There were many things she didn't remember, things she didn't want to, things she'd forced herself to forget for survival's sake, and things that had simply faded away. This, though, was the one moment in her life she could never forget, that even her will had failed to erase.

It was the moment she would live and relive in her nightmares for all eternity.

She'd parked her car next to her husband's and now stood with her palm on the handle of the 7-11's open door, gray metal turned icy by the late October night. The chill rose to numb her arm, traveled to the muscles of her face, and froze the thump of her heart mid-beat.

Inside, five men, including her husband, turned to her, then stilled like the arrested frame of an old movie. Bright fluorescent overhead lights leached the color from the scene and left their faces ashen. The acrid scent of burnt coffee wafted from the pot on its hot plate. Overdone hot dogs, cardboard hamburgers, and burritos ripened in their warming bins.

A grimace distorted the young clerk's face, as he stood paralyzed behind the counter.

Her husband, legs spread, knees bent slightly, arms away from his sides like a gunslinger ready for a shoot-out, hovered by a wire stand of snack chips.

Three men, faces hardened by evil intent to a likeness, grouped themselves in huddle formation. The tallest held a gun in twitching fingers.

She would take the image of those faces to her grave.

A scar marred the cheek of the shortest. Slashing down from the ridge of bone to the corner of his mouth, it stretched his lips in a caricature of Batman's Joker. A tattooed snake coiled on the flexing arm of the second, the one closest to her. Following the fist already bunched, the snake's bite would kill as easily as the real thing.

And the third. His blond hair brushed his shoulders and long lashes rimmed eyes the blue of a crisp cloudless fall sky. The smile of an angel creased full lips on a face that could have graced a movie screen and fluttered the hearts of teenage girls and old ladies. Except for the gun in his hand leveled steadily at the clerk. And his boots. Scarred black leather and steel toes that could crush ribs with a single kick.

She would remember the scar, the tattoo, and those boots.

The frozen moment, in which she saw everything and felt nothing, ended. The clerk reached beneath the counter. An alarm screeched in the night. The gun exploded, fire flashing from its muzzle. Her husband yelled.

And the gun went off again.

Someone screamed, the pain of it raging in her own throat.

Her husband slid slowly to the dirty linoleum. Bags of Cheetos and Doritos fell to the floor with him and covered him like a blanket.

The sudden profusion of color almost blinded her. The leaf-green of his sweater, bright orange and yellow potato chip bags, the red dot of blood blossoming from the tiny hole in his forehead. Her knees cracked against the floor as if it were concrete. She crawled to him on elbows and knees then gathered him to her.

His eyes turned from light brown to the deep color of freshly turned earth, and his breath brushed her wet cheeks. When his lips moved, she could only read his final words over the clamor in her ears.

"Find my sister."

Chapter One

"Head wounds bleed like a sonuvabitch, Max. That wasn't exactly the way I died."

How Cameron could speak with so little emotion? Perhaps because he'd been the one who died while she'd had to live with the aftermath these past two years. Live with it, sleep with it, ache with it.

Listening to her dead husband's unaffected voice, Max Starr curled into a ball in the center of her twin-size bed, wrapping her body around Buzzard the Cat. Her thrashing had terrified the black stray she couldn't seem to get rid of.

"Not a dream, a nightmare," she murmured into the warm fur. Cameron could read her mind and invade her dreams, and he was right. The night hadn't happened that way. She hadn't gotten close to him, hadn't held him in her arms as he died, hadn't breathed his last breath with him nor heard his last words.

His killers had hauled her from the store before she'd had a chance to touch him. And he'd been dead before he hit the floor.

Dead but not gone. Not the night he'd been shot. Not for the two years since his corporeal death. Cameron haunted her. Either that or she'd lost her mind. Call it a little quirk she had. Some people kept pictures and mementos. Max pretended her dead husband talked to her. And made love to her.

