Her Forgotten Betrayal(3)
He didn’t have to look to know that the man stepping to his side was his latest supervisor. Cole tensed, instinctively anticipating the worst. He’d been summoned to Atlanta ostensibly to offer an in-person consultation on their task force’s prime suspect. But he wasn’t buying it. The escalating stakes of the Cassidy Global situation had put their team on high alert. With Shaw Cassidy’s shooting on top of everything else, there were too many unanswered questions now for their investigation to continue without a significant shift in tactics.
“You said she was hysterical,” Cole began.
“The doctors had to sedate her again,” Chief Inspector Rick Dawson replied, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum and slipping it into his mouth. The faint, cloying scent of tobacco clinging to the man hinted that Dawson still hadn’t fully kicked his addiction. “Each time she wakes up, it’s as if she realizes that she can’t remember anything all over again. It’s happened twice already. At this point, the doctors think it will take considerably longer for her condition to resolve itself.”
“For her memory to return?”
Dawson nodded stiffly and chewed faster.
“Like what?” Cole asked. “A few more hours?”
“Days. Weeks. It could be months, for all they know. Or possibly never if we push her too hard for answers and her fucking mind closes down for good. That’s what the experts say, anyway.”
Cole winced. He reminded himself for the dozenth time that the spiraling-from-bad-to-worse circumstances of this case meant nothing more to him personally than any of his other assignments had. “Because of her injuries?”
“Because of the trauma of whatever happened. Her brain’s intact, but it’s shutting down for some reason. We’ll try interviewing her, but—”
“Don’t you mean interrogating?” Cole snapped.
“Whatever.” Dawson shot the gum wrapper at a nearby wastebasket and missed.
The calculating look in his gaze said he’d relish the opportunity to close this case once and for all. Any way he could. Shaw had been on their radar since the beginning of the Cassidy Global investigation. Yet legally they’d been unable to touch her. Most of the team would be happy to use any means necessary to finally get some real answers.
Including ruining a woman’s mind.
Dawson’s jaw clenched in frustration. He patted his pants’ pockets, as if searching for a pack of cigarettes that didn’t materialize.
“The neurologist says to give her time,” he said, chewing even louder. “Quiet. Isolation. Familiar surroundings. Additional agitation or trauma will worsen her condition. Maybe make it permanent. Which means, at least for now, we still keep our hands off.”
Cole gave the taller, fairer man a measured stare. Feeling as if a guillotine had been positioned precariously above his head, he shrugged back into his soggy jacket, already calculating how long it would take him to backtrack to the airport. “Then my interviewing her personally is a nonstarter. Of all the people who might agitate her, I assure you I’m tops on the list.”
Dawson’s focus tracked back to their patient. “I didn’t call you in to interview her.”
Cole froze. The moment that he’d somehow known was inevitable had arrived. He let his head fall forward, picturing a razor-sharp blade swiftly dropping toward him. He glanced into Shaw’s hospital room again. “Then why am I here?”
“Don’t you still own that piece of junk fishing cabin up on her family’s mountain?”
Ah, hell.
Chapter Two
HIGH LAKE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA
THREE WEEKS LATER…
Shaw woke in the dead of night, kicking at the attacker who’d discovered her in the conference room closet.
Awareness returned, her nightmare’s lingering hold as sickening, as real, as every other time she’d dreamed it since her shooting. But, thankfully, there was a pile of suffocating pillows beneath her, not office carpeting. There was no faceless man or brutal grip restraining her. Instead, her arms and legs were tangled in linen sheets, the fabric so fine and so old it was gossamer-soft to the touch.
She forced her eyes to open completely.
She wasn’t being dragged to her death by a murderer. She was sitting alone on an overstuffed mattress, fighting her bedding and losing her mind, grasping for the details of that night’s memory before they once more slipped beyond her reach. Just as every other recollection of her life before the shooting had stubbornly refused to return. Which left her smack-dab in the middle of a living nightmare, in a world beyond her control that her detail-obsessed brain refused to make peace with.