The Stranger Beside Me (2 page)

She looked back at John. He studied her for a moment. Jo didn’t want to say it: she wanted to stay with him. She had no idea who she was, or what was going on, but he was a link to the events that led her to this moment.

John was dangerous. He killed two people quickly, efficiently and with little to no remorse. There was an air of professionalism to the action. It was clear he’d killed before.

Again, Jo was reminded of her memory of the strange man in her bed, the soldier.

She studied him closely. His eyes were troubled. The muscle in his jaw tensed as he gritted his teeth. She felt certain she needed John, but she didn’t know why. She looked away, feeling suddenly ashamed.

Wordlessly, he reached over her and shut the door.

Silently, she thanked him for understanding. He knew she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, leave the truck. For now, they were in this together.

John’s face softened. “Tell me what you remember, from the beginning,” he said delicately.

Jo took a breath. “I woke up beside the lake. My head was pounding; my hands were covered in blood.”

At the mention of blood, John’s face turned serious. “Blood? Are you hurt?”

He looked over her body, then took her hands and examined her arms. Jo couldn’t find the words to stop him. It was comforting to feel his touch and oddly familiar. He ran his hands over her shoulders and neck.

Jo felt a chill go up her spine. Her eyes dropped down to her lap. John ran a finger down her jaw to her chin. Slowly, he lifted her face. When their eyes met, Jo felt like crying. “I can’t remember who I am.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

Headlights filled the cabin as a car drove past them, shaking the truck. John turned quickly, but the car continued on. If the driver was looking for them, he made no attempt to stop.

Jo turned to face away from John. She could feel his eyes on her. She didn’t want to meet his gaze. She’d come very close to kissing him just now. Jo took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She had to do better than this; she was losing control. John was involved with whatever had happened to her. He appeared to be on her side-for now. But how long would that last? What if he was deceiving her? This was not the man to fall for. And what about the man from her memory? They had been intimate. Was he her boyfriend, or husband? Jo rubbed her temples. Her headache had returned.

“Take me somewhere,” she said. “Away from here.”

John nodded and pulled the truck back onto the road.

~

The night was dark, heavy and silent. A large house loomed in front of them. Jo walked closely behind John. He swore it was a safe place for them to spend the night, but Jo was nervous.

The house was dark and empty; it gave her the creeps. As they entered she hugged the wall and waited for John to lead her to her room.

“You can take any room you want,” he said. “Bathroom’s upstairs. Get cleaned up and get some rest.”

“We have a lot to talk about. How are you involved in all this? Did you know those men?

The ones-” She almost said ‘the ones you killed,’ but stopped. “The ones who were after us?”

“Let’s sit down.”

John placed a hand on her lower back and led her into the living room. Jo sat down on the couch; John sat closely beside her. Their legs touched, making Jo squirm. John made her nervous, but for all the wrong reasons. She couldn’t deny her attraction to him. He was handsome and strong; he’d risked his life to protect her. In spite of watching him kill two men she found herself trusting him.

“Can you turn on a light?” she asked. John’s face was cloaked in shadows. She wanted to see his eyes as he told his story.

“We’d better not. We don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”

They were in an extremely isolated area. Jo didn’t think there was a soul around for fifty miles, but he was right: better safe, than sorry.

“Go on,” she said, “from the beginning.”

He rubbed his hands together and sighed. “I first met you six months ago.”

Jo was taken aback. This man knew her. “How…how do you know me?”

John paused. “You really don’t remember, do you?” He sounded surprised.

Did he think she was pretending to have amnesia? Jo didn’t answer.

“You were working for a man,” John continued. “I don’t know his name, or much about him, but he was involved in some shady business.”

“Shady how? Like, corporate stuff?” Jo was thinking of Wall Street: insider trading, backroom deals, white collar crime.

“Like running guns, cleaning up the messes of powerful people, and about a dozen other operations I wasn’t privy to.”

