Bad Nights

by Rebecca York

  But if she chose to have one, it wouldn’t be with this guy. Would it?

  The questions distracted her as she tried to hurry. The rain was only sporadic at the moment. Soon it would be coming down in buckets.

  She was breathing hard by the time she reached the house. Thankful that the entrance was only one step up from the ground, she pulled him onto the porch. She’d thought about leaving him outside, but just as they reached the shelter of the porch, the storm broke in earnest, the wind blowing stinging drops of rain against her face and toward the front door.

  Because she wouldn’t have left a dog out in the storm, she pulled the man into the house.

  Once he was inside, she wanted to slam and lock the door, but when she looked back the way they’d come, she saw a clear trail of skid marks where she’d dragged the tarp across the open ground, a dead giveaway that she’d been pulling something heavy, like an unconscious man. And somehow she had the feeling that giving away his presence in her house would be a bad mistake.

  Quickly she ran back, found a forked branch in the woods, and swept it over the track, the rain pelting her as she tried to hide the path she’d taken.

  She was remembering the house’s pre-Civil War history as she closed and locked the door. Once it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad, the chain of safe houses that had harbored escaped slaves as they made their way from servitude to the freedom of the North.

  Now it was sheltering another escapee, she thought as she stood dripping by the door. Because it was the easiest thing to do, she left him where he was and ran down the hall to change her sopping clothes. Once she was dry, she brought a blanket to the living room and used it to replace the soggy afghan. Then she went to throw all the wet stuff into the dryer.

  ***

  His mind flickered awake again in a swirl of confusion. Lying very still, not making a sound, he tried to separate fantasy from reality, fact from fiction.

  Where was he exactly?

  Still without moving, he cataloged sensations.

  He’d been outside, hadn’t he? Outside naked. He remembered a cold wind that had lashed his skin and seeped all the way to the marrow of his bones. Now he was warm. And lying on the hard floor with a thin sheet of something rough against his naked back and hips. But the covering on top of his body was slightly prickly. A wool blanket.

  He had no idea how he had gotten from outside to this place and gotten covered with a blanket. His fingers flexed on the wool, and unconsciously he grabbed the edges and folded them closer, gripping them as he tried to grip onto reality.

  Naked. Why was he naked?

  He struggled to pull forth a recent memory. But now that he was awake again, his head felt like little men with pickaxes were chopping away at the inside of his skull. When he raised his hand, he felt a lump on the back of his head that was tender when he touched it.

  That wasn’t the only pain. Not by a long shot. One of his eyes seemed to be swollen shut, and his whole body ached, like he’d been used for a dummy lineman at a football practice. Deep muscle and bone pain. Abrasions on his skin. And something that felt like burns. Not all over. Clustered on his shoulders, chest, and thighs.

  That sent an image flashing into his mind of a man with a cigarette, drawing on it to make the tip glow before pressing it into his flesh.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe he was making it up to account for the raw sensations.

  Screw the pain. All of it. Right now his job was to figure out where he was and why. And get away. Because he was sure that he wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Lying very still, he listened for clues and heard the sound of heavy rain pelting a shingled roof. And smelled the scent of soap and woman lingering in the air.

  She’d been here a few minutes ago. Or was it hours? He had no way of measuring time.

  He turned his head, seeing a living room with slightly shabby but comfortable-looking furniture. Sofas, chairs. A coffee table. A television set. Not one of the new flat screen ones. An old, clunky model.

  It looked like he was in somebody’s home, but he didn’t remember coming in, and he couldn’t even be sure how long he’d been here. Wait, hadn’t he thought all that before?

  He tried to stop the circling of his thoughts. The woman must have brought him. But how? He had an impression of a slender blonde. She certainly wouldn’t have had the strength to carry him.

  But she must have gotten him inside somehow and left him on the floor. Did he know her? He didn’t think so, but if not, why was he here?

  Not knowing who she was—or anything else—sent panic coursing through him. He tried to focus, but thoughts swam into his mind and out again too quickly for him to capture them.

  For a terrible moment, he didn’t even remember his own name and the fear of not knowing rose up like a giant wave, threatening to swallow him whole.

  His name. What the hell was his damn name?

  His heart pounded, and his hands clenched and unclenched as he struggled to remember his own identity.

  Finally, a small part of the fog in his mind cleared away.

  “Jack Brandt,” he whispered aloud, feeling a wave of relief. It was followed immediately by confusion. Hadn’t he been calling himself something else?

  Because he’d been…

  He tried to grab on to that thought and hold it, but it skittered away like a crab scrambling to escape from a seabird at the edge of the ocean.

  Was the woman working for…?

  Someone bad. Someone who was planning…

  The name of the man and his scheme wouldn’t come to him, and he gave up in frustration.

  A shiver went through his body.

  He wasn’t in Afghanistan, was he? No. He knew that from his recent observations. He’d been in the woods. Not in the rocky terrain of that godforsaken country where you never knew if one of the friendly villagers or a provincial police officer was going to turn and put a bullet in your back. And this was the wrong kind of house. In Afghanistan, he’d be lying on a dirt floor or stone. He’d see patterned rugs, not chintz-covered furniture. And there was no way he would have seen the woman’s face.

