Angus's Lost Lady

by Marie Ferrarella

  “No,” she said quickly, then tagged on, “but you’re not exactly something that only a cat would drag in.”

  He flashed an amused smile in her direction. “Thanks.”

  She wondered if she was normally this flustered, or if it was something new. “You know what I mean.”

  Angus let her off the hook. “Yeah, and you’re wrong. I do have someone.” He caught the look she slanted him. “I’ve got Vikki.”

  There was no reason why she should let that mean anything to her. For all Rebecca knew, ring or no ring, she might be married. Yet there was no blocking out the glimmer of excitement rippling through her. “Nobody else?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t need anybody else. Don’t have time for anyone else,” he added.

  And he didn’t. After Jane, there had never been anyone he’d allowed to mean anything to him. He’d never let things go that far. Just casual encounters and not many of those.

  “But you,—despite the fact that there’s no ring or a tan line to indicate that there’d ever been a ring—might very well be married or engaged or at least spoken for.” And he would do well to remember that, Angus thought.

  Spoken for. It was a quaint saying and it appealed to her. She had no idea why.

  Rebecca thought about what he said, but there was nothing to link to it. No feeling, however vague.

  “I don’t think so,” she finally said. “I mean, wouldn’t it be something that I would somehow feel? If you love someone, doesn’t it somehow slip beneath your conscious layer? Leave a mark?”

  It had with him. More like a wound, though, than a mark. But she hadn’t meant it that way. He smiled to himself. “Well, I know one thing you are.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A romantic.” He glanced at her. She was looking at him with those wide eyes of hers, decreasing the space between them within his car without moving an inch. “Watch the road,” he instructed, nodding toward the window on her side. And he would do well to follow his own advice, he told himself.

  As he drove, Angus gauged how far he thought Rebecca could have walked in the rain yesterday, given the circumstances. The radius turned out to be larger than he’d first estimated, but he was determined to cover it.

  None of the areas he slowly passed by stirred any sense of recognition within her. After a while, they all began to run together. Rebecca sank back in her seat. The constant tension of being alert had left her exhausted. “I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to remember.”

  He nodded. Maybe it had been a long shot after all. “You were probably too disoriented to really notice where you were.” He tried one last avenue, though as far as he knew, there were no alleys there that came close to her description. “Look, we’ve been driving around for a long time. Why don’t we take a break, get a cup of coffee, start fresh later?”

  Rebecca read between the lines. “You don’t think we’re going to find it, do you?”

  He wasn’t about to encourage a feeling of hopelessness. “I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I wasn’t an optimist. Didn’t you read the fine print on my card?” He deliberately kept his expression sober as she shook her head. “It says Miracle Worker. It’s not a title I take lightly.” He saw her smile struggle to the surface. “There, that’s better.”

  Silly though it seemed, she did feel better. He made her feel better.

  “Thanks, I—” Her eyes widened as the site on the opposite side of the street registered. “Angus, wait. That’s it.” Excited, she pointed past his left shoulder. “Over there. I think—” She didn’t think, she knew. “Yes, that’s it.”

  Angus pulled over to the right, grateful that there was no car behind him now. As a matter of fact, traffic along the street was nonexistent. This was no longer the popular area it had once been.

  He took a good look at where Rebecca had indicated.

  “That’s the ground floor of a parking structure.” Small wonder that he hadn’t been able to find it. He’d been taking her to alleys. “That’s where you woke up?”

  Everything she could remember had turned into one huge blur. “No, but I remember—I remember running through here.” She felt it more than she remembered it. “This is where the car was, the one that tried to run me down.”

  Angus pulled away from the curb and made his way to the structure. It wasn’t used very much anymore. Parking was free now that the mall that it had once serviced had lost more than half its stores. Businesses had gone elsewhere, to more popular, better traversed areas that catered to an upscale clientele. A few bargain discount stores, as well as some of the lower quality fast-food restaurants, had moved in to take their place.

  All in all, it wasn’t a very memorable place.

  How had she come to be here? he wondered. “Are you sure this was the place?”

  “I—I think I am,” she confessed. The feeling of certainty was gone. She wouldn’t have been able to swear under oath that this was where she’d been, but subconsciously the area nagged at her, taunting her to remember.

  Angus parked in a space, cutting off the engine. Rebecca didn’t move. Fear suddenly draped over her, immobilizing her. “Why are we stopping?”

  “You weren’t driving when you were here,” he told her. “If you were here, you were on foot. So we’re going to walk.” He rounded the trunk and opened her door. “Maybe something else will come back to you.” He took her hand, coaxing her out of the vehicle.

  Feeling foolish, she got out and looked slowly around. The sun, bright and gleaming as it skirted the perimeter of the structure, refused to enter beyond more than a few feet. Inside, the building was oppressively dark. The steel girders stood like dusky sentries with secrets, mocking her with their silence.

  There was only the sound of her breathing.

  A fragment flashed through her mind. She’d been breathing hard, her lungs almost bursting as she ran, afraid to look back. Knowing what was behind her. Praying that it would somehow vanish.

