Читать книгу Daddy By Decision - Lindsay Longford - Страница 9

Buck shut the door to his room and jogged to the Jeep through the dim parking lot where gray shadows lingered under cabbage palms and moss-draped oaks. Even before sunrise, heat radiated up from the black asphalt and thickened the humid air.

Twenty minutes later, he slammed through the automatic doors of the hospital and leaned over the fake plastic wood of the reception desk. “Hoyt Tyler? Room?”

Before the woman with the elaborate cornrow hairstyle could answer, a deep voice interrupted. “Hey, Buck. How many red lights did you run? Or did you scam a police escort?” Thomas Jefferson Tyler, Buck’s middle brother, punched him on the shoulder and draped an arm across Buck’s shoulders as he guided him to the bank of elevators. “You look like ten miles of bad highway.”

“How’s Daddy?” Buck wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. The expression in T.J.’s eyes unnerved him.

“Don’t know. He’s in intensive care. Internal bleeding, apparently. Anyway,” T.J. said, punching the Up button, “they’re running tests, Mama looks like hell, and the doctors aren’t saying anything. I’m just real glad the folks are here and not back in Seattle.”

“Yeah.” Studying his brother’s tightly controlled expression, Buck felt his stomach tighten. T.J. didn’t panic. Like all the Tylers, like Hoyt himself, T.J. was the calm in the center of the hurricane. But at the moment T.J. vibrated with clamped-down feelings, that unspoken urgency communicating itself to Buck, screeching at him like fingernails on a blackboard. “Can I see Daddy?”

“Sure. Every hour they let someone in for five minutes, but don’t expect much. I think they have him doped up. Hank and Mama are in the waiting room. Callie and Jilly are coming up later. They’re switching off with the kids and looking after the ranch. Everybody’s staying there until we find out what’s going on. You going to come on out and bunk with us?”

“Don’t think so.”

Watching the red lights blink at each stop, they rode up to the seventh floor in silence. Jamming his hands into his pockets, Buck turned off his whirling thoughts, let himself exist in the cocoon of metal and piped-in music. He found himself closing his fist around the miniature car he’d stuffed into his pocket at the last minute. Fingering its smooth surface like a prayer stone, he traced its unseen shape over and over.

In the intensive care waiting room, his mother sat waiting, her hands folded tightly together, her face gray-white. “I’m glad T.J. got hold of you. Hank’s with Hoyt. We brought him in ourselves. The ambulance would have taken too long.” Her voice was steady, her smile a brave slash of pink, but she didn’t unclasp her trembling hands.

Hugging her and covering her hands with his much larger ones, Buck held her close to him. He didn’t expect her to collapse in tears. Bea Tyler wouldn’t. She did her crying in private. But her clasped hands trembled with a fine vibration that belied her outward calm and he felt helpless to comfort her. He folded himself into a sitting position next to her. “What happened?”

As his mother talked, sorting through her thoughts, her words slow and halting, Buck greeted Hank, his younger brother, with a nod. Stricken, all his sunshine good humor vanished, Hank seemed suddenly years older than he had the day before, reminding Buck of T.J. when he heard about his infant son’s diabetes.

A word here, a question there, thoughts sputtering into speech and trailing off, they finally abandoned the attempt and sat in silence, together but alone, while the clock moved sluggishly through the unending minutes until it was Buck’s turn to visit.

Entering the quiet room filled with the electrical whirring of IV pumps and flashing green monitors, Buck stopped. Tubes went down Hoyt’s mouth, nose, draped across the bed. Two bags of packed cells for blood transfusion hung on a pole beside the bed. As Buck stayed at the entrance, his hand on the curtain, Hoyt opened his eyes and glanced around.

Walking around the foot of the bed, Buck smiled. “Hey, Daddy. You gave us a hell of a scare.”

Hoyt’s gaze lit briefly on Buck before his eyelids drooped shut, closing Buck out.

Buck felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. He’d heard what his mama and brothers had told him, but even so, they hadn’t prepared him. Reality transcended words.

The only father he’d ever known had looked at him and not recognized him. Loss, enormous and incomprehensible, swamped him.

With his hand gripping Hoyt’s, Buck swallowed. Cast adrift, he clung to the weathered, rough hand of the man who’d raised him, who’d taught him everything, and it-was the longest, loneliest five minutes of his life.

