Emma inserted the key into the lock on her front door and pushed inside, trying not to dwell on the memory of Joe’s face when he’d learned he’d had a family. A loving family that had been destroyed by the murder of his parents, just days apart.
And no one had ever been able to figure out who’d killed them or why they’d died.
It was sobering, really. After all, she’d always missed having a father, but to lose both parents at such a young age, and then to lose all memory of them and the siblings you once had? No wonder the guy had issues.
But now that she’d gone above and beyond the call of duty—and maybe even decency—and had filled in the missing pieces of Joe’s past, it was time to let go. He had still insisted on flying back to San Francisco tomorrow morning, and she was going to go back to her life. Jane was due back in three weeks, and Emma would need all her reserves to make it until that fateful doctor’s appointment. She’d helped, he had his past tucked into the small envelope she’d given him, and now maybe he could heal and she could move…
A noise like a footfall sounded in the next room, near the main staircase.
Emma froze. She was almost in the doorway and could see part of the stairway through the opening. Slowly, softly, she set her cumbersome shoulder bag down on the hardwood floor and listened for another noise. Old houses like this often made odd noises as they “settled”—a phenomenon she was all too familiar with, having lived in this ten-bedroom behemoth for the last three years. So why did that one little noise have the hair on the back of her neck standing on end?
Unable to ignore the fact that every cell in her body was flashing WARNING!, she lifted her right foot, swung it slowly behind her left ankle and softly set the sole onto the floor, inch by careful inch. When that step backward turned out to be successfully quiet, she repeated it, keeping her eye on the stairs.
A shadow stepped out from behind her and solidified in the dim moonlight streaming through the leaded glass windows.
Emma swung around, prepared to make a run for it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the shadow hissed. She heard the sound of a gun being cocked.
Her heart hammering in her ears, Emma slowly turned to face him. The intruder was dressed in black, a nylon stocking pulled over his face to obscure his features.
Oh, God, what was she supposed to do? The man was in her house, and unless she could beat him to the door, there was nothing and no one to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to her. Not to mention the man had a gun. She glanced around wildly for something, anything she could use to defend herself. It was futile. “What do you want?” she asked.
“To send a message,” he whispered.
A message. Okay, he hadn’t said, “To kill and dismember you and dispose of your body in a Dumpster,” so cooperating might be the thing to do. She clenched her hands together, trying to control her sudden shaking.
He walked toward her, stopping when his mouth was close to her ear. Emma swallowed the reflexive gag response at his proximity and forced herself to remain still. “I didn’t have to miss,” he said, and she knew he was referring to the gunshots embedded in her siding. “Those were a warning, and here’s your last one.”
He paused; she waited. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, during which every fiber of her being wanted to shriek her fool head off and bolt, he said, “Tell Detective Lopez to leave the city, or I’ll kill him. I’d rather not wait, but you know how it is.” He reached out to finger a lock of her hair. “And wouldn’t it be too bad if pretty Professor Reese got in the way again?”
Emma jerked back, startled that he even knew her name.
With one hand still in her hair, he cupped her waist with the other and ran his face along her exposed neck. “The smell of fear on a beautiful woman. It’s intoxicating.”
He slipped something long and soft around her throat, and that’s when she finally moved, jerking out of his grasp and flattening her body against an antique china cabinet. The hundred-year-old wood and glass rattled as her weight hit it. He let her go, laughing softly as he backed into the darkness behind the stairs.
It wasn’t until she’d heard him slip out the window behind the stairs that Emma noticed he’d looped her missing scarf around her neck like a noose.
AS SOON AS JOE RECEIVED Emma’s message, he borrowed a nondescript sedan from another conference attendee he had a passing acquaintance with and drove directly to her house. So much for avoiding his past—not only had it had come looking for him, it was leaving threatening messages with the one person in L.A. he’d considered a friend.
So, a short drive later, he parked a couple of blocks behind June Street and walked swiftly to Emma’s back door, taking care to keep to the shadows. She answered seconds after his knock and let him inside.
All she’d told him was that she’d received a message from their friendly neighborhood shooter, but not what form the message had taken. One look at her pale, drawn face, and he knew it had been bad.
“Hey.” She wrapped her hands around her elbows, hugging herself, but other than that and her too-serious expression, she looked completely composed. “Thanks for coming.”
“No prob.” He glanced around, assessing the entranceway. The windows he could see were still intact, and the front door hadn’t shown any signs of a break-in, but as he recalled from their first afternoon together, it was the back door locks that needed a security update. Badly.
