came out there was a man. Even though I was alone I didn’t feel a bit afraid. He was walking a dog, a cute little pup.” She stared at Seth, but he knew she wasn’t seeing him. “I bent down to pet the dog and...and...” A helpless expression filled her face. “And that’s all I remember.”
“Can you tell us what the man looked like?” Tom asked. “Short...tall...anything about him?”
The frown in her forehead deepened. “No. I remember the dog was some kind of a terrier mix, but I don’t remember anything about the man other than I wasn’t afraid.”
“Did you see another vehicle in the parking lot?” Raymond Michaels asked with obvious impatience. “We can’t exactly arrest all the people in town who have cute little dogs. We need something more specific.”
“And you need to back the hell off,” Seth said, a steely strength beneath his soft voice.
“Get the team together and start going through the bathrooms,” Tom said to Raymond. “Maybe you’ll find something specific in there.”
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. Seth reached for her hand and she grabbed it, holding tight. “I remember the dog, I have no memory of the man. I remember leaning down and touching the soft fur of the dog, but after that my mind is blank.”
“It’s okay, you’re doing the best you can.” Seth wanted to take the haunted glaze from her eyes, to assure her that nobody expected anything from her. She’d lived through whatever had happened to her and that was enough.
“I’ll make sure my men go over this place with a fine-tooth comb,” Tom said. “We’ll check the building and the surrounding area and parking lots. I doubt that the trash has been picked up out here since Tamara was here. We’ll cart it all back to the office and see if our killer threw something away.”
Seth nodded. “I’m taking Tamara back to Linda’s place.” He’d noticed that she’d begun to shiver despite the heat of the night air.
“I was a woman alone in an isolated area. Why wasn’t I afraid to approach the man? Why didn’t I go right to my car and leave?” she asked. But they were questions without answers at the moment.
Her shivering intensified and Seth dropped her hand and instead wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, let’s go home.”
“I was stupid. I let some stranger get close enough to me to take me, to drug me or something and then he took me to the sand dunes and buried me.” Her voice rose with an edge of hysteria. “I heard the scrape of the shovel. I felt the heat of the sun on my face as he buried my body. ‘You’re nothing but an ostrich,’ he said. What does that mean?” She looked to Tom and then back to Seth. “For God’s sake could somebody please tell me what that means?”
Seth squeezed her closer against him. “Come on, honey. Let’s get out of here.” With a nod to Tom, knowing that he and his men would probably work through half the night, Seth led Tamara back to his truck.
It was a long, silent drive back to Linda’s and Seth’s heart ached as he realized she’d pulled into herself, and he wasn’t sure if he should attempt to interact with her or just leave her alone to process whatever was going through her head.
He didn’t want to remind her that when she’d been taken from here she hadn’t been taken directly to the dunes, that there was still another place that must contain horror for her someplace in this small town.
When they reached Linda’s she went directly into the kitchen and began to reheat the meal for dinner. It was as if she needed to do something to keep herself whole and functioning.
It was at that moment, as she stood in front of the microwave, that Seth realized the depth of his love for her. He’d never felt this way about any woman and now he understood why people married, why they took a chance at happily-ever-after even though statistically it seemed as if the odds weren’t in their favor.
His love for her filled him up, swelled in his chest until he felt as if he might explode, but instead he sank down on the sofa with a weariness of spirit.
For the first time in his life he understood what it felt like to love somebody, and if events worked out as they expected she would go back to Amarillo and he would return