Five minutes at a time, the day crept into late afternoon.

Buck felt the walls of the waiting room closing in on him, imprisoning him with each passing moment until he thought he’d throw something at the picture on the wall.

He’d volunteered to come back and spend the night at the hospital so that the others could go back to the ranch. Callie Jo and Jilly were coming for the evening, but then they would return home so that everyone could rest and regroup while he stayed guard. He convinced everyone that was the best plan. They all had family responsibilities. He didn’t.

In the meantime, it was going to be another three hours before he could see Hoyt again, and he seriously didn’t think he could take three more minutes penned up in the waiting room. He jerked to his feet. “I need a change of scenery. Some fresh air. Maybe a walk.”

Hank, T.J. and their mother looked up at him, their eyes as dazed as his must be. Maybe it was the way they all stared at him with the same blue-green gaze, maybe it was the restlessness that had settled in his bones some time past, but he felt like a kid on the other side of a fence. “I’m going down for coffee. Y’all want some? A sandwich? Mama, can’t I get you something?”

One after the other, like dominoes falling, they shook their heads. Once more he was struck by his brothers’ similarities to their mother and to Hoyt. And today more than ever before, Buck felt like the cuckoo in the robin’s nest.

He passed up the cafeteria, opting for the more private vending machine lounge. Leaning his arm against the cold drink machine, he rested his forehead on his arm, staring uncomprehendingly at the selections. The machine ka-chunked as he pressed the round red button. A can of cola rolled to the bottom. All he could see was Hoyt’s blank gaze staring at him and looking away.

Hoyt was only sixty-one. In the prime of life, he could still ride and rope with the best of them. Buck shut his eyes. Anger and frustration boiling up in him, he wanted to slam his fist into the machine.

He wanted to grab Hoyt out of that bed, rip all the tubes and machines off him and run hell-for-leather out of the damned hospital. Get Hoyt out into the fresh air at the ranch where he belonged.

But for the second time in his life, he was helpless.

And so he stayed there, breathing deeply, trying to block out all the anger and fury ripping through him. He wasn’t used to being helpless, and he didn’t like it one damned bit.

It was a faint, elusive scent that alerted him, a hint of cinnamon underlying flowers.

He lifted his head and stared straight into eyes as bright blue as his own, eyes that widened before going carefully blank behind round glasses that slipped down her narrow nose.

The black-and-white reflection in the Palmetto Mart monitor had been way, way off the mark—only a shadow of the real woman. In living color, her wide mouth didn’t need bright lipstick. Rosy pink and full, her lips curved deeply into small creases at the corners, a mouth made for laughing, for kissing. Falling to her shoulders in a mass of gold and brown, curls twisted into small corkscrews and tendrils.

She was wearing some kind of loose green-blue dress with tiny, silly straps over a sleeveless white T-shirt, and the light ocean-colored material swirled around her bare legs as she stepped sideways, away from him. The dollar bill fluttered in her hand as she moved.

“We meet again, Miz McDonald.” Pushing away from the drink machine, he scooped up his can of cola and nodded once to her. He gestured with the can toward her dollar and watched those curves around her lips tighten as pink tinged the edges of apple cheeks. “Flush—and flushed today, I see.”

Her fingers clutching her dollar, her wallet-on-a-string drooping down her arm, Jessie wondered how fate could be so wicked. “Hmm,” she said and turned, walking steadily to the coffee machine, Jonas Buckminster Riley’s long shadow covering her as he followed.

“What brings you to Tarpon City Memorial Hospital?” His drawl curled around the question, putting a slight spin on it that made her wary.

“Now why would I tell you?” Jessie smiled sweetly at him and marched toward the coffee machine, her heart thumping sickeningly. She knew how Jonas could move panther-smooth from one unimportant question into a killing pounce.

“Ah, answering a question with a question. You’re either Irish or a lawyer.”

She didn’t stumble, didn’t stop, didn’t flinch. “And you can’t stop fishing, can you? Maybe the cowboy getup,” she said, gesturing toward his jeans and shirt, “is only camouflage, and you’re the lawyer?” She pleated her dollar. Had she gone too far? Drat her tongue.

“You didn’t answer my question.” He braced himself against the soup vending machine.

“No, I didn’t, did I?” Again Jessie managed her teeth-onedge-sweet smile. “How perceptive of you. To catch that. Oooh, I’m so impressed.” She batted her eyelashes mockingly.

