by Obsession
She was, she could tell, experiencing serious trust issues.
“Where are we?” she asked, glancing warily around. “This isn’t the FBI equivalent of the car lot, is it?”
“What, don’t you trust me?” That slight, maddening quirk of his lips was back. It told her that he was findingthis amusing again, despite everything.
“No,” she said. “I damned well don’t. And you’re going to have to drag me kicking and screaming from this car if you don’t give me a straight answer about what this place is.”
He looked at her for a moment without saying anything.There was just enough light for her to see his face. The infuriating curve of his lips was gone. He wasn’t smiling now. His jaw was hard and his eyes had a steely glint to them.
“You want it straight? Fine, here it is: Barnes wants you dead. Some elements of the Bureau want to bring you in for ‘safekeeping.’ Whoever broke into your town house might well still be interested in getting their hands on you, too. In other words, for the time being you’re Miss Popularity, and not in a good way. This is a place for you to hide out until it’s all over. I rented it a couple of days ago, as soon as I knew I might have to pull you out. Only one other person knows about it besides me. If we’d gone with my guys back there, you would be a bone of contention right now. People have different ideas about things. Maybe you would’ve ended up back at some facility with them tryingto erase your memory of this altogether. Or maybe … well, who knows? I just think it’s best to get you out of the way and keep you out of the way until nobody cares about you anymore.”
She felt a small thrill of alarm. “You mean, you’re not in charge of what happens to me?”
He grimaced. “I am, at least in theory. But now that we’ve hit pay dirt with Barnes, some of the higher-ups at the Bureau are honing in. I don’t feel like I can guaranteethat things will go my way on everything, and I don’t see any reason to take chances with you.” A glimmer lightened his expression. “You ever heard possession is nine-tenths of the law? That’s the principle I’m operatingunder here.”
He got out as he finished, and Katharine, who was now perfectly willing to go inside the building, unfastenedher seat belt and opened her door. As she swung her legs out, he was there beside the door, pulling it the rest of the way open for her. He took one look at her bare feet, smiled a little, and shook his head.
“What is it with you and shoes, anyway?”
Her brows twitched together. He might be all that was standing between her and death, but that didn’t mean she was happy with him.
“Probably it has something to do with the company I keep,” she said tartly, and stood up. Her knees were wobbly, she discovered to her dismay, and as she rose she went unexpectedly light-headed. Grabbing the top of the door, she managed to steady herself before her legs gave out. Her toes curled against the smooth, warm blacktop for balance, and she took a steadying breath of the soft summer air.
“Don’t even think about it.” She glared at Nick when he gave every indication of being ready to sweep her up in his arms and carry her into the building. “You get to carry Muffy.”
He looked slightly taken aback, then glanced into the backseat, where Muffy had so far been silent in her carrier.
“I forgot about the damned cat.” His eyes swept her. “You sure you can make it?”
“Positive.”
He looked skeptical but opened the back door and reached in for the carrier. Meanwhile, Katharine managedto stand on her own two feet and close her door, even if she did lean against it afterward, ostensibly to wait for him but really to gather her strength. She felt like she’d been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, but there was no need for him to know that. Her memories might have been messed with, but she retained enough of a feel for their relationship to suspect that the only way to deal with Nick without him taking charge completelywas from a position of strength.
Carrier in hand, he closed the door and looked at her. “I can always come back for the cat, you know.”
“Carry the cat.”
The light-headedness had subsided, and even though her legs still felt weak, she lifted her chin and straightenedher spine and relied on willpower to keep her uprightas she walked into the building beside him. There were few streetlights anywhere around, about one per parking lot as far as she could tell, so the street and small yard and tiny, flat porch were dark. Cars were parked along the street and in the various lots. A man who looked like nothing more than a denser shadow among many walked along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, heading away from them. He was the only person in sight.
When they stepped inside, it was into a small central lobby that was dimly lit by only a single panel in the ceiling. One wall was taken up with a large rectangular metal grid of mailboxes, each with the apartment numberand a slot for a piece of paper bearing the resident’s name to be inserted in it. Many of those were empty. She counted four rows of four mailboxes each, which made for a total of sixteen apartments. Several smooth, brown-stained wooden doors opened off the lobby. One was marked Emergency Exit, another was marked LaundryRoom, and the rest, presumably leading to apartments,were unmarked. There was an elevator beside the emergency-exit door. Nick punched the button to bring it to them while Katharine cast slightly nervous looks at the front door.
If someone had come through it before the elevator arrived, she probably would have had a heart attack.
They rode up to the third floor and got out. Besides the elevator and the emergency exit, there were two doors on each side of the hall, marked 3A, 3B, 3C, and 3D, respectively. Nick walked across to 3C, which was across the hall on the left, pulled his keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door.
Katharine moved past him into a small, dark living room, which was immediately illuminated by a white jar lamp in a corner by the couch as Nick entered behind her and flicked the light switch beside the door.
“Home sweet home,” he said, closing and locking the door and setting the carrier down. Muffy immediately meowed.
“Poor cat, she’s been in there forever.”
