At Her Service. Maureen Child

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СКАЧАТЬ next to her hospital bed. It had been the worst news of her life. She couldn’t imagine how it could be worse this time.

      Daylight spilled through the large first-floor window. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, clouds hung in the pines. Past them, she could see more pine trees and what appeared to be rocky cliffs rising out of the rainy mist.

      She had no idea where she was. All she knew for certain was that she’d never seen this place before.

      She closed her eyes. Earlier she’d fought the bottomless sleep of the dead, thinking there was hope.

      Now she knew better and gladly welcomed oblivion.

      “Mrs. Collins?”

      She squeezed her eyes shut.

      “Mrs. Collins, I know you’re awake.”

      She slowly parted her eyelids to find the cop had walked around the bed and was now standing over her. She hadn’t heard him and suspected he’d wanted it that way.

      As she looked up into his face, the warm brown eyes startled her. They didn’t go with the hard leanness of his face.

      “I’m Shadow Lake Police Officer D.C. Walker. I need to ask you a few questions.”

      She tried to remain calm as she watched him take a small notebook from his breast pocket, pluck a pencil from behind his ear and pull the chair closer to her bed.

      He flipped to a page in the notebook and squinted down at it as if he couldn’t read his own writing. “Your name is Anna Collins?”

      She nodded, then realized her mistake. “No. Drake. It’s Anna Drake.”

      He frowned. “You told the doctor it was Collins and your in-car emergency service has the car’s primary driver listed as Anna Collins.” His attention went to her ring finger and the large diamond next to her gold wedding band.

      “I was Anna Collins. I’m only recently divorced. I just haven’t taken off the ring yet or changed my name on the car.” She felt her face flame and cringed at the way she sounded. Pathetic. And still wearing the ring. A woman unwilling to accept reality. That was her.

      The cop looked as if he would doubt anything she told him after this. “I understand your car went off the road last night and into the lake?”

      She felt a jolt. “Is that what happened?”

      “You don’t remember?”

      She started to shake her head but stopped herself. Any movement caused excruciating pain. She ran the tip of her finger along the scar from her forehead into her hair, then retraced the line as she had a habit of doing whenever she was trying to remember.

      “No, I do remember being in the lake.” She shuddered as she had a flash of memory—water rising over the hood of the Cadillac.

      He studied her, then asked, “Who was in the car with you?”

      She swallowed and straightened the covers. “No one.”

      “What about your son? You told the doctor your son was in the car with you.”

      Her throat closed. “I was confused. He wasn’t in the car.” She touched the old scar again then, realizing what she was doing, quickly brushed her bangs back down over it and curled her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking.

      “I just want to make sure you know what you’re saying. Ms. Drake?”

      She hadn’t been Anna Drake for almost ten years. Why had she insisted on taking her name back? She could no more go back to being the woman she’d been before she’d married Marc Collins than she could change the past.

      “My son wasn’t in the car with me.”

      “Tyler, right? You’re sure he wasn’t in the car?”

      “Yes. I told you I was confused earlier. I thought—” She turned her face away. “I was wrong.” Tears burned her eyes. “Please, I’m really tired.”

      He raked a hand through his hair. “Where were you going when you had your accident last night? Were you headed to Shadow Lake to visit someone?”

      She shook her head, the pain almost comforting compared to the fear that quaked through her. History was repeating itself. She couldn’t remember last night. Nothing.

      “I don’t know where I was going. I…I don’t remember.” She closed her eyes. “Please, I just need to be alone.”

      “Where is Marc Collins?”

      “I don’t know. I told you. We’re divorced.” She squeezed her eyes tighter, her fingers gripping the sheet until they ached. She heard the cop swear under his breath and could sense him still sitting there watching her. After a few moments, she heard him close his notebook. But he didn’t leave. Please, just go away.

      “Is there someone I can call? Family? A friend?”

      “No,” she said, without opening her eyes. “There is no one.”

      She waited until she heard the door close behind him before she let it out, the anguish, the tortured grief. Tyler. My baby. Oh God, Tyler.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      POLICE CHIEF ROB NASH bolted upright in the bed in an unfamiliar motel room, his clothes sweat-soaked to his skin and a cheap synthetic second-rate motel pillow clutched in both fists as if he was trying to strangle it.

      His heart raced as last night came back in a wave of nausea. Hands shaking, he threw the pillow across the room and fell back on the bed to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.

      It all came back like a swift kick to his gut. His cheating wife. The wild drive to Pilot’s Cove. The rain and darkness and falling-down-drunk pity party he’d thrown for himself.

      He’d awakened a motel clerk demanding a room sometime after four in the morning and been forced to show his badge to keep the clerk from calling the cops on him for disturbing the peace. Kind of like the run-in he’d had at the Past Time bar and liquor store where he’d gotten the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

      The memory made him as sick of the smell of fear and alcohol permeating the motel room.

      Nash had heard about men hitting bottom. He’d seen his share that were certainly on their way if not already there. He’d just never thought he’d be one of them as he reached for what was left of the Jack Daniel’s and plotted how to kill his wife and her lover.

      OFFICER WALKER OPENED the door to the doctors’ lounge to find Doc Brubaker nuking a frozen beef burrito. On the way in, he’d passed Sheila leaving. She’d gone off duty, leaving the elderly Connie Danvers at the nurses’ station monitoring the small hospital’s only patient.

      “I thought doctors ate better than that,” Walker said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

      Doc shrugged. “She told you?”

      He nodded. “She СКАЧАТЬ