Sudden Recall

by Jean Barrett

  In the morning, a weary Eden had promised him before retiring for the night. In the morning they would decide what to try next to restore his memory and learn those answers. But as racked by frustration as Shane was, tomorrow morning seemed a hell of a long way off.

  AN INSISTENT VOICE awakened her. Eden’s eyes opened to find Shane leaning over her bed. His presence in her bedroom didn’t alarm her, but the expression on his face did. He looked tense and grim, a man ready for action.

  “What is it?” she demanded, struggling up against the headboard.

  “There’s a cop car out there just pulling into the driveway.”

  She saw his gaze slide in the direction of the bureau. On its surface rested one of her two cell phones he had appropriated yesterday. The other phone was still in his possession, but he had given this one back to her so she could make that call to Atlanta Johnson. She knew immediately what must have occurred to him.

  “I did not call the police,” she informed him emphatically. “And, no, I don’t have any idea why they’re here.”

  “We don’t have time to argue about it. That cop must already be on his way to the door.”

  “I’ll get rid of him,” Eden said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for her robe on a chair. “You stay in here out of sight.”

  She could see this instruction didn’t agree with Shane. He wasn’t a man to let a woman face a threat to him while he cowered behind a bedroom door. But wisdom overcame male pride. He accepted her plan with a reluctant nod.

  There was a knock on the front door as Eden, struggling into her robe, left the bedroom, closing its door behind her. What had brought the police to her houseboat? Had Atlanta Johnson, worried about Shane’s presence here, alerted them? No, she didn’t think the hypnotist’s code of ethics would permit her to betray them like that. Then why—

  The knock sounded again as Eden reached the door, unlocking it and pulling it back to reveal a young sheriff’s deputy standing on the pier in the early-morning sunlight. He was a local officer. She had seen him before around the village. It would have been difficult not to notice him. He was very good looking.

  “Ms. Hawke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry to rouse you like this, but if I could just have a word with you…”

  He looked at her expectantly, and she knew he was waiting for her to invite him inside. There was a sharp breeze off the river, and he probably wanted to escape its chill. On the other hand, he could just be looking for an excuse to check out the interior of the houseboat. To deny him entrance would be to risk his suspicion. Eden couldn’t afford that.

  “Come in,” she said, moving aside in the doorway.

  “Nice place,” he said, casting his gaze around the living room after he’d stepped inside and she’d closed the door behind him.

  “Thank you. How can I help you, Officer?”

  “You have a friend back in Charleston. Name of—” He consulted a small notebook in his hand. “Tia Wong.”

  Tia?

  “She phoned our office and asked us if we would just stop by and look in on you to be sure you’re all right,” the officer explained. “She’d been calling around trying to locate you and then had an idea you might have come out here to your houseboat.”

  “But why—”

  “She got worried about you, Ms. Hawke. Said she’d been trying repeatedly to reach your number and could never get an answer.”

  The cell phones, Eden thought. Shane had turned off both of them when he’d taken them away from her. And though the one had been turned on again for the call to Atlanta, Eden had afterward switched off its power to conserve its dwindling energy. She’d been much too wrapped up in the situation here to consider that Tia might try to reach her.

  “Your friend have any reason to be so worried about you, Ms. Hawke?”

  Had Tia told the sheriff’s office about Shane? Was that why the deputy was here? No, Tia must have held back on that. Otherwise, the deputy would be asking her a whole lot of other questions. There was nothing to be alarmed about.

  Or was there?

  The young officer was now eyeing something both she and Shane had forgotten about when the sheriff’s cruiser rolled up the driveway. Shane’s jacket was hanging over the back of a chair. It was plainly a man’s jacket, much too large for her. When the deputy looked around again, his gaze settled on the closed door to the bedroom. He knew she wasn’t alone.

  This could be trouble.

  Eden acted fast, providing an explanation that was familiar to her by now. “My husband returned unexpectedly from an extended business trip. That’s why we came out to the houseboat, to share some quality time together. We had the phone turned off so we wouldn’t be interrupted.”

  The deputy accepted her explanation with an understanding smile.

  “I should have told Tia he was home,” Eden added. “She’s very protective of me when he’s away.”

  “Call her,” the officer suggested, closing his notebook.

  “I will,” she promised, seeing him to the door. “And thank you for checking on me.”

  Shane emerged from the bedroom at the sound of the cruiser retreating down the driveway. The look on his face was not a happy one.

  “Were you able to hear everything?” she asked.

  “I heard.” He muttered an obscenity that expressed his frustration. “It looks like I’m no safer out here from the risk of the cops than I was in Charleston.”

  Eden watched him as he went to the window. There was a brooding quality about him as he stood there looking out at the river, broad shoulders hunched, hands buried in his pockets.

  “That being the case, then…”

  She paused, wondering if he was listening to her. But after a moment he swung away from the window and gazed at her perceptively.

  “I can see it in your face,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The look that says, ‘It’s time for me to be a private investigator.’ All right, what are you recommending?”