She thought the sound she heard coming from him was a surprised snort. It might have been a cough. She hoped it was a cough.

“Once in a while I’m—perceptive,” he said with not an ounce of inflection in his melted caramel drawl.

Her mind ran through every possibility she could think of. He knew. He remembered. He didn’t remember anything and was simply on the prowl.

Except that Jonas never prowled. He’d never needed to. She believed he must have learned in his cradle that all things came to him who waited, because everything did come to Jonas, sooner or later. He’d never had to exert himself for attention. He’d been the man with the golden touch, the man everyone crowded around while he backed away from the attention.

And the more elusive he became, the more sought after he was.

“Cat got your tongue, Miz McDonald?” Moving from the machine, he settled himself comfortably against the wall and popped the top of the can, holding her gaze the entire time as he tipped the can back and drank from it. Beneath the mischief in his eyes, she saw the veiled curiosity, the interest that sharpened with each second she didn’t answer. “You surprise me.” Again there was a note of another meaning rippling beneath his comment.

Sun and age lines radiated from the corners of his eyes. Caught in the power of that gaze, breathless and dizzy, Jessie couldn’t look away. She felt as though he were willing her to answer him, to tell him everything he wanted to know, to wring her soul dry.

The artificial light of the lounge highlighted deep mahogany gleams in his thick hair, glimmered in the red-gold bristles that darkened his narrow, hard-angled face. Lowering the can, he hooked his thumb in the waistband of his jeans. As he shifted, the washed-thin fabric pulled across his flat belly andtightened against his thighs.

Jonas Riley had been born to wear tight, worn jeans.

Jessie’s dollar drifted to the floor, brushed her leg and broke the spell he’d spun. Her face burning, she stooped to pick up the bill, took a toe-deep breath and stood up. Turning away from him with a quick movement, she pressed her fist into her skirt.

He didn’t remember her.

But he was on the hunt.

Feeding the dollar into the coffee machine with shaking fingers, she tapped the coffee selections without even seeing what she was choosing.

“Don’t you want to know how I know your name, Miz McDonald?” He hadn’t moved, but his question shivered the hairs on the back of her neck. “I’d think you’d be—interested. Me being a stranger and all?”

In the metal and plastic of the machine, she saw his rangy reflection. He was studying her, frowning, definitely on the hunt. “Don’t you want to know, Miz McDonald? Aren’t you a little curious?”

Goaded, she whirled, her skirt whipping around her. “I don’t have to ask. I know. You were right behind me. You heard Frankie.” Coffee slopped onto the floor.

“So I did.” He closed the distance between them with one step and dropped a stack of napkins over the coffee stain at her feet. Squatting to swipe up the liquid, he glanced up at her, the light spilling over his face and throwing into sharp relief lines of strain and exhaustion she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Well, Miz McDonald, you might want to remind your friend Frankie that it’s not a good idea, even in a small town like Tarpon City, to identify his customers, especially his—” he glanced at her naked left hand “—single female ones.” Soft and deceptively gentle, his voice drifted through the air, moved over her skin like a teasing feather stroke.

The Jonas she remembered was toying with her, seeking the weak spot. She knew it, and she still struck back, the old Jessie rising to the bait.

“Thanks for the helpful hint, cowboy. I’ll make sure I mention your advice to Frankie.”

Not fooling her one bit with his nonchalance, he pitched the wet brown wad of paper in the trash, took a final pull of his cola and asked, “By the way, does Miz McDonald have a first name?”

“And wouldn’t she be a fool for telling you?” Jessie smiled sweetly. “Even with this being such a small town. And you the picture of respectability? It’s a wonder I don’t just hand you my safe-deposit number and key. Gosh, can’t imagine why I don’t.” Quirking one eyebrow, she sipped deliberately from her plastic-coated cup, relaxed, all easy confidence, her voice as mellow as his as she continued. “And since you’ve been so helpful, may I return the favor, cowboy?”

“Of course, ma’am.” He dropped the cola can into the recycling bin. “I’m always grateful for good advice.” Butter-smooth, his polite tone matched the respectful tip of his head. But his eyes narrowed suddenly, as if she’d somehow made a mistake. Suddenly intent, he looked as if she’d handed him the end of the thread leading through the puzzle maze. “What was it you wanted to say?” He stepped back, waving her through as she approached the door.

