STOLEN MEMORY Read online

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  Chapter 1

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  No man is an island.

  But reclusive inventor Simon Ford could afford to buy one. He'd built his modern-day castle on a limestone cliff in the middle of a lake, two miles off-shore from the town of Eden, Illinois.

  Detective Laura Baker didn't want to be impressed by Ford's mansion or his money. Which was too bad, because from the inside his multimillion-dollar house was even more imposing than it had looked from the water. She followed Ford's squat, muscled butler—who had a butler anymore? Besides maybe Batman—across the polished stone floor. Soaring wood, jutting stone and wide panes of glass framed the views and let in the light.

  Jeez. Her entire apartment would fit inside Ford's foyer.

  Laura resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her uniform pants and stuffed them in her pockets instead. This could be considered a crime scene. She wasn't about to contaminate it by touching anything. Besides, the butler guy was watching her like he expected her to make a grab for the family silver or something.

  He lumbered in front of her to a broad, shallow staircase that spilled down to a room lined with windows and furnished in natural woods and neutrals. A massive fireplace split the view. The only spot of color in the room, a violent collision of oranges, purples and reds over the mantel, seemed jarringly out of place.

  Silhouetted against the sparkling lake was a big, dark, solitary figure. Ford?

  Something about him—the powerful line of his back, maybe, or the rigid set of his shoulders—brought Laura to attention. Beneath her heavy Kevlar vest, her heart beat faster.

  Stupid. She was not impressed, she reminded herself. She would not be intimidated. She touched her elbow to the gun at her waist for reassurance.

  Her guide stopped at the top of the stairs and scowled. "The police are here."

  "Thank you, Quinn." The tall figure didn't turn around. "I'll call you when we're done."

  Quinn shot Laura a resentful look. She returned it blandly. As the only female on Eden's small police force, she was used to men who considered her presence an invasion of their turf.

  "Right," Quinn said, and stomped away.

  Ford pivoted from the glass. His head lifted sharply. "You're not Chief Denko."

  Good deduction. The man should have been a detective.

  "Detective Baker," Laura said.

  "Simon Ford." He surveyed her a moment, silently. With the light behind him, she couldn't see his face.

  A disadvantage, she thought, and wondered if he'd positioned himself deliberately.

  "I asked for Chief Denko," he said.

  And whatever the almighty Simon Ford asked for, Laura gathered from that deep, abrupt voice, the almighty Simon Ford got.

  Except this time.

  She kept her cop mask firmly in place. "It's Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Ford. We see a lot of traffic and handle a lot of calls over the holidays." Which you would know if you ever bothered to get involved in the community. "Chief Denko was called to an accident scene."

  A pileup on Highway 12 that had pulled patrol cars and snarled traffic for miles. She was missing all the excitement.

  "But you are a detective?"

  "That's right," she said, doing her best not to sound defensive. Her rank was very new. She'd completed her training with the district attorney's office in Fox Hole less than six months ago.

  "Then why are you in uniform?"

  Laura frowned. Somehow this interview had gotten turned around. He shouldn't be the one asking questions.

  "In a small department like ours, detectives have to be prepared to do double duty. And most tourists respond better to an officer in uniform." Not that her uniform seemed to be having a similar effect on Ford. She cleared her throat. "The dispatcher said you had a situation out here?"

  "Yes." He didn't elaborate.

  She waited. Maybe now that Ford had a detective on site, he regretted calling. It happened. Somebody claimed an item was stolen and then discovered they'd misplaced it. Or got pissed off at a neighbor's kids and then relented. A lot of police work wasn't solving crimes but soothing tempers. Civil assists, the chief called them, but he was adamant his officers respond to every call with professional attention.

  "You want to tell me about it?" Laura invited.

  Ford studied her, still with his back to the light. And then he said, abruptly, "My lab was broken into."

  All righty. Now they were getting somewhere. Break-ins were unfortunately common at the luxury homes around the lake. Laura could deal with a break-in. Although any local punk who breached Ford's island fortress had to be crazy or lucky or both.

  She took out her notebook, grateful to have something to do with her hands. "Here?"

  Ford inclined his head. "Downstairs."

  "When?"

  "Two days ago."

  She lifted her pen. "And you've just now discovered it?"

  "No. I was here when it occurred."

  She felt her brows pull together and consciously smoothed her expression. "Why don't you explain to me what happened," she said.

  "Why don't we sit down first," Ford countered. He took a step forward, into the light from a side window, so that she got her first good look at his face.

  Oh, boy. Oh, man. She felt the punch of sexual attraction like a blow to her midsection. This was Simon Ford? The geeky inventor? The soft-living millionaire?

  It just went to show her the chief was right. A good detective should never theorize ahead of her facts.

  He looked like something out of her adolescent fantasies, a warrior poet or a priest king. Not that Laura believed in fairy tales anymore. His face was cold, strong and striking. Guarded, she thought. His dark hair—longer than she usually liked—fell over his forehead. His eyes were cool as rain.

  They narrowed on her, and she felt again that odd prickle like a warning on the back of her neck. "Have we met?" he asked.

