REMEMBER ME (Secrets of Spirit Creek Book 1)

by Linda Style

  “I thought you were in Europe,” Tori said.

  Her mother barreled in first and her father followed. In this marriage, her mother was the doer, her father the follower. Quiet and unassuming, he was loving, understanding and never critical. Although just as loving, her mother was the opposite in the other areas, but, as she always said, for good reason. She was only thinking of Tori.

  “Obviously we’re not,” her mother said, unbuttoning her pink cashmere sweater.

  Tori hugged her dad and then her mother. “I’ve got coffee. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  On the way, her mother said, “What is this all about, Tori?”

  Tori held back until she’d poured each of them a cup of coffee. Her father, wearing khaki pants and a navy V-neck sweater, looked like he’d just finished a game of golf. He sat at the table, but Tori and her mother remained standing.

  “What? Do you mean my wanting to look at the files of the case?” Her skin prickled.

  “Yes. What’s gotten into you?”

  Tori looked to her dad for help, but he shrugged and said, “We only want what’s good for you, sweetheart.”

  Trying to keep her cool, her voice even, Tori answered, “Nothing has gotten into me. A man went to jail for ten years because of me. I made a mistake. A huge mistake. I feel responsible in some way and I can’t just do nothing. If I read the file, I might learn something that will help him.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard. Just because this man is out and you somehow feel responsible, you want to ruin everything you’ve accomplished?”

  “What have I accomplished?”

  “You have your life back together. In case you don’t remember the two years—”

  “I remember,” Tori interrupted. “I’ll always remember. I have to continually push it out of my head so it won’t affect everything I do. But in order to get on with my life, I have to face—and come to grips with—the fact that it could have happened to anyone. And assisting Linc might help me be able to live with myself.”

  “What could you possibly do?” Her mother barely took time to breathe before she picked up her interrogation. “Gordon said you want to use your trust money to pay his hospital bills. Isn’t that enough?”

  Tori bit her lip, years of latent anger roiling in her stomach. Enough. That was a laugh. “I can never do enough,” she said evenly, enunciating each word. “There’s no amount of money that can replace a man’s life. I’m going to do whatever I can for as long as it takes.”

  Laila opened her mouth then closed it again. But just when Tori thought she had made her case, her mother said, “Come home with us. You can get back into therapy. We’ll—”

  “Stop!” Tori raised her hands and at the same time felt something snap inside her. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? I don’t want to go back! I don’t want any more therapy. I had one thing happen in my life and it’s plagued me ever since. I’m tired of living with the specter of the rape, tired of rehashing what happened over and over.” She swung around, waved her arms in a circle. “I have double locks on my windows and triple locks on my doors. I have security alarms and gates and guard dogs, and I can take a guy down with one swift chop. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to live like a normal person. I can’t do that with you coddling me and watching my every move, reminding me how dangerous the world is.”

  She took a breath. “Most of all, I have to deal with this myself, and I think I’m doing pretty damned well at it.” She lowered her hands…and her voice. “If you’d just leave me alone and let me do what I need to do…”

  Her mother gasped. Seeing the horrified look on her face, Tori took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you, but—”

  Shaking her head vehemently, her mother stabbed a finger in the air, pointing behind Tori.

  Even before she turned, she knew…

  Linc.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ADRENALINE SHOT THROUGH Linc’s veins as he jammed some clothes into the duffel bag. He shot a look around. Toiletries and the clothes Tori had bought for him—that’s all he had. Hell. He tossed the bag on the floor. He didn’t want anything that would remind him of her. He’d burn the clothes on his back when he got new ones.

  He’d come into the conversation late, but he’d heard enough. Enough to know who she was and that she’d tricked him. Tricked him so she could ease her guilt. He didn’t remember her and he didn’t remember the trial. But he knew the person who’d identified him was the reason he’d lost ten years of his life. He’d lost everything he had, even the memories. Good, bad, or otherwise, they were his.

  She’d asked her parents to leave so she could explain, but he didn’t see the point. Then, in the space of a second, as she stood in front of him, her parents behind, he clearly saw her…in a courtroom. Only she looked different. Another image flashed. An attorney telling him the woman who sent him to jail wanted to talk. The image came to him as vividly as if it were only minutes ago. And then it vanished. There was nothing else. Just that.

  In the last ten minutes his thoughts had ping-ponged from one end of the spectrum to the other. From denial to blame and blame to self-pity. It had all been a lie. Tori wasn’t his friend. She wasn’t his lover. The whole thing about helping him was to assuage her own guilt for ruining his life.

  Yet, as angry as he was, he knew in his heart it wasn’t the mistake she’d made ten years ago that was tearing him apart. It was the betrayal. The lies. There had never been a friendship. It was all a lie. Not only did he have no memory of his past, nothing he’d been clinging to since his hospital release was real. His old life was gone and his new life was fake. She was a fake.

