The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  He looked at the flakes beating against the window and realized he didn’t feel trapped. He was glad the storm kept them here. He hadn’t felt this alive since…the day he met Rosemary. He’d been young, but he’d known she was “the one.” It scared him so much, he almost took off. As if she knew it, Rosemary had gripped his hand and smiled at him. He forgot about taking off, forgot about his plan to hitchhike around the world, forgot everything but the pleasure of looking into her blue eyes.

  This wasn’t the same as that, of course. Goldie might be married or at least involved with someone. And she was too young for him. She was maybe in her early thirties. Maybe. He revised the number every time her eyes changed. Bottom line, he wasn’t looking to feel young again with a young wife. Looking down the barrel of fifty didn’t scare him. He’d earned his years the hard way. That didn’t mean his parts had quit working. Or that he was immune. He was human. He looked at her lying there, the blanket covering her chest rising and falling with each breath. Okay, make that damn human.

  She lifted her lashes, and he found that her eyes had changed again. Now she looked younger than his earliest estimate. Maybe it was the hint of shy in her eyes, as if she’d never woken up with a man before.

  “Good morning.”

  Her voice was husky, and he could tell she didn’t quite know what to do. Or, maybe she couldn’t move. He’d had the odd injury stiffen up on him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like…road kill.” But she smiled as she said it.

  Her smile stole the breath from his lungs and most of his wits. He smiled back and knew his expression was stunned and probably stupid looking, but the connection between his brain and his mouth seemed to be temporarily out of order.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he managed.

  “What I’d really like is to get from here to there.” She indicated the bathroom with her eyes, most likely the only part of her that didn’t hurt.

  “I can help you up, but it’s still going to hurt.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  When she didn’t move, it occurred to him that she didn’t want an audience. “I’ll go rustle up some grub.”

  After a detour to the bathroom to make sure she had water for the commode and washing, Luke headed for the kitchen. He braced for expected sounds of distress and pain, but there were none. After a time, he saw her pass by the doorway in tiny but determined steps. She may not know her own name, but the girl had guts. A hot bath would have helped, but there’d be no hot water with the power out. They had some liniment somewhere, but he wasn’t going to offer to rub her down. A good woodsman knew when not to add kindling to a fire.

  Thanks to a gas stove, he had a decent spread for breakfast ready to eat when she emerged from the bathroom after a period filled with the typical sounds of splashing and flushing. Good, she’d figured out what the bucket of water was for. He looked up, relieved.

  “Bad?” he asked, noting that she was moving easier, but with a look of concentration on her face.

  “Only when I breathe.” Her smile was brief but impish as she lowered herself into a chair. She surveyed the eggs, bacon and toast with surprise. “This looks good.”

  “It won’t disappoint,” Luke said with mock seriousness. “My mom taught me that food should taste as good as it looks.”

  “My compliments to your mom.”

  “How’s the wrist? And the arm? And the head?”

  “The edema is down in the wrist. The arm feels like someone set it on fire. And my head feels like the pendulum part of a bell going ding dong.” Despite her aches, pains and lack of memory, Goldie still felt an odd contentment. Luke was excellent company, and it had been fun last night. She felt embarrassed at how she’d abruptly fallen asleep and it still bugged her that she could recall an almost endless array of useless trivia, but seemed to know little about popular music.

  What she felt like, since feelings were all she had for clues, was like she was three different people. There was the one who was scared, not just of losing her memory but of the danger she felt lurking inside the fog blanketing her memory. Someone had shot at her, as amazing and unbelievable as that seemed. The next person was the one who felt freed from a burden she couldn’t remember. Inside the fog, not far from the fear, was a murmur of criticism, a voice that shot orders at her in a continuous stream. It was growing weaker and she was glad of it. It felt good to throw off the constraints of the voice. To feel more free, and well, not so prim and so worried about correct and proper behavior. Then there was this, well, woman. She couldn’t know for sure, but it felt new to feel like this. To be so aware of what was feminine about herself as Luke jumped up to refill her cup of hot chocolate—which she found her taste buds preferred to the coffee of last night. To be so aware of what was masculine about Luke.