Jo swallowed hard. How could she be involved in this? She couldn’t imagine being a part of some sort of gang or criminal family. But if John was to be believed she was in the middle of it.

“I was hired to… take care of a problem.” John shifted beside her. He began to rub his hands together, a nervous gesture. “That’s when I met you. You were a kind of liaison.

You got me what I needed: money, transportation, weapons.”

He paused meaningfully. Jo thought he was waiting for her to respond, but she was speechless. John’s description of her past sounded completely foreign to her. She couldn’t remember anything of her life before waking beside the lake.

She’d believed she was a victim, perhaps of some random act of violence. The story John was telling painted a picture of a woman in the midst of a dangerous situation. What if she had instigated the chain of events that led to her injury and amnesia? The thought made her head hurt. She had obviously been involved in something she shouldn’t have, but she refused to believe she had this coming. Someone had betrayed her.

She looked up at John, but his face remained cloaked in shadow. Who was he really? She had no reason to trust him, except for a desperate desire to trust someone.

“Go on,” she said. “I want to know how I ended up beside the lake.”

“It’s… let me go back. You and I became…close.”

It was obvious by his tone that he meant more than just friends. Jo remained silent and still. She didn’t want to give any more of herself away to this man.

Quietly, her mind reeled. She imagined tracing the outline of his jaw and cheekbones.

What did he look like naked? He had a nice body; she couldn’t help undressing him with her mind.

Jo saw a flash of a faceless man. His hard body pressed against her naked flesh. Was this John, or the other man from her memory?

“Are you a soldier?” she suddenly asked. She wasn’t sure where the question had come from.

John leaned in close to her. His face was suddenly illuminated by moonlight. His eyes were clear and concerned; his jaw tight. He didn’t look like a dangerous man, just deeply troubled.

“Why do you ask that?” he said. “Do you remember something? Did someone tell you that?”

His words came quickly. Jo’s question had struck a nerve.

“What does it matter? Are you or aren’t you?”

“Yes-no…I was.” He took a breath. “That’s not important now.”

The way he wanted to move on from the topic made Jo think it was of the utmost importance, but she didn’t press him. She wanted to know how she ended up by the lake.

“So we meet, I hook you up with… whatever it was you needed. Then what?”

“I was supposed to kill someone, but there were complications with my assignment.”

Jo feared he would same something like this. She didn’t want to believe she could play a part in such a thing and yet, here she was.

She tried to imagine killing someone and couldn’t. Was there some dark part of her, now forgotten, that was capable of murder? No, she thought with a strange conviction, not murder, survival.

“One night,” John continued, “we had a few drinks and one thing led to another…”

This turn of the story made Jo uncomfortable. “So we had a one night stand. What happened next?”

“It wasn’t just a one night stand. We were…”

Jo’s heart raced. Her skin felt electric. She instantly knew she’d felt his hands on her body before. It was as if some physical memory of the moment was held by her body.

“Anyway,” John continued, “things moved quickly. I don’t know how deep in you were with the people you worked for, but they obviously decided to start cleaning house.”

“What do you mean?”

“Obviously, you know something they don’t want anyone else to know about. Something that could be very dangerous to their operation.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

Jo put her head in her hands. It was too much to process all at once. John put his hand on her back and rubbed gently. She began to softly cry.

When he wrapped his arms around her, she tried to pull away. She knew it was wrong.

She had to stay focused if she was going to find the truth and stay alive. This was not a complication she needed, but her body resisted what her mind knew.

She pressed her face into his chest and let him hold her. He ran his hands through her hair. They stayed that way for a while, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

“You were a hit man,” Jo blurted out.

“I took care of complications… I never hurt innocent people.”

Jo didn’t find this comforting.

“I’m going to get some sleep. We still have a lot to talk about, but I can’t handle anymore right now.”

“That’s a good idea. In the morning we can talk about where to go from here.”