Turning her head to look at him over her shoulder, she smiled. “Not much. Except that even cowboys go in for a shave and a change of clothes once in a while. Maybe you’re working too hard at creating an image?”

She heard the quick intake of his breath. “Ah. I see. Clothes. The image. Yes, Miz McDonald, I sure do appreciate your input.” Rich satisfaction rippled through his voice, over his face, as he smiled. “You’ve been right helpful, ma’am.”

Jessie fled. She couldn’t imagine what she’d revealed, but in giving in to her desire to score one tiny point off him, she’d obviously messed up somehow.

Fast-walking down the corridor to the parking lot, Jessie muttered under her breath. “Coffee. That was the problem. It wouldn’t have killed me to skip my mocha latte for once.” She should never have stopped in for coffee before leaving for home. But she always did. “Why would I expect to see Jonas Riley stretched out over the cola machine like some martyred saint?” Swearing at herself under her breath, she stomped down the hall.

For her, the road to hell was clearly paved with coffee beans.

Two nurses stared at her as she stormed by them, and then their eyes drifted past her, their steps slowed, and one of the nurses lifted a hand to fluff out shiny black hair.

Jessie fought the impulse to break into a flat-out run. She didn’t have to look. Like the sun at high noon in summer, heat and determination came from the man keeping easy pace a step behind her.

“You took off in such a hurry, Miz McDonald, that you left your purse on the table near the door.” Lean brown fingers dangled her wallet-on-a-string in front of her. “You’re a busy lady, I reckon, rushing around the way you do, forgetting your wallet today, your checkbook last night?”

“I manage to fill my days,” she muttered, reaching for the wallet.

“I’m sure you do.” With a flick of his hand, he looped the burgundy leather strap over her neck. “Glad to help, ma’am,” he added, his voice cordial, his manner solicitous, his cowboy act perfect down to the slightest tone and gesture.

But she’d observed Jonas Buckminster Riley in action, had seen the man who’d been a shark in court, urbane, cultivated, as he cut through bloody waters, and she didn’t trust this blueeyed, tough-featured cowboy metamorphosis any farther than she could pitch an elephant. “Yes, well, for the umpteenth time, thank you.” She jerked as he touched her shoulder.

“Anything else I can do for you?” He straightened the strap, his knuckle sliding against her bare arm.

Prickles of alarm and awareness ran down her arm. She caught her breath. It was nothing more than a touch, nothing to be upset about, but her skin went hot and she wanted to shut her eyes and let him run that callused knuckle down her neck, across her shoulder—

Too many nights alone had made her forget the power of a simple touch.

Worse, she’d forgotten her susceptibility to the touch of Jonas Riley.

Clamping her arm close to her side, Jessie kept her gaze on the corridor floor, on the square, dusty toes of his boots. He’d had long, narrow, beautiful feet.

“Better?” He adjusted the strap once more, his face coming into her view as he stooped to her eye level, his breath mingling with her own, warm, cola-and-coffee-scented.

She’d known coffee would be her downfall. She hadn’t expected it to tempt her in this manner, though. “Thank you. You’re an exceptionally—helpful—person, aren’t you?” Trying to outpace him, Jessie lengthened her stride, taking two and a half to every one of his and feeling crowded the whole time, surrounded by him, his energy, his sheer, overwhelming presence. “Or perhaps you’re a retro Boy Scout?”

“I like to be useful.”

“Good for you,” Jessie said through gritted teeth. “The world could use a lot more useful men.” She reached the automatic exit doors that swung open as she stepped toward them.

Huddled under the portico, the smokers cleared way for her. For Jonas. Hurrying toward her car, she fumbled for her keys, pulling them out. A wave of heat curled toward her from the concrete sidewalks, washed over her. The red sun lay fat and hot on the horizon and she wanted to be home, to escape the very solid spirit from her past. Just as she opened her van door, he stopped her.

“Wait.” His hand closed around her elbow, his thumb flat against the inner pulse, and her heartbeat slammed in a staccato rhythm to that light, insistent pressure. His thumb was rough as he moved it against her skin, against her underarm in a slow, unconscious stroking that had nothing’ at all to do with the questions gleaming at her from his eyes.

“Take your hand off me, cowboy. Now.”

