A powerful tremor shook her body; that same shudder seemed to run through him, too. His hands tightened reflexively on her face and he lowered his head, grazing the shell of her ear with his lips, whispering, “I’ll make it better. Whatever it takes, anything I need to—”
Her mother’s voice sliced through the room like an ice pick.
“Take your hands off her.”
A feeble protest tore out of her as she tossed her head in negation. No. But the hands slowly, hesitantly, left her. She could no longer smell the sun on his skin, the masculine aroma of sand and trees clinging to his clothing; instead the scent of medicine and plastic prevailed.
“I ask you to get out now.”
Her heart thundered in her breast. She could not move. She could not scream. Could not say, No no no. Don’t go, don’t go.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
“You’re distressing her, leave now!”
His footsteps echoed on the tile floor. Leaving. Leaving now. And she could not do anything but lie there, afraid, in the darkness, with his fleeting touch imprinted somewhere deep and lonely inside her.
Her name was Paige.
CHAPTER 1
Phoenix, Arizona, March 4 Seven Years Later . . .
PHONE RINGING.
Damn phone ringing.
Lying prone on the bed, Zach flung an arm out and groped around for the receiver, lifting it just in time to catch the familiar boom on the other end.
“Rivers?” Fellow PPD detective Cody Nordstrom. Friend. Pain in the ass. Gossip girl.
Rolling onto his side, phone to his ear, he glared at the clock on the nightstand. Four forty-three p.m. Sunday. Fuck it.
After the all-nighter he’d pulled— bringing in some sick shit who’d beaten his teenage daughter to death— and a one-hour shower at noon, he’d been asleep exactly four hours.
“I’m awake,” he grumbled as he climbed off the bed and picked his jeans up from the floor. “What’s up?”
“Your pigeon’s home.”
One thought slammed him like a torpedo. Paige.
“There’s a 459R reported there. Patrol’s already dispatched. Apparently she’s unharmed.” A dramatic sigh. “So here I sat, thinking, figuring, ‘Man, this would really ruffle Zach’s feathers.’ ”
On his feet, fully alert, Zach grabbed his Glock, his backup, and his badge, shoving them all in place. “Robbery, my ass.” The house had been empty for seven years and the day she came home they decided to rob it?
“I hear you, I hear you. So then I wonder if maybe you can find something there that’ll persuade the lieutenant to reopen that old case you have a hard-on for.”
The judge’s case. Paige’s father’s case. The case every cop in town knew Zach was itching to nail.
He plunged his head into his T-shirt and brought the phone back up. “I will.”
“Or hey. Perhaps her failing memory has returned and you’ll have yourself a witness?”
Charging outside, Zach yanked his car door open, resolute. “I’m on my way.”
“Rivers?”
The engine of his SUV roared to life. “Yeah.”