Max hugged the cat, rubbing her face against fur fragrant with eucalyptus and dirt, the homey scent not quite easing the ache in her bones.

"Dinner at Witt's mom's must have given me indigestion," she said, hoping Cameron would take that as an explanation for the nightmare. Bad enough eating the TV dinner classics that Ladybird adored, worse snuggling up close to Witt on the couch, the worst dreaming about the night Cameron died.

"If you'd admit to yourself that you're in love with Witt, your problem would be solved."

"I'm not in love." Okay, four-fifths in love, but the nightmare brought her crashing back to reality. She wasn't over being a widow yet. She sure wasn't ready to fall in love again, especially not with a cop. Besides, Witt didn't take well to sharing her with another man, even if that man was a ghost.

Cameron's tone softened, but, relentless, he returned to the original topic. "It wasn't a dream, it wasn't a nightmare. And I never told you to look for my sister."

Her eyes snapped open. "I thought you couldn't remember anything that happened when you were alive." Including the night he died.

"I remember what you remember." As if their minds were connected, her memories miraculously became his memories. In this case, Max had never forgotten that night. He was right. He hadn't whispered anything of the kind to her.

"I didn't even know you had a sister." God, had they known that little about each other after five years of marriage?

"We knew the important things."

She blinked, a hint of sappy moisture at the corners of her eyes. Think about the sister, so she wouldn't have feel or hurt... "So why do you want me to find your sister?"

An early morning bird chirped in the tree outside. From below came the soft thud of someone getting out of bed. She lived in a second floor studio of a converted Victorian which housed mostly students from the nearby university in the heart of Silicon Valley. Max, at the horrid age of thirty-three, was the oldest tenant, in both age and length of stay, in the building. Pipes clanged and banged around her, probably a shower started by that same early riser intent on some last minute cramming for the upcoming week's mid-terms. Or was it finals this time of year? She couldn't remember what hurdle professors threw in front of students during these few days before Thanksgiving.

"You aren't answering," she whispered in the dark, searching for Cameron's glowing eyes. Red sparks in dim lighting was all she ever saw of him, except when she closed her eyes to dream.

"It was your vision, sweetheart. You have to tell me why my sister's important now."

She groaned and stretched out flat on the bed, the cat easing against the curve of her waist. She hadn't missed the use of that dreaded word, vision. "Don't pull that psychic crap on me. Not about this. Let's call it a plain old, every-day nightmare."

"But you know it's not."

There was a texture to each of her "visions." For God only knew what reason, she'd experienced them infrequently beginning soon after Cameron's death. Three months ago, they'd become a deluge. Tonight's dream bore the same feel. A mixture of reality and symbolism, the visions she'd had in recent months turned out to be a sort of psychic "dropping in"--some might have called it possession--on someone's life. Someone who was murdered. Max attempted to solve the crimes in the hopes of exorcising the spirits. The attempts worked. Until the next time.

She sat up in her narrow bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. Buzzard grumbled and scrambled under the covers. "It's not about your sister." She knew ... just knew. "It's about finding them."

"Them?"

Scarface, Tattoo ... and Bootman.

She didn't have to say it aloud. He picked the names right out of her head. "My killers."

All she could manage was a small grunt of agreement.

"Are they what bothered you most about the dream?"

Besides watching him take a bullet in the head? "No."

"Then what?"

Max swallowed with difficulty. "Why was I driving my own car?"

Silent less than a second, his pause still made her rub her arms for warmth. "I don't know, Max."

Some strange trick of death had robbed Cameron of his memories. Except that he loved her. Beyond that, he remembered only what she remembered, his recollection coming back as hers did, as if she were the conduit for his past, his life. There had been moments, though, in the last three months where she could have sworn he knew more than he was saying.

"Tell me why the car bothers you," he urged.

Unable to say, she closed her eyes. The image of his death pounded against her eyes, and her lids popped open again. "Why would I forget a thing like that?"