“I’m going to take a look around, see if I can’t fix some of the less-secure areas of this house, and—” He took another look at Emma and stopped himself, dropping the few pieces of equipment he’d brought with him. No longer the Amazon who’d tried to pepper-spray him a few days ago, she looked small and very scared, though she was trying her best to hide it. “Ah, come here,” he said softly. She came. Thank God.
He enfolded her in his arms and held her tightly, trying to give her some of the comfort she obviously needed. She was silent, with her arms tucked against his chest and her face burrowed in his neck, and he was hyperaware of her warm breath against his collarbone, her warm, curvy body against his. She wasn’t crying, he noted with relief, but something had scared Emma Jensen Reese to pieces.
“Tell me about it,” he said into her hair, not letting her go. So she told him, quietly and still without tears, and by the time she was finished, he knew he wasn’t going to leave L.A. Friday, nonrefundable airline ticket be damned. He’d stay; he’d unearth his past, and he’d finish this once and for all, fix it so Emma could walk the streets and be in her house again without feeling she was in danger. He’d never once felt the urge to kill a living soul, but this guy was cutting it close.
“Damn, Emma, I’m sorry,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She raised her head, reminding him just how tall she was. Her face was nearly level with his, and he was six-three. “For what?” she asked.
Ah, God, this was so not good. Because she was very good at making his darkest emotions just melt away like candle wax. And this time, he’d gone from his very first murderous impulse to very badly wanting to take the bottom lip Emma loved to chew on when she was worried into his own mouth, and then to kiss her until neither one of them could see straight.
He dipped his head, and damn if she didn’t raise hers to meet it. But just as his lips brushed hers, he pulled back. Emma had had a nice life before he’d come along and brought his gun-toting, SUV-driving, one-maniac entourage into it. She was a lady in the truest, nonsexist sense of the word, and she didn’t need the likes of him around.
“For dragging you into my messed-up life,” he said, laughing. It sounded hollow even to his ears.
Before he could disengage himself from her, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Even that small contact made his nerve endings sing. “Not your fault,” she whispered against his skin. “I had a birthday yesterday, and I wished for a grand adventure, just like I do every year.”
The corners of his mouth quirked upward. “Confucius say, be careful what you wish for.”
“Exactly.” Then she was the one who pulled away, and her expression was sober. “Look, seriously, it’s not your fault. That maniac is after you, and I just had the bad luck to buy and restore the broken-down house that holds the key to getting this homicidal monkey off your back.” She gestured toward the open doorway to the living room, which he’d avoided looking at since he’d gotten there. “Come in, Joe. Look around—being in here brought back some memories last time you did so. I want to help you get to the bottom of this. Because you’re a hunted man until you do.”
He took a deep breath and blew it out as he rubbed the suddenly tight muscles in the back of his neck. His earlier resolve to stay in L.A. and do just what she’d suggested now didn’t seem like the best idea he’d ever had. “But if I go, he’ll leave you alone. That’s what he told you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He followed you to my house that first night. I’m sure he knows your memories are coming back. He’ll follow you back to San Francisco, and he’ll finish what he started when he killed your parents. And maybe he’ll come back for me because I’ve seen him now, and I might know too much.”
Joe swore under his breath.
Emma gripped his elbows and looked him dead in the eye with that stare of hers. “You know I have an inordinately high probability of being right.”
“Oooh, out come the big words.”
“Joe, stay in L.A.,” she said, ignoring his stab at mood-lightening sarcasm. “Finish this. And I think you should get the police involved.”
He raked his hair off his forehead with one hand. “I talked to Rodriguez this morning who, by the way, is Homicide Special, just like I thought. Says he and his partner were the closest to your house when the call came in. They’ve been canvassing the neighborhood since the shooting, but no one saw anything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How old is Rodriguez? He’s LAPD, and so were your parents. And he was acting strange when he was here.”
“Not that old. I’d place him about five years younger than I am.”
She snorted. “Couldn’t tell with those goofy glasses he was wearing in the house. And it doesn’t mean he isn’t connected somehow to current events.” Then she reached out and pulled one of her ornate dining room chairs away from the dark-stained table. “Tell me what you remember,” she said suddenly, a clear invitation.
To his surprise, he didn’t mind the personal question, feeling more comfortable around Emma than he had around anyone for as long as he could remember. Sure, he had friends back in San Francisco, but they were basketball-and-barbecue types who were good for a cold beer and a few laughs. Nothing deep. Certainly not Freudian “tell me about your childhood” conversations.
“Beth,” he said before he could stop himself.
She blinked at him. “Who’s Beth?”
