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darlin’.”
    Her mind searched for a starting place, a string to follow to the point where everything went wrong. She was currently living in Sacramento, working with The Last Stand—a victims’ charity she’d founded five years ago with Skye Willis and Jasmine Stratford. No, not Stratford. Not anymore. Jasmine was married and living in New Orleans with her husband these days.
    Her thoughts were so tangled….
    “Why’d I come back to Whiterock?” she asked. With a bit more information, she might be able to put it all together….
    “You wanted to come after I called you about the rifle,” Ned said, but that elicited nothing.
    “I did?”
    “You said you’ve learned a thing or two about investigatin’ crime since you moved and wanted to help me solve Jason Wyatt’s murder. That was three weeks ago.”
    She couldn’t remember three weeks ago, but she could remember Jason. That part of the past came rushing back like a horror video on fast-forward: Cain’s stepbrother putting his arm around her in that steamy truck, trying to kiss her. Her unwillingness to let him. The way she’d wiped a spot on the window with her hand, hoping for a glimpse of Cain. Then the door being wrenched open—
    She squeezed her eyes shut as the barrel of the rifle materialized in her mind. Stop. Stop. Stop! She wasn’t ready to relive that nightmare.
    “Sheridan?” Ned pressed.
    Sweat dampened the valley between her breasts. “I—I’m not myself yet,” she murmured. “Maybe…maybe you should come back later.”
    Cain turned. She could feel him observing her closely, assessing the situation in that silent, watchful way of his. He’d changed some, filled out, grown harder around the edges, more rugged. But his mysterious, aloof air was vintage Cain.
    Ned let go of the bed rail and began rolling the sides of his hat toward the crown. “When?” he said. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but this hospital’s seventy miles from Whiterock, darlin’.’”
    “Stop calling her ‘darlin’,” Cain growled. “And so what if waiting means you have to make another trip? She doesn’t need any pressure from you. She’s had it hard enough.”
    She was relieved to have someone stand up for her. Right now, she needed that buffer. But she could also understand Ned’s impatience. He had an investigation to run, and he expected her to react like the professional she’d promised him she was and not the victim she’d become.
    Somehow, frightening and painful though it was, she had to delve into the half memories that shrouded this most recent incident. But she couldn’t create clarity that wasn’t there. “Can you tell me more, some detail that might remind me?” she asked.
    “Cain found you next to a half-dug grave in the forest near his old cabin. You were so beat-up he thought you were dead.”
    His words reminded her, all right. She could barely breathe. “I—I…”
    Cain cut in. “Damn it, Ned, give her a break.”
    The rest of Ned’s good ol’ boy veneer disappeared.“So you can get to her first?” he snapped, the twang of his accent growing more marked. “Plant thoughts and memories that aren’t her own? Hell, no!”
    Had Sheridan been more herself, she would’ve argued that no one could play with her memory that way. The truth was there; it was just temporarily locked inside her mind. But she felt too uncertain to argue about anything. “I’m going to need some time,” she said.
    Ned wasn’t happy with her response, but most of the tension in the room existed independent of her. There was some kind of feud going on between him and Cain. Why? They’d known each other in high school. But they hadn’t hung out together. They’d barely—
    “You married her,” Sheridan said, finally piecing one small mystery together.
    Cain knew exactly who and what she was talking about. She could see it in his face. But Ned was still caught up in trying to get his own answers and didn’t clue in quite so fast.