Читать книгу Rain Dance - Rebecca Daniels - Страница 10

Rain opened her eyes and felt every nerve in her body come to full alert. She didn’t know what she’d expected when Carrie had told her the sheriff was there to see her, wasn’t even sure she had any sort of expectation at all. Somewhere in the back of her brain she’d conjured up images of a badges and uniforms and guns in black holsters, but whatever she’d imagined, a tall Native American with long black hair and dark, haunting eyes wasn’t it.

She realized in that moment the stranger from her dreams, the man to whom she had turned to for comfort, the man who had held her and in whose arms she had felt so secure was a stranger no longer. He wasn’t someone from her past, someone who could tell her who she was and where she belonged. The stranger from her dreams was from the here and the now. He wasn’t someone she’d imagined or made up in her head, he was real—and he had a name and a face.

“Sheriff Mountain.”

He stood in the doorway, his broad shoulders and powerful frame all but swallowing up the space.

“Joe Mountain,” he said by way of introduction.

“And I’m…well, I’m Rain,” she said with a small laugh. She sat up, pushing a hand through her hair and wondering what she’d done with the comb Carrie had given her. “But I guess you already know that since I understand you’re the one who named me.”

If he was embarrassed, or pleased by the acknowledgment, it didn’t show in his expression. In fact, nothing showed on his hard, lean face and Rain felt herself growing tense.

“May I come in?” he asked politely.

Her first reaction had been to refuse, to put him off and turn him away, but that was not only unreasonable, it was irrational. For some thoroughly inexplicable reason, she found herself hesitant, reluctant—almost shy about facing him.

She couldn’t explain it. The whole thing was crazy. The man was only there to help her, was probably her best hope at putting her life back together. She had nothing to fear from him. He’d found her in the desert, had gotten her the help she’d needed. At the very least, she needed to thank him for saving her life. And besides that, she needed to talk to him, she wanted to talk to him. She had questions she’d hoped he could answer, concerns she’d hoped he’d address. So what was her problem? Why was her throat freezing up and the palms of her hands turning moist?

The dream. That stupid, silly little dream she’d had during her nap. He’d been in it, had been the tall dark stranger in her dream, the one who had touched her and held her and made her feel safe and warm. She felt like she knew him, like she meant something special to him and that was ridiculous. She felt embarrassed. The man was a stranger to her and she to him and there was nothing special about that.

“Of course,” she said, doing as best she could to push her apprehension aside. “Please do come in.”

Even though his khaki uniform was contemporary and looked appropriately official, Sheriff Joe Mountain had a rugged, distinctive look. Holding a weathered black cowboy hat in his hands, his dark hair pulled into a ponytail down his back, he looked like he belonged to a wilder, more uncivilized time.

Nothing about him was reserved or unsure. He crossed the room with strong, bold steps—each one speaking of confidence and ability. A man on a mission, he knew what he wanted and went after it. This was his realm, his arena and you played by his rules. Mesa Ridge, Nevada, may be a million miles from nowhere, but it was definitely Joe Mountain’s town.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he crossed the room toward her.

“F-fine,” she stammered, feeling heat rise in her cheeks and banking down her nerves. “I’m feeling fine, thank you.”

“I understand you had quite a morning.” It was a statement, not a question or an inquiry and there was nothing empathetic or particularly charitable in his tone. His voice was as devoid of emotion as his expression appeared to be.

“They ran tests, yes,” she told him, brushing off the tedious hours in the lab with a casual wave of her hand. “And I saw the doctor again.”

“I have a few questions, if you’re feeling up to it—about last night. About what you remember.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said with a small shrug, telling herself it was foolish to feel disappointed. This was the shadowy figure from her dreams, the one she’d hoped would come find her, the one she’d hoped would make her feel safe and secure again. Only he had found her and she was feeling anything but safe and secure now. “I just don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“I talked with Cruz—Dr. Martinez,” he said, setting his hat on the nightstand beside the bed and reaching for a tablet from the pocket of his shirt. “He’s given me a pretty clear picture of your injuries and the memory loss.”

