What She Forgot Read online

  “Oh, he was still a really hot man looking everywhere but at me.” Still handsome on a stick. Still hot. Still scared me to death with that scar across his face and the intensity of his eyes.

  She laughed out loud, and Jason startled, so I held him a little tighter. “Shh,” I whispered, as I dragged a finger down the center of his nose. His eyes fell shut.

  “So, what did he do?” she asked.

  “It was weird—” I stopped. “Never mind,” I muttered.

  She sat on the floor in front of me and began to fold laundry there, so she could look at me. “What was weird?” she asked softly.

  “He didn’t really even look at me,” I admitted. “It was odd.” I’d never met a man who wouldn’t take any opportunity to stare at a naked woman. At me, in particular. I was well aware that I was beautiful. It wasn’t a gift. It was more of a curse.

  “You’re just not used to hanging out with actual gentlemen.”

  “Pfftt,” I scoffed. “He’s about as far from being a gentleman as I am from being a nun.”

  “He’s actually a really nice guy. He’s been through a lot these past few years.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “You’d have to ask him.”

  “Lynn,” I scolded quietly.

  “Not my story to tell,” she replied.

  “But there is a story.”

  “Yes.”

  “A good story?”

  “Not for him, no.”

  “Jeez, Lynn. Now you have to tell me.”

  “I can’t. I promised.”

  Great. Now I would have to find out on my own. “He’s hiring an office assistant.”

  “And?” Her brow rose as a grin tipped up the corners of her lips.

  “And I might be interested.”

  She made an odd noise. “In the man or in the position?”

  Or in what position I could put the man. “The position,” I said instead. “I would like to have a job.”

  “You need a job like I need a hole in my head.”

  “I can be respectable,” I rushed to say.

  She got to her feet so she could put away the clothes. Then she laid a hand on top of my head. “Or you could be your perfect self.” She leaned down and air-kissed the top of my head.

  I was far from perfect, and I knew it.

  “Just don’t catch the feelings for him. He has a lot of baggage.”

  “What kind of baggage?” I asked. Jason’s bottle fell from his mouth, his lips slack.

  “Not my story to tell,” she sang out as she left the room. She popped her head back in. “You can put Jason to bed, right?”

  My heart swelled about four sizes larger in my chest. “If I must.”

  Then I spent the next hour watching the baby sleep. I laid my hand on his chest and counted his breaths. And knew that I would never have a life like Lynn’s. I would never have a husband or a family, despite how badly I desperately wanted both. I wasn’t made for that kind of life, and nothing could change that fact.

  Chapter 6

  Clark

  At almost two in the morning, I finally dragged my ass back to my office. My whole body hurt. I’d done some stupid shit during my years as a private investigator, but tonight I’d taken stupid to a whole new level. And I didn’t catch the person I’d been trying to find. He’d eluded me, right after waving and taunting me into jumping off a rooftop to get to him. I’d missed. And it hurt.

  I stopped abruptly when I saw my office door was open just a crack, enough that I could see that the light was on. I’d turned it off before I left. My place of business was in an office building, and I only used it to store paperwork and meet with clients. The rest of my work was done in the field. On rooftops. In alleyways. Seedy bars. Where the criminals went, I followed.

  Only now it looked like one had followed me, instead.

  I reached into my jacket and slid my Glock from its holster, caressing its roughened grip against my palm. I held it out in front of me and stuck the toe of my shoe into the crack in the door, silently kicking it open. As it swung wide, I let my finger caress the side of the gun. My dad had always taught me you never let your finger tickle the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. I’d always stood strong with that advice. When I saw her, I almost wished I’d tickled the trigger, and then let it shoot.

  Shelly Punter stood across from me, her feet spread wide, her arms lifted where she pointed a SIG Sauer P238 at me. My heart tripped in my chest.

  She let out a breath, lowered her weapon, and laid it on the outside corner of my desk. “What are you doing here?” she barked. Then she crossed her arms and glared at me.

  I lowered my weapon when I saw that she’d discarded hers, but I didn’t put mine away. This was fucking Shelly Punter, it was the middle of the night, and she was in my office.

  “This is my office,” I reminded her, scratching the stubble on my chin. “How did you get in here?”

  She glanced toward the doorknob and shrugged. “Oh, I picked the lock.”

  I looked toward the same lock. “Why?”

  “Well, you weren’t here.”

  And for some reason, she thought it was okay to break in. “Where did you learn to pick a lock?” It was a dumb question and I knew it as soon as I asked.

  She shrugged. “Here and there.”

  I nodded my head. “So why did you pick the lock on my office door in the middle of the night?”

  She looked around. “Well, it wasn’t the middle of the night when I got here. It was about nine o’clock, and you weren’t here and I knew you needed help in your office with filing and…other stuff.” She looked around and I finally realized that my office was neat and tidy, not at all like I’d left it. When I’d left, I’d had paper all over the place, littering every surface of the room, and file folders had been stacked on the corner of my desk.

