Running on Empty Read online

  “Earth to Jane.”

  She looked up into Detective Thompson’s concerned face. Only then did she realize she’d stopped right in the middle of the lot, blocking traffic.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I—I think I remembered something. But it was more like a feeling than an actual memory.”

  “What did it feel like.”

  “I felt…alone.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “Not yet.”

  If she saw a flash of guilt in his eyes, it was gone almost instantly. “Let’s go inside.”

  They stepped through the automatic door, and she once again felt that sudden and brief surge of adrenaline.

  “I think I remember being here,” she said, excitement and hope erupting inside her like a geyser. Maybe it would all start to come back now. Maybe this nightmare was almost over.

  Or maybe it was only beginning.

  Running on Empty

  MICHELLE CELMER

  Books by Michelle Celmer

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Running on Empty #1343

  Silhouette Desire

  Playing by the Baby Rules #1566

  The Seduction Request #1626

  MICHELLE CELMER

  lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband, their three children, two dogs and two cats. When she’s not writing or busy being a mom, you can find her in the garden or curled up with a romance novel. And if you twist her arm real hard, you can usually persuade her into a day of power shopping.

  Michelle loves to hear from readers. Visit her Web site at www.michellecelmer.com, or write her at P.O. Box 300, Clawson, MI 48017.

  For Steve

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Prologue

  It would be so easy to kill her.

  So easy to wrap his hands around her neck and squeeze until the life drained from her body. To plant the barrel of his gun to her temple and pull the trigger.

  Only that wasn’t part of the game.

  He liked to see them suffer. To know that for the rest of their lives they would live in fear. Fear of him. And this one, she would suffer. She would learn her place. She stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong, took what was rightfully his.

  But when he got what he was looking for, when he no longer needed her and the game was over, she would pay.

  With her life.

  Chapter 1

  Running across a body in a cordoned-off crime scene was rare enough in a community the size of Twin Oaks, but the odds of running over one in the toy department of the local Save Mart had to be about a million to one.

  Making this his lucky day.

  Cursing a blue streak, Detective Mitch Thompson swerved his cart and narrowly missed rolling over a denim-clad leg. The woman lay sprawled on her back, looking, as far as he could tell, unharmed. And breathing. She was definitely pulling in a sufficient amount of air. He crouched down beside her and pressed two fingers to her throat, finding a strong pulse.

  Okay, so what was the deal?

  He tapped her cheek lightly, finding her skin warm and soft beneath his fingers. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  She didn’t respond. Then he noticed the blood. It soaked through the back of her hair, transforming it from honey-colored to crimson.

  Well, that would explain it. Damn, he really didn’t need this tonight. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. He gave the operator his badge number and the location of the store. “I have a woman down, twenty-five to thirty years old, with a head injury.”

  After the operator assured him help was on the way, he disconnected and shoved the phone back into his pocket. Thinking she might have passed out and hit her head on the way down, he unzipped her jacket to look for a medic-alert necklace, searched her wrists, shoving up one sleeve, then the other. No bracelets, no rings. Nothing to indicate a chronic medical condition.

  He noticed bruises forming on her forearms and elbows. Odd, considering she was flat on her back. When a person fell backward, they didn’t typically land on their arms. Could she have fallen forward and rolled over?

  The pool of blood under her head began to spread, and though he didn’t want to move her, he had to stop the bleeding. He searched his pockets for something to press against the wound but came up empty. Out of desperation, he grabbed a beanbag animal from the bin above him and eased it under her head, doing his best not to move her neck. He doubted it was sterile, but it would have to suffice.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me?” he tried again. “Open your eyes.”

  She mumbled something incoherent.

  He scanned the area for a purse or wallet, something to identify her. He checked the pockets of her jacket, finding a few wadded tissues in one, a folded receipt with no store name on it in the other. He was about to check the pockets of her jeans when he heard a gasp behind him.

  “What did you do to her?” A young girl with a nametag identifying her as Becky stood several feet away, gaping at the scene on the floor. Her eyes locked on the blood and all the color leeched from her face. The plastic basket of items she was holding clattered to the floor.

  “Twin Oaks Police,” he said, producing his badge.

  She slapped a hand over her mouth, asking through her fingers, “Is she d-dead?”

  “No, Becky, but I need to get her to a hospital.” And he needed to get the clerk moving before he had two unconscious, bleeding women on his hands. “Go to the front entrance and flag down the emergency personnel when they pull up and lead them back to me. Can you do that?”

  “S-sure.” She backed up a few steps, eyes riveted on the woman, then turned and scurried away.

  He stuck his badge back in his jacket and yawned so deeply his eyes teared. Christ, he was tired. He should be home in bed right now. It was after midnight, which meant it was Saturday and officially his day off. If he hadn’t let his sister Lisa talk him into stopping at the store for her, in bed is where he would probably be.