“Yes,” she mumbled, picturing the two men discussing her. The thought made her awkward, self-conscious. What had they said about her? What was it Joe Mountain had asked about her?

Turning away, she suddenly became distracted by the comb in the bed table. A lot of good it would do her now. She didn’t know if she’d always been concerned about her appearance, but she seemed to be concerned about it now—or at least she was since Sheriff Mountain walked in.

“So just to clarify things, is it correct to say you have no memory of anything before waking up in the desert?”

She looked up at him, forgetting about the comb and her vanity. “That’s right.”

“Nothing?”

She thought of the black hole in her memory and slowly shook her head. “Not a thing.”

“So you don’t have any idea why you might have been out in such a remote area, don’t know how you got there?”

“That’s right.”

He flipped through the pages of his tablet. “Let’s talk about the desert, then. Why don’t you tell me the first thing you do remember?”

She closed her eyes, trying not to think about the gnawing fear she remembered. “The rain.”

He looked up from his notes. “The rain?”

She nodded. “Against my face. I was lying there looking up at the clouds and it kept getting in my eyes.”

“So you were on the ground?”

Rain opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I guess I was. I never thought about it really, but I guess you’re right. I was lying on the ground.”

“As though you’d fallen?”

She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. At least, I don’t remember falling.” She gave her head another shake and shrugged. “But then I suppose I could have. I don’t really remember.”

“And after that? You were lying looking up at the clouds and it was raining. What happened then?”

She closed her eyes again. “I remember my head hurting and when I got to my feet I felt dizzy.”

“Did you see anything then—around you I mean? Was there anyone with you? Was there a car there? Any people?”

She opened her eyes, knowing she would never forget the cold, desolate feeling she’d had. “No, nothing.”

He thought for a moment, then made a notation in the tablet. “You were near the highway?”

“No,” she said, looking up at him. “I—uh—I remember because I didn’t know which way to go. It was raining so hard and the ground was wet and muddy.” She didn’t like thinking about how lost and alone she had felt or how faint and ineffectual her screams had sounded. “I just started to run.”

Something flashed in his eyes when he looked at her, something she would have sworn was soft and compassionate, but it was so fast and so fleeting, she couldn’t be sure.

“So you pretty much just stumbled upon the highway?”

“Pretty much. I had no idea where I was. It was getting darker and I confess, the thought of being out there alone in the middle of the night…” A clutch of emotion had the words catching in her throat and she put her head back against the pillows.

“Are you all right? Need something?”

She shook her head, taking several deep breaths and feeling her composure restoring. “No, I’m fine, honestly. I just don’t like…it’s a little difficult to think about it. Coming to like that, in the middle of nowhere and not remembering…”

Once again emotion had her strangling on the words and she squeezed her eyes tight against the sting of tears. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, I’m not normally so emotional….” She realized what she’d said and looked up at him, feeling almost as lost and as helpless as she had out in the desert. “At least I don’t think so,” she said with a humorless laugh. “But the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Joe reached for a box of tissues from the nightstand and offered them to her. “We could do this another time, if you like. Maybe when you’re feeling a little stronger.”

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, pulling tissues from the box. Everything about him spoke of strength and courage, of power and determination. She felt weak crying in front of him and for reasons she didn’t quite understand, she didn’t want him to think of her as weak. “It just bothers me to think about it, to not be able to remember. It’s very…frustrating.”

It was also very terrifying, but she didn’t feel she needed to make that confession.

“That’s understandable.” He walked to the chair beside the bed, gesturing to it. “May I?”

“Oh, please, yes,” she said, blotting her cheeks dry. “Sit down.”

He pulled the chair close and lowered his tall frame into it. “So once you’d come to, you’d started walking.”

“That’s right.” Her nose was stuffy and probably needed a good blowing, but that phantom vanity had her refraining from doing so. It was bad enough that her hair was snarled and her face was completely devoid of makeup.

“Do you have any idea how long you might have walked around out there?”

