Forget Me Not: A Novel (Crossroads Crisis Center) Read online

  “You’re panicking, not thinking.”

  “Oh, I’m thinking plenty.” Harry paced between the trash drum at the base of the pier and the front end of the Jag. “I’m thinking I signed on for murder the first time, and we did it.” He stopped and stared. “I’m thinking I still ain’t been paid. Why should I do anyone else for free?” He screwed the cap back on the tube of ointment and dumped it into his shirt pocket. “But mostly I’m thinking I ain’t taking no needle.” He kicked the drum. “So don’t tell me I ain’t thinking.”

  “Fine, but you’re omitting a couple important things.” Edward shot his partner a level look. “We messed up.”

  “Chessman messed up. He tagged her and we did his tag. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Yes, we did,” Edward countered. “Chessman blew it for us, that’s true. But we didn’t verify it ourselves. And, like you said, we can link him to that murder. We put ourselves in this position, and unless we want to keep running from him, we need to give him a reason to keep us alive.”

  Harry shook his head. “He’ll come after us anyway. Her disappearing made us low priority, that’s all. As soon as they found her, we were right back on top of his priority list and you know it.”

  Edward agreed. His finding her had been simple. Her hotshot financial advisor recorded the beach house deed—stupid mistake for a man supposed to be a brainiac. It led Edward straight to him. He intercepted the guy’s phone calls for a while, and sure enough, she called in. And if Edward hadn’t had to strain to find her, he’d bet Harry’s hide Chessman and that Johnson jerk hadn’t had to strain either. “Our only hope was to neutralize her before he could. That would move us off Chessman’s list. No priority.”

  “Neutralize her? Then why didn’t we do it?”

  Tempted, Edward didn’t answer.

  “Leaving her alive ain’t neutralizing her, Edward.”

  “It will be. She’ll disappear again.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  “But what if she doesn’t?” Harry insisted.

  Anger rose in Edward like the water rose on the shore. “I said, she will.”

  “All right then,” Harry said in a way that proved it wasn’t all right at all. “But why are we risking it?”

  “Because I said so.” He slung down a raised hand. “Now drop it.”

  Harry frowned but didn’t ask again.

  Good. Because Edward stood dangerously close to pushing back. Hard. He stared out on the water, drank in the steady pitch of the waves hitting the shore.

  Harry paced. “No. Not this time. I can’t do it. My neck’s on the chopping block too.” He stopped just outside of striking distance. “We need to kill her, man. Not for Chessman, for us.”

  “For the last time, Harry, she will disappear again. She’s smart and she doesn’t want to wake up dead, okay?”

  “You still ain’t hearing me. She can identify us. That makes this not just about her. It’s about Chessman and Johnson too. They’ll know it and get us tossed in jail and executed for it. No, no way. Not for her or for Chessman or Johnson.”

  “Which is why we brought her to Florida and planted the cross and Crossroads card on her. Benjamin Brandt would have to be comatose not to put the two cases together. We got her here for that, remember?”

  “Yeah. His castle in Scotland and all that.”

  “Which is good for her—if she’s sent there, Chessman will keep her first priority. But we don’t have a castle or anywhere else to hide, and no one is going to help us.”

  “I get that, but—”

  Edward sighed. “Unless we stick to the plan to protect ourselves, we’ve got two choices. The needle or a bullet.” Edward paused for impact. “That’s it, Harry. There aren’t any more. So which one do you want?”

  Harry stiffened, staring at Edward a long moment. “Put that way, I guess I’ll stick with the plan.”

  “Yeah.” Edward parked his hands low on his hips. “I guess you will.”

  5

  Ben, it’s Peggy.”

  Benjamin Brandt rolled over and checked the bedside clock.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you not to call people before seven, especially on Sunday morning?”

  “I didn’t notice the time. We had a long night.”

