“The sheriff broke into a house,” she said suddenly with the urge to giggle. “And now I’m going in his police car, under arrest, under duress...I don’t know.”
“How much wine did you drink or what else?” he asked, getting them both up, then sitting her in the chair while he found the top for the bottle, put a paper napkin over it and screwed it on. Still touching the bottle only with the napkin, he put it on the table. She didn’t want to look at it, only at him.
“I can’t exactly remember,” she said, slurring her words. “I think I had bad dreams. So, what’s new, right?”
“I want you to tell me every one of your dreams.”
She felt giddy. “It means a lot when a gentleman caller asks a lady to share her dreams with him.”
“Keep talking.”
“Gabe, don’t leave me!” she cried when he walked out of the room, but he came right back with her jacket and helped her put it on.
“Don’t nod off,” he ordered when she yawned. “Did you get the door locks changed when you took this place over from Lee and Grace?”
She tried to remember. She felt spaced out. Her thoughts were all gummy. “No,” she managed to say, “but Mom changed them all after I was taken and then again after Dad left. I didn’t think to do it.”
“My fault not to ask earlier. You should have. Who knows who had keys when Lee and Grace were living here, including their dictator Monson? I’ll have to ask them.”
“If you can get near them. They have guards at Hear Ye.” She was pleased her thoughts were clearing, but it almost hurt to think.
“I know. But they’ll probably be at the farmer’s market uptown Saturday. Okay, now hang on to me. Upsa-daisy,” he said as he lifted her to her feet and steadied her with his hands on her waist.
Upsa-daisy? Why did he say that? She didn’t like that. It made her think she was a kid again and...and she did not want to remember that, even though she knew she had to.
“What good will it do to lock the door?” she asked as he made her take steps while he propped her up. He took the bottle along too. Maybe she should give up wine, at least in Cold Creek. Her legs were a little wobbly, but she was walking. “Someone could come in that window,” she added as if he didn’t get what she meant.
“I’ll put police tape over it, and we’ll get it fixed—and your locks changed—first thing in the morning. We’re going to Dr. Nelson’s. Then you’ll stay with me again.”
That sounded good to her. Though her head was clearing, her thoughts were dark. Whoever had done this wanted to scare and hurt her, maybe even worse than that.
* * *
Tess woke with a jolt. It was light. She saw an unfamiliar ceiling and room. She realized she was under a quilt on Gabe’s couch, and he was slumped in a chair he’d pulled up close. She had no shoes on but was dressed in her clothes, which must be a wrinkled mess. She started to remember. She’d been to the doctor last night after...after she’d blacked out and then Gabe came. He wasn’t dressed in his uniform now but jeans and a sweatshirt.
“You awake?” he asked the obvious when she looked at him. “It’s eight. Friday morning. How do you feel?” His voice was gravelly, and his beard stubble made his face look dirty. His usually police-sharp hair was mussed.
“I feel tired. That train I hear in my head sometimes—I think it hit me.” She scooted herself up to a sitting position, pulling the quilt up higher too.
“Dizzy, nauseated? Doc Nelson said you might be.”
“Just hungry, I think. Wow, don’t buy cheap wine at the Kwik Shop.”
“You giggled and cried last night. Talked in your sleep too. I would have taken notes, but you weren’t making any sense.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore.”
“Can you remember anything after you drank the wine or during the night?”
“No. Maybe it was another amnesia drug. Maybe my kidnapper came calling again,” she said with a shiver. “Did you get the search warrant for Dane’s place?”
“At least your head’s okay on what happened before you got blasted. Not yet. The judge was holding it up until she heard new evidence, but the fact that Dr. Stevens has perjured herself in a deposition means I should get it soon. The judge is obviously reluctant since the warrant my dad, ‘the previous Sheriff McCord,’ as she puts it, failed to pin anything on Dane when he served him with a search warrant twenty years ago. I told her double jeopardy should not figure in here, since Dane wasn’t arraigned or tried before. She took offense since I was lecturing her about a legal matter, but I think she’ll get me the warrant. The case is too hot not to.”
“And are you going to talk to Reese Owens?”
“Thank God you’re all right. We just have to keep drugs and booze out of your system. Stay right there while I fix us some juice and coffee. Oh, yeah, I’ll talk to Reese,” he said as he stretched his big frame, then went into the kitchen. “He’s in Cincinnati until tomorrow morning, and I’m not doing that over the phone.”
“I hope I feel better by tomorrow,” she said, rubbing both eyes. “I’d like to go to the farmers’ market. I want to see my family if they come with the Hear Ye people.”
“Let’s just see how you do with food and walking on your own today—you need some rest. Doc Nelson thought you might have ingested something like a date rape drug. They’re short-term but made worse by being mixed with any kind of alcohol. I’ll take you over to your house to pack up some things but you’re staying here.”
He came back with two huge glasses of orange juice. A date rape drug? And then she’d spent the night here with him....
Thank God she could trust Gabe. Because there was obviously someone in Cold Creek who’d been watching her, who wanted her out of here one way or another. That terrified her but made her angry enough not to leave until they found Sandy Kenton.
* * *
After breakfast, Gabe shaved and changed into his uniform, they picked up some things at her house and he checked everything there again. Nothing else seemed amiss. He called the hardware store to order new locks and a window. He took her back to his house and left, returning for lunch, still stewing he didn’t have his search warrant yet.
“You’d think there’s someone pulling the strings for Dane, just like for Reese,” he groused as he quickly ate the lunch she’d made, before heading back to the office. She felt as if she was married to him—and spending most of the time on her own. He said Vic was going to want to talk to her, but right now he was busy trying to locate a housekeeper who had recently worked for Reese Owens and his wife.
Tess locked up after Gabe left each time. She’d asked his permission to go up to his war room to look it all over again, hoping, as ever, to recall something useful. But she sat up there, studying the walls for an hour, while the wind kicked up and the house creaked. Feeling haunted, not by the house or even what had happened to her yesterday, but by the faces—her own and her family’s included—staring at her from the walls, she went back downstairs to wait for him.
He called and said he’d be there in a while, just a little late. It got dark so early now. Though she hadn’t heard his car, she jumped up to greet him when she heard him at the back door. She started to open it for him, then hesitated. No footsteps, no key turning in the lock.
When she tried to look out the window in the door, she saw it was blocked by a piece of cardboard or paper. She wondered if Gabe had done that to keep someone from looking in. But no, a crude drawing and printed words faced inward. Done in crayon, it depicted figures of three girls. Big tears dropped from the eyes of the smallest one. It looked so familiar. Suddenly she was certain she had drawn it. Was she hallucinating again? Were more memories coming back?
She read the words under the figures. YOU BAD GIRL! YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME!
She heard a voice from the past. She wanted to hide, had to hide! She rushed toward the closet in the hall, opened it to throw herself behind the hanging coats before she realized where she was. She took a deep breath. She was an adult, not a terrified child! She tried to recall more than her terror, but nothing else came, and she collapsed to her knees in tears.