“Oh, Rain. Mesa Ridge, Nevada, is about as far away from everything as you can get.” Her smile slowly faded. “Which makes me think you’re not from around here.”
Rain finished the milk and reached for a glass of orange juice. “You don’t think so?”
“I don’t,” the nurse said thoughtfully.
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You just don’t look the type.”
“I don’t?”
A random thought suddenly raced through her brain as she pierced an orange wedge with her fork from the fruit cup on the tray. Did she know what she looked like?
“I don’t know. You just look a little too…sophisticated for these parts. We don’t get a lot of corduroy blazers and penny loafers out this way. Besides, there may be a lot of land out here, a lot of wide-open spaces, but there aren’t that many people so we tend to keep track of one another. Someone from around here turns up missing, you tend to hear about it.”
Rain watched as the nurse fussed about her, adjusting the blankets on the bed, fluffing the already fluffed pillows, but her mind was remembering the shadowy figure that had reached for her in the headlights of the car. She remembered how warm and safe she had felt in his arms and longed for that feeling again.
“No one’s turned up missing around here?” she asked after a moment.
“Not that I’ve heard,” the nurse admitted. “And believe me, there isn’t much that happens in Mesa County that I don’t know about.” She paused for a moment, then pointed down at the tray. “And I’d say for someone who isn’t hungry, you did a pretty good job.”
Rain glanced down at the dishes, shocked to find them empty. “I—I had no idea….”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever known anyone to actually finish a bowl of our oatmeal before,” the nurse conceded, pulling a folded hospital robe from a drawer in the bed stand. “You must have been starvin’, darlin’.”
Rain had to admit she did feel better. The gnawing in her stomach had eased and her headache didn’t feel nearly as bad. “I didn’t even know I was hungry.”
“Maybe not,” the nurse said, handing her the robe. “But your body knew it needed some nutrition.” She pulled the covers on the bed back. “Now put that robe around you and let’s get you going.”
Rain looked down at the faded robe, then back up to the nurse. “Is there a mirror in here?”
The nurse hesitated for a moment, then something softened in her eyes.
“Right here,” she said, flipping back a plastic disk from a panel beside the bed, revealing a small lighted mirror on the other side. “And maybe I can scrounge up a hairbrush, too.”
Rain slowly leaned forward, almost reluctant to see who would look back at her. What if she didn’t recognize that face? She was surrounded by a world of strangers. What if she was a stranger to herself?
“It’s…it’s me,” she whispered, watching the reflection of her own lips move in the mirror. Leaning closer, she brought a hand to her lips, her cheek, and through her hair, feeling a wave of relief wash over her. She wasn’t sure when the last time was that she had seen the face in the mirror, but it was a familiar face to her—gloriously and gratefully familiar. For the first time since she’d awakened in the desert, she was looking at something familiar.
“This isn’t much,” the nurse conceded, pulling a small, plastic-wrapped comb from another drawer in the bed stand. “But it might work until we can get you some decent toiletries. Run it through your hair while I get one of the student nurses to take you down to the lab.” She glanced down at the oversize watch on her wrist. “X rays aren’t scheduled for about an hour but the way those techs in the lab poke around, it’ll take them about that long to draw a couple cc’s of blood from you.”
Rain glanced up, feeling another moment of uneasiness. “You—you won’t be coming with me?”
The nurse smiled. “Oh, don’t you worry—you haven’t seen the last of me yet. We’ve got a bunch of things planned for you.” She helped Rain into the wheelchair and pushed her out of the room and into the corridor where a young woman stood waiting. “This is Terri and she’s going to take you for your tests and then in to see Dr. Martinez.”
“Will he have the results then?” Rain asked, fear creeping into her voice. What if the doctor’s tests reveal that she’d never get better, what if they reveal she never would remember? “When will I know?”
The nurse bent close, covering Rain’s hand with hers. There was such kindness in her weathered face, such compassion, Rain couldn’t help herself from responding. The woman understood what she was feeling, understood just how frightened she was.
“Don’t you worry,” she assured Rain in a quiet voice. “We’re going to take good care of you, you can be sure of that. And don’t forget, there’s Sheriff Mountain…he’ll figure out what happened out there in the desert, he’ll find out where you belong and he’ll get you back there—you’ll see.”
Rain felt a lump of emotion form in her throat and she struggled to swallow. She wanted to believe the nurse, wanted to believe the nightmare could end and that she would find her life again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling the sting of tears burn her eyes and her throat.
“And by the way, I’m Carrie,” the nurse called after her as Rain was wheeled down the hallway. “If anybody gives you any trouble, you just tell them they’ll have me to contend with.”
“Was she raped?”
The words slipped out of his mouth as though he were asking about the weather or the score of a ball game. Being Navajo and being a lawman, Joe Mountain had long ago learned the importance of keeping any emotion out of his voice. It never paid to let anyone know how you really felt. It may have played havoc in his private life, but professionally, it was the only way to survive.
Cruz tossed the chart on to his cluttered desktop and drew in a deep breath. Leaning back in his chair, he glanced up at Joe Mountain and shook his head. “I told you—no evidence of sexual assault. No evidence of drugs or alcohol.”
Joe made a notation in his notebook and tried to ignore the rush of relief that pulsed through his veins. Acknowledging relief would have been admitting that it mattered and it didn’t—it couldn’t. As a lawman it was his job to dig out the facts—cold, hard facts. Not react to them.
“Is there a possibility she could have been struck by lightning?”
Cruz snorted at the suggestion and shook his head again. “Lightning strike would cause severe tissue damage—point of entry, point of exit—that sort of thing and there’s not a mark on her. No burns, no trauma at least. Just a bump on the head.”
Joe made another notation in the tablet. “So that would pretty much leave out an animal attack?”
“Mountain lion, or something like that?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty much,” Cruz said with a wry smile. “Not many declawed mountain cats out there. Unless, of course, you meet up with one of those club-carrying cats who prefer whacking their victims over the top of the head.” He breathed out a laugh. “You know, caveman style.”
Joe glanced up, shooting Cruz a dark look. “No sign of animal attack,” he said deliberately, writing as he spoke and enunciating each word carefully.
“Safe to say that,” Cruz mumbled, doing his best to look appropriately chastised. They were two men who worked in professions that saw too much human misery and adversity and the dark humor they shared from time to time was a way they helped one another cope. “And just for the record, your lady had no scratch marks on her. No scratches, no scrapes,