“Why?”
“It puts your eyes at the right level.”
She did as he said, and he kept speaking to her in a soothing voice. “Relax now. Relax now. Relax now.”
He saw some of the tension drain out of her features.
“How do you feel?”
“Good.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re just going to see if we can bring back more of your past.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“And when I tell you to wake up, you will. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“We can start with a little mental vacation. Let’s go somewhere where you’d like to be.”
She thought about that. “I’m not sure.”
“Most people like the beach. Does that work for you?”
She waited a beat before answering, “Yes.”
“We’re at the beach. You’re on a chaise, lying in the sun. It feels good on your face and body. The waves are rolling up across the sand.”
“Um.”
“Let’s go a little deeper into relaxation. You go back to the resort where you’re staying. You go inside, and there’s a flight of steps. You go down, one step at a time.”
“Okay.”
“Every step takes you deeper into relaxation.” He could see from her face that it was working.
“What’s at the bottom of the stairs?” he asked.
Her body jerked.
“What?”
“Women. They’re frightened.”
“Why?”
“They’re a long way from home.” Her body jerked again. “I don’t want to be there.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes blinked open, focusing on him.
She looked so lost and alone that every instinct urged him to cross the room and take her in his arms again, but he knew that wasn’t such a great idea, given what happened every time they touched.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“It’s all over your face.”
“Sorry I’m so transparent.”
“Not to most people, I think.”
“I want to ask about that memory.”
She shuddered. “It’s nothing good.”
“Is it something recent?”
Her vision turned inward. “I think so.”
“But you aren’t sure?”
“I’m betting it has to do with that man who was following me. Maybe I saw something I wasn’t supposed to. And the mob is after me.”
“The mob?”
“You have a better explanation?”
“I wish I knew, but the part about your stumbling into something sounds right.” He thought for a moment. “What kind of women?”
“Young and pretty.”
“What race?”
“Why are you asking?”
“You had a memory of an Asian woman before.”
“These were Caucasian.”
“Okay. Do you think it has anything to do with your job?”
“Good question.” She shook her head. “Maybe it would help to try word association.”
“I think we shouldn’t try to push this any further tonight. You’ve had a tiring day—coming off a mild concussion.”
“Yes, probably pushing to come up with any more answers right now is a waste of time.”
“I don’t want to leave you and Mrs. Kramer alone, with that Wilson guy out there.”
“I think we’ll be all right.”
“But you took off out the back when the doorbell rang.”
She shook her head. “Yeah. I’m jumpy, but that doesn’t mean it’s logical.”
He wrote down his cell phone number and set it on the coffee table. “Call me if anything worries you. Or if you have any memories.”
“I think the latter’s more likely when you’re around.”
He nodded, looking at her hand. It was so tempting to reach out and touch her. They’d get memories, all right. And a lot more.
She looked up at him and away, and it was obvious again that she knew what he was thinking.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Kramer I’m leaving.”
Elizabeth was still in the living room when he returned, and he had to force himself not to stop and touch her. And force himself to leave, for that matter. He’d forged a connection with this woman who didn’t even know her name, and he wanted to strengthen that connection. But nothing had changed as far as his ethics were concerned. He still had no business coming on to her.
Chapter Five
Matthew had been right. Elizabeth was exhausted. She dropped off again almost as soon as she crawled into bed. For a few hours, she was able to sleep. But sometime in the small hours of the morning, a dream grabbed her.
She was on her way to work. And a car was behind her, inching up. There were men in the car, and she knew they wanted to hurt her. Because...
Her hands clenched on the steering wheel as she struggled to grab on to the answer. The only thing she could remember was “the women.”
She’d been trying to help the women. She had to remember that. It was an important clue. But there was no time for clues right now. She had to get away because the men were going to kill her if they caught up. She wasn’t sure why she thought so. But she knew it was true. Well, they were going to question her first, because they wanted to know how she had found out about the women.
She pressed on the accelerator, desperate to escape, weaving down an alley before shooting out onto the street. A truck was in the way, and she slammed into a lamppost.
This time, she woke with a muffled scream, wondering where she was.
Then it came back to her. At least the past day. She glanced at the clock. It was four in the morning, and she knew where she was—at Polly Kramer’s house, the nice woman on the hospital nursing staff who had brought Elizabeth to her home, a woman who couldn’t even remember her name.
At least she knew her first name.
Elizabeth.
She’d gotten that when she had touched Matt Delano the first time. Something happened whenever they touched. A flood of memories—his and hers. Was she fixated on him because she couldn’t remember anything else about herself?
It was an interesting theory, but she knew it wasn’t true. Whatever had transpired between them was real—and unique. The exchange of information and the startling sexual awareness that pulled them together every time they touched. And then the speaking to each other, mind to mind. She shouldn’t forget about that.
She squeezed her hands into fists. He could help her, but that sexual connection was keeping him away because of his strict code of morality.
Movement at the door made her tense and glance up. Polly Kramer was standing there, staring at her.
Elizabeth relaxed when she saw who it was.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Yes. I had a nightmare. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I’m a very light sleeper. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Was the nightmare a memory?”
“Maybe.” She related the dream.
Polly lingered for a few more moments. “And that’s all you remember?”
“Yes,” she answered, again making the decision not to tell her about what else Matt had pulled from her mind.
When Polly had gone back to bed, Elizabeth lay in the dark, thinking about the broken recollections—trying to force herself past the blank wall before the car chase.
What had she been doing when she got herself into trouble?
Matthew had said all hypnosis was self-hypnosis. Did that mean she could try to do what he’d guided her through before?