  She felt as if the structure were going to close in on her. As if it would collapse, sealing her in. She had to get out.

  Rebecca dug her nails into Angus’s arm.

  She felt his hand close over hers.

  “This is the place, isn’t it?” he said.

  For a second, she could only nod. And then, she regained her voice. “I need to get out of here.” She turned her eyes toward him. “Please.”

  Chapter 6

  Rebecca paled right before his eyes. For one terrible second, Angus thought that she was going to faint. Moving quickly, he slipped his arm around her, just in case.

  She felt frailer than she looked, he thought. Protectiveness welled up within him.

  “All right,” he agreed as he slowly turned her toward the entrance again. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just sit in the car while I look around?”

  The edges of her vision had grown black, closing in on all sides like the screen of a dying television set. Employing every bit of concentration she could scrounge up, Rebecca struggled to hold the world around her in focus. She was not going to play the melodramatic heroine and pass out, she insisted fiercely to herself.

  With effort, she forced herself to listen to what Angus was saying. Something about needing to look around.

  “For what?” The words sounded almost breathless to her own ear. As if she’d been running a great distance.

  If he knew the answer to that, maybe he’d already be on his way to discovering who she was, Angus thought dryly.

  “That’s half the challenge of this job. Most of the time, you don’t know what you’re looking for. You just know it when you see it.” A whimsical smile played on his lips as he reflected on his words. “It’s a little, I guess, like love. You might have some preconceived notions of what you want in the person you want to marry, but nothing really concrete. Until you see the one person who knocks you back on your butt and she’s not a damn thing like what you expected.”

  He’d succeeded in rousing a smile fro
m her. Rebecca looked at him, humor bringing the color back to her cheeks. “Very romantic.”

  He felt his smile widen and lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “Hey, I have my moments.” His smile softened as he took her elbow. “C’mon, I’ll walk you back to the car and—”

  Rebecca shook her head, easing her elbow away. She’d had enough time to pull herself together. And more than enough to become both embarrassed and annoyed at her lapse.

  “No. The least I can do is stay and try to help. I was behaving like an idiot. I’m sorry.” She had no patience with herself for giving in to the feeling that threatened to overwhelm her. “I can’t run from some nebulous ‘something,’” she told him, searching for the right words. “I’m over it now.” She exhaled, as if that was all it took to blow the fear away from her. “It was just a temporary lapse.”

  She was trying too hard, he thought, unconvinced. There was still a small bead of perspiration on her forehead. Fear’s imprint. She’d been frightened when she’d looked around. Was still frightened—and ashamed to admit it. People who didn’t admit to being afraid were only fooling themselves, or worse, they were fools.

  She didn’t strike him as a fool. Only someone whistling in the dark to keep herself brave. He wondered what she would think if she knew that he had the urge to hold her until she stopped being afraid.

  Probably that he was trying to take advantage of her. All things considered, he couldn’t say that he’d have blamed her.

  “The biggest guy I ever knew,” he told her, “was afraid of spiders. He was six-four and over three hundred pounds. The sight of a wolf spider would send him running.” His eyes touched her face gently. “Everyone’s got fears, Becky. Everyone’s afraid of something.”

  An odd expression crossed her face as she looked at him. The lady should never be allowed to get in a poker game, he mused. Every emotion she felt was there, on her face, in her eyes.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me Becky before.” Even before the words were out, she laughed at herself in disbelief. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I have no idea who I am, where I came from, yet I can stand here, being almost positive that I never heard anyone calling me by a nickname.”

  “Not so ridiculous,” Angus countered. “There’s no size-places, no alphabetical order or priorities for a mind to follow. It’s all just random. Things pop into your head normally without warning. And that’s when your head’s filled to capacity. When there’s very little available to hang on to, it all seems random and odd.” He peered into her eyes, looking for a glimpse of the woman she’d been forty-eight hours ago. Would she be so very different from the one standing before him right now? He was beginning to hope not. “Do you mind being called Becky?”

  She didn’t mind, she rather liked it. Maybe it was silly, too silly to admit to Angus, but it made her feel closer to him, as if she actually belonged somewhere.

  “No, I don’t mind,” she replied softly. “You can call me Becky if you like.”

  Holding a shiver in check as she looked around the gray girdered structure, she dug in, refusing to be cowed by fears. It didn’t matter that Angus gave her excuses—she didn’t excuse herself. Whatever was out there, she was going to face it. She had to.

  Rebecca drew a deep breath. “Okay, let’s look around.”

  The word gutsy floated through his mind. Angus took the lead.

  They combed the area slowly, going from space to space. Rebecca remained by his side every step of the way.

  For all the good it did, she thought ruefully. There was nothing to trigger any further bursts of memory. Though she tried very hard to summon back her initial reaction when she’d entered the structure, nothing materialized.

  Instead, there was just a vague disquiet that stood in the shadows, mocking her. Feeding her feelings of frustration. Making her feel that someone was watching.