Rain remembered the bitter cold and her aching muscles. “It seemed like forever. I can’t really say, but it seemed like a long time.”

“Hours do you think?”

“At least.”

“And you were walking that whole time.”

“Except when I ran.”

He looked up from his tablet. “Ran?”

“Like in circles,” she confessed. “Panic, I guess.”

“I suppose that would be understandable, too.”

She watched as he looked down at the tablet again and started writing. She suspected the acknowledgment was about as close to sympathy she was going to get from him.

“Before you reached the highway, do you remember anything about the surrounding landscape? Were you heading toward the mountains? Did you see any large rocks? Anything like that?”

She thought for a moment. “Not really. It was dark and nasty because of the storm, of course.” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment longer. “Oh, wait,” she said, her eyes popping open. “I do remember seeing mountains in the distance.”

“Okay,” he said, jotting in his notebook. “And when you were walking, were you walking toward the mountains, or away from them?”

“I walked toward them.”

He made another notation in the tablet, his head bent in concentration. “So when you reached the highway, which way did you turn? Right or left?”

Rain thought for a moment. “I think it was right.”

He looked up. “You think?”

“It was right—I’m pretty sure.” She hesitated, watching as he continued to write. “Why? Is it important, Sheriff?”

He lowered his tablet. “I don’t know. Just trying to get a better idea about where you were out there. I know where you were when I found you. Trying to see if I could retrace your steps.”

“I see.”

“So you turned right?” he asked again. “You’re pretty sure.”

She closed her eyes, trying to relive the moment again. “It was right,” she said, opening her eyes. “I remember now because I thought I’d seen a light coming from that direction.”

“A light? You mean like a headlight? A porch light? Streetlight?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was more like a flash—like the sun hitting something shiny.”

“Except it was raining.”

She shrugged meekly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You’ve given me something to go on here.”

“I have?” she asked, feeling ridiculously pleased.

“Sure.”

He did something then that had her heart actually leaping in her chest. He smiled. Not a full-out smile, but a small, funny little one that nearly knocked her socks off.

“Oh,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Good.”

He nodded, no trace of the smile showing now, and made another notation in the tablet. “Okay, good.” Looking up, he leaned back in the chair. “What does Logan mean?”

She sat up. “Logan? I don’t know. Why?”

“It doesn’t sound familiar, doesn’t ring any bells?”

Her eyes grew wide. “Is that my name?”

He glanced up from the tablet again. “I don’t know. You kept saying it over and over in the car last night.”

“Logan,” she repeated slowly, trying to tell if the name sounded familiar on her tongue. “Logan.”

“Well?”

She sank back against the pillows. Her head began throbbing again and she remembered what Dr. Martinez had said about forcing the memories.

“No,” she said with a tired sigh. “I don’t know what it means. It doesn’t sound familiar to me.” A sudden thought had her sitting up again. “But it could mean something, couldn’t it? I mean, maybe it’s a…a clue.”

“It’s something to look into,” he admitted, but it was obvious he wasn’t sharing her enthusiasm. With the flip of his wrist, he swung the tablet closed and rose to his feet. “I think that’s it for the time being. I’ll let you get back to your rest.” Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt, he pulled out a card. “If you think of anything else—anything, it doesn’t matter how small or unimportant it may seem—my number is right there. Give me call, day or night.”

Rain stared down at the card. Seeing his name printed neatly in bold black letters, she felt something tighten in her chest. “I will, thank you.”

“Did you have any questions for me?”

She thought for a moment, glancing up from the card. “Why Rain?”

For the first time he looked something less than controlled, as though the question had caught him off guard.

“It’s Navajo,” he mumbled, reaching for his hat. “An old legend. Rain Woman, born of the elements.” Holding his hat by the brim, he looked down at her. “You don’t like it?”

“I do like it,” she said, her voice feeling strangely tight in her throat. “I like it very much.”

“Good,” he murmured. There it was again, that small, funny little smile—there only for a moment, before disappearing again. “Anything else?”