He snorted. "You always have been exceptional at forgetting what you don't want to remember. It's time you remembered the before, during, and after of that night."

She knew all she needed to know. She simply chose not to feel. He was still here with her, so the rest could be ignored. At least she thought it could until the dream brought it back.

She returned to the issue of the car, because the question hurt less. "But why remember that particular point? My car couldn't have been important to what happened that night."

The night he died. It was getting so easy to say it in her mind. A mind that Cameron could read freely when he chose to.

"Everything in that vision is important. Everything is a clue to what you're supposed to accomplish."

As with all the visions she'd had. She rolled her lips between her teeth and held them until it hurt. "They killed the clerk. They killed you. They did it because I opened that door."

His sigh surrounded her. "Please, not another guilt trip. First it was that you threw my cigarettes down the garbage disposal..."

"Which is why you went out that night," she finished for him in a whisper.

"Maybe," he countered. "Then again, maybe you simply haven't let yourself remember everything that went on."

Maybe she didn't. Maybe she never would. And here was another of those times when he seemed to know things she didn't. He shouldn't have been able to do that. Max closed her eyes. "Tell me the truth. Did they kill you because I walked into the middle of their robbery?"

Again he sighed, and the bed seemed to dip beside her. "We have no way of knowing."

A mere shifting of air currents, and his peppermint candy scent enveloped her. He'd sucked the mints since quitting smoking two months ago. How either of those things was possible after he'd been dead for two years made her head whirl so she'd chosen not to think about it.

Of course, he should have quit before he died instead of two years after, before he went to that 7-11 for another pack.

Hearing the words as if she'd said them aloud, he murmured without a hint of censure, "That's better. Blame me."

She pulled her legs up, nudging the cat. "I want to know what the dream means. That's all."

"It's telling you to find my sister. The reason will come later." His voice vibrated against her cheek, her throat, and her back. She could hear him, and with her eyes closed, she could feel him, too.

She gave in. "All right. I'll look for your sister. But it won't be simple. The letter I sent telling your family that you were dead," there, the words again, aloud this time and getting easier to say all the time, "came back return to sender. No one lives there anymore."

"You won't find her in Cincinnati. She never went there."

Suspicion crept into her voice. "How do you know that?" Especially since he claimed his memories died with him.

"You have to go back to the place where I was born," he insisted instead of answering her question.

Her turn to sigh. He wasn't going to enlighten her, so she asked what he obviously wanted her to ask, "Where were you born?" She should have known but didn't.

"Look in the box you keep hidden under the bed."

She hadn't looked in that box in ... at least a year and a half. Six months after he died, when she could no longer bear to look at his things, she'd hidden the box and all the emotions that went with it beneath the bed.

"It's time to feel again."

Max had done more than enough "feeling" to last a lifetime.

Outside the dawn lightened the sky from pitch black to shades of gray, the tree by her window outlined in relief. On the street a car engine turned over, then roared to life. Max dangled her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet touching the cold floor where the throw rug had slid away. Reaching out with her toes, she grappled it to her.

The room was stark. She hadn't needed much when she'd moved from the condo where she'd lived with Cameron. Taking the studio already furnished, she hadn't added much to the contents.

"You've got a bed too small for Witt to fit in..."

"Are you trying to palm me off on another man?"

Cameron had damn near succeeded. Witt crept into her life like a parasite she couldn't get rid of, like Buzzard the stray that kept coming back. They now had this weird sort of symbiotic connection she craved. The most terrifying aspect of it was that she didn't even find it all that terrifying anymore. She kind of liked having Witt around. She even liked Ladybird, his mother.

A wave of nausea traveled through her belly. She'd thought admitting she and Witt had a relationship would mitigate the fear. She'd thought fear would be a thing of the past. Fear of losing Witt. Fear of losing Cameron. Fear of the latest damn vision.

