“Hey, I know you think this is a waste of time, but it’s something I have to do,” he said as they walked to the house.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He stepped up the slick steps to the front door, where crime-scene tape that had been stretched across the frame now flapped in the wind. Over the noise of gusts rattling the branches of the surrounding trees, he heard the rumble of an approaching engine.

“Here we go,” Mendoza said, nodding to the lane.

He spied a battered old pickup, wipers scraping against the falling snow, visible through the trees.

Bobby Knowlton.

Foreman and friend of James Cahill.

The person who’d made the emergency call to 9-1-1.

Right on time.

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

“James? Can you hear me? James?”

The voice sounded far away. Soft. Female.

James opened an eye and blinked. For a second, he was disoriented, then remembered he was still lying in a hospital bed in a private room, snow still falling beyond the window. A woman—a gorgeous woman—was standing at his bedside and looking down at him through worried blue eyes.

He was light-headed and realized it must be the meds that made it seem this was almost an out-of-body experience.

“It’s me,” she whispered, sliding a worried glance to the door. “Sophia.”

Not a nurse.

Wispy blond bangs poked out from beneath a hood that was trimmed in some kind of fur or maybe faux fur—he couldn’t tell. A thick scarf was twisted around her neck. Her nose was short and straight, her cheeks flushed as if she’d just come in from the cold, and she was dressed in a long black coat.

He blinked again and focused. Sophia?

Her gaze searched his. Hopeful. “Remember?”

He didn’t.

“Thank God, you’re okay,” she said, and the corners of her lips teased upward. She had a great smile. Full lips shiny from a pink gloss opened slightly to show a glimpse of straight white teeth.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to place her.

Not the woman who had pierced his memory. Not the woman with the dark hair and suspicious eyes that had resurrected in his dulled mind.

“You do know me?”

“Sure,” he lied. But she was familiar. How?

She was too sharp for him. “Right.” She rolled those incredible eyes. “I’m Sophia,” she repeated, a little more loudly, as if that would help him remember. When he didn’t respond, little lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Sophia Russo.”

He turned the name over in his mind. Came up with nothing.

She was waiting for his reaction, trying to read his expression.

The name was ringing faint bells, but still he couldn’t place her. “Yeah.”

She let out a disgusted sigh and again rolled her eyes. “So, it’s true. You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Not everything.”