Jo turned to leave and stopped. “John, was I… did I have a boyfriend? Or a husband?”

“No, why?”

“Nothing.”

Jo made her way up the stairs to a vacant room. She closed the door and locked it behind her. The man she remembered waking up in bed with must be an old boyfriend, she thought.

She threw herself down on the bed and closed her eyes.

“It figures the one thing I remember would end up being totally useless,” she said out loud to the empty room. It wasn’t until it was too late that she realized how wrong she was.

~

The morning light was harsh. Jo sat up, opened her eyes and immediately laid back down, pulling the covers over her head. She rubbed her stiff neck and shoulders.

Without thinking she rolled over and reached for a warm body to cuddle with. When she found the bed beside her empty she sat up with a start. It took her a minute to find her bearings, but as she began to remember the events since waking by the lake a strange thought struck her: where is he?

She felt confused. The bed felt empty, but who was she longing for? John, or the mystery man from her memory?

Jo stretched out and stared at the ceiling. Shadows danced across the room, shapeless and formless.

She’d hoped she’d wake this morning to find her memories had returned. Instead, she had more questions than answers.

Jo forced her sore body out of bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom. She saw no sign of John as she stepped into the shower. When the hot water hit her a sharp pain shot through her head. A blinding white flash of light brought her to her knees.

Suddenly, she was submerged in darkness. She was curled on her side, unable to stretch out. For a heart-stopping second, she thought she was buried underground in a coffin. She reached out and felt around her. The space was small, but bigger than a casket. The floor beneath her was made of carpet and the roof and sides of metal.

It was pitch black and stifling hot. Where was she? She wondered. She began to hit the metal walls around her and cry for help. Her lungs burned as she struggled to breathe.

She pounded on the walls until her hands were sore, but no help came.

Suddenly, she felt movement. The box containing her was being carried somewhere. No, she realized, not carried, driven. She was in the trunk of a car.

This realization made her panic. She screamed until her throat was raw. She kicked and punched the inside of the trunk. All to no avail.

The car began to sway back and forth. Then, she was falling. Her body flew up, slamming into the top of the trunk. Suddenly, she was surrounded by light. The trunk opened long enough for her to be blinded by daylight.

She had time for a single breath before being submerged in icy cold lake water. Jo squeezed her eyes shut tightly and held her breath. The water turned from cold, to pleasantly warm. She felt hands on her shoulder and back. A voice called to her from a distance.

“Breathe,” the man shouted.

But she knew if she took a breath she would drowned. Her lungs cried out for air; she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. Finally, she relented. I’m going to die, she thought.

But to her surprise she breathed easily.

Jo opened her eyes. She was back in the shower. John was shaking her, trying to get her to come back from wherever she had gone away to.

“Look at me,” he said. “You’re safe. You’re here with me.”

Jo wrapped her arms around his neck. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I heard you shouting for help.”

Despite the warm water, Jo was shaking. John turned it off and held her close. He wrapped a towel around her and began to dry her off.

“I think, it was a memory,” she said.

John didn’t respond. A large robe hung from the door. He pulled it down and dressed her in it.

“It’s still early,” he said. “I want you to get some more sleep before we leave.”

He led her back to her room, pulled back the covers on the bed and helped her lay down.

“Wait,” she said.

The last thing she wanted was to be alone. The hot dark trunk and the icy lake water frightened her. She felt as if she’d woken from a nightmare to find that it was real.

“Lay down with me,” she said. “Please?”

“Of course.”

He slid onto the bed beside her. He wore only a t-shirt and his boxers. She laid her head on his chest and wrapped her legs around his. She was struck by déjà vu. She had no memory of John prior to this but she instinctively knew they’d been intimate before.

Protectively, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her in close. His strong arms and warm skin were comforting.

Jo closed her eyes and moaned.

John kissed her forehead and ran his fingers up and down her arm. Jo felt something stir deep inside her. An overpowering desire to have this man take her now made her move in closer to him.