more than a woman with a seedy past—possibly criminal. Hollis couldn’t imagine Grace would desire to return to that environment if her memories surfaced. He was there the Sunday she walked to the front and gave her heart and life to God. She was a new person now. But the needling inside him intensified. Reminded him of his own past.
Mary Beth had been a bright and shining star when he’d moved to Cottonwood to take over the SAR several years ago. He’d fallen fast and thought she returned those feelings, but after a year she claimed she didn’t know who she was and needed to find herself. Whatever that meant. She’d asked for three months, and Hollis had agreed with hopes she’d return from New York ready to move forward in their relationship.
But instead, she’d decided small-town life wasn’t for her. It was mundane. Too small. Not enough excitement. She ought to be here now. Mary Beth would have more excitement than she could handle.
She’d broken Hollis’s heart, and all but told him he wasn’t enough. He’d managed to get over the fact that his dad had walked out on his family, but Mary Beth stomping on his heart seemed different. Didn’t matter now. It was water under the bridge. Which reminded him. “I’d like to take a boat out and check river levels.” He peered into the sky. “I don’t see this letting up.” They had levees in place, but if this didn’t level off soon, he wasn’t sure what would happen. Being a water town had its perks, but also its fears.
“The rain or what’s happening to me?” Grace muttered.
Truthfully?
Both.
* * *
Grace watched as they discreetly carried the body of Peter Rainey from her home. She answered additional questions for Sheriff Freeman, though she had only so much to offer. After that hoopla wore off and a crew had come in and cleaned for her, she and Hollis sat on her worn gray couch and he made a call to Locke and then to Jody Novak, Locke’s sister. They put her and the team at Covenant Crisis Management on Speaker and Hollis relayed everything that had happened.
Wheezer, their computer analyst, had jumped on the search and according to the team, if there was something to be found he would find it. Grace hoped so. Once again, she prayed and asked God to reveal her past so she could move forward.
“Okay,” Wheezer said over the speaker, “I have a pretty large list of Dr. Sayers. Cutting down to female. Less of a list. I’m going to filter the search to doctors who went off-grid in the past two years. It’ll take a minute, but when I have something, I’ll call you.”
“Hang in there,” Wilder Flynn, the security team director, said to Grace. “We won’t stop until we have answers. If you need us there, Hollister, say the word. I can send a team member or personally fly in.”
“I appreciate that, Wilder. For right now, I think we can manage.”
Grace did, too, but flying blind was dangerous. Anyone could be against her. She wouldn’t recognize an enemy from an ally. They hung up and she offered to make coffee.
Hollis grinned. “I never turn down coffee.”
Grace actually laughed. As she headed for the coffee pot in her kitchenette, she glanced inside her bedroom and a sudden wave came over her. A memory! Like a scene from a movie playing in full color in her mind.
Grace was dressed in a long black evening gown, her hair swept to the side. She had her arm looped into a man’s and as she gazed up, it was Peter Rainey’s face. He laid his hand on hers, and that’s when she noticed the engagement ring. Peter leaned down and kissed her. “You look beautiful, Max,” he said.
Then the memory was gone. Fade to black.
She fumbled the carafe and it slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor. Hollis jumped up from the couch. “Grace?”
“Sorry... I uh—I dropped the coffee pot. Don’t come over here. Glass.” She rushed to the small pantry and retrieved a broom, but her hands shook. What did this mean? Had she been engaged—married even—to Peter? His betrayal could have been adultery. She’d had little moments of memory pops over the past six months but nothing this big. This substantial. This confusing. Grace went to task sweeping up the glass shards.
“What startled you?” Hollis asked.
Heat ballooned in her cheeks. She couldn’t hide this from Hollis. But everything in her wanted to keep it buried. “I... I had a flash of a memory. A snippet really, and it unnerved me. Came on so sudden.”
Hollis ignored her warning about the glass and leaned over the breakfast bar, resting his elbows on it and putting himself eye level with her. “What was it?”
“I’m not sure what it meant,” she whispered as she dared a peek at him. Solemn eyes. Jaw tight. As if bracing himself for the worst news. What would be the worst news to Hollis? Had she once loved Peter? He’d never mentioned any feelings. Granted, he hadn’t had much time before he was murdered. It was as if someone knew he would talk, and they were shutting him up.
Instead of revealing the secret, she changed the subject. “Someone wanted Peter dead. He was going to tell me who I was and possibly answer any further questions I may have had.”
Hollis’s lips twisted to the side as he pondered the information. “If the shooter didn’t know you had amnesia, then killing Peter first might not be about him giving you information as much as you giving Peter information...as in the doctor’s location. If those Latino men wanted the doctor, they could have killed Peter to cut him out of finding her first.”
“Excellent point. The guy with the gun may have believed I’d go with Peter. The men who attacked me didn’t realize I had amnesia—neither did Peter at first. If they’re behind killing Peter, your theory makes more sense.”
Hollis nodded. “I wonder if he was truly your ally. He said to trust him, but he also said he’d betrayed you.”
“He mentioned it had all been lies. What does all mean?”
Hollis’s phone rang, and he answered. “...Okay. Location? We’re on our way. I got Grace with me.” He hung up. “Two teenage boys out fishing on the river. With the rain and flow, they can’t paddle in. Need a tow.”
Grace left the broom and a pile of glass on the kitchen floor and followed Hollis outside to his truck. “Why would teenage boys be in the fast-flowing Mississippi River, knowing all the water—”
“One, they are teenage boys. Two, teenage boys have no sense. I know. I was one. And I’m sure there was a dare involved. They’re going to be grounded for a century.” Hollis chuckled but it didn’t quite hit the jovial mark. They could drown out there.
They stopped at the SAR facility. Hollis hitched the trailer to his truck and loaded the boat onto the trailer while Grace grabbed extra life vests. They headed west on Old Highway 4 until they reached the parking lot at the river’s boat ramp entrance. Grace backed the boat down the ramp and they lowered it into the water, put their life vests on and sped across the choppy waters toward the location the boys had given the 911 dispatcher.
Grace pointed ahead. They were bobbing in a little johnboat. “You’re right. They have no sense at all.”
Hollis pulled the boat close and tossed a rope. Then he leaped into the boys’ johnboat, rocking it wildly. Both boys sat quietly.
