Loe raamatut: «Marriage: Classified»

Chapter One

The scream woke her.

It sounded muffled at first, as though she were wearing protective earmuffs, as she did on the firing range. But then it became more intense. Shrill. It penetrated through to her bones, and made her shudder.

She opened her eyes. Was that a shadow disappearing through the far door? She blinked and it was gone.

The scream sounded again. She had to turn her head to locate its source. The movement was an effort…and it hurt! She gasped out loud at the terrible pain.

A woman stood there. She wore a light blue dress that appeared to be a uniform. She held towels in her arms.

At least she had stopped screaming. Now the woman just stood there, her face a ghastly shade of white, staring. And then she mumbled something and ran out the door.

What was happening? Where was she? A bedroom—but whose? She tried to sit up, but a wave of pain and nausea made her stop. She moaned, holding her head. Why did it hurt so much?

She smelled something, then—ugly and metallic and familiar. Blood. Her blood? She pulled her hand away from her head. It was sticky. Red. She was bleeding. She swallowed a rising wave of panic, took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. Audibly.

She would be fine. She had to be.

But the odor…it was so strong. Whimpering, she forced herself—slowly, carefully, painfully—to sit up. She leaned backward on her elbows, unable to pull herself totally erect. The effort was simply too much.

Again she forced open her eyes. Only then did she notice what she was wearing: a gown. White, lacy, a fairy tale…bridal gown.

A bridal gown?

The fairy tale had clearly gone sour, for the white was stained red. Blood. A lot of it.

Hers? She didn’t think so; only the side of her head hurt, and blood from a head wound would not have gotten to the front of her skirt that way.

But if not hers, then whose?

She sat higher and pulled her legs under her. The movement was excruciating.

She saw the source of the blood then. Probably also the cause of the woman’s screams.

Beside her, on the floor, lay a man. His clothing, too, was formal: a tuxedo, or so she thought. It was hard to tell, for he was covered in blood. His hair was gray, she noticed that, for his face was only a few shades lighter. His eyes were open. He stared sightlessly toward the ceiling.

“Are you all right?” She heard the hysteria in her voice, even as she realized the absurdity of her question. The man beside her, whoever he was, was clearly dead.

JORDAN DAWES didn’t wait for the hotel elevator. He didn’t wait to see if anyone followed him. He ran down the musty-smelling stairway, taking the steps three and four at a time. He thought he heard other rushing footfalls behind him, but it didn’t matter. He continued to run.

The call had come in on the hotel security radio. A maid had found a couple of bodies in a room on the third floor. Security had called the police.

They hadn’t had far to call. Nearly the entire police force of Santa Gregoria, California, was on the hotel’s top floor, celebrating a wedding.

He reached the third floor and shoved open the door to the hallway. Which room was it?

A maid stood at the end of the hall, sobbing hysterically. She was being comforted by another uniformed woman.

“Where?” Jordan demanded.

The woman pointed with a shaky finger. “Room Three thirty-s-seven,” she stammered.

The door was slightly ajar. Jordan automatically grabbed his 9 mm Beretta from its holster beneath his formal black coat, held it primed and ready with the barrel pointed upward, and kicked open the door. The only response was silence.

He carefully edged around the door frame, alert, ready to defend himself if necessary. Ready for whatever might be waiting…or so he thought.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he found. “Sara!” he exclaimed. “Casper. What the—damn!”

On the floor, covered in blood, lay the obviously lifeless body of Casper Shepard, Chief of Police of Santa Gregoria. Jordan nevertheless bent to check his carotid pulse. There was none. He scowled in helpless rage.

Beside Casper sat his daughter, Sara. She was trembling. Her head was bowed. Her white wedding gown was stained with blood.

“Why did you leave the reception?” Jordan demanded as he reached her side and knelt, ignoring the stiffness of his tuxedo trousers. “Tell me what happened here.” He knew, of course. He just hadn’t expected anything so soon. And certainly not here. He was afraid to take Sara into his arms. Was she injured?

“I don’t know,” was her only reply to his questions. Tears cascaded down cheeks as smooth as the finest porcelain. Their paleness contrasted starkly with the lovely raven color of her upswept hair. Her lips—full, pink lips that had smiled at him so teasingly only a short while earlier—trembled as her white teeth gnawed at them nervously.

“Are you hurt?” Jordan carefully touched her arms, her legs, trying to determine if any of the blood was hers or if it all came from her father.

“My head,” she said.

He took her gracefully tapered, trembling chin in his hand and gently turned her head to the side. Only then did he see the ugly red seeping against the blackness of her hair. He sucked in a breath.

He noticed from the corner of his eye that they were no longer alone in the room. Others from the wedding party, members of the Santa Gregoria police force, had joined them. “Get the medics here right away!” Jordan demanded. He turned back to Sara. “We’ll get you help right away…sweetheart.” He glanced at June Roehmer, a policewoman who knelt on the floor on Sara’s other side.

“Has she said anything?” June asked as though Sara wasn’t even there. “Did she tell you what happened?”

“Not yet, but she was just about to. Weren’t you, honey?”

