“Fuckers couldn’t time travel though, could they?” She felt violated. Confused. Freaked the fuck out. How did onelosea whole day?
When the memories started to return, she’d argued them away. There was no blood in her car or on her clothes. Zero evidence that she’d dragged a huge man from the cliffs all the way to her car and then driven like a bat out of hell to the nearest hospital. Not a hair out of place. She didn’t even have bruises or sore muscles.
She’d nearly been convinced the whole thing was, indeed, the dream it appeared to be until two days ago. She’d been walking the property after a showing, admiring the view, when her heart nearly thundered out of her chest with anxiety as a particular patch of wildflowers and grass came into view. She’d leaned over the cliff’s edge expectantly when the memory of silver hair and unnaturally green eyes—eyes like emeralds—made her gasp.
He was real.She’d stake her life on it.
She had called the local authorities, the hospital—pursued every avenue she could think of to get some kind of answer. But it was as if the injured man, and the entire event, had been erased from existence. There was no police report, no hospital records. She’d gone to the station, looked the officer in the eye, and seen no hint of deception. Same with the nurse at the hospital.
Both had looked at her with not just exasperation, but pity. Likeshewas the crazy one.
Yet, she remembered the uncomfortable chair she’d occupied in the hospital waiting room, worried and afraid that he would die, that she’d found him too late. She remembered the bitter taste of lukewarm, stale, hospital coffee. Most of all, she vividly remembered the panic she’d felt dragging him to her car when her cell phone wouldn’t work, and she’d realized she was his only chance for survival.
She’d looked back through her cell phone records. No record of her calling the emergency number. That was gone, too. Anything she might have used to prove her memories were real was gone.
Which meant someone had erased it. All of it. Someone with powerful connections. Hospital records. Police records. Phone records. Poof. And the police officer? The nurse?
She wondered how much money it took to make multiple people conveniently forget a half dead, bleeding, injured man ever existed.
A lot.
She should be grateful. She should be relieved that no one had come after her, that she hadn’t been dragged into whatever criminal web she had accidentally stumbled upon. Normal people didn’t cut up a gorgeous man and dump him on the side of a cliff, exposed to the elements, left to die. Definitely bad guys. Really, really evil people, the kind of people she’d moved across the country to escape.
And yet—she couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t stop thinking abouthim.Wondering who he was and how he came to be there. Wondering if he was still alive.
Wondering if he wondered about her. He’d become both ghost and obsession.
She hadn’t just imagined the encounter. She had the drone footage. Or at least, what was left of it.
She had woken up in her car and gone home. But that night, she dreamed. Even then, she’d convinced herself it had all been some weird fever dream—until she checked the drone footage, the video time stamps.
There was missing time. She was not crazy. She was missingan entire day.
Her logical mind had forced the pieces together into an explanation that made sense—organized crime. They’d drugged her and dumped her in her car. Paid off everyone else. Disappeared all records.
Nothing else fit. Because once she rememberedhim,the rest came back to her piece by piece. Driving to the hospital. Waiting. Speaking to the authorities. The tingling in her spine when the group of powerful, brutal men had walked in like they owned the place. The dark one, the one who had leaned over and made the nurse swoon and blink like she had just smoked enough marijuana to get an elephant high. The way the men moved. The expensive suits.
“Leave it alone, Raven.” People like that were dangerous. She’d escaped relatively unscathed. She should pretend it never happened and just live her life.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Could. Not. Stop. When she closed her eyes, she dreamed of him. Saw his face. Those eyes.
She’d never been an obsessive personality, never been a fanatic or a fan. Never cared about celebrities, royalty, sports teams or any of that nonsense. Never been unable to walk away from anyone or anything. Until this. Untilhim.
So here she was, standing in the exact same place, staring down at the empty space where he had almost died, looking for evidence. For blood. Clothing. Footprints. A broken flower stem or trampled grass. Anything to confirm that her memories were real and not due to a mental break of some kind.
She should leave. She should move on. She should justlet him go.
She could not. If anything, with every dead end, every blank look from the hospital staff, the fact that there was no record of the man—or the statement she gave to the police—only hardened her resolve to find him. He’d become more than obsession. Sheneededto find him, to know he was alive. The need made no sense, but it was elemental to her now, like thirst or the need for sleep.She couldn’t let go.
“He needs me.” She made the declaration to the wind, not expecting a response.
“Perhaps.” A male voice. A whisper of movement behind her sent a jolt through her system.
Raven spun, heart hammering.
Two men stood a few feet away.
Not just any men. The same men from the hospital. Darkness and light.