  It was a pleasure to look at him, though she was careful not to let him catch her at it. She liked the way his hair was combed back from his face, exposing its planes and angles. His eyes fascinated her, too. Had she ever studied a man’s eyes? Had she ever considered all the colors and the constantly shifting emotions? She’d seen them warm, seen them turn cool and wary, seen them grow dark and dangerous. He wasn’t a man to cross, but she felt in her aching bones that he was a man she could trust.

  She wished she could feel the same about herself. Could she trust herself? She hovered next to the fog, trying to peer into it, even as she longed to leave it undisturbed. Sometimes people didn’t recover from amnesia. Maybe she should accept it as a gift and let the sleeping past lie?

  Breakfast done, Luke told her to the leave the dishes for him and braved the cold bucket wash. Part of her wanted to take him at his word, while some part of her felt that to walk away would be a betrayal of…someone. It also felt rude to let him do all the work, so she struck a compromise with her three selves. She washed, using some of the water he’d pumped and put to heat on the stove, but didn’t dry.

  Their confinement was so intimate, cozy and comfortable. So very domestic. Luke in the bathroom. She in the kitchen. Almost sans shoes, since Snoopy slippers didn’t count. It was also natural, she told herself, to cling to this present, since she had no past. What she felt right now was as fleeting as the situation. Like a patient with a crush on her doctor. Not that she had a crush on him. She was enjoying being with him. That’s all.

  The last pan washed, she pulled the plug on the sink and watched the water drain away from her hands. Soap bubbles dotted her arms as she swirled the water against the sides of the sink. As the moisture on her arms dried, the tiny, transparent soap bubbles popped one by one. It seemed sort of symbolic, though if she’d had to put into words why, she couldn’t have. She pumped water into the sink, enjoying the jump into the past and rinsed the remaining bubbles—and any symbolism—down the drain.

  Feeling restless, she went into the main room but couldn’t settle down. Her discarded clothes lay tossed across the chair. Her boots under it. She had an urge to straighten, but a stronger surge of rebellion swept it away.

  A long, gray case on the rough-hewn coffee table caught her eye. Next to it was a set of keys on a Harry Potter key chain. She picked it up, because snooping suited her mood better than playing maid. The minatory voice squawked in shock. Goldie stuck her tongue out at the voice.

  “Harry Potter.” The books had been fun to read. She could remember the plot of all of them. How come she could remember his name and story, but not her own?

  Who am I? A cosmic question in search of a personal answer. Intriguing juxtaposition. The big versus the small, unless you believed man to be the center of the universe, which she may or may not.

  Nestled within the cosmic, the search for personal identity. Bits and pieces of identity theory drifted around in her head, like birds pecking at scattered seed. Nature versus nurture. Ids and egos. Optimists and pessimists. Interesting, but not productive, since she had no research material. Most of the theories depended, at least to some extent, on a study, or
at least awareness, of a past life.

  Which brought her back to the second question of day—how did she know all this? She couldn’t seem to spontaneously produce information. If she tried to remember something, it stayed just out of her reach. However, if triggered, she could riff along an information trail at an amazing rate. She’d certainly had a large store of odd knowledge last night while playing trivia. Knowledge that crossed back and forth between the liberal arts and the sciences. It didn’t give her many clues, other than the possibility she was an encyclopedia in her other life.

  She dropped the keys back on the table with a slight sigh and picked up the gray case. It stirred up nothing but a feeling that she had an aversion to gray. To her surprise, though, her fingers slid across the cool surface as if they belonged there—or they’d been there before? Did this belong to her? As if in answer, her fingers found the lid and popped it up. It looked like a small computer with a miniature keyboard. She turned it over and found the power button. The small screen flickered, then resolved itself into a password prompt.