  So had he. He hadn’t gotten home from Gregory’s dinner party until after two o’clock. “What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a situation at the crisis center—”

  Ben rolled flat on his back and stared at the fleur-de-lis design in his recessed bedroom ceiling. Peggy knew only too well he didn’t get involved at the center. Ever. “Peg—”

  “You don’t understand,” she said before he could reprimand her on the subject for the millionth time.

  She hung on to this crazy idea that if she could get him back involved at the center, he’d get right with God.

  It wasn’t happening.

  He’d been right with God. His wife had been right with God. They had been raising their son to be right with God. And she and their son had been murdered, and their killer had gotten away—scot-free.

  How did a man—why would a man in his position—want to get right with God? What kind of God let that happen to Susan and Christopher? Did the God Ben once fervently believed in even exist?

  “I know you don’t counsel or get involved in any way anymore, Ben. But this time, you are involved. It’s different.”

  Every time Peggy pulled this “you are involved,” it was always different—a different sick, twisted extortion scheme. People would do anything for money, including pretend to have important information on a dead woman and child.

  “I’m not going through this again.” He swiped at his sleep-ridden eyes. Bitterness roiled in his throat, tasted as sour as brine on his tongue. Once he had believed—had known—had felt connected and protected. Once he had felt loved. Now, he just felt … forgotten.

  “It is different, Ben.”

  “I’m hanging up now.” He moved the receiver away from his ear.

  “It’s about Susan!” Peggy shouted, her voice carrying.

  Ben stilled, his arm in midair. Chills rippled through his body, knotted his muscles, and tightened his chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “Clyde Parker brought a woman into the center. She’d been carjacked and beaten and left for dead. Obviously, she wasn’t. She can’t remember who she is, but the two men who abducted her called her Susan. And she found a card for the center in her pocket—”

  The grip on his chest cinched tighter. A few similarities to Susan’s case, but … “All of which means—what? Nothing,” he added before Peggy could answer. “It’s a common name and people take those cards by the handfuls.”

  “They don’t handwrite ‘Susan’ on the back of them and stuff them into the pocket of a woman who looks remarkably like her.”

  She looks like Susan?

  That got Ben’s attention, though it too had happened before, just over a year ago. The woman—the fourth trying to extort money from him by pretending to have information on Susan’s case—turned out to be well intentioned but crazy as a loon. She thought she had special powers and could save Ben.

  He grunted. What was left to save? He’d failed as a husband, not protecting his wife; as a father, not protecting his son; as a man, not finding the killers he failed to protect them from. Who wanted to be saved? Saved for what? For whom? He could do nothing to bring them back, and without them, he had nothing. He was nothing …

  “Ben, are you still there?”

  His eyes burned. Survivor’s guilt. That’s what Harvey Talbot had called it. The good doctor said Ben needed to forgive himself; what happened wasn’t his fault.

  But Ben was responsible. He hadn’t pulled the trigger or fired the shots that killed his family, but he’d promised to love, honor, and protect. He made vows, and unlike Harvey, who set aside his vows in a divorce, Ben had been determined to keep his forever.

/>   Being married to Susan had been a privilege, keeping those vows, his joy in life. Then he failed her and his son and he lost them both. Lost everything that most mattered to him. He wasn’t worthy of forgiveness.

  If he found their killers, then maybe he could bear to go on living. That alone kept him going, made it possible to drag himself out of bed every morning and into bed every night without wishing for the permanent escape of oblivion.

  He’d been forgotten, but he hadn’t forgotten Susan and Christopher. He owed it to them never to forget, so he kept getting up and going to bed and spending all his time in between trying to catch their killers.

  Yet he had to admit, in the dead of night when he was staring at his bedroom ceiling in the darkness, that the three years without success had driven him to the breaking point. How much longer could he bear living with his failures?

  One minute at a time.

  He repeated the litany in his mind. When the nightmare started, he’d worked to get through one day, but as time dragged on and despair grew, he’d gone down to an hour. More time passed, more despair led to hopelessness, and all he could stand was a minute. Without so much as a single solid lead, how much longer would it take to reduce him to fighting to keep going one second at a time?

