A/N: I feel like I waited so long on this story, I may have lost most of my readers. Is there anybody out there?

A little more of Enos' perspective on Daisy in this chapter, and I think you'll agree that he has a point. Also, a return to the crime portion of this drama. Enjoy!

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Chapter 29: Thin Ice

Hockey: An ancient sport played on thin ice.
Love: An ancient sport played on even thinner ice.

Daisy's hands were so numb from cold, she couldn't feel the cut, but alarm was in every line on Enos's face.

"Don't move," he told her, "I need see where you're bleeding from." He released her wrist and blood gushed from her palm before he tightened his grip again, his relief evident. "Lord have mercy, Daisy, I thought you'd sliced your wrist open!"

Several gawkers had gathered around, and someone handed him a towel which he wrapped around her hand. He took her other hand and put it over the cut.

"Put pressure on it while I get my skates off." He looked around. "Can someone help Daisy get her boots back on?"

"We've got her, Sheriff."

A couple helped her over to the bench where they pulled off her helmet, skates, and all the equipment except her shoulder pads (she couldn't let go of the pressure on her hand to get them off) and laced her boots. She peeked under the wrapped towel and could see blood soaking through the first layer even as she held pressure on it. How much did hands usually bleed?

By the time her boots were on, Enos was back, his coat unzipped, wearing jeans and the t-shirt he'd had under his pads. He stuffed her things in her bag and slung it over his shoulder with his own. "My truck's over there," he told her, pointing it out in the parking lot. "I'll get someone to bring the snowmobile back later."

Daisy felt a crowd of eyes follow her as she trudged behind him to the truck, knowing that she'd be telling this story for weeks to come. At least she'd scored the goal.

Enos flipped on his lights and sped through the stop sign at the end of the park. Daisy didn't think her cut hand was much of an emergency.

"Just sit there and imagine me saying 'I told you so'."

Beneath the porch light, Enos slowly peeled away the towel. The cut seeped from one end, and the rest was stuck to the fabric with dried blood. He wrapped the towel back around it and opened the door.

She stopped just inside the kitchen. "Can you take my shoulder pads off? If I use both hands, I'm libel to start bleeding all over the place again."

His hands hovered indecisively over her, and Daisy laughed at him trying not to invade her personal space. "I've got a turtleneck on underneath," she assured him. "You can just cut the jersey off since you're getting me a different one. That was a pretty good shot, huh?"

"That's all you've got to say for yourself? How about, 'Sorry, Enos, I should have listened to you about the gloves'. The library has a video of hockey injuries, I think I'll check it out and make you watch it."

She poked him in the chest. "Tell me it wasn't a good shot."

"It was a good shot," he admitted. He lifted her jersey up so he could unlatch the hook in the center of her shoulder pads. "Here, raise your arms." He pulled her pads and jersey over her head and set them on the table.

"You'd better come and look at the cut," she told him. "if it's bad, I'm libel to get queasy."

She flipped on the bathroom light and turned on the faucet. While she waited for the water to warm up, she glanced in the mirror and cringed at her hair, which was half-in and half-out of her ponytail. She pulled the hair band out and tossed it in a drawer before turning her attention back to her hand.

The water ran pink down the drain as she peeled away the towel to reveal a line that started between her first two fingers and curved down across the inside of her hand to stop in a deep gore at on the heel of her palm.

"Sit down so I can see better." She sat down on the edge of the bathtub, and he knelt down to examine the hand she held out. "It's only deep at one end," he said, turning it over gently. "You must've caught my skate blade when you fell."

"What if I need stitches?"

"I'll get out my fishing line and suture you up." He laughed at her horrified expression. "I'm just joshing you. There's a clinic in Paradise."

He reached into the medicine cabinet over the sink and took out the Betadine, gauze, tape, and some cottonballs. The gauze and tape he sat on the counter, but he shook the Betadine bottle and opened it, pouring it on a cottonball.

"This'll probably sting."

She whimpered at the cold bite of the antiseptic, but it was the scent that brought the tears. It was the smell of pain, confusion, and loss. Of waking up in the hospital with her arm in traction and twenty years of her life gone, like smoke in the wind. Enos stroked the cut gingerly to clean it as tears rolled down her cheeks and she tried not to alert him to her inner turmoil.

If he looks up, I'll blame it on the Betadine.

He looked up, and she shut her eyes.

"What's wrong?" His voice was gentle, but alarmed. She felt him shift and set down the Betadine, and then his hands were on her shoulders instead. "Daisy, what's wrong? And don't tell me it's the Betadine."

She shook her head and wiped her face with her good hand. "Sorry," she whispered. "It's the smell. It reminded me of...of..."

"Of the hospital?"

She nodded. "It's the first thing I remember."