She stuffed down the emotions. She would stop being afraid of her own damn shadow.

Cameron went on, listing the flaws in her life. "You've got some black suits for work, a couple of shirts, some shoes..."

Again, she jumped in. "What about all those new clothes I bought?" And what about her beautiful black suede pumps with the four-inch heels? They weren't mere shoes, they were--

"You bought that stuff in order to draw out a killer."

"Not the shoes. And it doesn't mean I'll chuck any of it."

"A chest of drawers, a refrigerator," he catalogued. "You don't even have a VCR."

"Or access to the internet," she snapped. He made Spartan living sound like a disease.

"But you kept the box, didn't you?" His whisper-soft voice in her head made her chest tighten until it hurt to breathe.

"That was the zinger you wanted to hit me with all along."

"Look in the box."

Kneeling on the floor, she lifted the green chenille bedspread. The box, a black lump in the near darkness, hid beneath the bed along with dust bunnies and musty air. Max sneezed. The bunnies made a run for the back. She touched cardboard with the tips of her nails. Drawing it to her, she got a grip on the back and pulled it all the way out.

A shipping box with the label torn off, flaps folded one under the other, it smelled old and moldy, as though the bottom had gotten wet at one time.

"Open it," Cameron urged.

She reached to her bedside lamp, turned it on, and looked at the box. Cameron was so good at pushing her to do what she didn't want to do. He'd pushed her into following those visions of murder to their natural conclusion. He'd pushed her at Witt. And now this box. Was there a point in fighting him? In the end, she'd do it to shut him up.

Pulling up one flap, the others came apart on their own. A wave of stale air washed over her as if she'd opened long buried treasure.

Treasure was what it held, Cameron's favorite things, the ones she hadn't been able throw out, sell, or give away. With a reverent hand, she held still above the first item in the box. Warmth spread across her palm, through the bones of her arm, as if a piece of Cameron had remained with his things.

On top lay his favorite CD. Romantic music for cold and stormy nights before a fire. Johnny Desmond singing standards on his album "Blue Smoke." Cameron found the record in a thrift store and used a buddy's state of the art equipment to burn a CD. Not something she would have spent much time on, Max had grown to love it because of the rhapsodic look it produced on his face. She'd saved it, but she hadn't listened to it since he died.

The CD now on her lap, she pulled out the next jewel. What else but a book, "Lost Horizon." Cameron had believed in Shangri-La, a place of perfect beauty and happiness.

"Shangri-La is a state of mind," he whispered.

A state of mind Max had never been able to achieve, not before she met him, not during the five years they were married, and certainly not in the two since the 7-11.

Underneath the book were his videotapes. Three. Steve McQueen's "Bullitt" because Cameron thought it had the best car chase ever filmed. "On Any Sunday," an obscure film about racing motorcycles, Cameron's teenage fantasy. And the 1937 version of "Lost Horizon" with Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt.

Every night for six months after he died, she'd watched that movie, over and over until the tape began to squeak. She'd watched it because she thought she was crazy hearing his voice, and because somehow, some way, she thought she could find Shangri-La if she did. She watched it because when she closed her eyes, she could feel his arms around her and remember his voice in her ear whispering, "Let's go there together."

She put a hand to her cheek, the flesh dry despite the ache in her eyes and the tingle in her nose. She hadn't cried, not in two years. After six months, she'd thrown out the VCR so she couldn't watch the movie again. She hadn't thrown out the tape.

"What else is there?" Cameron urged, making no comment on the torrent of emotions flooding through her.

Hands shaking, she laid the tapes in her lap, along with the book and the CD. His Rolex watch stared up at her. They'd argued as they always had, she fearing they couldn't afford it. She hadn't thought they could afford the Miata he bought her when she made partner at the CPA firm, either. Hell, she was an accountant, she hated spending money on principle.

"What's the engraving?"

She turned the heavy gold watch in her hand and read the words aloud. "To Cameron. This is the last one. Love, Max."

