Julie Miller - Unsanctioned Memories

They turned and headed for the locker room. “You think the fact that I’m spending extra time on the shooting range means I can’t run an investigation anymore?”

“No. I just don’t want to have to break in a new partner. I had a hell of a time training you.”

“Training me?” Sam twisted up a towel and flicked Virg in the backside before tossing it around his neck, catching the support beneath the gibe. “I love you, too, pal. I promise I won’t be stupid. If I give you my word, will that do?”

They shook hands like men. Then they shook hands in a goofy secret code that only two people who had been friends through the best and worst times of their lives could share.

“That’s all I needed to hear.” Virgil stopped at his locker and opened it. He pulled out a folded slip of paper, rolling it back and forth between his fingers and frowning as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “Because I got some information you’ll be interested in.”

Sam ran his tongue around the rim of his lips and tried not to betray the instant anticipation racing through his veins. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be pushing the regs, not you.”

“I know you’ve been accessing files you don’t have clearance for. Reading hospital records and police reports on rapes that match the MO in Kerry’s case.”

Sam’s jaw shook with the restraint it required to keep from snatching that paper from Virgil’s hands. “So far I’ve matched up four rape-murders with the same binding and strangulation marks, and the souvenir lock of hair cut from the scalp. Kerry here in Boston. One each in Dallas, New York and Miami.” He knew his sister’s case backward and forward. “The Bureau profiler and my gut tells me they were all victims of the same man. In each case the victim was dark-haired. She was single and successful, but she ended up in a bad part of town. She was kidnapped, tortured and ultimately raped. And then, as if that wasn’t enough…”

Sam closed his eyes in a futile effort to block the image of Kerry’s sweet round face bruised and frozen in death. He’d seen dead bodies before. But hers had unnerved him. She was his responsibility. Even as a full-grown woman she’d still been his baby sister. The sassy sweetheart he’d promised his father on his deathbed that he’d protect.

He’d failed.

Oh, God. Sam shook with the force of his emotions. Bile twisted in his gut and tried to poison the good memories he had left of his family. He’d failed. He tilted his head and swallowed hard, forcing down the gag reflex that convulsed throughout his body.

When he was in control of himself once more, he opened his eyes and looked deep into Virgil’s cryptic expression. “Did you locate another vic?” he asked.

“It’s not much. A rape in Chicago. Dark hair with a chunk of it cut off. That was enough to flag it for me. Listed as a Jane Doe.” Virgil handed the paper to Sam. “But there’s one key difference between this case and Kerry’s.”

“What’s that?” Sam unfolded the paper with impatient fingers and read the answer for himself. No. His heart thumped hard against the wall of his chest, trying to hope, trying to believe what his eyes were seeing. “Jane Doe survived the attack.”

In a flurry of movement, Sam removed his holster, peeled off his shirt and hurried toward the showers. A biting sense of urgency nipped at his heels, making every moment too long, too precious to waste. This was the best lead—the only lead—he’d had since Kerry’s murder nearly eight months ago.

An eyewitness.

If it was the same murderous son of a bitch who’d killed Kerry, this vic could ID him. Give him a name, a visual, a voice—anything that he could put in the profile and hunt down.

Virgil followed at a slower pace. “Should I tell the chief that you’ll be taking that bereavement leave now?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t want his partner to get caught in a lie, so he played along. They both knew what he had to do. “Tell Dixon I’m leaving tomorrow. Tonight, if I can get a flight.”

One way or another—sooner rather than later—he was going to track down this Miss Jane Doe.

One Month Later

Jessica first saw him from her porch, walking along the gravel country road, putting a determined distance between each step and the urban sprawl of Kansas City, Missouri. She watched him as he approached the crossroad that divided her property and the Kent estate.

The shaggy black German shepherd mix that lay at her feet shifted his big, rangy body to a sitting position beside her, eyeing the stranger. The dog’s alert curiosity matched her own, and a ripple of uneasiness cascaded down her spine. Trouble was headed their way.

“What do you think, Harry?” she asked, trusting the dog’s judgment and companionship more than she trusted most people’s.

The front porch ran the full length of her one-and-a-half-story log cabin house, situated on the top of a hill. The high-school boy she’d hired for odd jobs around the shop and acreage had just driven home to his parents’ farm for dinner, and the dust kicked up by his speeding truck never even slowed the man’s stride. Rendered ghostlike until the curtain of dust settled, he just kept coming, moving toward the iron gates of her property with a sense of purpose that had her shifting back half a step.

Thrilling anticipation as much as cautious fear revved in her veins and gathered speed as the blood raced from her heart into her tingling extremities. Her lips parted to accommodate the quicker pace of suddenly shallow breaths.

Was he the one? Was he finally coming for her?

Nothing about him seemed familiar. And yet, how could she know?

The dog stood and circled her legs, antsy about her next command. Would she order him to run down the stranger? Stay and protect? Attack?

Jessica shook her head, answering the dog’s unspoken questions. “I don’t like the looks of him, either.”

She slipped back another step, into the shadow of a wooden post. She needed more time to think, more time to make a decision. She needed to remember.

But he just kept coming.

The sun hung low in the western sky, not yet at the point on the horizon that would color the Indian-summer clouds in a palette of orange, pink and gold. Silhouetted against the sun, she could see he was a big man. The pack he carried on his back seemed to hold a whole life’s worth of belongings, from the faded denim jacket tied at the top to the sleeping bag that hit his hips. Yet he carried it all with an easy posture and resolute stride that said he could carry the weight of the world on those broad shoulders. And had.

Jessica reached down and scratched Harry behind the ears, catching up a handful of his longish black coat, which reflected more of his wolfhound heritage than his police dog ancestry. She needed the comfort of contact with another living creature to forestall the sense of impending doom that made her chest seize up. Had she felt this same fear before? Reacted this same way? Had she gone numb with shock like this? Choked on her helpless anger?

“Turn the corner,” she coaxed the stranger beneath her breath. “Walk on by.”

He could turn at the crossroads at the foot of the hill and head east. But long before he neared the brick posts and wood rail fence that surrounded her land, she knew he wasn’t going to turn. He would come right through the gate, saunter up her long gravel driveway and invite himself up to the house.

And he didn’t look like the type of man who’d hiked out into the countryside southeast of Kansas City just to buy antiques at her shop. He paused only to read the carved wooden sign, Log Cabin Antiques. He must have read the hours, knew she’d just closed at six.