“While we’re waiting for the doctor, maybe we should start from the beginning,” he suggested. Somehow, he had to make sense of all of this and arrest her for auto theft or send her on her way. “You said you remember your car going into the creek?”
Alana nodded. “I remember that. You pulled me onto the muddy bank and gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You saved my life.”
So far, so good. “And then you went into labor.”
Silence. For a long time. He could see the worry lines bunch up her forehead. “I don’t remember that part.” It seemed to break her heart to say it.
It damn near broke Jack’s, too. Of course, he had more at stake than she did. Joey was his son in every way that mattered. And he wouldn’t ever turn his back on that little boy the way Alana had.
“I took you to the hospital that day,” Jack continued, wondering what he was going to do if he actually jogged her memory. “We got there, and you had the baby on the way into the examining room.”
He watched those blue eyes to see if there was any recollection of that. But there didn’t seem to be any. Only more tears. Disgusted with the sympathy those tears were producing in him, he grabbed a handful of tissues from his desk drawer and shoved them at her.
“Wipe your eyes,” he insisted.
She did. It didn’t help, though. More tears followed. So did a helpless-sounding throaty moan. “Why don’t I remember? Why?”
“To hell if I know. You didn’t seem to have a memory problem when you were there at the hospital.” But even then, he’d thought there was something fishy about her story of how she’d gotten into the creek. Or what she was doing in Willow Ridge in the first place.
Alana stared at him. Blinked. “Maybe I had amnesia from the accident.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to shake his head. “The doctor thoroughly examined you. No head trauma. No trauma of any kind except for a bruise on your shoulder from the seat belt. I never heard of a seat belt bruise causing amnesia.”
“Emotional stress, then.” She sounded desperate to come up with an explanation, any explanation, of why she’d done something so despicable.
“You were fine after the delivery.” Jack didn’t bother to answer nicely. Every moment with her was like another mountain falling on him. “You even filled out the hospital paperwork.”
Including the birth certificate.
“You nursed Joey,” he continued. “Ate Christmas dinner that my aunt Tessie brought in for you. You slept a few hours. And then a little after one in the morning, you sneaked out of the hospital.”
She repeated that last sentence under her breath. A moment later, a spark flared across those blue irises. “That must have been when the guard and the nurse kidnapped me.”
Jack didn’t bother to suppress a groan. So they were back to that story. Of course, he couldn’t completely dismiss it. After all, she was sitting in his office wearing just a nightgown. A wet one at that.
The flimsy cotton clung to her breasts. It was so clingy that he could see her nipples.
He got up, grabbed a raincoat from his closet and put it over her so that it covered the entire front of her body. For reasons he didn’t understand or care to explore, seeing her breasts reminded him that she was a woman. An attractive one at that.
Jack didn’t want to think about that.
He only wanted to remember that this was the person who could destroy him. All because of DNA. As far as Jack was concerned, she was just an egg donor, nothing more.
“Willow Ridge might be a hayseed town to a city girl like you, but we still have a few amenities,” he explained. “Like a security camera in the hospital parking lot, for instance. That camera photographed you leaving the hospital alone. No guard. No nurse. Definitely no indication of a kidnapping. You left of your own free will and without anyone’s coercion or assistance.”
And he should know. He’d studied the tape hundreds of times trying to figure out what the devil had happened.
“You mean I left alone in the dead of winter?” she clarified. There was strong skepticism in her frail voice, and she waited until he confirmed that with a frosty nod. “Did I get into a car?”
Now, here was the confusing part. “No. You just walked away.”
Jack still had that image of her in his mind, too. Wearing the bleached-out green hospital gown, cotton robe and flip-flops, she’d walked out of the front of the one-story hospital, and stumbled on the sidewalk. The cold wind had whipped at her nightclothes and her hair. She’d looked unsteady.
She’d staggered several more times as she made her way through the parking lot.
There’d only been one clear shot of her face that night.
Jack would never forget it.
It was the same frightened, tearstained, shellshocked face that was staring back at him now.
“You said the baby’s name is Joey?” she asked.
All of his muscles went stiff. He didn’t want to discuss Joey with her. But he also knew he didn’t have a choice. Eventually, he had to give her enough details to satisfy her curiosity so he could get her out of there.
“You named him,” he reminded her.
Another blink. “Did I?”
He couldn’t contain his smirk, but beneath it, his concerns were snowballing. “You did. You said you named him after your kid brother who died when you were a child.” And he braced himself.
Alana hugged his raincoat closer to her. “I remember my little brother, Joey. And I remember I was wearing a green hospital gown and robe when I woke up at the house in the woods.”
Jack actually welcomed the change in subject, even though he knew it could only be temporary.
Eventually she’d ask more about Joey.
“What else do you remember about the house, the guard and the nurse?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment. “Everything, I think. It was December twenty-sixth when I woke up in that house. So I must have been there all this time.” Alana’s eyes met his. “Why did they hold me captive?”
Jack shrugged. “You’re the only one who’ll be able to answer that.”
Their eyes stayed connected until she lurched at the sound of the front door opening. Because he was on edge, Jack automatically reached for his gun and went to the door. But the gun wasn’t necessary. The tall, lanky visitor was Dr. Keith Bartolo.
“Doc’s here,” Jack relayed to Alana, only because she looked ready to jump out of her skin.
“Jack,” the doctor grumbled. He pulled off his rainbeaded felt hat, and with his leather medical bag gripped in his right hand, he made his way down the hall.
Jack had known the doctor most of his life, since the man had moved to Willow Ridge over twenty-three years ago and set up a practice. Jack also knew when Bartolo wasn’t in a good mood. Apparently, the fiftysomething-year-old doc didn’t like being called out after hours during a storm. Jack knew how the man felt. He rarely worked late these days because of Joey, but here he was at ten thirty going a second round with Alana Davis when he was supposed to be finishing up paperwork so he could take the weekend off.
“You said you had a sick prisoner,” Dr. Bartolo prompted. He headed in the direction of the lone jail cell at the far end of the hall.
“She’s in my office,” Jack corrected.
The doctor lifted a caramel-brown eyebrow, and Jack stepped to the side so the man could enter. The doc and Alana looked at each other, and Jack didn’t know which