“My second foster mother. My first was a nice lady, but she just didn’t know what to do with me, you know?” He gestured for her to sit in the chair she’d pulled out and made himself comfortable across the table from her. “I don’t remember much about the logistics surrounding how I got into the California foster care system, but I do remember how I felt. Lonely. Hollow. Lost. All these big feelings, and I couldn’t remember why I was having them, couldn’t answer anyone’s questions about them or me. So I just stopped talking. And after a few months of radio silence, my first foster family gave up and tossed me back into the system, and it spat me out on Beth Billings’ doorstep.”
Emma rested her chin in one hand, listening intently. “I hope she was good to you.”
He shook his head. “She was great to me. She took in the problem kids. You know, the ones who got into fights or got arrested for stealing or were labeled head cases, and she loved us to pieces. Simple as that. We would have rather cut off our own heads than disappoint Beth.”
“She sounds amazing.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah. So those are the last things I remember. Waking up one morning in the home of my first foster family, transitioning out, and then Beth.” He got up, feeling a little weird at having told her more about his past in five sentences than anyone else. “What about you?”
Emma straightened her spine, shooting him a slightly bewildered look. “What about me?”
“Vhy don’t you tell me aboutchour childhood,” he said in his best attempt at a fake German accent, which really wasn’t so bad.
Relaxing once more, chin in hand, Emma shrugged. “Nothing much to tell. I’m an only child. I have great parents. They divorced when I was nine, but as befitting a couple who got married in Woodstock—the peace, love, and music Woodstock—it was the most amicable divorce ever. They became ‘co-parents’ and friends, and I never really missed having a conventional family.”
“Cool,” Joe said.
She pressed her finger down on a fleck of dust marring the shiny surface of the heavy oak table and then flicked it onto the floor. Then she told him about her mother’s cancer, how it had nearly taken Jane from her when she was ten and how it had come back eleven months ago.
“Funny how the worst years of our lives happened to both of us when we were ten,” she said, picking up more dust flecks, real and imaginary.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounds lame, but I mean it. That must have been really hard on you, then and now.”
She smiled at him, then. “Not really. I can’t imagine being in your shoes.”
“I went looking for them today,” Joe said abruptly. “My family,” he supplied at Emma’s puzzled look.
Emma straightened in her chair, interested. “What did you find?”
“Nada.” He gave her a wry smile. “Would you believe the adoption records for all three of them were destroyed in a fire back in the eighties?”
She made a face. “Nothing about this can be easy, can it?”
He hitched a shoulder. “Guess not. But I’ll find them. I work missing persons cases all the time.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded—without any records, finding Patricio, Daniel and Sabrina was going to take a hell of a lot of work. Then again, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do, other than hang around L.A. and get shot at.
Joe pushed away from the table and stood. “Look, it’s late. I’m going to go through your house and make sure it’s secure.”
Standing herself, Emma flicked her gaze toward the living room door once more.
“I’m not avoiding the living room,” he said.
“Of course not,” she agreed, with no conviction whatsoever.
He picked up the hammer and nails and dead bolt set he’d brought with him and walked toward the living room. So if he was going to have one of those memory attacks in the house, he might as well get it over with.
He stalked into the doorway, his gaze taking in the sage-green overstuffed sofa, the oriental rug on the ground, the dark-stained antiques scattered about the room. And then…
Nothing.
The room, which the mere thought of entering had given him a severe case of vertigo, seemed vaguely familiar, but that was it. No passing out. No nightmare flashbacks. Nothing.
Huh.
He checked the window locks, then moved through the rest of the house, nailing the loose window behind the stairs shut and installing a new dead bolt on the back door for extra security. Then he went to the front door, uneasiness tugging at the corners of his mind. Emma shouldn’t be alone tonight. But he sure as hell shouldn’t be the one keeping her company, making her house a big target for that whistling perv.
He went to the front door, preparing to leave, then finally turned to face Emma, who had been silently following him as he checked the house. “Okay, what I’ve done will keep someone from entering silently, but you really ought to get a security system installed.”
Emma glanced back at the stairs, obviously thinking about the man who had broken into her home. “Okay.”
More than ever, he worried about her being alone. “Call me,” he said impulsively. “If you just want me to check out a strange noise or something outside. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid—if the slightest thing makes you uneasy, just call me.”
Tilting her head, she gazed at him for so long, he almost squirmed. “You’re a really nice guy, Joe Lopez,” she said.
“Yeah, whatever,” he replied quickly. “Night, Emma.”
“Good night, Joe.”
As he made his way quickly around the house to the back alleys, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him, watching the house, watching Emma. And once again, he was struck through the core of his being with the stark certainty that she really shouldn’t be alone tonight.