Private Eye Protector. Shirlee McCoy

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СКАЧАТЬ name speared through the darkness, and she jerked back to the room, the endless mechanized beeping.

      The pain.

      Overwhelming, mind-searing pain. Cold tiles seeped through cotton and chilled her to the bone. On the floor, but she didn’t know how she’d gotten there.

      Footsteps sounded on tile. Close. Coming closer.

      The man returning?

      She struggled to her hands and knees.

      Get up.

      Find Emma.

      Hurry.

      But, her movements were sluggish and uncoordinated, her efforts futile.

      “Rayne? What are you doing?” A voice drifted into the darkness, light splashing across the floor, splashing into her eyes and blinding her, making her turn her head to the side, away from the glare.

      She blinked, focused.

      Boot-clad feet just inches away.

      Hands wrapped around her waist, eased her to her feet.

      Warm breath against her cheek, and she was being lifted off the ground, the machine beeping, her ear pressed against something warm and solid.

      She let her eyes slide shut, relaxing against the touch that felt so safe.

      Someone brushed strands of hair from her cheek.

      Her brother or father?

      Michael?

      Couldn’t be Michael. She’d given back the ring, broken things off.

      “Dad? Jonas?” She wanted to open her eyes, tried to open them, but they felt so heavy.

      “Chance.”

      She forced her eyes open, looked into a stranger’s face.

      Dark hair, high cheekbones, pale eyes.

      She knew those eyes.

      Didn’t she?

      “Who are you?”

      “Chance Richardson.” He frowned, pressed a button on the bed rail. “We work for the same company. You rent an apartment from my mother. Don’t you remember?”

      Did she remember?

      She tried to pull the information from her mind, found nothing but emptiness and a cold, hard kernel of fear. “I live in Arizona. I work for a women’s shelter in Phoenix.”

      “Do you know what day it is, Rayne?” He looked into her eyes, searching for something, but she had nothing to give. His eyes shimmered blue or green or gray, and she was sure she’d looked in them before.

      When?

      Where?

      “I … No.”

      “Do you know what city you’re in?”

      A memory surfaced. Packing the U-Haul, strapping Emma into her car seat, leaving everything she knew to take a new job in a new place. “I remember packing to leave. That’s it.”

      “Do you know where you are?” He pressed the button on the bed rail again, and she knew he was summoning a nurse. A nurse couldn’t help, though. All that could help was remembering, and that seemed to be impossible.

      “The hospital.”

      “Do you remember how you got here?”

      “No.”

      “You were in an accident,” he said, as if he hoped it would spark a memory.

      All it sparked was terror.

       Emma!

      “Where’s my daughter?” Rayne tried to sit up, but Chance pressed her back.

      “She’s fine. She wasn’t in the car with you.”

      “Thank God.” She closed her eyes, the prayer swirling through her mind again and again and again.

      “He was definitely looking out for both of you. Do you remember what happened?”

      No, and that terrified her.

      She tried to respond, but her thoughts were clumsy, her eyelids leaden.

      “Do you remember the accident, Rayne?” he persisted, pulling her from the edge of sleep.

      She scowled, wondering if she knew him well enough to tell him to go away and leave her alone. Not to ask any more questions, because every question she couldn’t answer only added to her fear.

      “Do you know how it happened? Where it happened?”

      “In my car?” There. Finally something she could answer.

      “Funny, Goldilocks, but that’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

      “I wasn’t trying to be funny, and my hair isn’t gold, it’s platinum.”

      “Looks gold to me. Do you know what town you’re in?”

      That she could answer, too.

      She’d left Phoenix to work in Spokane, Washington. If Chance was her coworker, she must be there.

      “Spokane, but I’m tired of playing twenty questions, so let’s stop for a while, okay?” She opened her eyes, looked into his gray-blue gaze.

      Eyes she knew but didn’t know.

      The world spun, and she spun with it, falling back into darkness so quickly she thought she might never escape it.

      She reached out, grabbed something warm and solid.

      His hand.

      Calloused and rough and oddly familiar.

      She knew his eyes, and she knew him, but she had no memory of meeting him, no knowledge of their shared history. How far back did that history go? How much time had passed since her last memory?

      Was Emma still a baby?

      Had she grown into a toddler?

      Something more?

      Terrified, she sat up, stars shooting in front of her eyes.

      “I need to see my daughter.” The frantic edge to her voice matched her racing pulse and the frenzied beep of the machine.

      “Calm down, Rayne. Emma is fine. My mom was babysitting her while you worked, and she’s still taking care of her.” Chance СКАЧАТЬ