Clayton loped toward the woman. Adam dug in his pocket for his keys, then mumbled a curse when Clayton motioned for him to join them in one of the interrogation rooms.
Several minutes later, after Clay had introduced the two of them, Adam stared in surprise as the woman scribbled a message on a Palm Pilot. Her name was Sarah, soft and sexy just like her. But her last name was Cutter, a bit sharp, although it mirrored the wariness in her eyes.
She claimed she’d been in the hospital three days before and had overheard a woman scream for help.
“What woman?” Clayton asked.
“And why the Palm Pilot?” Adam indicated the small computer.
She bit down on her lip, drawing his attention to the delicate curve of her chin and the vulnerable shadows that haunted her face. He didn’t want to feel sorry for her, but judging from the dark smudges beneath her eyes, she’d been through hell and back. He wondered if she was sick, then wanted to kick himself for being concerned. He knew better than to get involved.
He had his own damn problems.
“I don’t speak well,” she wrote. “I lost my hearing when I was five.”
“But you can hear now?” he asked. She’d frowned when he’d spoken, her eyes creasing together as if she’d had to concentrate to understand him. And she kept staring at his mouth while he talked as if she might be reading his lips. Or maybe she was just too afraid to look into his eyes again.
In any case, he found himself fixated on her mouth, on those kissable lips, and he didn’t like it.
“Yes, I recently had surgery and received hearing implants.”
Ahh. He arched a brow and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Clayton spoke up, “Okay, tell us exactly what you heard.”
She scribbled, “I don’t know who the woman was. I heard her cry out, then decided I must have imagined it. But I’ve heard her voice again, twice this week.”
“Did you tell someone in the hospital about the woman?” Clayton asked.
“Yes.” Her mouth formed the word silently. “My godfather. He suggested I’d been dreaming because of the medication. But the more I think about it, the more I know I was awake. The people must have been down the hall or in the next room or outside the window.”
Clayton rocked the wooden chair back on two legs. “You’re saying you heard a woman being kidnapped but nobody else in the building heard it except you? What are you, a psychic or something?”
Adam bit back a chuckle at the disbelief in his partner’s voice.
She shook her head, a spark of anger lighting her eyes while she fidgeted with a silver locket around her neck. Finally she turned to Adam and met his gaze again, as if she wanted to see if the connection was still there, if he’d believe her. It was, the sliver of awareness tingling along his nerve endings, but he steeled himself against any emotion.
She finally tore her gaze from his and wrote, “Yes, but my godfather Sol convinced me the anesthesia had affected me. After I went home, though, I heard the voices again. One night, it was late, the man and woman were arguing….” She shuddered as if the memories were too painful to revisit. Adam had the insane urge to fold her in his arms and comfort her like he used to do his sister when she was little and woke from a nightmare.
“Wait a minute.” Clayton held up a hand to stop her. “First you heard the voices at the hospital, then at home? How close do you live to the hospital?”
A shadow passed over her eyes. “About ten miles.”
Adam thumbed his hair from his face, impatience flaring at himself for being attracted to her. This woman was some kind of psycho, wasting their time. Clayton shot him a sideways grin as if he had read his mind and agreed.
“Were you sleeping when you heard them?” Clayton asked in a soft tone.
“Yes, but I woke up with this strange piercing sound in my ear. Then I heard the man and woman arguing. The man was forcing her to go somewhere with him.”
“And these were the same people you heard at the hospital?” Clayton asked.
She nodded.
“Did you recognize the voices?”
She glared at Clayton. “I told you I just got my hearing back, so, no, I hadn’t heard the voices before.”
Adam almost smiled at her small show of spunk. “Listen, ma’am, it’s a stretch to think you heard something strange go down at the hospital,” Clayton said, “but to hear those same voices again miles away from the hospital at your house, that’s impossible. Have you ever heard voices in your head before?”
The woman sounded schizophrenic, Adam decided.
She shook her head no again, and those vibrant blue eyes swung Adam’s way to see his reaction. Bizarre as it sounded, he found himself trying to make some sense of her story. Could her hearing implant somehow work like a radio transmitter?
She hesitated as if she had a moment of sanity and realized how crazy she sounded, then gave him a pleading look. “I received an experimental type of hearing implant at the research center. The doctor said my hearing might be warbled at times, more acute at others, and in the beginning it might sometimes be delayed.”
“Delayed hearing? A special hearing implant that allows you to hear through walls?” She was a candidate for the nuthouse. Adam pointed to himself, then Clayton. “Could you hear everyone else on the street talking? How about us—did you hear us talking from your house, too? Is that why you came here?” He stood, annoyed at himself for being suckered in and wanting to believe her when he should be looking for Denise.
“Are you saying you have some kind of bionic ear?” Clayton asked.
She stood this time and closed her eyes briefly as if to regain control. When she opened her eyes, her expression bordered on panic. She knew her story sounded crazy yet she’d come anyway. Why?
And she was looking at Adam, all sad-eyed and sincere and fiercely determined to make him believe her. She had so much depth there—it was almost as if she could see inside him, smell the cold distance he put between himself and everyone else in the world. The distance he had to keep in order to survive.
Shaken, he looked away and stared at the window, purposely raised his chin so he wouldn’t have to look into those soulful eyes. So he wouldn’t have to see the slight tremble in her hands, the quiver of that bottom lip. So his body wouldn’t stir at the soft vulnerability in her feminine form.
So he wouldn’t reach out and touch her.
This was the wrong damn woman to even think about jumping in bed with. She needed psychotherapy instead of a detective. He turned and opened his mouth to tell her that but his partner cut him off.
“How did you lose your hearing, Ms. Cutter?” Clayton propped one leg on the battered table between them and leaned forward, his tone sympathetic.
A moment of anguish glittered in her eyes. Adam watched her fold her delicate hands, noticed the way she’d chewed her nails down to stubs, saw the faint scars along her palms and saw another one at the edge of her hairline, and all his protective instincts kicked in. What exactly had happened to her? Had she been in an accident? The scars looked faded and old, but she immediately dragged a strand of that ebony hair over the spot as if to hide it. Had she been victimized recently or early in her life?
“That isn’t important,” she replied. “What’s important is that I heard a woman in trouble and you need to find her.”
Clayton lowered his voice to a placating tone, “Look, I can understand your concern, but you have to give us more to go on than this. If a woman was in danger at the hospital, don’t you think someone on staff would have heard, too?”
She