Katharine moved to let her out even as she glanced around. The room was a long, narrow rectangle, with a round pine dining table and four chairs at one end, along with another doorless entryway that opened into the kitchen. The other side of the room held a brown-and-tan plaid couch pushed against the wall they had entered through. A brown recliner sat beside the couch, with a glass-topped metal table holding the lamp betweenthem. A glass-topped coffee table sat in front of the couch, with a black remote control on it. Across from the couch, a small TV was tucked into a cheap oak shelving unit that also held various decorative knickknacks.Nondescript tan curtains that reached only halfway to the floor closed over one of the small windowsthat were a feature of the building.
“It rents by the week, and it came furnished,” Nick said as Muffy cautiously emerged from the crate. “I stocked it with some food and other things I thought you might need, so you should be good for a while.”
“What do you mean ‘I should be good for a while’?” Katharine frowned at him while the cat looked from her to Nick and let out a piercing yowl. “You’re not planningto just leave me here, are you?” Then, to the cat, she added on a softer note, “Hey, Muffy,” and bent to stroke her. Muffy twitched her tail and started walking away with another piercing yowl even as Katharine’s fingers grazed her back. Clearly theirs was not a touchy-feelyrelationship.
“I’m winding up an investigation here, remember?” He looked at the retreating cat. “You don’t suppose it has to go to the bathroom, do you?”
“Muffy’s a she, okay? And at a guess, I’d say it’s eitherthat or she’s hungry.” Katharine reached into the crate for Muffy’s dishes. Unfortunately, like her shoes and purse, the cat food had been lost in transit. “And just so you know, there’s no way in hell I’m staying here by myself.”
Muffy had disappeared into the kitchen. Dishes in hand, Katharine followed, clicking on the bright overhead
light as she went. Now that she no longer felt like she was in imminent danger, she was getting a kind of second wind. It was a galley kitchen, she saw at a glance: white linoleum, white tile, white appliances, dark wood cabinets. Nick, frowning, brought up the rear.
“The whole reason I got this place was so you could stay here and be safe.” He sounded a little testy as he watched her fill Muffy’s water dish from the sink and set it on the floor. The cat immediately crossed to it and lapped thirstily. She even let Katharine stroke her back while she drank. “There’s tuna fish in the cabinet beside the refrigerator.I’m fresh out of cat food, but cats like tuna.”
“She’s going to need a litter box,” Katharine pointed out, opening the cabinet in question. Sure enough, there were half a dozen cans of tuna, along with various varietiesof canned soup, a jar of Jif peanut butter, a box of saltines, a box of Cheerios, a can of coffee, and a bag of sugar. And that was just the one cabinet. Five more just like it lined the wall. Clearly he didn’t intend for her to starve.
“Shit,” he said, and left the room, presumably to acquirea litter box.
In the meantime, Katharine opened a can of tuna and dumped it into Muffy’s bowl. Muffy must have smelled it coming, because she looked up, suddenly alert. Her big blue eyes gleamed hopefully. She tracked the bowl’s descent with radar-like precision, and as soon as Katharine put it on the floor she was all over it, eating in big, greedy gulps.
She was even, Katharine realized as she crouched to stroke her again, purring.
“You’re …” Welcome, she was going to say, but her throat closed up before she could get the last word out. She was staring at her arm, the one that was extended in front of her as she stroked Muffy. Besides the two round burns on it—which she had already mentally dealt with and gotten over—there was a thick scattering of brownishdots of various sizes. At first glance, she had almost thought they were freckles—except that she didn’t have freckles.
Katharine sucked in her breath and felt the room start to recede.
“What?” Nick asked, reappearing and dropping something to the floor. The sharp slap of its landing was enough to bring her head around in surprise and get her past the first acute stage of impending freak-out. “Jesus, you’re white as a ghost.”
“I have Hendricks’s blood all over me.” Her voice was very calm, and she managed to stand up without keeling over, which, under the circumstances, was a considerable accomplishment. What Nick had dropped on the floor, she saw at a glance, was a makeshift litter box, fashioned out of a cardboard box with strips of ripped-up newspaper piled high in it. She only hoped Muffy wasn’t proud. “I have to go take a shower. Right now.”
She was already moving toward the second exit from the kitchen, a doorless rectangle like the first, which opened onto a hall that led to the bedrooms. Presumably,she would find a bathroom back there.
If she didn’t get Hendricks’s blood off her soon, she would vomit.
“Okay.” His eyes moved over her, and his lips tightenedat what he saw. He followed her, a little at a loss, she thought, as to what to do. “You need help?”
There were two bedrooms. The master, which was easy to tell because it was much larger than the other one and had a queen-size bed while the other had twins, was bound to have a bathroom adjoining it. It did, she saw when she was about halfway across it.
“No,” she said over her shoulder. “But don’t you dare leave while I’m in the shower.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
With his promise echoing in her ears, she stepped into the bathroom, turned on the light, and closed the door. Then she promptly walked to the toilet, opened the lid, and vomited.
