A keening sound came, and he realized it was coming from his own throat.
Jane squeezed his hand. “Are you okay?”
He took several deep breaths. “Give me a minute.”
She put the box aside and crawled into his lap. With her arms around his neck and her fresh scent in his nose, the horror began to fade. “I’m okay.” He nuzzled her neck and inhaled. “Let’s continue.”
She moved her hands to his cheeks and stared into his eyes. “You’re sure?”
“We have to do this.”
“Okay.” She slid off his lap and reached for the pictures again.
His mother’s raised hand was a plea the two men above her showed no sign of answering. His father’s right hand was raised with a knife in it, and blood stained the blade. At the sight of the blood, his gaze went back to his mother, and he saw blood on the arm she’d lifted. A defense wound.
He closed his eyes and breathed in and out a few times.
“You don’t have to look at more, Reid. I can do it.”
He opened his eyes and stared into her face. A face full of concern and love. He drank in the expression in her eyes and the curves of her cheeks. This wasn’t something she should do alone. It would take both of them to make sure they gleaned every clue from every picture.
“Just give me a minute.” He pulled her into another embrace.
She was his port in the storm, his anchor when waves battered him. She grounded him, completed him. And he didn’t think she had any idea of how much he loved her. He wasn’t an eloquent guy. He preferred to show his feelings, not spout flowery words. Hopefully she could sense his love in everything he did.
She nestled against his chest and nuzzled her nose against him. “You smell clean and yummy.” Lifting her face, she pulled his head down for a kiss.
He kissed her with every bit of the love filling his heart. She tasted of sunshine and vanilla. Of forever and family.
He pulled away and rested his chin on her head. “I see what you’re doing. Distraction can only go so far. This job is still in front of us.”
She gave a throaty laugh. “But you don’t have to do it, Reid. I really don’t mind. These kinds of pictures are the terrible things I have to see all the time.”
The touch and smell of her rejuvenated his determination to do what had to be done. To face this horror.
He kissed the top of her head. “This isn’t any easier for you. It might bring back memories of that night. Got any glimmers yet?”
She shook her head. “Just that same initial feeling of holding a shovel and a sense of panic. Maybe that’s all I’ll remember.”
“I hope so. I know it had to be terrible. Go ahead. Let’s see the next picture.”
She sighed and lifted it into view. This one showed Gabriel with his knife buried in Reid’s mother’s chest. He tried deep breathing for a few seconds. Maybe his father hadn’t been the one who killed her. But the next picture shattered that hope. His dad’s knife was in her throat. He’d executed the final cut.
“What an evil man,” Jane murmured. “I’m sorry, Reid, so sorry.”
His throat was too tight to answer, so he pulled her close and buried his face in her hair until he calmed again.
“How many more pictures?” he muttered against her cheek.
“A bunch. Want me to look at them first?”
He lifted his head. “No, let’s just do it. One after another quickly, then we can go back and examine them for details. That way I’ll know what I’m facing.”
“Okay.”
They saw several pictures of his mother’s dead body followed by several pictures of her in a shallow grave. Jane inhaled at the final photo of herself shoveling dirt onto his mother’s prone body in the hole. She was easy to identify because of her very pregnant belly.
Tears tracked down her face.
“It’s okay, honey. There wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it.”
“Why can’t I remember this? I need to remember.” She shoved the pictures off her lap and clutched him.
She couldn’t look at anything more. Not tonight. She had to remember.
Twenty-Nine
Even with the air-conditioning going, Jane was hot, so hot. She threw off the covers and sat up in bed.
The clock on the nightstand blinked 2:00 a.m., and she and Reid had gone back to his house at eleven. The past three hours had been filled with tossing and turning. Maybe it was the unfamiliar space. This large bedroom decorated in an impersonal style wasn’t home.
Memories of that forgotten night floated like fog through her brain. Too diaphanous and faint to catch hold of an outline. But there was something important she needed to remember, if she could just snatch it out of her brain.
Parker lifted his head and stared at her from the foot of the bed. “Sorry to wake you, buddy.”
She slid her legs off the mattress and padded downstairs to the living room. She gazed outside into the blackness, then grabbed her sketch pad and went out to sit on the back deck. The mosquito zapper emitted a constant crackle, and the night air was thick and hot, dripping with humidity after the storm.
She settled on a chair and threaded the pencil through her fingers for several moments before she opened her sketch pad to a fresh page. She stared out into the dark yard into the space under a tall tree. Her fingers began to move of their own volition, and she closed her eyes and tried to think back to that night.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree, and she heard the squeak of a mouse. Hunter and prey. The way of the world. But humans shouldn’t act that way. Moses Bechtol had killed his own wife—the mother of his only child—and that kind of atrocity happened every day.
The whole thing was an affront to her sense of justice.
She continued to scratch the pencil across the page, the sound a soothing litany in the back of her mind. She barely heard it as she tried so hard to remember. Sights, sounds flooded her consciousness. It had been cold that night with a skiff of snow, hadn’t it? And windy. Her ears had been cold.
The screen door behind her squeaked, and she opened her eyes. Reid exited with rumpled hair and a sleepy expression. He dropped into the chair beside her. “You’re going to get eaten by mosquitoes.”
“The zapper is getting them. I haven’t gotten a single bite. You look good enough to eat though.” She reached over and mussed his hair up even more. “I wasn’t sure I liked you with hair, but it’s growing on me.”
He rubbed the dark thatch. “I need a haircut. What are you doing out here?”
“I feel like I’m forgetting something really important. If I could just remember, it might be the key.”
It had felt like she was on to something for a while, but it had vanished like a dream upon waking.
“Or it might make you feel worse.” He leaned over. “What are you drawing there?”
It was too dark to see, so she shrugged. “Just doodling. Sometimes it helps me think. It didn’t work this time.”
A mosquito buzzed by her ear. “Let’s go back inside. Maybe some decaf would help me sleep. Did I wake you?”
He rose and held out his hand. “I heard a door squeak, and I’m kind of on guard right now. I keep thinking Gabriel or one of his minions will try to forcibly take the key and the pictures we found.”