  “Great.”

  “That’s as far as I got, too,” Luke said.

  Goldie started. She hadn’t heard him come out of the bathroom. She turned to find him standing with his feet planted, his hands in the pockets of a fresh pair of jeans that hugged him like they needed him to survive. He’d pulled on a navy blue sweater that clung to his chest and arms. It seemed to like him a lot, too, and did wonderful things for his skin and eyes. His hair was still wet. The dark strands clinging to the bold shape of his head had a bit of natural curl when wet.

  He walked up next to her and added, “I found it in your jacket. Ring any bells?”

  Was there a hint of suspicion or skepticism in his voice? Since she couldn’t admit she thought it was his and was snooping, Goldie shrugged. “My fingers seem to remember it, but my brain is proving recalcitrant.” She shut it off and closed it with a loud snap. “I don’t suppose you have something here I could change into? I promise to be very easy to please.”

  “Upstairs. Both my sisters-in-law have clothes here. Help yourself.” He stepped back. “Let me heat some more water, and you can take a sponge bath. The water is chilly.”

  Goldie shot a wry look in the direction of the windows. “I can only imagine.”

  It felt good to wash, even in a pot. The clothes fit pretty well, though the jeans were a tad short. Did that mean her legs were rather long or the sister-in-law’s legs were rather short? The sweater felt soft and warm, once she’d navigated her bandaged arm into the sleeve. When she rejoined Luke, she found him eyeing his beeper like it had just snapped at him.

  “Trouble?”

  “My brother Matt. I knew I should have called my mom last night.” His mom wouldn’t tell him off, but his brother would. He’d bet money his mom had called Matt to see if he’d heard anything. He dug through his stuff until he found his phone. He didn’t remember shutting it off, but he must have. He turned it on and when it was ready, started to punch in the numbers, but stopped. He rubbed his face in frustration. “I started thinking about it, and now I can’t remember the number. She had the number changed last week, after she got some obscene phone calls.”

  Started thinking about it. Goldie watched him close his eyes, try the number again, and then stop with a disgusted sigh. “It’s no good. I’m trying too hard to remember.”

  She looked at the PDA, then back at him. Saw his gaze refocus on her, then sharpen as his thoughts began to track with hers. He set the phone down and grabbed the PDA. “It’s worth a try. Try not to think about it at all, let your thoughts drift…”

  He opened it, then handed it to her. “Just keep looking at me.”

  It was easy to look at him. Her eyes liked it a bit too much, and she was afraid they were showing it to him. Dang body language. Soon she’ll be tossing her hair and leaning in to him like at teenager with her first crush.

  “Don’t look down,” Luke said.

  He made it easy for her by catching her gaze with his and holding it in a way that was almost physical.

  “Don’t think about anything but me.”

  Well, since he told her to…she upped the level of her scrutiny, finding a tiny cleft in his chin that she’d somehow missed before. A tiny scar above his right brow…a heat in his eyes that warmed her insides nicely. Beneath the surface, she felt the bubble of desire waiting to flare, sensed that he was a passionate man who had put passion on hold for some reason. That he was able to do this told her was a man with a great deal of self-control. There came that urge to lean in again, to feel the warmth, maybe stir it up into a flame to fill the blank places inside herself.

  In odd contrast, the surface of the PDA felt cool and impersonal where she gripped it, as the temperature in her body spiraled up her middle like smoke up a chimney. Distantly, she powered it up again. Her gaze started to turn down, but Luke called it back with a soft, “Keep looking at me.”

  She was going to do more than look. Her body felt languid and inclined to lean his way. And even more inclined to linger. For the first time since she opened her eyes, her aches and pains faded to a dull murmur, while her body turned warm and fluid. As if he knew it, felt it, too, Luke reached out and brushed a strand of her hair off her face, the brush of his knuckles against her cheek light but tingle inducing. Her lips caught the tingle and parted before she could stop them.

  “Now,” he said.

