LITMIR.BIZ

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      CHAPTER ONE

      “WE DIDN’T KNOW WHO ELSE to call. We’ve never seen anything like this before. We saw your name in the paper regarding a case you worked on with the Philadelphia P.D. We figured maybe you could help us, so we reached out to Ben Tyler.”

      Greg was standing in the lobby of what was the Brigantine Police Department thinking he was less than fifteen minutes away from Atlantic City. So close he could smell the salt in the air from the ocean. A cold sweat broke out on his brow and he considered how lucky he was that no one would notice with almost 90 percent humidity in the air.

      The Jersey Shore, even in the waning days of summer, was no joke.

      “How do you know Ben Tyler?”

      The sheriff shrugged. “Everyone in law enforcement around here knows Tyler. He has resources that can be helpful for any number of cases. Also we recently worked with a former colleague of his on a cold case, Mark Sharpe. You know him, too?”

      “Sad to say I do.”

      Ben Tyler was the head of the Tyler Group, a troubleshooting organization that pulled together some of the best minds in many different areas, including political strategy, criminal investigation, law, computer technology and well...him.

      Tyler was Greg’s boss, for lack of a better word. Ben offered him various different jobs and Greg had the option of which ones he wanted to take. Which were all of them because they paid his bills. As for Mark, Ben’s former colleague in the CIA, Greg tried to avoid him as much as possible, which wasn’t easy because Mark and Ben seemed to be actual friends now.

      Anytime the two of them were together, Mark would ask Greg to play poker with him because he wanted to see if he could bluff him. Nobody could bluff Greg. It was why the police had called him.

      “Greg, are we doing this or what?”

      Greg turned and found his roommate, Chuck, the man he credited with keeping him gambling sober for the past year, leaning over the lobby’s counter trying to flirt with the young woman seated behind it. He was pointing to things on her computer, no doubt trying to enlighten her on more efficient ways to use the equipment.

      Greg had told him dumping computer knowledge on women wasn’t the best way to impress the ladies, but it was the only game Chuck had. Greg had to admit it actually worked sometimes. Lately, Chuck had had his fair share of female company.

      Apparently computer nerd was the new hot.

      Greg had asked his roommate to come along for the ride so that, in case his willpower faltered, someone would be there to back him up. He wasn’t sure if Chuck’s impatience had to do with the girl’s lack of interest or if he was concerned on Greg’s behalf.

      Even Ben admitted he had hesitated before calling Greg for this particular job. He’d mentioned the case. Mentioned the location. Mentioned his concerns. Then asked, actually asked, if Greg thought he was up for it.

      Up for it?

      Screw that. He hadn’t gambled in over a year. He could freaking handle a trip to the beach even if it was one town over from AC. He’d snarled at Ben and told him yes he could handle it. Then he’d hung up the phone and told Chuck to put on some real pants. Chuck preferred spending his days in their waterfront loft that overlooked Penn’s Landing in clothes he referred to as his comfy-womfies. His assertion: a man who spent his life mostly on his ass in a chair in front of a computer needed to be comfortable. So pajamas, sweats and the occasional stretchy pants he referred to as men’s yoga pants, were the norm. Some of them actually had small animals on them.

      Since Greg refused to be seen out in public with him like that, anytime they went anywhere together he forced Chuck to wear jeans. While Chuck insisted they pinched—although at five foot six and barely a hundred and fifty pounds, Greg didn’t know what the jeans were pinching—he usually agreed to put them on. Greg also tried to tell him that women didn’t have sex with men who wore comfy-womfies in public.

      “Can I see her?”

      The sheriff nodded and escorted the two men back through a room that hosted a bunch of cubicles. They reached a door that led to a short hallway that ended in another door. No elaborate two-way mirror for a small town sheriff’s office. Just a window that looked into a small room furnished with a stark wood table and two folding chairs.

      The interrogation room.

      Sheriff Danielson pointed to the door and Greg walked over and stooped a little to look through the window.

      She was sitting in a chair, her shoulders slumped, her eyes dull, her demeanor defeated. Long, nearly white blond hair almost touched the table in front of her. Despite her posture, Greg could determine she was young, maybe late twenties early thirties, and slim in a charcoal-gray short-sleeved dress.

      She might have been really pretty had it not been for all the blood.

      “Okay, tell me the situation again. Ben gave me the details you told him, but I would like to hear them from you directly.”

      The sheriff nodded. “Officer Hampton was out on his normal patrol. He spotted her walking along the highway in the early morning. As he approached her he could see she was covered with blood. He pulled over, assessed that she wasn’t injured, but when he asked for identification she couldn’t provide it. When he asked her name, she said she didn’t know it. When he asked her what happened—”

      “She couldn’t remember it,” Chuck said, finishing the sentence for the sheriff. “Cool.”

      Greg gave him a severe look. “You want to wait outside?”

      “I’m bored.”

      “Play a game on your phone. I’m working.”

      “Fine. I’ll stay here and be quiet. But no more than an hour. You need to be in and out. You follow?”

      “Yes, Mom.” Chuck was like a mother hen. And he’d brought him along for exactly that reason. Despite the fact that his roommate was younger than him by seven years, he had a way of grounding Greg that was beneficial to Greg’s continued gambling sobriety. He was almost like a sponsor, except as far as Greg knew, the only thing Chuck had ever been addicted to was hitting on women.

      “You want me to talk to her and tell you if she’s lying.”

      “It’s a start. I don’t really have any grounds to hold her on. She wasn’t carrying a weapon. There is no crime that we know of, except someone is walking around without a lot of blood. For all we know that might be a deer she hit with her car. If you tell me she’s lying, I’m going to come up with something to hold her for at least another twenty-four hours. Otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”

      “The hospital would be a good start.”

      “But she’s not hurt.”

      “Sheriff, if her brain is not working, she’s hurt.”

      He seemed to consider that. “True. Man, you don’t think this is one of those bumps to the head that caused this?”

      “Since bumps to the head that leave the victim this physically functional rarely cause memory loss, I’m going to say no.”

      “Maybe we should hit her on the head again and see if her memory comes back. You know like...what was that show? Was that The Brady Bunch?” Chuck asked.

      “Gilligan’s Island,” Greg corrected. “And that idea is as ridiculous now as it was on the show. But thank you for your insightfulness.”

      “Dude, she’s got amnesia. That’s totally cray-cray.”

      “Chuck. You’re almost thirty. It’s time you stop talking like a teenager. It’s only crazy if she’s telling the truth. Which she most likely isn’t. Sheriff, I don’t know how much you know about memory loss...”

      “Nothing. Which is why I called you here.”

      “It’s

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