“Honey?” Sara blinked her enormous, soulful hazel eyes at Jordan. “Is that…is that my name?”

He stared at her. And then he stifled a smile. “No, it’s Sara.” He wanted to throw his arms around her, even laugh—though without mirth. She had to be the smartest woman Jordan had ever met. “You don’t remember your name? How about what happened here?” He made a point of asking in front of June. If Sara gave the right answer, word would get around: she didn’t recall who had killed Casper. Had hit her. Had most likely run away when the maid interrupted—but who probably had every intention of silencing the sole living witness, Sara.

But if Sara pretended she didn’t remember, it would buy them time. The killer wouldn’t feel compelled to act quite so fast. They could set up a trap—another trap.

He wanted to kiss Sara. He’d already discovered that she’d grown into a woman who was both beautiful and as sexy as sin. Now he knew she was brilliant, too. Struck hard on the head and she still managed to come up with a scheme on the spur of the moment.

He looked at her. She was also a darned good actress. The pensiveness that drew her smooth forehead into a mass of wrinkles segued into a wide-eyed look of shock. “I…No,” she said. “I don’t remember anything.” And then she burst into tears.

EVERYTHING AROUND HER became a horrifying jumble.

Sara—that was her name, wasn’t it?

Why couldn’t she remember?

Her head hurt….

The man who had joined her was kind and handsome and formally dressed. “Who are you?” she asked, desperate for any kind of knowledge.

“Jordan Dawes,” he replied in a tone that implied she should know.

“But who—” she began just as three men in white outfits arrived, carrying all sorts of frightening equipment she couldn’t identify.

“Check her over first,” Jordan commanded the Emergency Medical Technicians. Kneeling at her side, he blocked her line of sight from the rest of the room. “There’s nothing you can do for him.” He nodded in the direction she couldn’t see.

She knew who “him” referred to—the bleeding man on the floor beside her. Shouldn’t she know who he was?

The EMTs put her on a gurney and wheeled her through some halls, down an elevator and out a door. There was an IV in her arm.

The handsome man with the slight Southern accent stayed with her in the ambulance. She was still wearing the bloody wedding gown. Why? She shook nearly uncontrollably from fear.

Jordan held her hand. “It’ll be all right, Sara,” he said.

But how could anything be all right? She couldn’t remember—

“Please ask them to turn off the siren,” she begged as its shrieking sliced into her aching head. He obliged. Every bump and turn the ambulance made aggravated the pounding pain in her head.

At the Santa Gregoria Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, she was whisked off almost immediately for a CAT scan. When they brought her back to the emergency room, Jordan was waiting. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked the doctor assigned to her, a young resident with sleepy eyes.

“The CAT scan didn’t show any bleeding inside her brain, so it’s probably a memory loss brought on by the trauma of the blow to her head…and what she witnessed.”

What she witnessed. She didn’t recall. Had she seen who had struck the poor man on the floor…the decedent?

Decedent. Why had that word come to mind?

More examinations, more questions. All she wanted to do was to sleep, but they wouldn’t allow it.

Much, much later, they put her in a hospital room. Once the nurses had gotten her situated, she lay in the bed, her eyes wide open, and stared at the ugly, sterile room.

“Sara,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the two short syllables. Her name was Sara.

Why hadn’t she been able to remember?

Oh, Lord, why couldn’t she remember anything? Anxiety welled up in her once more.

Lying beneath starched white sheets, she wore a skimpy green gown, tied in the back—a ludicrous contrast to the lovely wedding gown she had been wearing earlier.

Wedding gown. There was something about it she should know…. Her shaking grew more pronounced. Why couldn’t she remember? She swallowed a sob. She wouldn’t cry, at least. She was a brave woman…at least she hoped so. And crying would not bring back her memory.

Everything would come to her, and soon. It had to.

But thinking hard didn’t resurrect any memories. All it did was intensify the horrible, pounding ache at the side of her head. She bit her bottom lip, determined not to ring the call button looped over the side rail of her bed for the nurse. She didn’t need medication to muddy her mind further.

Were there any drugs that would make her memory return?

Jordan had reassured her that it was all right to take something for the pain. He had seemed so caring, so attentive…but she couldn’t remember anything about him.

“Sara, are you awake?”

She felt as though she had conjured Jordan from thin air, for there he was, standing in the doorway. He hadn’t changed clothes, although he no longer looked so amazingly suave and urbane in his tuxedo. Now, the jacket and bow tie were gone and the top buttons of the starched white shirt were undone.

Earlier, his light brown hair had been parted and combed down. Now, it was brushed back from his face, revealing a high, broad forehead. She couldn’t be certain of the shade of his eyes beneath his jutting brows, but she had a slight recollection that they were a deep, dark blue, the color of blackberries ripened in the sun.

How did she know that?

“How are you feeling?” he asked. His stride, as he crossed the sparsely furnished room, was brisk and certain, as though he knew she would welcome him. And she did.

He had been the only constant in the turmoil of the short lifetime that she remembered. In fact, she smiled at seeing him.

“I—I’m okay,” she lied.