  “Ben?” Peggy sounded uncertain if he was still on the line.

  “I’m here.” He swallowed around a lump. “Where’s the woman now?” No way could he make himself call her Susan.

  “Here. She wasn’t sexually violated, but she was battered and has a head injury. Lisa Harper ran some tests to be safe. So far everything’s come back okay.”

  “Except she can’t remember who she is. And she just so happens to look like my dead wife, and she just so happens to call herself by my dead wife’s name.” Ben sighed, soul weary.

  She was another one out for money. Thanks, Uncle Rudard.

  When Christopher was three, Ben had inherited more money than he could spend in several lifetimes from his uncle Rudard, an Englishman he’d never met who had amassed a fortune but was spiritually bankrupt. He’d charged Ben, because of his faith, to spend the money to do good things.

  Those good things took form in Crossroads Crisis Center, Susan’s dream.

  Yet with money’s perks came its liabilities and, according to police, these types of scams happened all the time to people of means.

  “This is nothing new, Peggy.”

  “No, this has never happened. Trust me, Ben. This woman is different. You haven’t seen her or talked to her, or you’d know it. Her injuries are consistent with her claims, and Lisa is convinced the woman is legitimate—and not at all like the one last year. She’s sane.”

  Dr. Lisa Harper was an intern. Gifted, but on this, considering the situation, Ben wanted the most expertise and experience available. “What does Harvey say?” Dr. Harvey Talbot was the senior psychologist at the center. A former military officer, devoted to his job, and uncannily shrewd at detecting impostors.

  “He did the first psych interview with Lisa right after they determined Susan was physically okay. Preliminary finding is Dissociative Fugue, but he wants to run more tests.”

  Ben glanced from the ceiling to the wall, plucked at the edge of the covers. “Temporary amnesia due to head injury or stress.”

  Peggy’s lip smack carried through the phone like static. “Lord knows the poor woman’s suffered both.”

  Ben’s heart suffered a tug. He shunned it, refused to allow this stranger’s situation to tap into his compassion. He would not, could not, be touched. He had nothing left to touch. “And you know this, of course, because she says so.”

  “Yes, and because between the hospital and the center I’ve been at this for nearly a decade, and I can read liars at fifty paces. Granted, Harvey is better at it—and when you were crisis counseling, you were good too—but I’m not a rookie and I’m no slouch. This woman isn’t a liar and she’s not crazy,” Peggy insisted. “I also took a statement from Clyde. He found her in the woods, beaten and bloody. She couldn’t even stand up on her own.”

  “Who did you say found her?”

  “Clyde Parker.”

  A fuzzy image formed in Ben’s mind. He could have grasped it but sensed Susan associated with it so he buried it instead. “Don’t know him.”

  “Oh, please.” Peggy had no association reservations.

  Heat rushed to Ben’s face. “Sorry, I can’t quite place him.”

  “Well, you could if you’d get yourself back to church. He sat in the pew in front of you and Susan for a couple years, Ben.”

  The mental image snapped into sharp focus. “The older guy.” The widower he and Susan had visited after his wife passed. A slow, torturous death from cancer. Heartless disease.

  “Yes. The one who wouldn’t lie if his life depended on it.”

  Ben remembered Clyde Parker only too well, and Peggy knew it. “Of course.” Ben gave in, hoping she’d be graceful about it. “So why are you calling me?”

  “Because she looks like Susan. They called her Susan. The card, and—”

  “All right. All right.” He caved, though not graciously. Grace was beyond him. “Where was she abducted?” She remembered she’d been carjacked, so obviously she wasn’t suffering a total memory loss.

  “She doesn’t remember.”

  “Convenient.” Another scam.

  “Not really.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you ever not known who you were or had your life be a mystery to you?” Peggy asked. “It’s many things, arouses a riot of emotions, Ben, but nothing about it is convenient.”