  The moment he’d been waiting for, the moment when he remembered something real was here. But instead of being happy and excited, he felt as if he’d just been given a death sentence.

  He waited until he heard her parents’ car leave, then he went out the patio door in his room and walked around the house so he wouldn’t have to see her. But as he headed down the walk, he felt her watching him. He turned.

  “Linc,” she called out to him from the doorway where she stood. “Please let me explain.”

  He kept on walking. He didn’t know where he was going or what he would do, but he knew he had to get out of there.

  When she didn’t come after him, he realized, sadly, that he’d wanted her to. Pathetic. He was pathetic. Once outside the gate, he saw the long winding road ahead. What was it…four miles to town? He glanced one way and the other. No cars. He started walking. He’d go into town, go to the bank and then find someplace to hang his hat.

  He stumbled along for about a quarter of a mile when he heard a car. He turned and stuck out his thumb. A small red Mustang pulled over. Tori’s friend Natalia. Damn.

  The window went down and Natalia said, “Need a ride?”

  “I do. If you’re going into town that is.”

  “I am.”

  He went around and got in the passenger side, barely getting his seat belt fastened before she floored it.

  “Were you planning to walk? It’s a little far on a bad leg.”

  He crossed his arms, not feeling any compunction to explain. But he couldn’t be rude, either. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “One you don’t want Tori to know about.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You had a fight.”

  He jerked around. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because she’d be giving you a ride otherwise.”

  He remembered then that Natalia was the one who’d recommended Mac. “How well do you know Mac?” he asked.

  “Quite well. Why?”

  He shrugged. “I tried to get in touch, but I guess he’s still out of town.”

  “He should be back tonight. We’ve got a fly-in tomorrow.”

  “I suppose I should know what that is, but other than it might involve planes, I don’t.”

  “It�
�s just a get-together for some pilots. A bunch of us who were in the military together.”

  Linc turned. “Really?” Natalia, who looked like she could belong to a rock band, was the last person he’d have expected to be in the military. “Which branch?”

  “All branches. We don’t discriminate. We just fly.”

  Okay. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming, so he shut up and watched the scenery whiz by. The woman had a lead foot.

  “So what’s wrong between you and Tori?”

  “I didn’t say there was anything wrong.”

  “You didn’t have to. And actually, I take that back. I don’t want to know. But I will say you should do some serious thinking before you go off half-cocked.”

  He crossed his arms. “You don’t know—”

  “I know enough.”

  Pain tightened like a vise around his chest. Words caught in his throat.

  “I don’t know what happened between you two,” Natalia went on, “but I’ll tell you what I do know. Tori is the most honest, the most caring person I know. She’d give up her dogs before she’d hurt someone intentionally.”

  “Good intentions don’t always matter.”

  She was silent for the longest time, but as they neared the outskirts of town, she said, “You’re absolutely right. In the end, good intentions don’t always matter.”

  Surprised that she’d agreed, he was about to say something when she added, “You know, I go out on search and rescue missions nearly every day. I did the same in Iraq. I’ve seen young men, some still teenagers, with bleeding limbs missing or the sides of their heads blown off. I’ve tried to rescue people in cars at the bottom of a canyon and found dead bodies, mothers, fathers, kids and babies. In the scheme of things, my little problems and yours are nothing, and we should appreciate every person we know and love them every minute of every day. Regardless of anyone’s intentions.”

  “Well, that’s one way not to deal with problems, but it sounds like a cop out to me.” He crossed his arms. It was true other people had bigger problems, but that didn’t make his insignificant. He was living his problem and she wasn’t. He was the one who’d been deceived. Betrayed. “Burying your head in the sand and pretending there’s nothing wrong isn’t going to fix anything.”

  She glanced over, eyes narrowing. “Yeah. I know. Believe me, I know.”

  Linc heard undertones of regret in her voice. Maybe something he said had hit home. He’d met both of Tori’s friends several times, and Natalia was the most difficult to figure out. She wasn’t as open as either Serena or Tori. But then he obviously wasn’t good at figuring out anything. Tori least of all.

  The first street in town they came to, Natalia pulled over and dropped him off with a “good luck,” a smile and a salute.

  Watching her speed away, he took a deep breath, looked up and down the quiet street. He shoved a hand in his pocket. He had no money, no nothing…just the check that needed cashing and his wallet and social security card. Then he recognized Quint’s truck in front of the Jeep Tour place. Someone he knew. Someone who could maybe take him to the bank and tell him where to get a room for the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Tori wandered through the house, barely able to eat or sleep. She couldn’t blame Linc for anything. She had no one to blame but herself. If only she could stop seeing the incredulous hurt in his eyes, the accusation, the pain that said she’d betrayed him.

  Natalia had called that same day wondering what had happened. She’d given Linc a ride and knew something was wrong, but Linc hadn’t told her anything. Tori hadn’t been able to talk, either. Every time she started to talk to anyone, she’d tear up.