Buck did.

She hadn’t needed to tell him. As he’d touched her, her face had turned pinched and tight, and he’d already taken a step away from her. He recognized the desperation blazing in her eyes. Holding his hands up, palms toward her, he didn’t move. “Sorry, Ms. McDonald. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t. I don’t scare that easily.” Not looking in back of her, she opened her van door and stepped quickly inside, shutting the door between them with a quiet snick. She stabbed the key into the ignition as she said in a low, furious voice, “But I don’t like strange men grabbing me, cowboy, no matter how charming they are. And you don’t know me well enough to be anything else except a stranger.” Sunlight burnished her hair to pale gold.

Like an overlay, another image superimposed itself, this one in vivid color.

Her hair should have been sleek—a smooth, bright blond helmet cut close to her face, that full mouth dark red, seductive.

“But we’ve met before, haven’t we?” Trying to meld the two images, he rested his hand on the open window of the van. A strand of her hair brushed the back of his hand, curled around his palm with the feel of a forgotten touch, a remembered kiss. “I know you, don’t I?”

She looked as if he’d struck her. Her face went paper-white, and a rumbling growl came from the shadowy interior of the van. “Believe me, you don’t know me at all.” As she spoke, a wide head with enormous teeth and lolling tongue appeared next to hers at the window edge.

Buck kept his hand on the window. “Does he bite?”

“She. Yes, she does.” Color was flowing slowly back into the woman’s face as she regained her equilibrium.

“Bites, huh?” Buck scanned the dog’s face, noting the wagging tail. “She doesn’t strike me as a dog who’d bite.” Dog slobber dripped on his hand but he didn’t move, didn’t try to pat that wide, rough head.

“Well, she does. Enthusiastically. Every chance she gets.”

“Now why don’t I believe you?” he asked gently.

“Maybe you’re not a trusting soul,” she said, her gaze flashing to his and back to the key.

The woman’s astringent tone matched her earlier, back-offfella attitude, and he was relieved. Her skim milk white face had disturbed him. He’d never seen himself as a man who intimidated women, and he didn’t like the idea that he’d scared her. Pushing for answers was one thing, but reducing her inyour-face thorniness to white-faced fear wasn’t an image of himself he cared for. “Not trusting? Me? I’m wounded,” he said, placing his hand over his heart.

“Now why don’t I believe you?” Her arm resting on the dog, she turned to him and lifted her eyebrow, her mockery obvious.

“How perceptive of you.” Deliberately he repeated her earlier gibe and watched her quite remarkable blue eyes darken behind her glasses. “I’d almost think we’d met before—for you to have such insight into my character, Miz McDonald. Or was it only a lucky guess?” He wondered if she’d let him have the last word. He somehow didn’t think she would.

“Down, Loofah,” the woman said and ground the ignition key, restarting the engine before tilting her chin up at him. “Look, cowboy, you tried out your pickup routine, and it didn’t work. You were bored, at loose ends, and I wasn’t interested. Don’t make a big deal out of it, okay? Call it a day.”

Pebbles and dust spurted out from under the tires as she backed out. The monster dog watched him from the rear window, tongue hanging out as if maybe after all she’d like Buck to be dinner.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Buck found himself contemplating the van’s taillights. But this time, he had an answer.

She knew him. Her slightly acid responses hadn’t been those of a stranger. And he knew her. But she wasn’t a Miz, Ms. or Mrs. McDonald. Some other name. It would come to him sooner or later. Dust blew into his face as he stared into the empty distance.

He understood the sizzle crackling between them. He understood sex. He liked the way her pupils dilated when she looked at him. He liked the way her smooth skin shone pink with discomfort. He liked the faint scent of flowers that rose from her skin, her hair.

The sense that there was something more than a sexual pull between them disturbed him. He liked sex a whole, heaping bunch. It was simple, uncomplicated. What he felt toward the woman with the bedroom voice and cautious eyes wasn’t simple at all.

Scratching the still-itching mosquito bite on his neck, he thought about the peculiar swirl of emotions the woman created in him. He’d never exerted this kind of energy in pursuit of a woman, and he wasn’t comfortable with the sense that he was sailing over the edge into unknown seas, that she had some power over him.

But he trusted his instincts and his instincts told him that she had her own reasons for pretending not to remember him. He couldn’t help wondering what they were. Rocking slowly back and forth on his worn-down boot heels, he stayed there until the van was nothing more than a dark speck on the red horizon.