  It had been a long, hellish week that resulted in the arrest of a man allegedly responsible for the brutal rape of five women. Mitch’s arrest, thanks to an anonymous tip. Now all he wanted—what he desperately needed—was a few days off. God knows he’d earned it. Between work and helping care for their mother while she recovered from back surgery, he was running himself ragged. After he dropped the groceries off he had planned to go home, unplug the phone, crawl into bed and sleep straight through until Sunday. Now he’d have to go into the station and file a report.

  The woman on the floor moaned, wincing when she tried to move her head.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me? You need to lie still. Help is on the way.” He braced one hand under her head and cupped the other over her cheek to hold her immobile. Her delicately boned face felt fragile and looked small cradled in his palm.

  She reached up in a vain attempt to pry his hand away. “Hurts.”

  “I know it hurts, but you could make it worse by moving.”

  Her lids fluttered open and she looked up at him, eyes unfocused and bleary—eyes a spectrum of speckled gray, like the stones he used to collect on the beach at Lake Superior when he was a kid. For several seconds, he found himself suspended in their depths.

  “Please,
” she murmured. “Please, don’t let him—” She grimaced, as if the effort to speak was too painful. Her eyes rolled up, and he could tell she was sinking back into unconsciousness.

  “Don’t let him what?” he urged. “Did someone hurt you?”

  In a surprising burst of strength, she reached out and clutched the front of his leather jacket, her eyes clear and wild with fear. “Don’t let him kill me.”

  Mitch watched, feeling an uncharacteristic surge of empathy as the paramedics wheeled the woman away. She looked so small and helpless on the gurney, her skin ashen in contrast to the stark white bandages on the gash at the base of her skull. Since those brief seconds when she’d pleaded for her life, she hadn’t regained consciousness, but her single utterance told him everything he needed to know to get an investigation started.

  This had been no accident.

  As a result, the store was crawling with Twin Oaks’ finest. If the suspect was ballsy enough to attack a woman in a well-lit store, who knew what else he might be capable of.

  “Detective?”

  Mitch turned to Officer Greene, one of the uniforms dispatched to the scene. Greene was new to the force, six months out of the academy, but what he lacked in experience he made up for in enthusiasm. He reminded Mitch of himself ten years ago. “Find anything?”

  “We combed the area but we didn’t find a purse or anything else that might identify her. We’ve got two men searching the parking lot, and another two in the alley, in case the perp slipped out the back.”

  “What about her cart?”

  He nodded to the left. “At the end of the aisle. No purse or any identification.”

  Mitch followed him to the cart abandoned a few feet from where he’d found the victim.

  “Looks like she was on a budget,” Greene said.

  The cart contained generic brand vegetables by the case—six of them altogether. There were also diapers and disposable wipes, and a couple dozen jars of baby food. It would be a safe bet that their Jane Doe had a family, although she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. Divorced maybe? A single mother? Or maybe she just happened to take her jewelry off and had forgotten to put it back on when she left the house.

  Sighing, he dragged a hand through his hair and massaged away the knots from the back of his neck. “There are probably a couple kids out there wondering why Mommy hasn’t come home yet.”

  “How bad was she?”

  “Blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Too severe to be from a fall. From the bruising on her arms, I’m guessing she was hit from behind and thrown forward, then rolled over onto her back.” He gestured to the tinted dome overhead that housed a security camera. “What about surveillance?”

  “The store is old, so it’s not exactly a state-of-the-art system. Picture quality couldn’t be much worse. Maybe if the victim knows him, she could identify him from the tapes.”

  Her words echoed in his head—don’t let him kill me. She could still be in danger. They needed to find out who she was and if she knew who had done this to her. They meaning him. Which also meant that sleep would have to wait. Though he wasn’t sure why, he didn’t trust this case to anyone else. It was as if, in those few seconds she’d looked up at him, they’d bonded somehow.

  Bonded? Christ, he must be delirious from exhaustion. If he told anyone at the station his theory, they would tell him he needed his head examined.

  “Make sure someone takes down the plates of all the cars in the lot,” he told Greene. “With all this food, I doubt she was walking.”

  Greene followed him to his cart. “It’s a good thing you found her. Who knows how long she would have lain there bleeding. The store is practically deserted this time of night.”

  “Yeah, my lucky day.” Not.

  “You seem to be having a lot of those lately. That was some arrest. Did you get a confession?” Greene had what could only be described as hero worship in his eyes.

  Mitch didn’t deserve the recognition. He’d been completely stumped until an anonymous letter had been dropped on his desk. It named the suspect, gave his address, and even disclosed where the evidence—trinkets taken from each of the victims—could be found. The entire arrest had been unbelievably easy.

  Too easy.

  “The interrogation went on for twelve hours and he didn’t crack,” Mitch said. “But the D.A. thinks we have enough physical evidence to convict.”

  “This your stuff?” Greene asked, motioning to his groceries.

