Mind Tricks by Adrianne Wood Page A

reservation
book to see who else had been there that night. And I heard that they took our
security tapes of the parking lot. Not sure why they would do that, if you were
parked on Chester. Still…” He made an apologetic face. “Of everyone who was
here two nights ago, they seemed most interested in you.”
    Not a surprise, but he felt like an
extra fifty pounds had just been slipped onto his shoulders. “Okay. Thanks for
telling me all this. I appreciate it.” Jake held out his hand, and Mark,
brightening, shook it.
    “Sure thing, Mr. Vant. If I think
of anything else, I’ll let you know.”
    Emma also reached out to shake
Mark’s hand. Maybe Jake was succumbing to jealousy, but she seemed to hold the
kid’s hand a second or two longer than necessary. “Nice to meet you, Mark.”
    “You, too. See you soon.” Giving a
little wave, Mark hopped on his bicycle and rode off, cutting expertly through
the throngs of tourists cluttering the harborside pathways.
    His brain buzzing with this new information,
Jake got back into the car. Emma slid into the seat opposite him, and within
ten minutes they were free of downtown Camden and returning to Baymill.
    “At least we know the police aren’t
looking at only you,” Emma said, breaking the silence.
    “No, but they’re looking at me very
closely.” He lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror. A car was behind him, but
far enough back that he couldn’t make out the color, only that it was dark. The
police in an unmarked car, tailing him? He wouldn’t be surprised.
    He glanced at Emma. “I don’t know
why I was bringing Ginny back to my place. That hadn’t been my intention when I
walked into the Waterview that night.”
    She scrutinized him. “All right,”
she finally said.
    He let out the breath he’d been
holding. “Do you think that Mark might have been lying about that?”
    “He’s not lying.” She sounded one
hundred percent certain. “As for her going to your place…Maybe you and Ginny
had, you know, gotten back together.”
    “No. There’s no way. I’d just
learned that Ginny had been spreading rumors that Woodhaven was short of cash.”
    “Why would she do that? She was
working for Woodhaven.”
    “Good question. And one I was going
to ask her at dinner. I absolutely wasn’t going to ask her if she wanted to go
out with me again.” He snorted. “Or bring her home for the evening. I liked
Ginny, but I’d never been tempted to go out with her again.”
    Emma cocked her head. “And never
been tempted to sleep with her? You can do that without dating.”
    Damn it, he was flushing again.
“She was fantastic-looking, so of course I sometimes thought about sleeping
with her. I’m a guy. But it wouldn’t have been smart. She was my employee, for
one thing.”
    “Maybe you fired her, then realized
your no-having-sex-with-employees rule didn’t apply any longer, and—”
    “I wouldn’t fire her for trying to
ruin my business and then try to get her in bed,” he interrupted, not bothering
to hide his irritation. “Give me a little credit.”
    She nodded. “Sorry. Anyway, none of
this gets us any closer to figuring out where you were that night.”
    Frustration tightened like a noose
around his throat. “I’d hoped we’d learn that Mark had seen someone drop a pill
into my wine. Or I’d imagined that he might mention a detail from that night,
and the rest of my memories would come shooting back.”
    Emma gave him a doubtful look. “Can
it even work that way? I mean, you didn’t get knocked on the head; you were
chemically impaired. Maybe the drugs distort the memories even as they’re
coming in, so what your brain records is already damaged.”
    Thanks, that was an uplifting
thought. “So you’re saying that you think pursuing my missing memories is a
wild-goose chase?”
    She tapped her forefinger against
her chin thoughtfully. “No, I think you should be pursuing your missing
memories. Even if you don’t find them, you might