Dust swirling and blowing around him, foretelling the coming storm, he walked around the hospital and the physical rehabilitation center for veterans. He didn’t want to go back inside the hospital. Out here in the wind and dust, the air was rich with the smells of ozone and earth, with sweat and flowers. Inside the automatic doors were filtered air and the smells of disinfectant and tragedy.

Bea refused to leave. “I’ve slept beside Hoyt every night for almost forty years. We’ve never been separated. I don’t intend to start now. I don’t want y’all fussing me about it, hear?”

They heard. And they quit pestering her to go back to the ranch and rest. “You know how Mama is,” Buck said to his brothers. “Don’t push. She’ll only dig in her heels harder.” Like the woman in the Palmetto Mart, he thought, surprised. “I’ll be here. Let’s back off, all right?”

There was a curious peacefulness during the quiet night hours with the pinging bells and shushing sounds of doors opening and closing. Bea dozed beside him, her head falling to his shoulder and then snapping up as anxiety slapped her awake. Buck brought her soup and tea. Later, the tea and soup gone cold, he disposed of the paper cups.

During the night, while he sat in the pulled-up chair close to Hoyt’s bed, Buck felt his stepfather’s gnarled hand pull against his own.

“That you, son?” Hoyt’s words were slurred and hard to hear, his effort at speech palpable.

“Yeah, Daddy, I’m here.” Keeping in the shadows at the head of the bed, Buck stayed out of sight, only his touch linking him to this man he loved as much as he loved anyone in the world. He would be whoever Hoyt needed him to be, Hank or T.J. He could give Hoyt that comfort. “I won’t leave,” Buck said, his throat closing as he swallowed.

“Bea?” The rough hand rubbed against Buck’s.

“Mama’s here, too. All of us.”

There was a long pause. Green spikes marched in regular waves across the heart monitor.

“Buck?”

“Yeah, Daddy?” Buck leaned forward. Even without seeing him, Hoyt knew who he was, knew he wasn’t T.J. or Hank.

“Don’t let Bea wear herself out, hear? You know how she gets.” Hoyt’s words echoed his earlier ones.

“I know how Mama gets.” Buck smiled in spite of the lump in his throat. “I’ll watch out for her. We’ll take care of her.”

“Shoot, son, sounds like y’all got me with one foot in the grave already.” Hoyt’s breath rattled as his chest rose laboriously up and down. “Don’t go picking out my tombstone just yet.” Slow, spaced out, the words fell into the quiet, the man’s spirit rising above the limitations of body and tubes. “I ain’t ready to call it a day, you know. I got things to do. Grandkids I ain’t seen yet.”

Tightening his hold around his daddy’s large hand, Buck said, “Reckon that means you want us to cancel the flowers, huh?”

The rasping cough was Hoyt’s version of a chuckle. “Hell, yeah. No sense in wasting all that money. I got a few miles left. Ain’t time to count me out, son.”

“I won’t.”

Hoyt’s eyes closed. “Good.”

“They were awful nice flowers, Daddy.”

“Hope to Billy hell they were.” An almost-smile twitched the corners of Hoyt’s mouth. “Y’all better show this old coot proper respect.” He grunted and then was silent, his chest moving slowly, slowly, rising and falling to the regular rhythm of his sleep.

Holding Hoyt’s hand between both of his, Buck stroked the rough, weathered skin as he whispered, “Hang in there, Daddy.” Carefully he squeezed his father’s hand. “I love you,” he whispered, his throat raspy with unshed tears.

For the rest of the night as Bea and Buck alternated visits, Hoyt drifted back and forth between consciousness and wherever he’d been. Like wings beating lightly against his face, Buck felt hope settle softly in him, easing the dreadful weight of fear. What would be, would be. They would handle it Together.

In the twilight between sleeping and waking, Buck saw a tiny red race car barreling past him over and over again while two women—one with sleek blond hair, the other with wildly tumbling curls—strolled toward him and continued past, their mocking laughs blending into one as they left him behind, alone.

And when night sounds changed to morning bustle, he sat up with a start, everything coming together in his brain with an almost audible click.

He knew damned good and well who she was.

And he was going to find her, one way or the other.

Oh, yes, he remembered Jessica Bell.