  As he turned over those details, memories of his last mission jolted through him. SEAL team fifteen had been sent to take out a nest of insurgents hiding in a remote mountain village. It hadn’t worked out the way anybody had expected. He remembered a woman in a burka coming toward them, her hand raised as though she wanted something from them. Then a flash, as the explosives belt she’d been wearing under the shapeless gown detonated.

  Behind her, men with automatic weapons had surged forward. Insurgents who must have known the team was coming.

  Recent memories eluded him. But that terrible scene ripped through his mind like an explosion in a munitions storage bunker.

  He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to blot out the memory of the massacre. He’d seen the team cut down by machine-gun fire and grenades. But somehow he’d gotten out alive and staggered into the rocks. The hostiles had looked for him. But they hadn’t found him because he’d covered himself with rocks and dirt. When they’d given up and moved out, he’d looked for the other members of the team. He’d only found bodies. Everyone else was dead.

  A terrible feeling of loss grabbed him as he fought that memory. It was in the past. The shrinks had told him it wasn’t his fault that he was alive. They’d said he could never change the past. He had to cope as best he could. But what was the present? Where was he, and why?

  He strained for coherence and cursed softly when it eluded him.

  As he closed his eyes and scrambled for something to ground himself, two familiar faces swam into his memory. His two best friends. Shane and Max. Guys he’d met in jail.

  That stopped him again. Why had he been in jail? What jail? What city? What country?

  Again, he simply couldn’t remember. But he and Shane and Max had gotten each other through a long, dangerous night in a holding cell full of tough, angry men.

  He recalled brea
king up more than one fight between guys too drunk to think straight and stopping a couple of badasses determined to keep everyone else away from the phone. Then there had been the jerks who’d thought they could decide who could use the toilet and who couldn’t.

  He and Shane and Max had forced the bastards to make nice.

  Yeah, he remembered that. It wasn’t pleasant, but it gave him a sense of reality. It must have been in the U.S. Or perhaps Mexico because half the guys had spoken Spanish. Well, not Mexican Spanish. Cuban Spanish. Weird how he recalled that detail.

  Maybe those memories brought him up to a year ago. Trying to remember more, he shifted his body, wincing as skin and bones moved against the hard floor.

  How the hell had he gotten into this shape?

  He must have taken a job. Something dangerous. But what was it, exactly?

  He clenched his teeth, remembering pain as men punched him, burned him, beat him with a cane while a low, controlled voice spoke to him.

  “You lied to me.”

  “No.”

  “No more lies. Who are you?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Who sent you?”

  They were questions that he hoped he hadn’t answered.

  But there was something else. Something he had to remember now. Something dangerous that was going to happen. An attack? Maybe, unless he was making it up.

  He scrambled to remember, but it was simply gone.

  His mind snapped into the present as the woman came back into the room, and he watched her through slitted eyes. Well, through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. This time he was better able to take her measure.

  She was medium height with dark blond hair worn straight and chin length. Her slender figure was covered by jeans and a long-sleeved knit shirt. Running shoes completed her fashion statement. Her breasts were medium-sized. Her hips narrow. And her blue eyes were filled with concern. Her lips parted as though she was getting ready to speak to him.

  She came down beside him on the floor. “You’re awake,” she said in a soft voice as she pressed her fingers to his cheek.

  He liked her touch. It was the softest thing he had felt since forever.

  When he didn’t speak, she said, “I saw you watching me.”

  No use pretending he was still out cold. He made a grunting sound.

  “What happened to you?”

  She’d saved him. Maybe he owed her an explanation. Or was she like the Afghan villagers—pretending to be his friend? He guessed he’d find out.

  His mouth was so dry he could barely speak, but he managed to say, “I don’t know.” It was only partly a lie. If he remembered more than the flashes that had come to him, he wasn’t going to tell her. The knowledge would put her in danger. In fact, he thought with a flare of coherence that being close to him now was as risky as playing with a stick of dynamite.

  Some of what he was thinking must have showed on his face.

  “What?”

  He tried to push himself up and fell back against the floor. “I need to get out of here.”

  She dragged in a breath and let it out. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Perfectly serious.”

  “You were just unconscious. You’re… injured. It’s pouring rain. You’re naked. You’re not going anywhere.” The last part was said with finality like a teacher informing a student of the classroom rules and giving no options.

  To prove her wrong, he tried to get up again. Although he was panting from the effort, he couldn’t even get to a sitting position. Unfortunately, she was correct; he wasn’t going anywhere until he got a little stronger.

  “I brought you some water.”

  Her words made him zero in on the terrible thirst he’d tried to ignore.

  When she reached to ease him up, her touch was gentle. Still, he struggled not to groan as she got him to a sitting position, resting his back against her front with the blanket draped across his lap. When she lifted a cup of water to his lips, he drank eagerly before she took the cup away.