  “Where did you put all my papers?”

  “Where they belong,” she chirped. She danced from side to side. I suddenly realized that her stocking-clad feet were buried in my carpet, her high heels discarded near the door.

  “You’ve been here all night?”

  “Only since nine. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop.”

  I nodded and swiped a hand down my face. “Shelly—”

  But she held up a hand to stop me. “I know what you’re going to say.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “What was I going to say?”

  She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Well, you were going to say thank you, silly.” She narrowed her gaze at me suddenly. “And you weren’t going to say another fucking thing aside from ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Shelly.’”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” I bit back a groan.

  She shrugged again. “Close enough.”

  Jesus. I knew she was different, but damn…

  “You can say thank you now,” she prompted.

  I looked around. “Where did you put all my paperwork?”

  “I filed it.” She pulled open a file cabinet I’d never used and pointed inside. “Old cases, cold cases, invoices, receipts.” She swiped her finger around, pointing out the other files. Then she dusted her hands together. “I can work on your invoicing system next. It needs some serious work.”

  “Shelly.” I heaved her name out on a sigh. “I’m not hiring you to work in my office.”

  “I know. I’m doing it for free.”

  Fuck me. “Why would you want to work for free?”

  She rolled her eyes at me again. “I have a trust fund that would allow me to buy whatever I want. But it won’t let me buy myself a job. And I kind of told Lynn that I would try to be respectable, now that I’m an aunt and all.”

  She looked so serious that I almost bit back my laugh. Almost but not quite. I coughed out a sputter.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

  “You want to work for me? For free? So you can be respectable?” I barked out another laugh. While I
chuckled, I tucked my Glock back into its holster.

  “Is that so hilarious?” The vee between her eyes grew deeper.

  Yes. Yes, it was. “No,” I said. “I just don’t need office help.”

  Her features softened. “Tell that to someone who didn’t just reorganize your filing system.”

  I raised my hand to run it through my hair, but my side hurt like hell, so I brought my arm back down.

  “Why did you just wince?” she asked, her eyes sweeping up and down me like she had X-ray vision.

  “I didn’t,” I muttered. I did. I hurt like hell, but there was no reason for her to know that.

  “Yes, you did.” She reached for my arm, her slender fingers sliding across the tender skin on my wrist.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I fell.”

  “Did you break something?”

  “No.”

  Her fingertips tickled up my side until she poked a spot that made me wince. “You might have broken a rib.”

  “I don’t think so.” I’d done that enough times that I’d know. She continued to poke around until I grabbed her fingers. “Please stop poking me where it hurts.”

  “Oh,” she chirped. She winced. “Sorry.”

  She didn’t pull her fingers from mine, and our stare-off turned quickly into an uncomfortable moment. I cleared my throat as soon as I realized it and she jerked her hand back.

  “You should go,” I said. And don’t come back. I was going to kill Mason for suggesting she come and work for me. “Why don’t you just ask Mason for a job at the hospital?” Mason and both his parents worked there. It should be easy.

  “I can’t work with psychiatric patients.” She waved her hand in the air. “Something about me being a little psychotic once upon a time. A lack of remorse. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  “You know legal work and medical work kind of have similar rules, right?”

  “You don’t do legal work. You surveil stuff. You detect. You investigate.”

  I shook my head. “I do legal work. For the police department. When I’m not ‘surveilling stuff.’” I drew air quotes around her ridiculous phrase.

  “Oh, well, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.” She walked across the room and slipped her feet into her high heels. Then she walked back to the desk, picked up her gun, flicked the safety, and put it in her purse.

  “Shelly,” I said slowly.

  She raised her eyes to meet mine. “What?”

  “Is that gun legal?”

  She nodded. “I have a permit.”

  “And you know how to fire it?”

  “Of course. And I can fire it accurately. With precision. Perfect aim. I’m a gun prodigy, they told me at the firing range.” She said it all without even cracking a smile. She was serious, and that was disturbing.

  She hitched her purse strap onto her shoulder. She was still wearing the dress I’d zipped for her earlier today. Suddenly, a vision of her almost naked flashed in my mind’s eye again.

  “You can’t work for me, Shelly,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She strode toward the door.

  “Shelly,” I called out. “Did you drive here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where did you park?”

  “By the street. Why?”

  “I’ll walk out with you.”

  She patted her purse. “I’m safe.”

  “I’ll still walk out with you.”

  She smiled, and I thought it was a true, genuine smile. But with Shelly you never could really tell. “That would be nice of you,” she said softly.

  She was quiet all the way down the elevator. She didn’t say a single word as she walked to her car.

  When she opened her car door, she turned to face me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Shelly, you can’t work for me.”

  “Okay.” She smiled and shook her head.

  Then she got in her car and left. I stood, somewhat shell-shocked, and looked at where her car had been. Then I called building maintenance and left a message for them to install a better lock on my office door first thing in the morning. Something that was Shelly-proof.

