s get you two out of here. The local ME is on his way and the crime scene team will want everything as untouched as possible.”

  “And we need to get Quinn to the hospital ASAP,” Griffin reminded them. “I’ll drive y’all there. It’ll be quicker than waiting on the ambulance.”

  Griffin had stayed at the hospital with Annabelle during Quinn’s surgery and when she refused to leave, he stayed on with her throughout the night. He had left her only a few minutes ago, shortly after Quinn awoke. But before he left, he gave Quinn the report that had come in through his agents in Texas. A report on Kelley Morgan Fleming and her son, Jace.

  Sitting on the edge of Quinn’s bed, feeding him his breakfast, Annabelle had never felt so thankful. She had come very close to losing Quinn and if she had lost him, she wasn’t sure she could have gone on living.

  After eating half his meal and downing a full cup of coffee, Quinn told her, “That’s enough.” Then when she pushed aside the serving table, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “Since you’re still here, does that mean you aren’t going to run from me while you still can?”

  “Silly, silly man.” Lifting her hand to his forehead, she brushed back several stray curls. “Don’t you know that you’re stuck with me for the rest of our lives?”

  “Annabelle…” He gazed at her pleadingly. “My stupid, careless actions when I was a teenager helped create that poor boy. I got a girl pregnant and never knew it. And my child—my son—grew up with a crazy woman who punished him because he reminded her so much of me.”

  “I didn’t want Griffin to give you that report on Kelley Fleming and her son. I told him to wait until you’d recovered.”

  “Griffin knew I needed all the facts he could unearth and I needed them right away. I have a great deal to work through and I can’t do that without the facts, without the truth.”

  “The truth is that you’ve made some mistakes in your life. Who hasn’t? You can’t change the past, can’t go back and save Jace. But you can continue helping other kids in trouble, the way you’ve done for years. And I’ll help you do it. We’ll build a girls’ ranch adjacent to the Judge Harwood Brown Boys’ Ranch. We’ll—”

  With his good arm, Quinn reached out and pulled Annabelle to him, then lifted his head and kissed her. When the kiss ended, he smiled at her. “Don’t ever leave me, querida. You’re my only hope for salvation. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know that I love you and you love me. And against all the odds, we found each other, fell in love and now have a chance for real happiness. I’d say that means you’re as much my salvation as I am yours.”

  “Marry me, Annabelle. Marry me and help me become a better man than I’ve been in the past.”

  “You don’t think being married, being tied down to one woman, will bore you in a few months?”

  “Not if that one woman is you.”

  Her face lit up with a deliriously happy smile. “Then the answer is yes. Yes, Quinn Cortez, I’ll marry you.”

  Epilogue

  One year later…

  Annabelle and Quinn lay in front of the roaring blaze burning brightly inside the rock fireplace in their rustic home on Quinn’s ranch, deep in the Hill Country of East Texas. They had married two and a half months ago, in a small white church not far from here, with Aunt Perdita as her Matron of Honor and Quinn’s long-time friend, Johnny Mack Cahill, as his best man. Griffin Powell, Aaron Tully and Johnny Mack’s family were their only guests. Since first meeting the Cahills, Annabelle and Johnny Mack’s wife, Lane, had become fast friends, and she adored the Cahill’s children.

  During their two-month honeymoon, which wasn’t over yet, she and Quinn had barricaded themselves from the outside world, from the past and all its heartaches and regrets. It had taken them ten months to put their lives in order, ten months to endure three funerals, to bury family members and move beyond each tragedy.

  Quinn had buried his son, a child he’d never known as his own. And although he had at first resisted the idea of therapy, he had finally seen a highly respected Houston counselor. After months of counseling, Quinn had accepted the reality of what had happened and the fact that all the self-hatred in the world wouldn’t change anything, that it served no worthwhile purpose.

  Only a few months after Jace Morgan’s funeral, Annabelle’s Uncle Louis had passed away quietly in his sleep. They had buried him near his beloved Lulu, in the family cemetery near Vanderley Hall, on a hot, humid day in late June. Uncle Louis had made Annabelle the executor of his will, thus putting her in charge of his vast fortune. Then, when his father hadn’t been gone less than two months, Wythe had been arrested for raping a sixteen-year-old girl. Annabelle had used the Vanderley money to hire him a good lawyer, but she had refused to pull any strings to get him out of trouble. The family had saved him too many times in the past. But Wythe had never gone to trial. The father of the girl he had raped took matters into his own hands and shot Wythe with a long-range rifle, while Wythe was standing on the front veranda of Vanderley Hall one evening in early October.