He waited patiently without speaking as she hung her head and wept, his thumbs rubbing soothingly against her arms. She focused on that instead. "I woke up and everything was different or gone," she sniffed. "And, I miss it. I miss the boys being kids like I remember them. I miss Aunt Lavinia, and my cat, and my room, and me...and I'm so, so sorry about forgetting you."

He sighed and gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

"I ain't good at knowing what to say to make you feel better, Daisy, but none of that is your fault, so there's no cause for saying sorry. It's normal to grieve when you lose someone, so I reckon it's even worse when it's yourself you've lost. New memories will make the loss of the others easier, but it takes time. Maybe a long time."

He yanked off a piece of toilet paper and handed it to her. She dried her eyes, and looked down into his. This close, she could see all the colors in them, from the greens and browns that made them hazel to tiny flecks of gold. The sense of deja-vu falling came and with it, a nervous warmth in her stomach and a rush of blood in her ears.

Every sense awakened; from his hands, strong and gentle against her arms, to the musky scent of him still sweaty from practice. She read her heart in his warm eyes and with sudden, reeling clarity knew that she was in love with him. Maybe she had always loved him?

Enos wasn't sure what to make of the look on her face before she threw herself into his arms. He hugged her tight, selfishly wishing that her memories would never return.

After visiting her in the hospital and talking to Uncle Jesse, he had called her doctor when he got back to Michigan and asked him point blank for her real prognosis, making him understand he wasn't interested in platitudes or 'maybes'. The man had been clear that they didn't know. With so little brain damage, there was always a chance, albeit slim, that her memory would recover, but the longer she went without regaining anything significant, the less likely it would be.

As far as Enos knew, the occasional 'deja-vu' was the only proof that something still existed.

Therein lay his problem. The Daisy he knew before the accident would never have come to Tamarack. Whatever second thoughts she'd had in the two years between him leaving and her accident, none of them had been enough to try and find him - an easy task for a Duke. If her memories ever returned, she would leave. It was as incontrovertible as the sun rising in the morning.

That wasn't all - eventually, someone would run their mouth and tell her what had happened between them. It was bound to happen, and then everything would get messy and painful. No matter how much he loved her, that wasn't a road he was willing to travel. Not again. The tavern and town could have their fun with betting on them but, in the end, life wasn't a fairy tale.

He released her and she gave him a sheepish grin.

"Sorry, Enos."

"Nothing to be sorry about," he told her, ruffling her messy hair. "Let's get your hand fixed."

He placed a layer of gauze against the cut and wrapped the white tape around it, then a second pass between her fingers and around. She jumped as his radio blared an alert tone from dispatch.

"Here," he passed the tape to her, "wrap it enough to hold in in place. Tight, but not tight enough to cut off your circulation. I need to see what's going on."

She listened as she wound the tape around the cut, trying to hear what he was saying to Pete, but it was too muffled through the wall. She went back out to the kitchen for the scissors and found Enos standing in the middle of the room with a look of utter confusion on his face.

"Everything okay?"

He opened his mouth, then hesitated. "I don't know," he said, at last. "Pete said a guy just turned himself in claiming to have killed John and Gino."

"Seriously!? That's great!" Without Enos obsessed over the Elcid Barrett murders, life could only get better. She thought he'd be ecstatic. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "It's Jake Dawson, the kid who talked to me outside the Antelope Tavern when I went to visit the crew. The one who told me about the superstitions going around."

"Maybe he's the one who made them up?"

"I guess I'll find out. I told Pete I'd be there in an hour, but need a shower first." He studied her as though he was trying to remember something. "Oh! I almost forgot! Hold on a minute."

He ran off, and she rummaged in a drawer for the scissors and cut the tape off the roll as his footfalls echoed on the stairs to the loft. A moment later, he was back carrying a wad of orange material.

"I owe you a different jersey," he conceded. "Since the Flames got new uniforms this year, you can have my old away jersey if you want...at least until you find one you like."

He tossed it to her, and she shook out the folds. It was burnt orange with white and black trim and a black silhouette of a lighthouse with golden beams shooting from the top. On the back in large white letters read STRATE and the number 44.

"You'd have to take in the sleeves," he told her, "and hem the bottom if you want it shorter. I'd give you the home jersey, but it's awful ratty."

"This is perfect, Enos!" she grinned, hugging it tight. "Now, I'm part of your fan club."

"I'm afraid it's a small club," he laughed, blushing with embarrassment. "I've gotta get ready."

Less than an hour later, he walked into the station to find both Pete and Joy waiting on him.

"Sorry, Sheriff, I called Joy, too. Thought maybe we'd need her?"

"You need to see this kid, Sheriff," she told him, quietly. "I don't know what's going on, but it doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't?"

