“Okay,” he said, jotting in his notebook. “And when you were walking, were you walking toward the mountains, or away from them?”
“I walked toward them.”
He made another notation in the tablet, his head bent in concentration. “So when you reached the highway, which way did you turn? Right or left?”
Rain thought for a moment. “I think it was right.”
He looked up. “You think?”
“It was right—I’m pretty sure.” She hesitated, watching as he continued to write. “Why? Is it important, Sheriff?”
He lowered his tablet. “I don’t know. Just trying to get a better idea about where you were out there. I know where you were when I found you. Trying to see if I could retrace your steps.”
“I see.”
“So you turned right?” he asked again. “You’re pretty sure.”
She closed her eyes, trying to relive the moment again. “It was right,” she said, opening her eyes. “I remember now because I thought I’d seen a light coming from that direction.”
“A light? You mean like a headlight? A porch light? Streetlight?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was more like a flash—like the sun hitting something shiny.”
“Except it was raining.”
She shrugged meekly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You’ve given me something to go on here.”
“I have?” she asked, feeling ridiculously pleased.
“Sure.”
He did something then that had her heart actually leaping in her chest. He smiled. Not a full-out smile, but a small, funny little one that nearly knocked her socks off.
“Oh,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Good.”
He nodded, no trace of the smile showing now, and made another notation in the tablet. “Okay, good.” Looking up, he leaned back in the chair. “What does Logan mean?”
She sat up. “Logan? I don’t know. Why?”
“It doesn’t sound familiar, doesn’t ring any bells?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Is that my name?”
He glanced up from the tablet again. “I don’t know. You kept saying it over and over in the car last night.”
“Logan,” she repeated slowly, trying to tell if the name sounded familiar on her tongue. “Logan.”
“Well?”
She sank back against the pillows. Her head began throbbing again and she remembered what Dr. Martinez had said about forcing the memories.
“No,” she said with a tired sigh. “I don’t know what it means. It doesn’t sound familiar to me.” A sudden thought had her sitting up again. “But it could mean something, couldn’t it? I mean, maybe it’s a…a clue.”
“It’s something to look into,” he admitted, but it was obvious he wasn’t sharing her enthusiasm. With the flip of his wrist, he swung the tablet closed and rose to his feet. “I think that’s it for the time being. I’ll let you get back to your rest.” Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt, he pulled out a card. “If you think of anything else—anything, it doesn’t matter how small or unimportant it may seem—my number is right there. Give me call, day or night.”
Rain stared down at the card. Seeing his name printed neatly in bold black letters, she felt something tighten in her chest. “I will, thank you.”
“Did you have any questions for me?”
She thought for a moment, glancing up from the card. “Why Rain?”
For the first time he looked something less than controlled, as though the question had caught him off guard.
“It’s Navajo,” he mumbled, reaching for his hat. “An old legend. Rain Woman, born of the elements.” Holding his hat by the brim, he looked down at her. “You don’t like it?”
“I do like it,” she said, her voice feeling strangely tight in her throat. “I like it very much.”
“Good,” he murmured. There it was again, that small, funny little smile—there only for a moment, before disappearing again. “Anything else?”
She nodded. “What do you think happened out there in the desert? Why do you think I was out there?”
He looked at her for a moment, his black eyes devoid of any emotion, of any expression at all. It was as if she had asked him about the weather.
“At this point, I couldn’t even offer a guess,” he said in a low voice.
She was too disappointed to be angry, too frightened to argue. “I have to find out who I am, Sheriff,” she said, looking up at him and not bothering to hide the tears she felt stinging her eyes now. “I have to.”
“I know,” he said, taking a step closer to the bed. “And you can be damn sure I’m not going to rest until we do.”
His words were softly spoken, but full of intensity and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he meant every word. She knew in that moment that Sheriff Joe Mountain was going to solve the riddle of her past, was going to conquer the darkness and would bring her to the light again.
With a stiff little bow, he turned and headed for the door.
“Sheriff,” she called after him, bringing him to an abrupt halt. “Just one more thing.”
He turned around. “Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s right there in black and white,” Deputy Ryan Samsung said, pointing to the faxed report he set on the desk. “No matches. There’s been no one with the name of Logan matching the description of your Jane Doe reported missing.”
Joe stared down at the papers on the desk. The report had merely been a formality, confirming what his gut had been telling him from the beginning. This wasn’t a simple missing person’s case and it was going to take more than punching a few things into a computer to figure this out.
He had a sense for these things and his sense was that something more was going on here, something menacing and dark and nothing about it was going to be simple. Whatever had happened in the desert had been dramatic and devastating and it had not only changed Rain’s life, but his life, too.
“And you cross-referenced it with the State Department of Justice as well as the FBI?”
“Came up with nothing,” Ryan assured him. “Just like you said.”
“Well, it might have been nice to have been surprised for a change,” Joe admitted, picking up the faxed report and slipping it inside a large manila folder. “But at least now we can be sure.” He leaned back in his chair, glancing up at Ryan. “Did Gracie e-mail a description out to the newspapers in Sparks and in Reno?”
Ryan shook his head. “Gracie’s not here.”
Joe sat up. “What do you mean she’s not here? Where is she?”
Ryan shrugged as he started for the door. “I don’t know. I think she said something about a doctor’s appointment.”
That triggered a vague recollection in his brain and