  Then tomorrow I was going to kill Mason Peterson with my bare hands.

  Chapter 7

  Clark

  The next morning, I stopped by Mason’s office because I needed his help with the vigilante case I’d been working on. I’d taken him the file the week before, before the last murder even happened, so he would have time to look it over. I greeted Mrs. Anderson, his secretary, and then I rapped my knuckles on the doorframe of his office, and he looked up at me. Then he looked back down at the file he had open on his desk.

  “Good morning to you too,” I muttered as I stepped into his office and took a seat across from him. I glanced down at my watch. I was on time.

  Finally, Mason closed the file. That’s when I noticed it was mine. The words “Vigilante Justice” were written on the tab.

  Mason narrowed his eyes like he was thinking about how to break bad news. Finally, he blurted out, “I think this is more than one person.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure why you think that or you’re not sure why it’s more than one person?”

  He opened the file and fanned the profile pages out like a deck of cards. “This one,” he said, pointing toward the case where the abusive husband had been shot between the eyes. “This one is a clear case of vengeance. His wife didn’t do it. She was in another state, with witnesses.” He pointed toward another. I recognized the name. “This one is similar, yet different.” He shook his head. “The man sexually abused his two daughters for years.” And someone had entered the home in the middle of the night and chopped his dick off. “His wife died two years ago. And his daughters didn’t do it. They couldn’t have.”

  “Why not?” People who had been abused often went back for vengeance.

  “They’re both right-handed. The slice was made by someone who’s a lefty.”

  “Huh.” I scratched my head. “What about the case of the dead wife?”

  He pulled out one of the profiles. “This one is what makes me think these are random crimes.” He stared at the paper. “She beat her son black and blue in a fit of rage.”

  “And?”

  “And her son is six years old.” He closed the file and pushed it toward me across the desk. “He didn’t kill her. There’s no physical way that he could have restrained her like that, and then killed her.” He shook his head. “I know you were hoping this was a vigilante killer, so you would only have to go after one person, but none of these are related.” He stopped and stared at me.

  “I just have this feeling.”

  “And I have a feeling you’re wrong.”

  “My gut has never led me astray.”

  “Until now.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  Mason’s grit was one thing I liked about him. He never failed to stand up to me. I tended to intimidate people. I’d been told it was my size; I topped out at six-two, two-forty. And then there was the scar that slashed across my face. People tended to recoil when they saw it. I’d gotten used to it. Mason wasn’t intimidated by me at all.

  “Okay.” I didn’t agree with him. I still felt like someone was using open police cases to get vengeance against people who hurt people weaker than them. There had been over two dozen in as many months, just in this state, in this general area.

  “You should talk to Shelly about six-year-olds who tie up their fathers. Get her perspective.”

  I knew about Shelly’s situation. I knew about how she’d tied her father up with a lamp cord when she was six. Then she scared the fuck out him with threats after he’d beaten Lynn nearly to death. Shelly had scared her father so badly that he had his wife dump her with his mother. He kept the other sister, Lynn.

  “Speaking of Shelly,” I began.

  He chuckled. “A match made
in heaven.”

  “She can’t work for me.”

  He held up his hands like he was surrendering to the cops. “Talk to her, man. Not me. She has a mind of her own.”

  “You set me up.”

  “She needs a job.”

  “She needs no such thing.”

  “You’re right. She has a trust fund that could feed a small nation.” He laughed. “Just let her play at working for a while. She’ll get tired of it.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “That’s not what she told Lynn. Your office was a mess.”

  “It’s my office.” I could leave it a mess if I wanted to.

  “Admit it. She was helpful.” He paused as a slow grin slipped across his face. “So she pulled a gun on you, huh?”

  “In my own fucking office. At two in the morning,” I grumbled. With silky, nylon-covered feet, her shoes kicked off in the corner, the top button of her dress undone, one of my pencils stuck in her hair, holding it up off her neck.

  “She’s a hell of a shot. I think she’s teaching an intro-to-gun-safety class at the shooting range. And another one at the women’s shelter. That one is more hand-to-hand combat, though. No guns.” He laughed. “Never tussle with Shelly, man. She can kick ass.”

  “She can’t work for me.”

  “Too late.” He tossed up his hands and grinned. “She’s in. It would be a lot of work to get her out.”

  I’d get her out.

  “I know you didn’t fuck her, by the way,” Mason suddenly blurted out.

  “What?” I jerked my head up from where I’d been staring at the file on his desk.

  “At the church. You found her naked in the hallway. You helped her get dressed.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah.” I scratched my head again. “Why was she naked in the church?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself.

  He laughed. “Apparently, she hung her dress up in one of the back rooms and had to go to the bathroom. As she was coming out of the stall, the hem of the dress she didn’t want to wear got stuck on the lock handle. She didn’t want to tear the dress, since Lynn gave it to her for some special occasion or another, so she shimmied out of it. She didn’t think anyone would see her.”