"Just go look at him." Joy pointed down the hallway towards the cells. "Gave Pete some bullshit about being lost in the woods, but he looks like he got lost in a third world prison."

Enos brushed past Pete unlocked the first cell where a man lay on the cot facing the wall, a blanket draped across his shoulders.

"Jake?" Enos approached him cautiously, remembering all the classic snookering techniques criminals had used back in Hazzard. He tried again, "Mr. Dawson?"

Slowly and with great effort, the figure on the mattress rolled over and looked at him.

"Pete!" shouted Enos, closing the distance between himself and Jake. "Call the ambulance! Now!"

"Yes, sir!"

He knelt down beside the cot. "Jake?"

"Hey, Sheriff," he mumbled, "sorry I came on your night off."

The ragged man scarcely resembled the young greenhorn Enos had spoken to two months earlier. His sunken eyes and cheeks betrayed starvation and his clothes hung off shoulders and hips that were little more than bones. Small round scars peppered his arms and hands, and his skin was a myriad of yellow, black, and green where it had bruised, healed, and bruised again. His lips were dry and peeling, fixed in a grimace.

"Hold on, I'm going to get you some water."

He ran down the hall, more worried about the kid dying than escaping, and returned a moment later with a Dixie cup of water.

"Can you sit up?" Jake nodded and with Enos' support, pushed himself up to slouch against the wall. "The ambulance is gonna be here in a minute," he told him. "Try and sip some water."

He put the cup into the young man's shaking hands and helped him guide it to his mouth. He tried to drink several times but sputtered and choked, and Enos wasn't sure if any got from the cup down his throat. He couldn't remember when the Elcid Barrett had been scheduled to offload their next shipment and stop in port, or how Jake, in his condition, would have gotten from the St. Mary's River to Tamarack.

"Who did this to you? Was it someone on the Elcid Barrett?"

Jake shook his head. "...got lost in the woods. I was...camping in Tahquamenon, but I got turned around...got lost my..." He looked up, clutching at Enos' uniform and whispered. "I did it, Sheriff. Killed them. I did...I did..."

"We'll talk about that later," Enos assured him. He could hear voices at the front of the station and a moment later, Harry, the ambulance driver, appeared.

"You want the stretcher, Sheriff?"" he asked, then focused on Jake, who had begun mumbling incoherently. "Geez Louise! I'll be right back."

A moment later he returned with Sarah, the paramedic on rotation that night, and together they guided the metal framed stretcher through the hallway and into the cell.

Enos helped Harry move Jake and covered him with the blanket before buckling the safety straps around him while Sarah inserted an I.V. He fastened one end of his handcuffs to Jake's wrist and hooked the other to the stretcher, not that he expected Jake to do much running.

"I'll ride with him," he told Sarah. "Let me talk to dispatch first, and I'll meet you outside."

He squeezed past the stretcher and hurried back to the lobby. "Joy, call the State Police. Explain, in that wonderful way you have of getting people to listen, that we're transporting the witness of a double homicide to HNJ Hospital in Newberry. Tell them his life may be in danger, and I need backup to secure the hospital. I'm gonna go with him."

Joy picked up her headset. "I'm on it, Sheriff."

"Pete, did Jake say how he got here?"

The deputy shook his head. "Someone found him wandering down Highway 123 and stopped to see if he needed a ride. He asked if he was in Whitefish County, and told them to take him to the Sheriff."

"Alright, I guess we'll work on that later," he told him. "I need you to follow us. Lights, no siren. If you think we're being followed, radio me and let me know. I have no idea what we're dealing with here."

Pete nodded, grabbed his coat and headed out the door.

Enos turned one last time to Joy. "Call in Rodney and Rick and have them patrol between here and 123. Tell them to report anything strange, especially any unfamiliar or out of state vehicles."

"You want they should put up a roadblock?" she suggested. "That way they could check IDs. Say they're screening for drunk drivers?"

He nodded. "Good thinking," he agreed. "It's plausible enough to keep people from asking questions. Have them set up on 123 south of Shelldrake. That way we can catch anyone coming in or out of Tamarack and Paradise. If they find anyone from out of town, make a note of name, address, and license. This late in the day, most of the winter tourists should be at their cabins. I'll call you when I get to the hospital."

He picked up his hat from his desk and followed the others out the door, climbing into the back of the ambulance with Jake and Sarah. She pulled the door shut, banged on it, and they were off, speeding towards Newberry's hospital thirty miles away. He checked his watch. It was shortly before 11:00pm. Outside, the strobes of the ambulance and Pete's car flashed across the snowy fields.

If anything was more boring than sitting around a hospital waiting room, Enos wasn't aware of it.