It was probably twenty minutes later by the time she stepped out of the shower. The hot water had done its work: She was as clean as it was possible to be, and she felt limp and absolutely boneless. The strong scent of the Irish Spring soap—clearly he was partial to that brand—she had used lingered in the air even as she wrapped herself in a towel. A beach towel, big and orange,with a picture of a foaming can of Miller Lite on it. There were about a dozen identical ones stuffed haphazardlyinto the small linen closet, and she could only suppose that they had been running a special at Big Lots when Nick had gone shopping. In any case, there was enough terry cloth in that one towel to wrap it around herself twice over, and, with the ends tucked in, to cover her from her armpits to just above her knees. When she stopped in front of the sink to brush her teeth for the third time since she’d been in there—Nick had thoughtfully stocked the medicine cabinet with a handful of new toothbrushes and two tubes of toothpaste,and she wondered if he’d thought he was buying for an army—she was already nicely dry. She had put her hair up so it wouldn’t get wet, and she was just pulling out the single bobby pin—clearly a leftover from a previous tenant—she had found in the linen closet when she noticed in the mirror over the sink that there were a couple of tiny spots staining the bandage on her nose.
She looked closer and felt her stomach drop. She couldn’t be positive, of course, but the drops looked like blood.
Her heart speeded up as she contemplated removing the bandage. It was flesh-colored, not much larger than a Band-Aid, and it covered the bridge of her nose completely.It had been faithfully in place since her nose had been smashed. Thinking about what kind of damage might be under there, she shivered. For some reason, she felt a strong reluctance to take the bandage off. But she could breathe easily now, she realized, and her sense of smell was definitely back.
There was no mistaking the scent of that Irish Spring soap.
If her nose wasn’t one hundred percent healed, it was healed enough, she told herself. And she absolutely could not live with the possibility that there might be drops of Hendricks’s blood on that bandage.
Leaning in toward the mirror, working very cautiously,she pried up one corner of the bandage with a fingernail and started to peel it gently from her nose. Her face screwed up at the thought of what she might see. Her heart tripped anxiously. But when the bandage came off, what she saw was a slightly reddened but perfectlynormal nose.
Her perfectly normal nose.
A little crooked, with a small bump on the bridge. Many times in her life, she’d thought about having it fixed, but she had always found an excuse—lack of money, lack of time, sheer cowardice—not to.
Jenna, honey, you don’t want some little Barbiedollnose.
The words echoed through her head. Somebody had said them to her once, a long time ago. A man. It was a man’s chiding voice, filled with avuncular affection, that she was hearing in her mind.
Jenna.
Her eyes widened on her own reflection. Her heart began to pound. She could hear her blood rushing in her ears. The whole bathroom seemed like it was shifting around her, and a terrific pain shot through her head. She clung to the sink, gasping for air.
After a moment, the dizziness and pain receded enough to allow her to get her bearings a little.
Don’t think about it.
If she did, she knew the pain would at least come back.
So she tried not to. She steadied herself, then, cautiously,let go of the sink and walked to the door. Openingit, she leaned against the jamb. Light from the bathroom streamed out around her. The bedroom was dark, but not so dark she couldn’t see the bed with its simple white counterpane, the slightly shabby blue armchairin the corner with the floor lamp beside it, the stretch of cheap, tan wall-to-wall carpet.
“Nick,” she called, her voice as weak as she felt. “Nick.”
But he must have been nearby, because he heard and walked into the bedroom. He had stripped down to a white T-shirt, which he wore with his black pants now, she saw as he looked at her inquiringly. Her eyes met his, clinging to them, even as his inquiring look turned to a frown and he lengthened his stride to reach her.
“What the hell?”
“Nick.” If she hadn’t been leaning against the doorjamb,she would have collapsed as the pain came back and the
room started to spin around her. “Who’s Jenna?”
24
“Damn it to hell.” He caught her as her knees gave way, grabbing her by the upper arms, then, as she crumpled against him, gathered her up. “Okay, I’ve got you. Don’t faint on me.”
She dreaded saying it again, knowing that the pain would come with it, but she had to know. In fact, she felt that somewhere deep inside she did know, that the knowledge was right there beneath the surface of her consciousness waiting to emerge.
“Who’s Jenna?” Her voice was the merest breath of sound. Her heart hammered. Her pulse raced. The expectedpain attacked her, sharp and stabbing, and she moaned faintly as it shot through her head. Sliding an arm around his neck, she closed her eyes. He sank down into the armchair in the corner with her cradled in his lap.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” He was holding her close, his hand warm and gentle as it smoothed her hair back from her face. There was an undertone of harsh, driving fear in his voice, and she forced herself to open her eyes. Her head was pillowed on his wide shoulder, and he was looking down at her. His jaw was hard and set. His mouth was a tense line. His mild blue eyes weren’t mild at all. They were the color of steel and fierce with concern for her. “You don’t need to upset yourself about it. Just relax and let it go.”
“I’m Jenna,” she whispered, holding his gaze, feeling as if her heart were trying to pound its way out of her chest. “Aren’t I? I’m Jenna.”
Not Katharine. Never Katharine.
