told herself that she owed him that much. She told herself, too, that it wasn’t because of his eyes. Or his shoulders. Or the size of his hands.
The fan whirring overhead stirred the hot dry air into a semblance of a breeze, pushing loose strands of her hair into her face. She plucked them away, ignored the heat stirring low in her belly and said, “Sergeant Harding—Kell—was about to explain forensic hypnosis to me.”
Kate squeezed Jamie’s wrist. “What?”
“I’m pretty sure he wants to jog my memory.”
“The same memory you’ve told everyone repeatedly is blank? Does no one believe you?” Kate shifted on the bench, closer to Jamie and away from Kell. “Or since they’re at a loss to solve this thing, are they now putting the onus on you?”
Kell had been sitting silent all this time, absorbing the exchange between mother and daughter as if searching for the best tack to take, or as if waiting his turn because, law enforcement or not, he knew he was the outsider.
But Kate’s accusation obviously riled him. His pulse throbbed in his temples, and he had barely swallowed the rest of his coffee before he crushed the cup.
“The onus is on us, Dr. Danby. On me. Completely. Coming to Jamie is not a shifting of responsibility—”
Her skin pale, Kate pulled her hand from Jamie’s and waved it to cut him off. “Then why are you talking to my daughter about hypnosis? Why—”
“Let him talk, Mom. Please.” Jamie so understood what her mother was feeling.
It had been Kate’s job to protect her daughter, to see Jamie from traumatized teen to a woman standing on her own, recovered, able to view the past from the distance she’d come in ten years. And she’d done it alone, while building a new life as a divorcée, coping with all of it at once because she’d had no choice. As much as Jamie did not want to return her to where this whole nightmare had started…
She tamped down the fear rising in a dark cloud around her and turned her attention on Kell. “Let him talk.”
His gaze captured hers, held, a potent thank-you for not writing off his proposal before he’d had a chance to explain. A brief nod, then he looked at her mother, as if her permission was as important to him as was Jamie’s.
She liked that. Found she was liking many things about him when the only thing that mattered was whether or not he would be the one to put an end to her hell.
Kate hadn’t objected, so Kell cleared his throat. “Before you arrived, I was explaining to Jamie that the memories she thinks she’s lost, well, she hasn’t. Not really. Selective amnesia is a coping mechanism—”
“Selective amnesia? Are you saying she’s forgotten on purpose?”
He shook his head. “Her subconscious won’t let her remember. Her mind is protecting her from reliving the trauma of that night’s events.”
“And yet knowing that, you want to hypnotize her and have her suffer them again?” Kate shook her head vehemently. “No. No. It’s not going to happen. Absolutely not.”
“Mom—”
“Jamie, no.” Kate’s voice grew shrill. “I won’t let you go through that again. You can’t—”
It was time for Jamie to take charge. “I can, but I haven’t said that I will. I want to know more before I agree to going back there.”
Kell’s expression changed, growing accommodating, respectful yet urgent, as if he was at her disposal for any little thing. “What do you want to know?”
Jamie wasn’t even sure where to begin. “What makes you think this will work? This forensic hypnosis?”
“I’m not sure that it will,” he told her, and she appreciated his honesty. “You may not recall anything we can use in our investigation. On the other hand, you might remember the very thing we need to track down this bastard and put him behind bars.”
“Such as?” Jamie couldn’t help but fear, what was for her, the unknown.
Her mother spoke before Kell could answer. “A license-plate number? Isn’t that
Lindsay Paige, Mary Smith
Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, Charles Dickens and Others