  On the fifth day, Quint had come to do some work and said he’d been trying to get in touch. He told her Linc had stayed with him for a night and then had rented the apartment above Thompson’s Hardware store. Apparently he’d gotten a job and was going to work at the Blue Moon Saloon when it opened next week.

  Well, that was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? Linc was getting on with his life, so why couldn’t she. She reached to pet Bruno and Cleo, her devoted friends…her family. Later that day, she went to her studio to paint. She’d forgotten how good it felt to get lost in her work, to think of nothing but color and form, inanimate objects that she could shape and mold and tint the way she wanted. A balm for her soul.

  She was sitting back, studying the work she’d just finished, when the phone rang. Gordon. She hadn’t talked to him in a week, but she couldn’t hold a grudge. Not with Gordon. And she hadn’t yet thanked him for sending the files. She hadn’t read them because there didn’t seem to be any point. But she had asked him to send a copy of the files to Linc.

  “Hello, Gordon.”

  “Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing?” The concern in his voice sent a wave of guilt through her because she hadn’t answered his last few calls. Her mother’s either.

  “I’m doing fine, Gordon. No need to worry.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad, which makes this call even harder.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck spiked. Gordon only said things like that when something was really bad, like the nearly fatal car accident her parents had years ago. “What? What is it?”

  “I really hate to spoil things with this, but―”

  “Just tell me, Gordon. Spit it out!”

  “Lincoln Crusoe’s been arrested.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” She held her stomach, as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “I don’t have all the information, but apparently, he was in Phoenix yesterday and had some kind of altercation with one of the witnesses from his trial. And the police had also found evidence that linked the breakin at your parents’ house to him, and to another rape, as well.”

  Tori reached for the wall to keep from falling off the stool. “What evidence? And when was this supposed to have taken place?”

  “Which event?”

  “All of them.”

  “Earlier when the police were investigating the breakin at your parents’ house, they found evidence that was similar to what was left at another crime scene the week before. And they found Crusoe’s fingerprints all over the house. The witness dustup was yesterday, and the guy called the police.”

  “So, Linc is in jail?”

  “As a person of interest. He has no explanation for where he’s been.”

  Tori’s heart sank. She and Linc had stayed at her parents’ before going to California, so naturally his prints were all over the place. Linc had been with her the whole time, so he couldn’t possibly have committed another crime.

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Gordon, we need to talk.”

  ~~~

  Linc heard someone outside the door of the interrogation room. He’d been there ten hours, alone for the last three, according to the clock on the wall. His mind flashed to another room exactly like it. Then everything became perfectly clear. He remembered. He hadn’t even realized it because it just seemed normal. And he couldn’t believe the same nightmare was happening all over again.

  He’d told the officers everything, including the fact that he’d been railroaded the first time, in case they’d forgotten. He got no sympathy whatsoever. Nothing he said made any difference, and in fact, might’ve made things worse.

  Just then the door opened. The hair on the back of Linc’s neck stood on end when he saw the tall, silver-haired man enter the room. Ten years hadn’t changed Victoria Culhaine’s attorney in the least.

  The detective who’d been grilling him came in right behind the attorney and said, “You can go now, Crusoe. But don’t leave town.”

  Walking out the door with Linc, the older man said, “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “I’d rather walk,” Linc tossed back.

  “Okay, have it your way. I’m only here because Tori asked me to come. And if she hadn’t, you’d still be sitting in that room.”

  Linc’s pride warred with his ne
ed to know what Tori had to do with anything. But the walls were closing in around him, and he kept walking toward the door. He couldn’t stay in this building one more minute. “Okay,” he said. “You can drive me to my rental car.”

  Once inside the man’s black Cadillac Escalade, Linc said, “So, what’s going on?”

  The attorney handed him a fat manila envelope. “You can thank Tori for that, too.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TORI SAT ON the stool in her studio for over an hour staring at the blank canvas. One week, eight hours and twenty-seven minutes had passed since she’d spoken to anyone but her girlfriends, her dogs and Quint. She’d stopped answering both her cell and the landline and instead let the machine get it. That way she could hear if someone was calling about a job.

  She had several new contracts lined up, but couldn’t get excited about any of them. She’d even had an offer to go to Italy to paint a portrait, all expenses paid, but she couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.

  Dylan had called twice and finally left a message on her phone, telling her he was getting married. That news caught her off-guard. She hadn’t known he was even dating anyone. She’d cried. Not because she was still in love with him, but because she realized his overprotective friendship may have been more from the guilt of leaving her than anything and, in the days that followed, she found herself on the verge of crying just thinking about it. Everything she’d thought was real was simply her fooling herself. Her thinking, believing what she needed to believe in order to go on.

  She’d done the same with Linc. She’d helped him because she’d wanted to exonerate herself. She kept the truth from him supposedly to be able to help him, when in fact it was because she knew he’d leave. He’d hate her and leave. And she’d been right. Every decision she’d made regarding Linc was wrong.

  She was about to head for bed when Gordon called again.