  “That we go back to Charleston and retrace your route that night. Every step of the way from your first awareness of wandering out there in the storm until you arrived at my door. Hypnosis didn’t work to trigger your memory. Maybe this will.”

  He was silent again while she waited anxiously for his decision, maintaining her belief that her recovery of Nathanial depended on this inscrutable man.

  “You’re right,” he said. “There are no answers for either one of us in this place. If we’re going to learn anything, we have to start in Charleston where it began. Only, if it turns out I am wanted by the cops—”

  “We’ll deal with that problem when, and if, we have to. But if you are ever challenged… Well, there is maybe a way to reduce that risk.”

  “Being?”

  Eden hesitated, unable to believe what she was about to propose. “The deputy who was here,” she went on, “he accepted your presence without question when I told him you were my husband.”

  “So he did. Is that what you’re suggesting then, Eden? That we go on posing as husband and wife?”

  She could see it now, the unmistakable glint in his eyes. Damn him, he was enjoying this. “Forget it. It’s a bad idea.”

  “Actually, it isn’t. That cop might have demanded some ID.”

  “Which you wouldn’t have been able to produce.”

  “Exactly. Instead, he went away satisfied.”

  “Because I passed you off as my husband.”

  “And could again in a sticky situation. Yeah, I like it. I think I’m even getting comfortable with the idea. And since we’ve already had some practice in that direction…”

  Eden was beginning to wish she had kept her mouth shut. This arrangement could end up presenting more problems than solutions. But she wouldn’t retract her offer to play his wife, not if that’s what it took to recover her son.

  Before Shane could have any more fun with the situation, she escaped into the bed
room to shower and dress, leaving him to fix their breakfasts. While she was there, she called Tia. Eden told her friend just enough about what had been happening to satisfy her. Fortunately, Tia was getting ready for work and had no time to demand details. All she really wanted to hear was that Eden was safe.

  But just how safe am I with any of this? Eden wondered an hour later as they followed the road back to Charleston. It wasn’t as if she feared the man at her side would physically harm her. But though she no longer worried about that, there were other concerns.

  She remembered how, back there in the houseboat when Shane had announced the arrival of the sheriff’s cruiser, he had entertained a suspicion she had called the cops. However momentary that suspicion had been, it was an evidence of his struggle with trust. And there was her own lingering mistrust of him. She couldn’t forget he had abducted her from Charleston. Did that make him capable of having abducted Nathanial?

  Just as though he had sensed her nagging misgiving in this direction, Shane turned to her, his manner sober now. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Stop it, Eden. You have to trust him. Both of you have to learn to trust each other if this investigation stands any chance of succeeding.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said, and she meant it.

  Only there was something else connected with her safety. She thought about it behind the wheel of the Toyota. Thought of the young deputy who had called at the houseboat and how handsome he was. But his looks had in no way interested Eden.

  She wished she could say the same about the man beside her. He wasn’t handsome, not in the conventional way. His face was too craggy for that. It didn’t matter, though. He didn’t need to be handsome. He had sex appeal. A lot of it, and she was entirely too aware of it.

  And that, Eden thought, stealing a glance at him, wasn’t safe for her. Especially when they were playing man and wife.

  It’s for convenience’s sake, she reminded herself sharply. That’s all this marriage is. Not real, just a masquerade to facilitate our investigation.

  Eden had the uneasy feeling she was going to have to go on reminding herself of that. Frequently.

  SHE FELT LIKE a mother watching her child take his first awkward steps. Wanting him to succeed. Resisting the urge to help him. Knowing he had to do this on his own.

  Eden experienced all of these emotions as she and Shane worked their way on foot from her front door back along the twelve blocks he had traveled the night before last. Their progress was a slow one, partly because of his limp but mostly because she wanted him to have sufficient time to assimilate the sights and sounds along the route. Any one of them could stir a vital recollection.

  Holding her silence when she longed to ask him whether this experiment was in any way useful wasn’t easy. But it was necessary. She didn’t want to short-circuit his sensory process.

  However, Eden doubted he would have heard her eager questions. Shane seemed to be almost as much in a trance as when Atlanta had hypnotized him. He moved in a kind of robotic state, his head swinging mechanically from side to side, gaze darting here and there.

  It was a little scary, like walking beside a machine scanning for something. Which, of course, was exactly what Shane was doing. He was looking for his memory.

  “That’s where I ducked into the alley to avoid the patrol car,” he said woodenly.

  A little later on he indicated: “Here’s where I fell down.”

  And finally: “There’s the convenience store across the street.”

  They had covered the entire twelve blocks by now and stood on the edge of the parkway where he had found himself wandering that night, the cars whipping past them on the boulevard. Eden could no longer hold her tongue. Fearing their effort was a failure, she was about to ask him if he had recovered any scrap of memory at all, when he abruptly left her side and moved rapidly ahead of her along the parkway. Catching up with him, she could sense his sudden excitement. A glance at his face told her that he was being bombarded with images.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “A breakthrough?”