She considered the idea, then rejected it. What if she couldn’t wake up and nobody was here to pull her back?
She made a frustrated sound. Every which way she turned led to some new dead end. No, not really new. Just another manifestation of the same old sense of defeat.
She tried to go back to sleep, but that was beyond her. Finally she heaved herself up and went down the hall. Hoping she wasn’t going to wake up Polly, she prowled around the kitchen, checking ingredients in the refrigerator and the pantry. Polly had the makings of a vegetarian minestrone soup. Well, vegetarian except for the chicken broth.
Yes, she could make that and put it in the refrigerator for later.
She stopped and laughed out loud. Was cooking what she did to relax herself?
She didn’t know, but it was something to occupy her mind while she tried to get the rest of her life back.
* * *
C
YNTHIA
P
RICE
WAS
back at the nurses’ station in the morning when another young man showed up. Last time it had been a guy who had said he was Elizabeth’s brother, although Cynthia had wondered if it was true. This time it was a different story.
“I understand you had a woman here who doesn’t remember her name or anything else,” he began.
“Yes,” Cynthia answered cautiously.
“She didn’t have any identification on her?”
“No purse.”
“She was in an auto accident. Did the police check the car’s registration?”
“That was a dead end. The car belonged to someone else who’s on an extended trip outside the country.”
“Your patient’s a mystery woman.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was thinking I might be able to help her.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m a newspaper reporter with the
Baltimore Observer.
”
“Never heard of it.”
“We’re an online publication. That gives us the flexibility to get the news up quickly.”
Cynthia waited for him to say more.
“If I did an article about the woman—Jane Doe—someone might come forward to, you know, claim her.”
“We don’t have a picture of her.”
“But do you know where she went?”
Cynthia hesitated, weighing the upside and the downside. Polly had said not to talk about Elizabeth, but this was a newspaper reporter who might be able to help her.
“She went home with one of our nurses,” she finally said.
“One of the nurses from this floor.”
Cynthia swallowed. “Yes, but if you get someone who thinks they know her, you can call me, and I’ll contact her.”
“You can’t give me her name?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Okay. And what else can you tell me? Can you give me a description of her?”
Cynthia thought
for
a moment. “She was in her late twenties or early thirties. Her hair was short and dark, curly. Her eyes were blue. Her face was oval-shaped. She’s about five feet five inches tall and weighs about 110 pounds. Does that help?”
“That’s excellent.”
Cynthia was starting to wonder if she had done the right thing. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jack Regan.”
“You have a card?”
He handed her one with his name and a phone number.
She bent it back and forth in her hand.
“I’ll call if I get a lead,” he said.
“When will the article be out?”
“I’ll let you know.”
The man left, and Cynthia looked toward the phone. Should she call Polly? Or should she just act like nothing had happened? In the end she didn’t make the call.
* * *
E
LIZABETH
WAS
THINKING
that she would have never in her life have considered finding herself in this helpless situation. Then she laughed because she was making up the “never in her life” part. The truth was that if she had imagined this, she didn’t know about it because the memory was missing.
She showered and dressed, and spent a restless morning flipping through TV channels.
Over two hundred channels and nothing held her interest. As she looked out the back window, her gaze roamed over Polly’s weedy garden. If Elizabeth went out and worked in it for a few hours, at least she’d be doing something constructive.
This was one of the days Polly didn’t go to work. At least that’s what she’d told Elizabeth, who hoped the nurse hadn’t made special arrangements to stay home and watch over her.
* * *
S
O
FAR
SO
GOOD
,
Derek Lang decided. Hank Patterson, who had posed as Jack Regan, returned with valuable information.
“Elizabeth Forester is staying with a nurse who was on duty yesterday.”
Derek swung to his computer and consulted one of the many databases he had access to.
He quickly came up with the personnel files of Memorial Hospital and found out who was on the nursing staff. Next he used a hacker program to get into the hospital work schedules and was able to zero in on the medical unit that had treated Forester.
A few moments later, he looked up from the computer. “There were three nurses on duty in her area. We know it’s not the Price woman. That leaves two others.” He gave Patterson the names. “You and Southwell check them out.”
When Patterson had gone, Derek went back to the computer. It might be good to know what doctors had been on duty, too.
* * *
E
LIZABETH
FOUND
P
OLLY
folding laundry in the bedroom.
“I’m going to be out back, doing some yard work.”
“You don’t have to do anything like that.”
“I want to.”
“All right, dear.”
“Do you have some gardening gloves?”
“In the shed.”
Elizabeth took a plastic grocery bag from the kitchen. She could stuff weeds inside it and then periodically empty the bag at the side of the shed. And then she could ask Polly what she wanted done with the mess.
She slipped out the back and stood on the cracked concrete patio for a moment before crossing to the shed. As soon as she stepped inside, she started thinking about what she and Matthew had been doing in here last night.
Banishing that intimate scene from her mind, she located the gloves, exited the shed and looked around. The garden had been laid out with several flower beds, although it seemed that Polly had lost interest in keeping the place up. But really, it could look much better. Elizabeth crossed to the far right corner, got down on her knees and began pulling at the various weeds that had taken over. She didn’t know the names of them, but she knew which were the plants that were choking out the flowers.
She’d been working for a half hour when the back door opened. Expecting to see Polly, she looked up. Instead of the nurse, a man was standing in the doorway staring at her. A man with a gun that had a strangely long barrel.
She gasped.
He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s go.”
“No.”
“You want me to shoot you here?” he asked.
She raised her chin. “You won’t. You want information from me.”
His face registered surprise and annoyance. “Yeah, but what if I shoot you in the kneecap?”
“Are you going to risk it?”