  “Better take it slow.”

  He didn’t protest. He knew that if he drank too much, he’d probably throw up.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Jack.” He didn’t volunteer more, partly because he wasn’t sure of his real name.

  “I’m Morgan Rains.”

  “You came outside with a gun,” he said as pictures flashed in his mind.

  “I keep it for protection. Since my husband was shot by a burglar.”

  The clipped explanation told him she wasn’t going to say any more about the weapon. Or her personal life.

  “I’m going to put some salve on your burns.”

  He said nothing, because he was in no position to object.

  Chapter 3

  Morgan still held the man in a sitting position, his back cradled against her front. Picking up the tube of burn salve, she reached around him so that she could unscrew the cap and set it on the floor.

  She spread some of the salve on her fingers, then eased him forward so that she could stroke the ointment onto the angry red circles on his back, feeling his firm skin slide beneath her fingertips. Ministering to him like that was much too intimate. She should have brought a tissue to use.

  But she wasn’t going to get one. The best thing to do was just to finish this and let him rest because that would help him mend.

  When she’d taken care of his back, she eased him down to the tarp again and adjusted the blanket.

  “I should get you a sheet.”

  “This is fine.”

  His eyes were closed as though he was trying to distance himself from her as she kept working on him. And she understood why.

  They were two strangers, yet she was touching him as a woman might touch a lover. And working on his broad chest with its covering of dark hair was more intimate than treating his back. Then there was the rest of him.

  She stole a quick look at his face, relieved that his eyes were still closed as she pulled the covering down, then squeezed out more salve. Some of the burns were close to his penis, and she bent her head to hide her face as she soothed on the salve. She hadn’t stared at a lot of penises this close up. His was long and thick. Bigger than Glenn’s.

  She grimaced at that inappropriate thought. What did the size of his penis matter? She wasn’t going to make love with this guy.

  She pushed the sexual speculations out of her head. As quickly as she could, she finished with the salve and pulled up the blanket, covering him again. Maybe if she put some clothes on him, she wouldn’t have to think about his body. She’d come up here to get Glenn’s clothing out of the dresser and the closet. Although Jack No-Last-Name was taller than her husband and a bit leaner, the size wouldn’t be too far off.

  But she was pretty sure that the effort to dress him was more than he needed now.

  “Thanks,” he murmured, the weariness in his voice confirming her assessment.

  “Get some rest.”

  “Don’t have much choice,” he mumbled.

  She thought he was going to sleep when his good eye blinked open. “Keep the gun with you.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re looking for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Guys you don’t want to meet.” He kept his gaze on her for long moments, and she saw the concern in his eyes.

  “Maybe you’d better tell me about them.”

  “Can’t,” he whispered.

  “Did you do something illegal?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then answered, “No.”

  She didn’t like that hesitation. What had he been doing that he thought was against the law?

  “You’d better tell me.”

  He made a low sound. “Just push me out the door again, and you won’t have to worry about it.”

  It was an audacious suggestion under the circumstances, but apparently the exchange had drained away his strength. She listened to the sound of his breathing change
and knew he had drifted off to sleep again. Although she was relieved that he was getting the rest he needed, their conversation had unsettled her. He’d said men were looking for him. Bad men, she assumed. Did that mean she had to stand guard all night?

  Or she could simply call 911 and let someone else decide what to do with him.

  But before she did anything else, she’d better eat something, or she was going to fall over.

  As the options for dinner ran through her mind, she made a dismissive sound. Once she had loved to cook. She’d learned the basics from her mother and continued her kitchen adventures after she’d graduated from college. She’d met Glenn in her first year of graduate school. One of the early things they’d discovered was that they both loved creating great dishes and sharing them.

  They’d enjoyed paging through ethnic cookbooks for recipes to try. Then they’d shopped together and commanded the kitchen together.

  Their first triumph had been a great paella, followed by beef paprikash, crème brûlée, the sugar topping caramelized with a blowtorch, chocolate lava cake, lobster bisque. She smiled as she remembered some of their kitchen adventures, then sobered. The fun had evaporated from cooking when her husband had been taken from her.

  For the past year, eating had been something she did to keep up her strength because she had to go to work and make a living.

  Not that she didn’t like teaching, she added hastily. Too bad it wasn’t the same when there was no one at home to share her victories with—or to listen to her complaints when the head of the psychology department made his power plays.

  Glenn had been an engineer working for an aerospace company. Men with that background didn’t necessarily want to discuss abnormal psychology. But he’d been different. He’d listened when she’d talked about the fine points of diagnosing mental illness or the pros and cons of behavior modification versus medication. He’d even given her some insights into aberrant behavior by discussing his colleagues at work.

  She smiled as she recalled some of their discussions, then snapped back to the present as she opened a kitchen cabinet and began searching for something appealing.

  Why was she thinking about the past now? Because a man was in her house for the first time since Glenn had died? She hadn’t sought out a relationship with anyone, even the men who had made it clear that they were interested in her. But none of them had measured up to Glenn. Not in her estimation.