  It felt like a glider being cut lose as she broke contact and looked at the keyboard. Her hands were already there, in proper position to type. Since they seemed to know what to do better than her, she watched with a sense of detachment as they tapped five keys in slow succession. She took a deep breath, trying to clear the constriction in her chest, then pushed “enter.”

  The screen flickered to life.

  “We’re in,” she said.

  * * * *

  “Any word?” O’Rourke asked. O’Rourke was a thin, wiry Irishman and Grady’s second-in-command. If he’d led the sortie, Prudence Knight would be secured in a remote cabin as planned, but Grady had wanted to limit the camp’s—and his—exposure by using Larry, an independent contractor.

  Grady O’Brien turned from the window, his body burly but graceful, his coloring out-of-control Irish. The prospect outside was not encouraging, as the wind and snow were still a thick, impenetrable curtain, despite a sun that was out there somewhere. No sign of what was usually a bustling, rustic-looking camp, with its rough log housing laid out in military style against the hillside. Grady was careful to keep operations straightforward, open to scrutiny by federal agents who regularly tried to infiltrate them, though there were areas on the land they owned that were not for public scrutiny. His covert, illegal operation was hidden in this area.

  Inside it was more pleasing, though still a place with an air of military discipline. The furniture was big and rustic, but comfortable, too. Grady didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be half as comfortable as Leslie. If needed, blackout blinds could cover the windows and special stealth insulation in the attics of some of his cabins protected their heat signatures from the infrared satellites that regularly passed overhead.

  Man could plan, but Mother Nature was impervious to the grandest of stratagems, he knew. On the upside, the storm was keeping Leslie away. The guy had no “off” switch on his mouth and since he liked to sound like an idiot, most of what he said made Grady want to slap him silly. Or blow his head off. He’d almost done him during their cross-country trek from Yale, but even then Grady had the ability to see beyond the moment and the emotion. Leslie had money and access to people with money. At the time, Grady had needed that access more than he needed peace and quiet.

  Beneath Grady’s semi-pleasant exterior was a man who was both brilliant and disciplined. He possessed an innate ability to convince people that they were important and interesting to him. Like many brilliant people, he believed he knew better than anyone else, and that his superior intelligence gave him the r
ight to make decisions for other people—even life and death ones.

  When Grady met Leslie, he’d realized Leslie was a man in search of a cause—and a deep need to piss off his old man. Les didn’t give two hoots about the plight of woodland creatures and the environment. Like most fanatics who wanted to do someone dirt, he needed to feel virtuous while doing it. Since his dad was an “evil” businessman bent on destroying the environment, it was easy for Les to find his “cause.” With a little nudge from Grady, of course. Grady didn’t think the environment needed help. It had done pretty well at taking care of itself for millions of years. But if people thought it needed saving, they were more inclined to donate money. His real cause—himself—required lots of money, but was, surprise, far less popular than the environment.

  As far back as he could remember, he’d known he wanted lots of money. Enough to be listed among the top ten millionaires in the world. Enough money to make God sit up and take notice of him. He’d made progress. He’d skimmed from the money Les donated for the cause. More came from using the camp to train terrorists in an underground area that even Les didn’t know about. Grady didn’t care who the terrorists hated, as long as their money was good. But the big score, the one that would put him on the rich list, had eluded him—until Les had arrived full of his big plan to finish off dad and score one for nature.

  As soon as Les told him about the experiments with the ultimate body armor and that Les wanted to destroy it and everyone associated with it, Grady knew he’d found his personal mother lode. There wasn’t a government, drug cartel or terrorist group on earth that wouldn’t pay dearly for it. He was still trying to decide whether to sell an exclusive or just start selling. Either way, everyone would win. Hell, he’d even sell it to his own government if they’d cough up the bucks. Though they might be a tad pissed, since they’d already paid for its development. That wouldn’t stop them from ponying up again, though—not if they wanted to be “competitive” with other world powers.