  Shame burned through him. He had no right to be cold and callous. No matter what he’d been through or lost, this woman could be the real thing. Her experience and injuries could be real too. It was possible. Not probable, but possible. And until he knew otherwise, he should at least be civil. Well, as close to civil as a cynical man could get.

  “You’re right, of course. But she’s claiming to be Susan.”

  “Not exactly. According to Mel, when the woman arrived, she wasn’t claiming to be anyone. She was asking if anyone knew her—because of the card. Then she saw Susan’s painting and things changed.”

  His heart twisted. “Do they resemble each other that much?”

  “Honestly, with all the bruises and swelling it’s hard to tell. But she must think so. Even with my telling her I saw Susan at the crime scene and in her—um, after she passed, the woman still doubted she wasn’t Susan.” Peggy paused, then added, “I understand it, Ben. She believes what she’s seeing with her own eyes, and what she sees is that she’s Susan.”

  “Susan is dead, and we both know it.” The truth hollowed his chest, and its bleak emptiness stretched and filled every crevice, smothering everything good.

  “Yes, but this isn’t about what we know. It’s about this woman and what she knows. And I have to say, there’s too much odd in so many similarities. We can’t just blow this off. We know that too.”

  Peggy had one of her funny feelings. She didn’t have to say it; she’d hinted, and after three years of experience with her, that hint was enough. Maybe the woman wasn’t crazy or a con artist. Maybe she could provide the one piece of evidence or information that would lead him to Susan and Christopher’s killers.

  Don’t dare to hope it, Ben. Don’t dare.

  He couldn’t, wouldn’t. But neither could he close that door without looking through it. “When Harvey’s finished, conference this.” Ben made a judgment call he could tolerate. “I want to see her myself.”

  “Okay. Good. It’ll be probably another half hour. I’ve given Detective Jeff Meyers the report, but he’s waiting for the docs to finish to see her himself.”

  “She’s agreed to talk with him?”

  “The docs haven’t agreed to it yet. Right now, he’s just asking for an eyes-on look.”

  “Fine, I’ll wait for that. I want Harvey and Lisa to sit in.”

  “You’re coming in to
the center?” Surprise riddled her tone.

  “No. Computer conference.”

  “You could come down. Frankly, I could use the help. There’s been a terrorist attack at a mall in Mobile. We nearly had a catastrophe that would rival 9/11. Fortunately, someone at Homeland Security put the pieces together, and they nearly got the mall evacuated in time. Minimal casualties but a lot of shaken-up people.”

  “Terrorist attack?”

  “It’s all over the news. Some group called NINA is taking responsibility,” Peggy said. “Emergency Management is asking us for help. They’re short on counselors.”

  “Don’t even ask.” He didn’t counsel anymore. He didn’t go to the center anymore. Not since Susan and Christopher …

  “Computer conference it is, then.” Peggy sighed. “I’ll set it up.”

  Somewhere deep inside, the hope that this would lead to something that revealed the truth flickered to life.

  Ben snuffed it out.

  He’d follow through. He’d always follow through. But his days of being suckered into hoping he wouldn’t just hit another dead end were over.

  He cradled the phone and pressed his hands over his eyes. A man could only survive that hard a fall so many times.

  By nine thirty Sunday morning, the adrenaline surge that kept Susan’s pain minimal subsided. Every conceivable part of her body ached. But at least she had the comfort of knowing she suffered no permanent physical damage—and, while being attacked had been a violation, she was spared that type of violation women most fear.

  She felt safe at the crisis center; at least, she had until Dr. Harper and Dr. Talbot and Peggy Crane brought her into this sterile conference room and some guy no one bothered to introduce appeared on a computer screen placed at the far end of the long table. He came out glaring at her, and he still hadn’t stopped.

  He appeared to be in his early thirties, and he was indisputably a handsome man with black hair, gray eyes, and a strong, angular face that was far more interesting than perfect. The only thing that wrecked his appeal was the bitterness etched into its every line.