  He didn’t answer her. He kept walking, his gaze searching the area. He was limping noticeably now, and that worried her. The twelve blocks had tired his leg.

  “Let’s sit down and rest,” she said, motioning to a nearby park bench that overlooked the river.

  She could see that her suggestion irritated him. He was the kind of man who didn’t want to admit his strength might in any way be hindered by his limp. But he didn’t argue with her. They settled side by side on the bench.

  “Flashes,” he said. “What happened to me that night is starting to come back in flashes.”

  “Take your time,” she encouraged him. “Don’t force it. Let the bits and pieces come through at their own rate, and we’ll piece them together as we go.”

  It was good advice, Eden felt. But even as she gave it, she had to restrain herself from rushing him for a knowledge that might mean everything to both of them. She could see that Shane, too, was impatient, that he was fighting for the memories of that night.

  “It’s all a little muddy, but I can see myself in a car. I’m alone in a car and driving somewhere. I don’t know where, but it’s dark and raining, and I’m out on this highway. It must be late. There’s hardly any traffic on the road.”

  “Do you know where you were coming from?”

  “No.”

  “What about the car? Do you think it was your car?”

  He shook his head. “I have the feeling it was a rental I picked up somewhere and was maybe on my way into the city.”

  “The airport,” she said. “You could have arrived at the airport and hired a rental car.”

  “Makes sense. What happened afterward doesn’t.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was forced off the road by another vehicle.”

  “Couldn’t it have been an accident? It was dark, after all, and with the rain—”

  “No,” he insisted. “It was deliberate. I’m positive it was deliberate. I lost control of the car. Crashed into something off the road. Lost consciousness.”

  “And when you came to?”

  “Don’t know. Except I don’t think I was in the car anymore.”

  “Try to visualize it, Shane. Try to see yourself there, just as you did when you put yourself inside that car.”

  She watched him as he made a concentrated effort to recall the scene.

  “A room?” he asked himself slowly. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m in this room somewhere. I’m tied to a chair. They’ve got me all trussed up and tied to a chair.”

  “Who?”

  “Three of them. There are three of them. A couple of mean brutes who look like they should be called Bruno and Boris and this little weasel of a guy. They must have searched me when I was out, emptied my pockets. All my stuff is dumped there on the table. Everything but the picture and the business card.” He laughed harshly. “The bastards didn’t get those.”

  “Why?”

  “I think…yeah, I think at some point I must have managed to wiggle them down inside the lining of my jacket.”

  “What happens next?”

  “The two brutes send the little weasel outside. They don’t want him to hear when they question me. They want something. They keep asking me over and over what I did with him.”

  “Him? Are you sure it’s a him, Shane, and not an it?”

  “Did I say him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess that’s right then. They want to know where he is, and when I can’t tell them, or won’t tell them, they work me over. The bastards work me over.”

  The image of Shane being beaten, along with her memory of his battered condition when she had found him on the floor of her piazza, sickened Eden. And angered her, as well.

  “I’m no longer in that room now,” he continued. “They’re dragging me outside, dumping me into the back of a van. No, wait, it isn’t a van. It’s a panel truck, and it’s seen better day
s. The little weasel is driving it, and one of the gorillas is up front with him telling him where to go. They didn’t get what they wanted out of me so they’re taking me someplace else. It’s going to be another interrogation when we get there, I guess.”

  “Do you know where that is?”

  “No, I didn’t hear.”

  “Go on.”

  “The other bastard is riding in the back with me. They think I’m unconscious again, no threat. But I’m only playing at being out. I wait for my chance. There’s an old bike pump over in the corner. It’s peeking out from under some burlap on the floor near where I’m lying. He doesn’t see it, but I do. I wait for my chance when his back is turned, and then I grab it. He goes down without a sound, and I’m out of there when the truck slows for a corner. The two up front never know I’m gone.”

  “And then?”

  “The parkway, I suppose. That’s when I must have found myself out here on the parkway.”

  “With everything a blank.”

  “Total.”

  Any part of the long trauma he had suffered could have been responsible for the amnesia that had resulted, Eden realized. The crash of his car, the beating he had received, his leap from the back of the truck. Or all of them together.

  “If you remembered this much,” she said, “maybe you can remember the rest. What about before that night? Anything?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “How about your name?”

  “It’s still Shane.”

  Frustrating, she thought. For both of them, judging by the expression on his face. She tried something else. “Those men must have known who you are if they took you like that. How did they address you when they questioned you?”

  “With language you don’t want to hear. Look, Eden, it’s no use. If names were used, either mine or theirs, they didn’t stay with me.”

  Eden took a deep breath and released it slowly in an effort to temper the excitement that had been building in her ever since Shane had spoken of his captors’ demands. “You were headed toward the city, carrying the photograph and my business card. Were you coming to see me? Is this him they kept asking you about Nathanial? Is it, Shane?” She leaned toward him earnestly.