  Annabelle rolled over on the cushy rug in front of the fireplace and faced her husband, an adoring smile on her face. “So, tell me something, Mr. Cortez, are you bored with married life?”

  He yanked her into his arms and kissed her passionately, then when she was breathless, he said, “Does that answer your question?”

  Propping herself up on her elbow, she sighed contentedly. “We can’t stay here forever, you know. I have an empire to run and you have a law practice that can’t function much longer without you. Besides, all those delicious meals you’ve prepared for us while we’ve been here has put five pounds on me.”

  “Yes, I know.” He stroked her hip. “On you those five pounds look great.”

  “Are you saying you’d love me if I got big and fat?”

  “Yeah, I’d love you if you got big and fat and wore a tow sack.”

  “Ah, Quinn…”

  He caressed her cheek tenderly. “I realize we have to return to the real world soon. Are you sure you don’t want me to move my practice to Mississippi
? I know it will be difficult for you to oversee Vanderley, Inc. from Houston.”

  “I can perform my duties as chairman of the board without living in Mississippi,” she told him. “I plan to gradually, over the next seven or eight months, put trusted employees in key positions so that I won’t need to personally oversee everything on a day-to-day basis.”

  He stared at her, a puzzled expression on his face. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I want to free up most of my time for the next few years so I can be a really good full-time mother to our child.”

  She waited and watched for his reaction when realization dawned.

  “Annabelle? Querida? You’re pregnant?”

  Smiling, she nodded.

  “How? When? Are you certain?”

  “How? I’m pretty sure our making love had something to do with it. As for when it happened—probably on our wedding night. Am I certain? Yes, I am. I took a home pregnancy test that is supposed to be very reliable. And I have now missed two periods. And that bout with nausea this morning was the beginning of morning sickness.”

  Tears filled Quinn’s black eyes as he laid his hand over Annabelle’s still flat belly. “I swear to you that I will be the best father I can possibly be. I’ll never let you or our child down. I’ll—”

  She kissed him. Then with tears of joy in her eyes, she said, “You’ll love us. That’s what you’ll do. And we’ll love you…your daughter and I.”

  “Daughter, huh?”

  “Or son.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “No. All that matters is that she—or he—is part of you and part of me. Conceived in love.”

  “And brought up surrounded by love.”

  Quinn wrapped her in his arms and brushed her temple with a wispy soft kiss.

  Annabelle closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Michael Speltz, Reserve Inspector with the

  Shelby County Sheriff’s Department, with thirty-plus years

  of service and a lifelong resident of Memphis and

  Germantown, Tennessee. Mike’s assistance in doing

  research for this book proved invaluable.

  A special Thank You to Mike’s wife, Pat, owner of Pat

  Speltz Media Consultant in Germantown, Tennessee, who

  drives writers in the Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee,

  Oxford, Mississippi, and Blytheville, Arkansas, area. Pat

  also helped with research on this book.

  And to Mike’s brother-in-law, Ben Payne, retired captain of

  the Memphis Police Department, whose assistance is

  greatly appreciated.

  About the Author

  An avid reader since childhood, Beverly Barton wrote her first book at the age of nine. Since then, she has gone on to write well over sixty novels and is a New York Times best-selling author. Beverly lives in Alabama in the U.S. For further information on Beverly Barton, visit her website at www.beverlybarton.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  By the Same Author

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  THE DYING GAME

  coming in 2008

  The intensely bright lights blinded her. She couldn’t see anything except the white illumination that obscured everything in her line of vision. She wished he would turn off the car’s headlights.

  Judd didn’t like for her to show houses to clients in the evenings and generally she did what Judd wanted her to do. But her career as a realtor was just getting off the ground, and if she could sell this half-million-dollar house to Mr. and Mrs. Farris, her percentage would be enough to furnish the nursery. Not that she was pregnant. Not yet. And not that her husband couldn’t well afford to furnish a nursery with the best of everything. It was just that Jennifer wanted the baby to be her gift to her wonderful husband and the nursery to be a gift from her to their child.

  Holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the headlights, she walked down the sidewalk to meet John and Katherine Farris, an up-and-coming entrepreneurial couple planning to start a new business in Chattanooga. She had spoken only to John Farris. From their telephone conversations, she had surmised that John, like her own husband, was the type who liked to think he wore the pants in the family. Odd how considering the fact that she believed herself to be a thoroughly modern women, Jennifer loved Judd’s old-fashioned sense of protectiveness and possessiveness.