  "I don't think so."

  "Are you sure? You look…"

  She didn't want to think about how she looked with her ball cap jammed over her untidy braid and sweat stains under her arms. The boat ride over had been windy and rough.

  "Familiar?" she provided.

  "No. As if you recognized me."

  "Nope." She shook her head. From another man she might have suspected a pickup line. But Ford's voice was perfectly dispassionate. His face gave nothing away. "Sorry."

  He continued to study her with those disconcertingly light gray eyes, plainly unconvinced.

  Annoyance sharpened her voice. "Look, if we'd met, you'd remember."

  "Not necessarily."

  They hardly ran in the same circles. Hell, they barely inhabited the same town. Ford kept himself to himself. He even did his grocery shopping in Chicago, well over an hour away. It hadn't endeared him any to the local merchants.

  "You have a problem with your memory?" Laura asked dryly.

  Ford smiled a small, wintry smile. "Actually, yes. I do."

  Her eyes widened. She had to watch her mouth. She was off balance, reacting emotionally, like some stupid traffic officer letting a pretty woman flirt her way out of a ticket.

  There was no quicker way for a cop to get into trouble.

  "Maybe we better sit down after all," she said, making a grab for the situation. "And you can tell me why you called."

  Could he? Simon wondered.

  Doubt hammered inside his chest and seized his head in a vise. He'd expected a seasoned police chief to respond to his call, not this young, wary female. He didn't want her. But he was attracted to her.

  Was she his type? He didn't even know. Sh
e was as lean and graceful as a greyhound, with a narrow, intense face and a wide, mobile mouth. Her light brown gaze was clear and direct.

  She looked honest. She might even be competent. But he couldn't rely on his own judgment. For all he knew, he was a lousy judge of character.

  He hesitated, his head pounding.

  Her mouth quirked. "Or we can stand."

  Her humor tipped the scales in her favor. He couldn't trust anyone who worked for him. Why not a total stranger?

  "We'll sit," he said.

  He lowered himself cautiously onto one of the cordovan leather couches flanking the fireplace. Sudden movement, he'd discovered, hurt his head.

  Detective Baker sat, too, her back straight beneath her bulky vest and ugly uniform.

  Simon opened his mouth. But he still didn't know how to begin.

  His vacillation, his helplessness, infuriated him. Was he always like this? God, he hoped not.

  "So." Detective Baker regarded him expectantly, her notebook open on her knee. "You called the station."

  And now he was questioning even the wisdom of that idea.

  But after more than twenty-four hours of groping and bumbling in a fog, Simon had reluctantly acknowledged he couldn't cope on his own. He needed professional help.

  Fear clawed him. Yeah, like a psychiatrist.

  He took a deep breath for calm. "On Wednesday night, I left the corporate headquarters in Chicago and came here."

  Detective Baker nodded. "Alone?"

  "No, I was accompanied by one of my security staff." Or so he'd been told. "We left the office at seven, which means we would have arrived on the island no later than seven-thirty."

  Her brows arched. "You must have broken some speed limits."

  He didn't smile. "We took the company helicopter." He'd been told that, too.

  "I've seen it." She scribbled something. "Who was your pilot?"

  "I flew myself." He told himself he wasn't trying to impress her. Just as well, because her expression never flickered.

  "Okay, so you got here at seven-thirty and found … what?"

  Simon teetered on the edge of self-revelation, an enormous chasm that yawned at his feet and threatened to swallow him.

  He took a step back. "Everything must have been in order then. I know I made dinner." There had been dishes in the dishwasher the next morning and fresh vegetables in the stainless-steel refrigerator.

  "And then?"

  "I went down to the lab."

  "Did you have a reason?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did something attract your attention?"

  "I don't know." He closed his teeth on the thin edge of desperation he heard fracturing his voice. "I don't think so. I may simply have intended to get some work done after dinner."

  "'May have.'"

  "My company—Lumen Corp—has several new projects in development. Laser research." He could say that with some certainty now. He'd spent hours yesterday fighting off pain and despair, searching for clues on the Internet and in the house, struggling to make sense of the equipment and files downstairs. The scope of his loss still stunned him. He needed to trust her, to tell her exactly how serious his situation was. But pride and panic constricted his chest and tightened his throat. "I must have been working on one of them when I was interrupted."

  "'Interrupted,'" she repeated without inflection.

  It wasn't quite a question. It stopped short of actual challenge. But he was insecure enough to bristle. "I presume so."

  He was relieved when she appeared to let it go. "Okay. So, you were downstairs working in your lab and … what happened?"

  His brief relief evaporated. "That's the problem. I don't know. I must have lost consciousness when I was attacked. When I came to, I was staring up at the ceiling with a bump on my head and a whopping big headache."

  "Mr. Ford." Her voice was soothing. Her eyes were sharp. "Is it possible you fell? It was late. You mentioned you'd had a meal, maybe some wine…"

  Simon's hands curled into fists. If he shouted at her, she'd really think he was a nut job. "The bump is on the side of my skull, Detective." He slid his fingers into the hair above his ear to show her. "I was lying on my back."