Joy had come through, and they had arrived to find three Michigan State Police cruisers lined up in front of the building and one just inside the entrance to the hospital's parking lot. He'd left Jake with the doctors and a State Trooper in the ER to brief their Lieutenant on the murders, explaining that the guy they'd brought in had been the only person willing to talk to him about what was going on aboard the ship. Now his whistleblower was in bad shape. He didn't mention Jake confessing.

"Sure sounds like someone wanted to hush him up," said Lt. Olson. "We've got a guy on the parking lot, and guys in the lobby, ICU, and ER with one float. They've got fresh coffee in the gift shop. You look like you could use a cup. We'll let you know if anything comes up."

Enos thanked him and left to hunt down the coffee and a phone to call Joy before making his way back to the ER.

It was over an hour before the doctor appeared. "Your boy's had a rough go of it," he told Enos, as soon as they were out of earshot. "The worst was dehydration, and we've got him on a glucose drip with a broad spectrum antibiotic and an anti-fungal, just in case. He's taken more than a few rounds of blunt force trauma. Three broken ribs; two almost healed, one pretty fresh; two broken fingers. Burns on his arms, hands, and scalp; most look like cigarette, but a couple are bigger. Malnourished, but I'm less concerned about that than his mental status. Yammered on constantly until we sedated him. I could give him some Risperidone, but I'm guessing you want him as unmedicated as possible."

"Risperidone? Sounds familiar, but I'm not sure what it is."

"Anti-psychotic. Pretty standard treatment for schizophrenia."

"I'd rather avoid that for now," he said. "What was he talking about?"

The doctor shook his head. "Something about Alice," he said. "Girlfriend, maybe?"

"Could be," said Enos, filing it away for later. "He claimed he got this way from being lost in the woods for several weeks. Is that possible?"

"Oh sure," the doctor smirked, "if he was kidnapped by a swarm of chain-smoking, angry beavers." Enos, not following, stared back at him, and the doctor shook his head. "The dehydration and malnutrition, yes, but not the rest."

"Is he going to ICU?"

"Just the next 12 hours for observation. We can put him in a room at the end of the hall when he goes up to the floor, if you'd like. Make it easier to track who goes in or out."

"I'd be much obliged for that, sir."

"No problem, Sheriff. Not that I like to see injuries, but it's been a nice change from snowmobile accidents."

With Jake sedated in the ICU, Enos left Pete at the hospital until the morning to be his eyes and ears while he made the trip back to Tamarack with Harry in the ambulance. He checked in with Joy first and called Rodney and Rick back in. Only one of the five cars they had stopped was from out of town, but it was hauling snowmobiles and probably a tourist. Rick stopped a confused elderly lady who blew a .08 on the breathalyzer test. Rick gave her two blankets and a cell for the night, grumbling about how grandmas should stay home and bake cookies instead of going bar hopping.

Nothing about DUI's surprised Enos anymore up here.

Rodney took over dispatch for Joy, and she and Enos headed for their separate homes.

It was after 2:00am when he pulled up beside the cabin, not looking forward to shovelling six more inches of snow in the morning. The cabin was locked, much to his relief. Like Hazzard, few people in the UP remembered to lock their doors. Most crimes were DUI's and disorderly conduct calls, but being the Sheriff in charge of the Elcid Barrett investigation put a target on his back and anyone associated with him.

He unlocked the door and stepped in. The lights were off; the only sounds the cracking of the fireplace and gentle hum of the fridge. He hung up his hat and lay his duty belt on the table as quietly as he could, then went to put another log on the fire for the night.

The firelight glinting off a picture frame caught his attention. After Daisy had complained his cabin had less personality than a Motel 6, he'd grudgingly agreed to let her put pictures up. They did make the place feel more homey.

There were three 8x10's on this side of the fireplace. The top one was of him and Turk and below that, one of the whole Metro Squad in front of the 'HOLLYWOOD' sign. He wasn't in the bottom picture, but he knew it meant more to Daisy than the others. It was the Dukes on their porch at the farm, the last summer she remembered. She and the boys were still kids and Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lavinia not so much older than he and Daisy were now.

It was the family she had expected to see when she woke up that October day. The one that would haunt her forever.

He stoked the fire and added another log to the top before he realized that Daisy was asleep on the couch, her body nestled into the cushions and wearing his jersey, her arm wrapped around a throw pillow like a teddy bear.

He looked down at her and grinned, shaking his head at her stubbornness. He'd forgotten how tenacious she could be when she had her mind set on something. It was part of her charm, and it had been getting her in trouble since she was little. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that sprang to them, thanking God that she had only lost her memories and not what made her Daisy.

He took the blanket from the back of the couch and lay it over her shoulders where she wore his name, glowing orange in the firelight, and tried to forget the feeling of holding her close.