  When John Farris parked his black Mercedes and opened the driver’s door, Jennifer met him, her hand outstretched in greeting. He accepted her hand immediately and smiled warmly.

  “Good evening, Mr. Farris.” Jennifer glanced around, searching for Mrs. Farris.

  “I’m sorry, something came up at the last minute that delayed Katherine. She’ll be joining us soon.”

  When John Farris raked his silvery blue eyes over her, Jennifer shuddered inwardly, an odd sense of uneasiness settling in the pit of her stomach. You’re being silly, she told herself. Men found her attractive. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything to lead them on, nothing except simply being beautiful, which she owed to the fact she’d inherited great genes from her attractive parents.

  Jennifer sighed. Sometimes being a former beauty queen was a curse.

  “If you’d like to wait for your wife before you look at the house, I can go ahead and answer any questions you might have. I’ve got all the information in my briefcase in my car.”

  He shook his head. “No need to wait. I’d like to take a look around now. If I don’t like the place, Katherine won’t be interested.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He chuckled. “It’s not that she gives in to me on everything. We each try to please the other. Isn’t that the way to have a successful marriage?”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s certainly what Judd and I have been trying to do. We’re a couple of newlyweds just trying to make our way through that first year of marriage.” Jennifer nodded toward the front entrance to the sprawling glass and log house. “If you’ll follow me.”

  “I’d be delighted to follow you.”

  Despite his reply sending a quiver of apprehension along her nerve endings, she kept walking toward the front steps, telling herself that if she had to defend her honor against unwanted advances, it wouldn’t be the first time. She knew how to handle herself in sticky situations. She carried pepper spray in her purse and her cell phone rested securely in her jacket pocket.

  After unlocking the front door, she flipped on the light switch, which illuminated the large foyer. “The house was built in nineteen-seventy-five by an architect for his own personal home.”

  John Farris paused in the doorway. “How many rooms?”

  “Ten,” she replied, then motioned to him. “Please, come on in.”

  He entered the foyer and glanced around, up into the huge living room and to the right into the open dining room. “It seems perfect for entertaining.”

  “Oh, it is. There’s a state-of-the-art kitchen. It was completely gutted and redone only four years ago by the present owner.”

  “I’d like to take a look,” he told her. “I’m the chef in the family. Katherine can’t boil water.”

  Feeling a bit more at ease, Jennifer led him from the foyer, through the dining room and into the galley-style kitchen. “I love this kitchen. I’m not much of a cook myself, but I’ve been taking gourmet cooking lessons as a surprise for my husband.”

  “Isn’t he a lucky man?”

  Jennifer felt Mr. Farris as he came up behind her. Shuddering nervously, she started to turn and face him, but suddenly and without warning, he grabbed her from behind and covered her face with a foul-smelling rag.

  No. No…no, this can’t be happening.

  * * *

  Had sh
e been unconscious for a few minutes or a few hours? She didn’t know. When she came to, she realized she was sitting propped up against the wall in the kitchen, her feet tied together with rope and her hands pulled over her head, each wrist bound with individual pieces of rope that had been tied to the door handles of two open kitchen cabinets.

  Groggy, slightly disoriented, Jennifer blinked several times, then took a deep breath and glanced around the room, searching for her attacker. John Farris loomed over her, an odd smile on his handsome face.

  “Well, hello, beautiful,” he said. “I was wondering how long you’d sleep. I’ve been waiting patiently for you to wake up. You’ve been out nearly fifteen minutes.”

  “Why?” she asked, her voice a ragged whisper.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “What do you think I intend to do?”

  “Rape me.” Her voice trembled.

  Please, God, don’t let him kill me.

  He laughed. “What sort of man do you think I am? I’d never force myself on an unwilling woman.”

  “Please, let me go. Whatever—” She gasped, her mouth sucking in air as she noticed that he held something shiny in his right hand.

  A meat cleaver!

  Sheer terror claimed her at that moment, body and soul. Her stomach churned. Sweat dampened her face. The loud rat-a-tat-tat of her accelerated heartbeat thundered in her ears.

  He reached down with his left hand and fingered her long, dark hair. “If only you were a blonde or a redhead.”

  Jennifer swallowed hard. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me with that meat cleaver. He’ll chop me up in little pieces…

  She whimpered. Oh, Judd, why didn’t I listen to you? Why did I come here alone tonight?

  “Are you afraid?” John Farris asked.