Memories of Megan. Rita Herron

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СКАЧАТЬ her car. Seconds later, April climbed in her Volvo and drove away, rain spewing from the back of her car as she sped toward the cottage she rented on Skidaway Island. Megan let the curtain slip back in place, but a dark sedan across the street drew her eye. It was parked in the shadows of a live oak, the Spanish moss drooping like spider legs, casting it in shadows made worse by the dark sky. She peeled the curtain back and studied the vehicle for a moment, trying to see if someone was inside. Was a cigarette glowing from the interior? Had she seen the car in the neighborhood before? Could it belong to one of her neighbors? People she’d never met because she and Tom had both been too busy at work to entertain? Too busy trying to hold their marriage together?

      Except for those last few weeks when he’d moved out, when she sensed he’d given up…

      Had she seen the car while he was gone?

      After several tense seconds, she decided she must be getting paranoid. The car was empty. And there was no reason for anyone to be lurking outside her apartment. No reason anyone would follow her or want to harm her. After all, Tom’s death had been accidental, not suspicious.

      Chuckling at her runaway imagination, she carried her tea to the bedroom, bypassing Tom’s closet with a tentative glance. At some point she had to sort through his things and clear them out. At least what he hadn’t taken with him when they’d separated.

      But not tonight. She was too battered by Tom’s funeral.

      She slipped beneath the covers and finished the tea, grateful for the small shot of bourbon April had laced it with. Weariness pulled at her, but the uneasiness she’d felt earlier rose again to taunt her. Could someone have been outside watching her? And if they had, who were they?

      She couldn’t quite forget the trouble surrounding Nighthawk Island and the research center just a few short weeks ago. That Arnold Hughes, the CEO and cofounder who’d been behind the unsavory sale of some of their research, might not be dead as the police hoped. That his body had never been found.

      That Tom had been working on something secretive the last few months, something that had made him jittery and even more closed off from her than before. And that a stranger had been at Tom’s funeral. A man who had recently been in an accident of some kind himself but who’d taken her husband’s place at the hospital.

      A man who had come out of nowhere.

      COLE WALKED THE OUTER BANKS surrounding the research center on Skidaway Island, amidst the tall sea oats and damp grass, well aware security tracked his every move. He inhaled the scent of ocean, needing the familiarity, because nothing else about his life seemed remotely familiar.

      Not the idea of being a psychiatrist or the people he’d met at the funeral or the little apartment he’d returned home to.

      Home.

      What did it mean for him? He had no friends. No family. Not even back in Tennessee where Davis Jones, the head of the psychiatric ward had told him he’d moved from. Hell, Jones had even shown him his résumé, but the information on it seemed foreign as well. Apparently he’d gone to Vanderbilt, worked at a small private practice before signing on with the research facility in Oakland.

      Wind whistled through the sea oats, a seagull swooped onto the shore in search of crumbs, and water lapped at the shore in a soothing rhythm. The doctor warned that it would take time to recover his memories. The sea stretched before him, endless and all consuming, just as the blank spaces in his mind. How much time would it take to recover? Would his memory ever fully return? Would he ever feel like the real Cole Hunter again?

      An image of Megan Wells’s grief-stricken face flashed into his mind, emotions gripping him. If they had never met, why had he experienced visions of her when he’d touched her?

      HE WAS WATCHING HER. Standing beside her bed, his dark eyes staring at her, his hand outstretched.

      Shadows hugged the walls, the curtain billowing out from the window, the whisper of a familiar scent filling the room. His cologne. The one she had given him for Christmas last year.

      The one he’d hated.

      Megan struggled to reach for his hand but her arm was too heavy. Frustration welled inside her. She focused her energy on lifting her hand, but just as she did, he took a step backward. His frame stood silhouetted in the moonlight, the dark look of concern on his face so somber, a whimper bubbled in her throat.

      What was wrong?

      It was Tom, wasn’t it?

      He opened his mouth as if to speak, his eyebrows pinched the way they did when he was trying to concentrate. But when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. She tried to reach for him again, but he slipped farther away, almost floating now, the distance sucking him in some kind of surreal vacuum… What was he trying to tell her?

      “Don’t go,” she whispered. “Please, don’t leave me.”

      His lips moved again, slowly as if it were painful, and she traced the movements, studying the words. “Be careful, Megan. Don’t trust anyone.”

      Megan jerked upright, her heart pounding. Throwing back the covers, she searched the darkness, a gasp escaping her when she saw the curtain fluttering from the opened window.

      Someone had been in her bedroom.

      The window had been closed when she’d gone to bed.

      HE HUNKERED LOW IN THE CAR, hiding in the shadows of the giant live oak, his only light the cigarette glow in the dim interior of the car. His gaze latched onto Megan Wells’s house while he pressed his cell phone to one ear.

      “How did the funeral go?”

      He snorted. “It was a funeral. How the hell do you think it went?”

      His partner chuckled. “Do you think she suspects anything?”

      “No, leastways she’s not asking any questions.” He took a drag from the cigarette, savored the nicotine taste, then blew a smoke ring into the air and watched it swirl in front of him. With a gloved hand, he wiped the fog from the tinted window. A light flickered on in Megan’s bedroom. She was awake now. Probably sitting up in bed, that blond hair tousled around her cheeks, her nightgown clinging to her supple body.

      “Good, keep it that way.”

      He jerked his thoughts back on track. Back to the scene at the graveyard. “But—”

      “But what?”

      “That guy Hunter, he talked to her for a few minutes after the service.”

      A long tense silence followed. “What did they talk about?”

      “Nothing really. Just chitchat, but he kept watching her, sort of creepy, if you know what I mean.”

      “Like a man wanting a lay, probably. She is good-looking.”

      Worry knotted his stomach. Megan Wells was a sharp nurse, intuitive, sensitive to her patients’ needs. Smart. Maybe too smart. He shrugged off the worry. “Yeah, I guess that was it.” He remembered the way Megan Wells’s long blond hair had looked spread across her pillow. Imagined the silky blond strands wound around the black leather of his glove. Damn right she was good-looking.

      Unfortunately СКАЧАТЬ