The talk in town said Kylie Brewer was returning to Conard City with no memory of what had happened to her. That should have made the man who had tried to kill her feel good, knowing she couldn’t identify him, but he didn’t trust her amnesia. He was going to have to keep an eye on her in case she started remembering. The possibility terrified him.
And then there was the fact that she was still alive. That bugged him. She was supposed to have died, vanishing forever from his life. Instead she still breathed and walked and talked.
And she might remember.
He was galled by the fact that he had a score to settle with her. He thought he’d done it when he left her in that alley. Apparently not. Or maybe he had. He couldn’t quite make up his mind about that.
Regardless, the need to take her out hadn’t been satisfied, not completely, and it still nagged at him, made him itch. Kylie Brewer should be dead as physically as her memory had become.
He pushed ideas around in his head, trying to square his needs with reality. She had survived, but she’d lost all her plans and a chunk of her life. Kylie was now damaged goods. Surely he could leave it at that. But part of him wasn’t pleased and probably never would be. An unfinished job.
As long as she didn’t remember, maybe he could live with that. Much as he didn’t like to soil his own nest, if she started remembering, he’d have to act even though it would be harder to cover himself in such a small town.
But he’d deal with that if it became necessary. In the meantime, he just had to remain one of her friends. He had to find ways to be around her, to listen to her, to make her trust him.
In case she remembered.
Somewhere deep inside, much as the possibility frightened him, he hoped she would because then he wouldn’t have to argue with himself anymore. The decision would be made for him; the internal uncertainty would be gone.
He’d have all the reasons he needed to finish the job, no matter the danger to him.
But it occurred to him that a little misdirection might be useful. A little scare that would have everyone looking in a different direction. Something that would distract him from the nagging fear that Kylie would remember. Something that would distract everyone else from Kylie.
Humming, he set about changing his appearance with a wig and ugly cheap sunglasses, then went to get one of the old, unrecognizable cars from the barn where his dead father had left them. All he needed now was to find one little girl walking home from school alone.
Riding into the outskirts of Conard City finally released the awful tension in Kylie Brewer. Her sister, Glenda, was driving, and Kylie had been uneasily aware since they left the hospital in Denver that nothing looked familiar to her. Nothing.
And yet she had lived in Denver for the last three years. She’d even been treated in the hospital where she had worked part-time. The violent assault that had landed her in the hospital at death’s door had stolen those three years from her, and all she wanted was to see and touch something, anything, that was truly familiar.
Now she saw familiar sights at last. The Olmstead ranch, green and lush with the spring, caught her eye and filled her with a sense of peace. Cattle and deer both grazed amid the deepening grasses. She wondered vaguely if Mr. Olmstead minded the deer grazing, but couldn’t recall if she’d ever heard a word about it. Another gap in her memory? She hoped not.
Conard County, Wyoming, was home, and Conard City was as familiar to her as yesterday. Maybe more so, given how much she had forgotten. She had grown up here, and despite all the fear and despair that had dogged her since she awoke in the hospital, now she felt excited, hopeful. At peace, however temporarily.
“A word of warning,” Glenda said, speaking for the first time in the last fifty miles.
“What?”
“I’ve got a houseguest. You remember Connie Parish? She used to be Connie Halloran?”
“Of course I remember her.” It felt so good to be able to say that.
“Well, her cousin is on leave from the marines, and he’s in town for a few weeks. I couldn’t see letting him stay at the motel when I have a perfectly good room to let him use.”
In an instant, all the tension returned to Kylie. “Glenda...I don’t know him.”
Glenda patted her thigh before returning her hand to the steering wheel. “It’s fine. He’s not a threat. He was overseas when you were attacked. He only got here two days ago.”
That was supposed to be comforting? Kylie’s hands knotted into fists. Sharing her sister’s house with a stranger? While it was true she had no memory of the attack on her, and no memory of most of the last three years, she didn’t feel at all comfortable around strangers. Even the hospital staff, some of whom had worked with her before she was attacked, had presented a constant sense of threat simply because they were now strangers.
“They never caught the guy,” she said dully.
“I’m telling you, it couldn’t have been Coop. You want to check his passport?”
Kylie glanced at her sister, feeling irritated, noting that Glenda had become sharper since her divorce. Realizing she was probably being unreasonable herself.
“Look,” said Glenda, “the doctor explained your fear is normal. I understand that. You can’t remember, although I’m not really sure how remembering would help. It’s natural to be uneasy around strangers. That’s what he said. But Coop is Connie’s cousin and he won’t be a stranger for long, okay?”
Kylie managed a stiff nod. All she had wanted to do was come home and sink into the comforting familiarity of a life she could remember, and now a stranger had been thrown into the mix. She nearly felt betrayed by Glenda. Then she tried to tell herself that meeting a real stranger, one she couldn’t possibly remember, could be beneficial itself because she wouldn’t have to rack her absent memory. Somehow she didn’t quite believe her own argument.
Turning her head, she stared out at the passing countryside, picking out the ranches she remembered, realizing they were only minutes from driving into town. She had no idea how much or little had changed about Conard City during the years she couldn’t remember, but she guessed she was going to find out. It would probably be almost the same. Little changed as slowly as Conard City.
The center of town looked pretty much as it always had. There was the courthouse square, surrounded by storefronts, where a handful of retired men regularly met to play checkers or chess at the stone tables in the front park. A few were there now, though the afternoon was still chilly. It was like a snapshot, familiar her entire life long. The picture never changed much, although the faces at the tables did with the turning of the years.
“Brick sidewalks?” she asked suddenly, noticing.
“The resort up the mountain put them in. They were going to paint, too, but the landslide halted everything.”
Small change, an attractive change, but she remembered nothing about a landslide at the resort, although she remembered hearing it was going to be built. Another gap. She wondered if she should bother asking about it. It hardly seemed worth the effort at that moment.
Everything else remained solidly familiar, including her sister’s driveway and the house. It was the family house, a two-story Craftsman style painted white, left to both of them by their grandparents a few years ago. Their parents had both died years before on holiday in Guatemala. Their tourist bus had been attacked by some