She nodded. “What do you think happened out there in the desert? Why do you think I was out there?”

He looked at her for a moment, his black eyes devoid of any emotion, of any expression at all. It was as if she had asked him about the weather.

“At this point, I couldn’t even offer a guess,” he said in a low voice.

She was too disappointed to be angry, too frightened to argue. “I have to find out who I am, Sheriff,” she said, looking up at him and not bothering to hide the tears she felt stinging her eyes now. “I have to.”

“I know,” he said, taking a step closer to the bed. “And you can be damn sure I’m not going to rest until we do.”

His words were softly spoken, but full of intensity and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he meant every word. She knew in that moment that Sheriff Joe Mountain was going to solve the riddle of her past, was going to conquer the darkness and would bring her to the light again.

With a stiff little bow, he turned and headed for the door.

“Sheriff,” she called after him, bringing him to an abrupt halt. “Just one more thing.”

He turned around. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s right there in black and white,” Deputy Ryan Samsung said, pointing to the faxed report he set on the desk. “No matches. There’s been no one with the name of Logan matching the description of your Jane Doe reported missing.”

Joe stared down at the papers on the desk. The report had merely been a formality, confirming what his gut had been telling him from the beginning. This wasn’t a simple missing person’s case and it was going to take more than punching a few things into a computer to figure this out.

He had a sense for these things and his sense was that something more was going on here, something menacing and dark and nothing about it was going to be simple. Whatever had happened in the desert had been dramatic and devastating and it had not only changed Rain’s life, but his life, too.

“And you cross-referenced it with the State Department of Justice as well as the FBI?”

“Came up with nothing,” Ryan assured him. “Just like you said.”

“Well, it might have been nice to have been surprised for a change,” Joe admitted, picking up the faxed report and slipping it inside a large manila folder. “But at least now we can be sure.” He leaned back in his chair, glancing up at Ryan. “Did Gracie e-mail a description out to the newspapers in Sparks and in Reno?”

Ryan shook his head. “Gracie’s not here.”

Joe sat up. “What do you mean she’s not here? Where is she?”

Ryan shrugged as he started for the door. “I don’t know. I think she said something about a doctor’s appointment.”

That triggered a vague recollection in his brain and Joe breathed out a silent curse. Nothing had been the same around there since the young woman he’d hired to help out around the office had discovered she was pregnant. Files had piled up, faxes had gone unsent and the phones were ringing off the hook.

“Again? Didn’t she just have one?”

“Don’t ask me,” Ryan said, raising his hands in surrender. “The woman’s going to have a baby, who knows what goes on with that?”

“Then maybe you could e-mail that out.”

“Oh, no,” he said, reaching for his hat from a hook on the hat stand. “I don’t know anything about that Internet stuff.”

“It’s not Internet, it’s e-mail,” he explained. “It’s like typing a letter.”

“Don’t make no difference to me,” Ryan insisted, shaking his head. “I don’t mess with any of the cyber stuff.” He slipped his hat on over his shaggy black hair and turned back to Joe. “Besides, I’m heading across town. Those drivers from the old mine have been barreling down Wheeler Road again and when school lets out that place is just an accident lookin’ for a place to happen.”

“What if I pull rank on you?”

“You won’t,” Ryan said, his eyes all but disappearing as his smile grew wider. “Because you know I don’t know how to type.”

“You’ve got two fingers, don’t you?” Joe called after him as Ryan disappeared out the door and into the small parking lot outside.

He was annoyed, but not at Ryan. Not even at Gracie. He was angry at himself, angry that he was losing perspective and he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.

In all their official documents and queries, she was listed as Jane Doe, but she was Rain to everyone else. She was the woman who had stepped out of the wilds of a storm and took refuge in his arms, the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about, the woman he couldn’t get out of his mind.

He’d been the law in Mesa County for over a decade and he’d seen his share of crime and unrest during that time. He’d investigated cases that upset him, that made him mad. He’d even had cases he’d taken personally, but none of those compared to this. Rain was different. He’d known it the moment she’d looked at him.