  "But you don't remember how you got there."

  "No." He couldn't delay confession any longer. He drew another deep breath. "I don't remember anything around the time of the attack."

  He didn't remember anything, period.

  Oh, he had some basic stuff down. He could dress and feed himself, turn on the lights and dishwasher. If he didn't stop to analyze how he did it, he could even operate the TV and computer.

  But he had no knowledge of who he was or what he did or how the hell he was supposed to continue doing it. The detective blinked, once. "You mean you have amnesia?"

  She didn't believe him. "Amnesia can be a product of head trauma," Simon said stiffly.

  "Is that what your doctor told you?"

  "No. I looked it up on the Internet."

  His computer, thank God, had been up and running when he'd searched his office. He hadn't dared to turn it off, since he had no idea if his files were password protected.

  She laid her pen flat on her notebook. "Mr. Ford, I'll be happy to take your statement. I can take a look around, talk to your security people, check for signs of forced entry. You have surveillance cameras, right? But I really think you need to see a doctor."

  She didn't understand.

  He hadn't explained himself clearly.

  Frustration made him abrupt. "That's the last thing I need."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I told you, my company is in the process of launching new laser technology. I can't have my competitors—I can't have people in my own company—thinking I've lost it."

  "But doctor/patient privilege—"

  "It would still get out I'd seen a doctor. Someone is bound to ask why. I can't afford any weakness."

  "Why not?"

  She probably thought the bump on the head had made him paranoid. But he wasn't. He knew he wasn't. He felt the sharp certainty of threat, the only tangible guidepost in the fog that was his brain.

  And he couldn't explain that to her without sounding even more crazy.

  "Look," he said, using really basic concepts and small words she could understand, "Wednesday night somebody got into my lab and hit me over the head and robbed me."

  "You were robbed."

  She was doing that echo thing again. Simon set his jaw. "Yes."

  "Are you sure? I mean, if you can't remember…"

  "The safe was open," he snapped.

  Now—finally!—she picked up her pen. "And do you have a record of the safe's contents?" she asked, still plainly humoring him.

  "There's got to be a list somewhere." His notes were precise and methodical. His desk was ruthlessly systematized, his bedroom uncluttered. Everything he'd seen pointed to his being an orderly, organized, painstaking individual. He must have kept an inventory of something as important as the contents of his safe. He just hadn't found it yet.

  "It would help if you could locate it," said the detective practically. "Where was your security guard during this attack and robbery?"

  He stared at her.

  "You said he came up with you from Chicago," she reminded him gently. "He showed me in. Mr. Quinn?"

  Simon shook his head, forgetting his resolution to avoid sudden movements. Pain momentarily grayed his vision and robbed him of breath.

  When he could speak again, he said, "Not Quinn. Quinn Brown is my household manager. Apparently he was visiting his daughter for a few days. He arrived yesterday."

  Simon calculated he'd been alone at that point for almost twenty-four hours and conscious for five or six. He hadn't recognized his employee's face. He hadn't recognized his own name, either, when Quinn had called him, except that it had appeared on the various notes and papers he'd found.

  It had been a relief, he remembered, to realize that it was his name, that this mu
st be his house.

  Some sense of self-preservation, a horror of weakness or perception of danger, had kept him from confessing his confusion and utter helplessness to his household manager.

  The same instinct made him cautious now.

  "The guard was supposed to stay at the house until Quinn returned. But when Quinn came to work, no one was here."

  Detective Baker frowned. "Except you."

  Simon inclined his head in careful acknowledgment. "Except me."

  She tapped her pen on her notebook. "Doors and windows?"

  At least she appeared to be taking him seriously. "Locked. And the security system in the house was on."

  "The safe?"

  "Open. Either someone else knew the combination—which seems unlikely—or I opened it myself. I could have been putting away my notes for the day when I was interrupted."

  "I'll take a look at it," she said. "This other guard—have you tried to reach him? Who's in charge of your company security?"

  He didn't know. "I thought it best to contact the police."

  She caught his implication immediately. "You think it was an inside job."

  Simon was grateful for her quick understanding. But he didn't answer her directly. "I don't know."

  "Isn't there anyone you can trust?"

  He didn't know that either. He'd searched the office and the master bedroom for clues. Nothing. On his dresser sat a framed photo of a teenage girl with a row of silver earrings whose eyes were the same shape as the ones he saw in his mirror. His daughter? But then why didn't she live with him? There were several bedrooms upstairs, but no magazines, no makeup, no feminine clutter. Only a bikini, forgotten in the back of a drawer, and some half-empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner stashed under a sink suggested he sometimes had visitors.

  His apparent isolation was frightening. He must have friends and family. Perhaps a woman? But they had left no trace in his life.

  What kind of a man was he?

  The detective was still waiting for his answer, watching him with what was certainly only professional concern in her eyes. Or impatience.

  Isn't there anyone you can trust?

  He wanted to trust her. But was that because she was trustworthy or because he was desperate for connection, eager to imprint on the first person he saw like a baby duck? The idea revolted him.