  But there was no one here but Angus. Not even a single car had pulled in since they’d arrived.

  She was surprised at how methodical Angus was. Had it been up to her, she would have elected a simple drive through the area, and would have thought that was enough. Obviously, he didn’t agree. He examined every wall, every girder they passed, looking for that elusive, hidden-in-plain-sight clue he’d talked about.

  She still didn’t know what he hoped to find. Certainly nothing tangible. If her purse had been lost here, she was certain that someone would already have picked it up and taken whatever there was inside that was valuable.

  She didn’t know if she’d been carrying anything valuable. For that matter, she didn’t think she would have been able to identify her purse, or any of its contents even if they did come across it.

  Frustrated, she struggled against the shackles of uselessness. Damn it, there had to be something here, something that would make her remember at least a single fact.

  But there was nothing. Nothing to tell her why she’d been here, nothing to tell her who she’d been before yesterday afternoon.

  Nothing. The word ate away at her.

  She wanted so badly to know.

  Was she an active person, or a passive one? Did she allow life to roll right over her, or did she fight back with every fiber of her being? Who was this person she’d woken up inside of?

  A piece of a newspaper flew across her path, chasing itself as the wind blew it end over end. It occurred to Rebecca that she didn’t even know what day of the week it was.

  “Becky, over here.”

  Startled, Rebecca looked around and realized that Angus had turned a corner without her. She’d been lost in thought—or what passed for thought, she amended ruefully.

  Hurrying to catch up, she found him on the other side of the wall, standing by a dilapidated car. From its condition and the heavy layer of dust on it, it had been parked here for a while—obviously abandoned.

  Like her?

  She squeezed the thought out. It wasn’t like her to feel sorry for herself.

  Was it? a small voice whispered uncertainly.

  She shut that out, too. Faced with a clean slate, she was determined to do some of the writing on it herself.

  Apparently pleased with his find, Angus indicated a very small hole right below the car’s rear window. Surprised, she raised her eyes to his and he nodded in response.

  “It’s a bullet hole.” Angus confirmed her silent observation. “Judging from the angle, unless he was shooting from the hip, whoever was chasing you was shorter than average.” He looked at her. “Or driving a car.”

  She had remembered being pursued by a car. She stared at the hole, fascinated. A bullet hole. Meant for her. It didn’t seem real. “How do you know it’s fresh?”

  Angus produced the handkerchief he’d used to inspect the point of entry and showed it to her. “The hole itself is clean. No dust like the rest of the car.”

  Shoving the handkerchief back into his pocket, Angus tried the door. It amazed him that even though the car was abandoned, it was locked. He wondered if the owner had meant to return and hadn’t—or if this was just the final disgruntled act of an unhappy driver. Either way, the car had to be opened.

  He felt Rebecca watching him as he took a tool out of his pocket and began working the lock. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He cocked his head slightly, listening for just the right sound. “Something I learned in my misspent youth.” That had been the Colonel’s term for it—a term that had gotten even more judgmental as Angus grew older and began exercising his own will.

  “Breaking into cars?” she asked.

  Amusement curved his mouth as he spared her a glance over his shoulder. “Unlocking cars for ladies who had accidentally locked their keys inside,” he corrected.

  She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not, but she had her suspicions. She wondered just how grateful these “ladies” had been for his services.

  “There.” He pulled open the door, pocketing his tools. Pocketing, too, a small sense
of accomplishment. “Contrary to what the Colonel believed, I did pick up a few things that turned out to be useful in my later life.”

  Rebecca stood back as Angus got in and searched the back of the car. Questions multiplied in her mind as she watched him go over every inch of the back seat. Questions that had nothing to do with her.

  “Was he really that hard on you?”

  Angus thought of the strap his father favored over conversations and lectures. But that was all tucked away in the past. There was no point in talking about it. He shrugged carelessly as he went on looking.

  “He thought he was doing me some good. That somehow, it would make me tough, make a man out of me.” At least, those were the reasons that the Colonel gave when he did bother talking to him.

  Angus had other ideas about the methods the Colonel used.

  She noticed that he didn’t really answer her question. Maybe in not answering, Angus had done just the opposite, she thought. The Colonel had been hard on him and Angus didn’t want to talk about it. “Well then, I guess he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, didn’t he?”

  This time Angus did turn around. “How so?”

  The smile on her lips was heartfelt. “You’re a knight in shining armor, aren’t you?”

  The fact that she’d put it that way amused him. The image of a knight dovetailed with his weakness for damsels in distress.

  “Tarnished armor,” he amended.

  Shifting, he went over another section of the back seat. It was dark within the car and the upholstery was a dirty, stained burgundy. He wished he had thought to bring a flashlight.

  The next moment, his fingers came in contact with a deep impression in the material.

  “Bingo.” Using the same tool he’d used on the lock, Angus dug something out of the back of the rear seat.

  “Did you find something?” Rebecca asked, eagerly, peering over his shoulder.

  “Another piece of the puzzle.” Not one that fit readily into anything right now, he thought, but it might eventually.