She may not remember what had happened to her out there in the desert, but the memory of it had been there in her eyes. They’d had a harrowing, haunted look so clear and so frightening, it had sent a chill rattling through him.

He thought of that moment when she’d walked out of the gloom, when for a moment the clarity of the horror flashed like a beacon on her face. Something had passed between them then, something significant and profound. He’d not only seen the terror in her eyes, he had felt it and it had left him shaken.

He flipped the manila file closed and pushed himself away from the desk. He had to take a break, had to get away from this for a while. He was less than twenty-four hours into this investigation and already he could feel himself becoming lost, feel himself losing focus, losing touch.

Slowly he rose to his feet, heading out of his office toward the small break room just down the hall.

“Damn,” he cursed in a low voice as he rounded the corner and spotted the empty coffee carafe. No filing, no e-mail and now no coffee. He only hoped once Gracie had her baby and got back to work things would finally get back to normal.

Grumbling, he walked to the sink and filled the coffee carafe with water, poured it into the drip coffee-maker and filled the filter with fresh grounds. But he grew restless waiting for the coffee to brew and wandered back out through the hall and to the outer office.

He stopped at Gracie’s desk, looking at the computer. Reaching down, he tapped the mouse, bringing the screen to life, and called up the Internet messaging service. Maybe with a little caffeine running through his veins, he could give those e-mails a try. He was the sheriff and this was his office and like it or not, it was his responsibility to see to it that everything got done, no matter how small or how mundane—even if that meant he had to do it himself.

The truth of the matter was, this was his county, his piece of the planet and he had a stake in everything that went on in the sprawling two hundred miles of territory. When something went wrong or somebody got hurt, he took it personally.

And somebody had hurt Rain. They may not have stabbed her, or raped her or even beaten her up, but the pain on her face had been so great, it had managed to find its way to him, as well. He had felt it, just as sure and if he’d been the one abandoned. He had nothing to go on, no leads to pursue or clues to follow but somehow, someway he was going to find out who had injured her and why.

It may be his job to help her, but it was also the right thing to do, the only decent thing to do. The woman was alone in the world; she had no one to lean on, no one to calm and comfort her. She was the stuff legends were made of, the object of myth and lore. She was Rain Woman, born of the elements and christened by the rain. Like the tales from his ancestors, she had walked out of the desert, a mysterious woman with no past, no people and no one to protect her—and into his arms. It was not only his duty to help her, it was his destiny.

Reluctantly he sat down at the desk and slowly started composing the e-mail he wanted to send, but with his hunt-and-peck style on the keyboard, progress was slow and he soon grew restless. He wanted the information sent to the newspapers and media as soon as possible, but at this rate it was going to take forever.

He pushed away from the desk, stretching the stiffness in his arms and back. He needed something to help him, something to boost his sagging spirits and tense muscles. But just as he rose to go pour himself a fresh cup of coffee, the telephone rang.

“Sheriff Mountain,” he barked into the phone.

“Sheriff? It’s me, Gracie.”

Joe could hear the alarm in her voice. “Gracie, what’s the matter? You sound terrible.”

“Oh, Sheriff Mountain,” she sobbed through the wire. “Sheriff, I’m so scared. It’s my baby. The baby’s in trouble.”

“Trouble? Gracie, what are you talking about?”

He pressed the phone close, straining to hear through the sobs and tears. He made out something about tests and lab results, none of which meant much to him, but the culmination of them all meant complete bed rest for her for the remainder of her pregnancy.

“Jerry’s trying to find someone who can come in with me while he’s at work during the day,” she explained, stopping only long enough to blow her nose loudly. “I have to stay flat for at least the next twelve weeks. I can’t come back to work. What about my job? What about all my work?”

He could hear how overwhelmed she was and looked around at the reams of papers yet to be filed and felt a little overwhelmed himself.

“Don’t worry about your job,” he assured her. “It’ll be here whenever you get back—and we’ll get along just fine. You just concentrate on taking care of yourself and that baby.”