LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      She was going to go insane.

      Augusta Bishop stood on the cabin’s porch and looked out at the broad green meadow and the evergreen forest beyond, peppered with the crimson and gold of oak and quaking aspen leaves in autumn dress. If she didn’t remember who she was in one minute, she thought, she could not be held responsible for what happened. After more than three weeks of this confusion, she had enough pent-up frustration to cut down the forest with her teeth.

      “It’s like being in the womb,” she told herself aloud, rubbing her swollen belly. “An uncertain future stretching out there somewhere, but inside, no past to light the way, just the darkness and the indistinguishable sounds outside.”

      Dr. Lane had diagnosed the problem as amnesia. She might remember everything tomorrow, he’d said, or she might never recall more than she did at the moment. She retained all her personal skills and her life knowledge, she just didn’t remember who she was, where she lived or whom she loved. She thought of it as a Life Saver existence: it could sustain her, but there was a giant hole in the middle.

      She walked down the porch steps and part of the way across the meadow, remembering her husband’s caution that she not go into the woods.

      Her amnesia was the result of an attempt on her life by someone he’d sent to prison, he’d told her, and he’d brought her here to hide in a friend’s summer cabin in the mountains of central Oregon.

      She looked around her at the magnificent mountains enclosing them in a cozy little valley and was astonished that her mind could ever forget this beautiful image, no matter what kind of injury she’d sustained.

      But when Bram had brought her here just over two weeks ago, she’d been certain she was seeing it for the first time.

      “We honeymooned here,” he’d told her in the rich, quiet voice that seemed to soothe her fears. Unfortunately, it also raised new ones, because she didn’t remember him, either.

      She’d struggled for weeks to go back as far as her mind would take her, but it refused to go any further than that night three weeks ago when she’d surfaced in the Columbia River, spitting water and wondering what on earth had happened to her. She’d been cold and terrified.

      Then the running lights of a boat had appeared and strong male hands had pulled her out of the water.

      “What happened?” the man demanded, wrapping her in a jacket. “I saw your car go in! Were you alone?”

      It was as though the questions had struck her ear and then bounced off. She wanted to answer, but she couldn’t.

      Even as he questioned her, he was on the radio, calling the police. “Astoria police, this is Captain Burgess, pilot boat Rainbow. I just fished a young woman out of the water. Saw her car go in right by the church on the Washington side of the river. Have an ambulance meet me at the Red Lion Marina.”

      He turned the boat around and headed not for the near shore, but for the opposite one, where she saw a mound of lights on the other side of a big bridge.

      “What’s your name?” he asked her, apparently providing information to the police.

      But that was another question that bounced.

      She remembered the sense of panic, the jolt to her feet off the cushion in the cabin where he’d placed her. Then the surprise she’d experienced at her sudden awareness of the weight she carried. She was pregnant! More panic blossomed out of itself.

      Her name! How could she not know her name?

      “Whoa!” The captain had put the radio down and caught her arm, urging her to relax. “It’s all right. You’re just in shock. Sit down and put that jacket back on. They’ll warm you up at the hospital and everything will come back to you.”

      That had been three weeks ago, and so far, nothing earlier than that moment of surfacing from under water had come back to her.

      She sat down awkwardly in the middle of the fragrant grass and listened to the silence. The insects were gone now that it was the second week in October, and all she heard was the rustle of leaves and the steady, staccato sound of Bram’s ax against the firewood. Half a mile out of Paintbrush, a town of four hundred, their four-room cabin was on the city water line, but power was iffy depending upon the elements. The only source of heat was a fieldstone fireplace.

      The nights were cool now, and Bram said that soon it would snow. He’d been chopping wood for half an hour.

      If she was surprised that she’d forgotten the scenery surrounding this mountain meadow, she was astounded that she’d forgotten her husband. When she’d awakened in the hospital the morning after the accident, the hour so early her room was still in shadows, he was leaning over her bed, a finger to his lips asking her to be quiet.

      “I’m taking you home,” he’d whispered.

      Now that she looked back on it, she thought it strange that she hadn’t been afraid. She’d looked into his dark brown eyes and seen something there that had reassured her, despite the threatening situation. And the word “home,” when she couldn’t remember where she belonged, had sounded so inviting.

      He’d taken her left hand and held it up to her face, pointing to the simple gold band on her third finger. It had shone in the shadows. He’d placed his hand beside it, to show her that he wore a matching ring.

      “I know you don’t remember anything,” he’d said. “But I’m your husband. You’re in danger here, and I want to take you to safety.”

      The sight of their rings, when she felt so alone, had been a ray of light in her black panic.

      Then he’d wrapped her in a blanket, leaped nimbly out the open window and reached in for her.

      He was a private detective, he’d told her as they’d driven into the night, and she was a teacher. He’d been working on a case on the Oregon Coast and she’d flown out from their home in northern California to meet him to celebrate his birthday. When it was time for her to return home, they’d left in separate cars, she to drive to Portland and fly home, he to return to work.

      He’d been following a small distance behind her on the narrow, winding road along the river, a row of rocks the only protection against the water. He’d seen a car speed out of a side road, then bump the back of her vehicle at high speed. At a low point in the rock wall, the car hit hers again and she went into the river.

      Her rescue and resultant amnesia were all over the news.

      Bram recognized the car as belonging to the brother of Nicanor Mendez, a trafficker in drugs and women, sent to jail by Bram’s testimony.

      Bram had been hired by Mendez’s wife, who’d suspected infidelity. His surveillance had taken him to Mexico, and when he realized what Mendez was doing, he’d called the DEA.

      Certain the man’s motive was revenge, and that he’d see the news and be after her again, Bram had spirited her out of the hospital and they’d been in hiding ever since.

      The whole scenario had an unreal quality because she could remember none of it. All the personal things she’d

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