Detection Mission. Margaret Daley
WHO IS SHE?
While looking for a missing child in Sagebrush, Texas, K-9 detective Lee Calloway and his border-collie partner find someone else. A mystery woman running for her life, scared and injured. But she has no idea who she is—or why someone is after her. Lee’s unit suspects “Heidi” is a criminal who knows more than she’s saying, yet his gut instinct says she’s innocent. Lee vows to protect her until her memory returns, but now someone is desperate to ensure that never happens.
MARGARET DALEY
feels she has been blessed. She has been married more than thirty years to her husband, Mike, whom she met in college. He is a terrific support and her best friend. They have one son, Shaun. Margaret has been writing for many years and loves to tell a story. When she was a little girl, she would play with her dolls and make up stories about their lives. Now she writes these stories down. She especially enjoys weaving stories about families and how faith in God can sustain a person when things get tough. When she isn’t writing, she is fortunate to be a teacher for students with special needs. Margaret has taught for more than twenty years and loves working with her students. She has also been a Special Olympics coach and has participated in many sports with her students.
Detection Mission
Margaret Daley
MILLS & BOON
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The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed,
a refuge in times of trouble.
—Psalm 9:9
To Shirlee McCoy, Sharon Dunn, Valerie Hansen, Terri Reed and Lenora Worth
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Margaret Daley for her contribution to the Texas K-9 Unit miniseries.
Contents
ONE
Who am I?
She bent over the bathroom sink in her hospital room, cupped her hands and splashed some cold water on her face. As though that would suddenly make her remember who she was. She studied herself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person looking back at her. That revelation only intensified the panic she’d been struggling with ever since she woke up from a coma yesterday. Her fingers clenched the countertop.
Earlier, the nurse had brought her a few toiletries since she didn’t have any. After brushing her hair and putting it into a ponytail, she stared at the red gash, recently healed, above her eyebrow. She closed her eyes and tried to recall how it had happened. The screech of tires echoed through her mind. The sensation of gripping a steering wheel made her hands ache. She looked down at them, her knuckles white.
A car wreck?
A sound coming from the other room invaded the quiet. The sudden intrusion kicked up her heartbeat. She moved toward the door, putting her hand around the knob. But when two deep male voices drifted to her, she stopped and pressed her ear against the wood to listen.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“The patient who belongs in this room.”
“I don’t know. I’m here to clean her room. She wasn’t in here when I arrived.”
The sound of the two men talking about her sent her pulse racing even more. Why? It seemed innocent enough. But she couldn’t calm the pounding against her chest. Her breathing shortened. One of the voices was familiar. But how could that be? The only interactions she’d had since she’d regained consciousness were with women. She eased the door open an inch and had a pencil-narrow view into the room.
“I can come back another time. You’ll have to ask the nurse where the patient is.” The guy who was there to clean her room shifted back and forth while holding a plastic bag in one hand and a dry mop in the other.
The other man, just out of sight to the left, said, “I will.” That was the voice she’d heard somewhere before this. She wished she could see him.
Instead, she examined the features of the custodian with a beard and dark-slashing eyebrows over a piercing gray gaze. Although he was a complete stranger there was something about his frosty eyes that scared her. She eased the door shut and leaned against it.
Fear from somewhere deep inside her swelled to the surface. She couldn’t get a decent breath. She tried to search her mind for any clue to who she was, to the man with the familiar-sounding voice. A voice with a rough edge to it.
But what bothered her the most were the custodian’s gray eyes. Why? Did she know him? Someone from her past? Then why couldn’t she muster the strength to go out there and demand to know who she was?
Of course that conundrum led to lots of other baffling questions.
Like...how did she end up in the hospital?
And were the police interested in her? The nurse last night had told her they would be glad she had awakened, that they needed to talk to her. Why? She knew nothing. At all. Her mind was a blank.
A