“Does your head hurt?” His deep, slow voice was soft with apparent concern. He stood at the edge of the bed and touched her cheek. His hand was cool, as though the hospital air conditioning had chilled it. He gently moved her face so he could look at the area where she had been struck—for she knew now that the injury to her head had been from a very hard blow. Of course, he couldn’t see much; the area was bandaged.

“It hurts some,” she admitted. But she hastily added, “I can take it, though.”

“Of course you can.” He smiled at her. Why did she have the sense that this was a rare occurrence, that she had seldom seen him smile? Maybe it was because she could see, with him still standing so close beside her, that there was no humor at all in his dark blue eyes. They appeared almost blank, as though he allowed no emotion at all to reflect from his soul to the world. “But there’s no need for you to suffer. If you want, I’ll have the nurse bring something for you in a minute, before I leave.”

“Please don’t go.” Panic washed over her again, so intense that she felt she could dig her fingernails into it.

Her fingernails. Shaking, she glanced at her own hands. Her nails were short and neatly rounded. She wore a light rose polish on them. Polish? It didn’t feel right. Maybe she had polished them because she had been dressed up. In a wedding gown…And on her left hand was a gold band. Was she married? That didn’t feel right either, but—

“You need some sleep, Sara,” Jordan said soothingly, interrupting her strange train of thought.

“I—I don’t want to sleep!” She knew she sounded almost hysterical. “Please stay here.”

Why had she said that? She wanted him to leave…didn’t she? She needed time to herself. To think. To remember.

But to lose the one fragile thread to her life, this man who had been there for her—

“I’ll be here until you fall asleep, Sara. I promise. And there will be two uniformed police officers guarding your room from the hall. You’ll be fine.” He sat beside her on the bed, and she felt the mattress sag with his weight. He took her hands. His were large, his fingers thick and rounded, his nails blunt. She stared at them, not willing to meet his eyes.

But then he bent down and kissed her forehead. Shocked, she stared at him.

“Oh, Sara.” He shook his head slowly. How had she thought she’d seen no emotion in his eyes? They looked abysmally sad. “Is this an act? It’s okay to tell the truth. You can trust me.”

“An act?” She didn’t understand at first. And although he had shown a great deal of concern toward her, how did she really know she could trust him?

Someone had been killed, in the same room as she’d been injured.

Jordan had been the first, beside the maid, to come in.

Of course, he had been nothing but kind to her, for as long as she could remember.

Yes, but that was only a few hours, she reminded herself ironically.

In any event, she didn’t see any downside in telling him the truth. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I don’t remember anything.” To her horror, her voice broke.

He studied her for a moment, and she wanted to shrink from his intense gaze. She didn’t, though. She pulled her hands away and forced herself to sit up just a little straighter.

He finally said, “All right. I’ll assume it’s real, for now at least. And if so, there are some things you should know.” He sighed. “But most will keep until tomorrow. We’ll talk then about how long it will take to get your memory back. We need for you to remember what happened.”

“To catch whoever did it?”

He nodded, and she had a feeling that there was a lot hinging on solving this crime.

Solving the crime…why did that seem so crucial to her? The idea seemed—well, familiar. But she couldn’t remember why.

“We have to catch the murderer,” she said out loud.

“That’s for certain,” he said grimly.

Suddenly questions bubbled up inside Sara, insisting on spilling out. She blurted the first. “Who was the man who died?” She knew, somehow, that the answer was vital.

“If you really don’t remember, then this isn’t the time to get into that.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Tomorrow, we’ll—”

“Tell me now,” she insisted.

“But—”

“Please.” She steeled herself, realizing, after his dissembling, that what she would hear would be painful.

“He was your father, Sara.” The man gathered her into his arms while she stiffened in shock. “He was Casper Shepard, Chief of Police of Santa Gregoria.”

“No-oo—” Sara heard her own keening as though it were issued from someone else. Her father? Even seeing him on the floor that way, lifeless, she hadn’t remembered him. Still couldn’t. But the ugliness of having lost him, coupled with her inability to recall, finally drove her into a frenzy of emotion. She tried to push against the strong, hard chest of the man who still held her. She wanted to stand. To run…somewhere. Anywhere.

“I’m so sorry,” the man whispered in her ear, his accent slightly more pronounced with emotion. “It was partly my—Never mind. I’ll find the murdering SOB.” The man who held her seemed as upset as she, and she pulled back. She stared at him.

Despite the hardness that turned his deep blue eyes to steel, his hollow cheeks were damp.

“You cared about him, too,” she said brokenly.

“Yes. I cared about him. And I care about you. Sara. Do you remember yet who I am?”

She hated to admit it—especially since she believed that for her to tell him the truth would hurt him. And though he had doubted her veracity, she didn’t want to hurt him. He appeared to be hurting more than enough already.

But even if she lied, it was not a lie she could sustain. She couldn’t answer the simplest question about him, such as where he worked or lived.

And so she said, “I’m sorry. I truly am. But, no, I don’t.”

“My name is Jordan Dawes. Yours is Sara Shepard Dawes. We were married today, Sara—just before you were hit on the head and your father was killed.”