  “Yeah.” Mitch glanced down at his cart. No time to pay for it now. Besides, the death-by-chocolate ice cream was oozing out and creating a brown puddle on the floor. He’d just have to stop somewhere on the way home, which by the looks of things, wouldn’t be until morning.

  Greene gestured to the basket the employee had dropped. “What about that stuff?”

  “It’s not part of the crime scene. You find anything else, page me.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m going over to the hospital to get an ID on her,” Mitch said. “With any luck, I’ll have this case wrapped up by morning.”

  Pain, sharp and relentless, lanced the back of her head, pounded through her brain like a jackhammer and wrapped itself around her eyeballs. She tried to lift her lids, but piercing white light seared her retinas.

  “That’s it,” a voice said. It sounded distant, muffled. “Open your eyes.”

  “Too bright,” she muttered, nearly choking on her own words. Her mouth felt funny, as if it had been stuffed with cotton.

  “Why don’t we try sitting you up a little.” There was a humming sound, and she felt herself rising, as if some invisible force held her suspended in midair. Maybe she was dead. There had been a bright light.

  Nah. Heaven wouldn’t smell like rubbing alcohol. And it wouldn’t be so loud. All around her she heard the drone of muffled voices, odd beeps and bleeps, the thud of footsteps. Did people in heaven even have feet?

  She tried to swallow, but her tongue felt thick and sticky. “Water?” she croaked, her voice sounding coarse and unfamiliar.

  A straw touched her lips but she sucked a bit too enthusiastically. The shock of the cold liquid made her gag and choke. Water spewed from her mouth and dribbled down her chin.

  That must have been attractive. When she was able to speak, she would have to apologize to whoever it was she’d just sprayed. With caution, she forced her lids open, blinking several times to clear her vision, and found herself gazing into a pair of deep-set, chocolate brown eyes.

  “Want to try that again?” he asked, holding up a plastic cup. His deep voice enfolded her like soft flannel, and any apprehension she’d been feeling melted away.

  Entranced, she nodded and he lifted the cup, holding the straw to her lips.

  “Take it slow this time.”

  She sucked in a few drops, rolling it around on her tongue before letting it slide down her throat. Much better. She sipped slowly on the straw, and all the while he kept those dark, watchful eyes trained on her. When she’d had enough, he set the cup on the tray beside her bed.

  Bed? The haze in her peripheral vision cleared and her surroundings came into focus. “Where am I?”

  “In the hospital. You were attacked. Do you remember what happened?”

  “Attacked?” She tried to lean forward and was stopped short by a stab of pain at the base of her skull. She winced, squeezing her lids together.

  He curled one large hand over her shoulder and pressed her back against the mattress. “Relax, you’ve got a pretty good lump on the back of your head.”

  That would explain the excruciating pain. She reached up to touch it, but tangled herself in her IV lines instead.

  “Here, let me.” Though his voice held a note of irritation and his eyes mirrored the emotion, his touch was undeniably gentle as he unwrapped the tubes from her fingers. When she was free, she reached up, grazing the small bandage taped to the back of her head. Considering the pain, she’d expected to find half
her skull gone. This didn’t seem so bad.

  “Did you see who hit you?”

  She shook her head, regretting the move instantly, as another wave of nauseating pain swept through her. “I don’t remember being hit.”

  His face grim, he perched on the edge of her bed, and produced a small notepad out of the dark leather jacket he wore. Everything about him was dark. Dark clothes, dark hair, dark eyes. Even his expression was dark. “You were found with no identification. If you give me your name and number I’ll call your family.”

  She must have looked confused, because he added, “I’m Detective Mitch Thompson. Twin Oaks P.D.”

  “Twin Oaks?” she asked and he flashed her a badge. Twin Oaks, Michigan. Why didn’t that sound familiar?

  “If you’ll just give me your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Yes, your name,” he said. “I need to contact your family. They’re probably worried about you.”

  “Right.” Her family would be worried, wouldn’t they? She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing happened. No name popped out.

  She tried again, but still, nothing.

  She looked down at the band on her wrist. Jane Doe. No, that wasn’t right. She swallowed hard, a cold, itchy panic churning her belly. She tried again to summon a name, a mental picture of herself, but there was nothing there. No names, no familiar faces. No family.

  Nothing.

  This was all wrong. She clutched the thin blanket, willing her brain to work harder, to concentrate past the frantic thumping of her heart. The rush of blood echoed in her ears like static on a radio. If she could just turn the dial, adjust the frequency…

  But there was nothing. It was as if a hole had been punched in her memory and her identity had just…leaked out.

  “Are you okay?” Detective Thompson was on his feet. “Maybe I should get a doctor.”

  She thrust her arm out, clutching the sleeve of his jacket, oblivious to the pain the action induced. He was the only thing familiar, the only thing that felt real. “Don’t leave me alone.”