Watches were to a man what rings, necklaces and bracelets were to a woman. Any woman but Max. Cameron could never have enough. She'd given in. Both to the Miata and the watch.

It had been the last expensive thing he ever bought.

A pair of gold cufflinks bearing his initials chinked against the watch as she set it back in the box. Cameron wore French cuff shirts when he had to appear in court. And there, next to the cufflinks, the tiepin his father left him, a ruby surrounded by several tiny diamonds. He'd worn it daily. It shone amidst a strange assortment of clothing she'd kept.

A couple of white dress shirts, ties, underwear, and socks. She moved them aside with a gentle touch. A toothbrush clattered to the bottom of the box, falling from the shaving kit she hadn't quite zippered. Why had she saved all this stuff? The ties weren't favorites. And his underwear and socks? She'd admit to being a little out of her head at the time, but keeping all this? God, she'd been pathetic, more so than she ever imagined.

"They don't have anything to do with my sister. Dig deeper."

She did. And came up with a gun.

"Jesus Christ." Max suspended it between thumb and forefinger. A Glock nine millimeter semi-automatic, magazine still in it. She wondered if she'd been idiotic enough to leave it full of bullets as well.

"Where'd this come from?" She searched the room for the fine points of red that were Cameron's eyes.

"We got it for protection, remember?"

No, she didn't.

"But you remember me teaching you how to fire it."

Yes. But somehow she'd thought they'd borrowed a friend's gun. Okay, so her memory sucked. "But why'd I keep it?"

"You were afraid they'd come back for you?"

His killers. They'd raped her, beaten her, and left her for dead alongside a hiking trail. It was a miracle that Cameron returned to talk to her, to keep her alive long enough for the dawn and a jogger to find her.

But she'd never worried they'd come after her. A part of her had wished they would, to put an end to the nightmare she'd found herself living.

"What else is inside?" Cameron distracted her with his insistence.

Carefully laying the gun on the floor, she dug once more in the box. Her fingers touched something else.

Another book. Big. Protected by a plastic dust cover. A man and a woman walking on the beach before a golden sunset graced the cover. She opened the flap to a picture of bleachers filled with cheering students at a high school game of some sort. The more conservative dress of a few dedicated parents was sprinkled in amongst girls with tight shirts in bright colors, their jeans sporting bell-bottoms. At the lowest edge of the picture, three cheerleaders, all blonde, had been caught in mid-bounce, their pleated skirts flying, blue and yellow pom-poms beating the air, their legs lopped off by the cut of the editor.

She held Cameron's high school yearbook in her hands. She could have sworn she'd never seen it before nor could she remember packing it in this box.

"Turn the page."

She responded to the urgency in his tone. Washington Irving High School--someone must have loved The Legend of Sleepy Hollow--and the name of a town. Lines, Michigan. A fist-sized lump grew in her throat. He was from a town called Lines. Another thing she hadn't known. So many things she'd never bothered to ask. She wasn't normal, she'd never been normal. Learning history was so basic to a relationship, yet Max had wanted to create a world of their own, where only she and Cameron mattered. True, she'd had a job, she'd had a few friends, but when she got home at night, she'd wanted to pretend only she and Cameron were real. Home was the only place she felt safe, despite the fights they had. She'd wanted to pretend life began when they met each other.

"You didn't need to know about my past."

Which meant he hadn't wanted to tell her. Her isolationism had played right into that.

"Look at the index in the back."

Max did as he said, not willing to look their marriage in the face, not now when she could no longer change it. She went straight to his name. He was listed on several different pages, had probably been in all the clubs, on the debating team, class president, whatever.

It was the name beneath his, though, that made her gasp.

She turned to the page listed and stared at a face, framed by honey blond hair, a face that was a feminine replica of Cameron's.

"My sister," he whispered, the hint of tears in his voice. "Cordelia."