I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

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  I'LL REMEMBER YOU

  Barbara Ankrum

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

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  Prologue

  ^»

  Dusk seemed to hold its breath as the gunshot's echo reverberated against the canyon's rocky walls. Birds fell silent. Even the steady coastal breeze, which had only moments earlier relieved the thick summer evening, stilled as the two men stood at the top of the precipice, staring down into the well of darkness below.

  "Dammit!" snarled the bulkier of the two. Decapitating a clump of weeds near the edge of the road with one well-placed kick, he punched the air like a shadowboxer. "What did I tell you?"

  "I hit him, bato," argued the second in a voice born of the barrios east of the city. Smoke still trailed from the gun in his hand as he peered over the edge of the shrub encrusted slope. Dragging a hand through his black hair, he searched the darkness. "I know I did."

  "You know? You know?" The older man stopped dead in his tracks, staring incomprehensibly at his companion. "Then maybe you know what the boss is gonna do to us when he finds out we lost the bastard over the side of a cliff!"

  A low growl rumbled deep in the second man's throat and he rolled one shoulder with a grimace. "He's dead. The fall alone would've killed him."

  The shadowboxer glared over the steep incline below them, fingering his bleeding knuckles and pondering whether luck was indeed with them.

  "Well, wouldn't it?" the other man pressed. Shadows clung to his chiseled features, carving them with fatigue.

  His partner turned and locked eyes with him, clamping a hand against his shoulder as a big brother might a dimwitted sibling. "How many times I gotta tell ya? Head shot. It's clean. It's fast, it's—"

  "Basta, ese bato. I aimed for his head. How was I supposed to know the crazy bastard would turn and jump off the cliff?"

  "Hell, I should've done it myself."

  "You're the one who decided to beat the truth out of him first. We should'a just popped him—"

  "Before he told us where it was? And leave both our butts swinging in the wind?"

  "Yeah, well, he told us exactly nothing."

  "And maybe," the older one conceded, "that was everything."

  The second man shrugged his shoulders inside his black leather jacket. "I hit him good. I saw it knock him backward." He shook his head and gave a gesture of dismissal with his hand. "Ah hell … he's dead all right. No man could've survived that fall."

  The eerie screech of an owl from across the canyon evoked a shiver in both men. As one, they looked at each other, then peered silently over the side of the sage and jumper dotted cliff, listening. Nothing but the heavy flap of wings overhead broke the unnatural hush that had blanketed the night. No sound of movement or life came from the depths of the blackness below.

  The older of the pair muttered and shook his head. "Stupid bastard."

  "Loco. You think we ought to—"

  "—go down and check?"

  There was a long pause. "Yeah."

  Loose dirt skidded down the treacherous slope from beneath the weed kicker's foot. With a curse, he leaped backward. "Whad'ya think I am? A suicide waitin' to happen? I say he's dead and that's the end of it."

  "Right."

  "That's our story and we stick with it."

  "Yo."

  The two men knocked knuckles and exchanged an almost violent handshake of solidarity, cast one last glance toward the darkness below, then retreated to the dark sedan waiting nearby. The engine ground to life – a punctuation mark to the end of a very unpleasant evening.

  The tires crunched gravel as they edged off the shoulder, then squealed against the asphalt as the car pulled away, speeding down the road toward the constellation of city lights that haloed the distant hills. In its wake was a deathly silence, broken only by a breath of wind skidding down the canyon.

  That, and the faintest scrape of rocks against loose dirt from somewhere far below the deserted road.

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  Chapter 1

  «^»

  "Of course, I'm all right. What did you think I was going to do? Throw myself off the nearest bridge?"

  Tess Gordon cringed at the forced lightness in her voice, certain that her boss, Daniel McCaffrey, wasn't for a moment fooled. She tightened her grip on the cellular phone, staring at the dark canyon road winding before her.

  "Nothing as dramatic as that," came Daniel's measured reply. "Just tell me you're not going to … I don't know … go bungee jumping, or diving off some cliff in Acapulco."

  "Hunh. I pro-miss nozzing," she said in her best Garbo imitation, half enjoying the concern in Daniel's warning. "Besides, I don't recall any stipulations on exactly how I should spend this enforced vacation of mine. As a matter of fact, as I recall, the beach was one of your suggestions."

  Daniel laughed. "Remind me about your literal nature next time, will you?"

  She could picture his kind, hazel eyes sparkling as he bantered with her over the airwaves. His interest in her was something he didn't even try to conceal anymore. She was grateful for his friendship, but for her, it would never be anything more than that.

  It couldn't be. With anyone.

  "My literal nature is the reason you hired me in the first place," she pointed out, following her headlights around a pitch-black curve in Angelo Canyon. "You need me, Daniel. The project needs me. Which is exactly what I tried to tell you when you—"

  "Uh-uh! Don't even go there," he warned. "We both know you're invaluable on this team. We would never have gotten as far as we have without your work. But we need you alive, Tess. And frankly, you're starting to worry me."

  Here it comes, she thought. "Daniel—"

  "You need this vacation, Tess," he interrupted before she could argue anymore. "You need twenty-four solid hours in a real bed – as opposed to, say … your office couch? – to erase those little Morticia Addams smudges around your eyes. You need three squares a day prepared by room service in some ridiculously luxurious hotel. You need maid service and frou-frou drinks with little umbrellas propped beside some five-star lagoon. Relax. Contemplate your navel." He paused deliberately. "Hey, here's a thought. Have some fun. Remember fun?"

  "No," she replied glumly as the fleeting image of her forehead connecting repeatedly with a brick wall flickered through her mind. Gripping the steering wheel hard, she rounded a sharp curve fast enough to make her tires squeal. The high-pitched whine echoed off the steep canyon walls, then slipped down the sheer cliffs that hugged the road.

  Only passingly aware of that sound, Tess focused on the more obvious one – the distinctive thud of the proverbial "other shoe" dropping.

  Okay, so things had been going too well. She should have seen this day coming. Braced herself for it. But how did one prepare for being dropped like an egg from fifty stories without so much as a parachute?

  Work had become her sanctuary, her sanity. Didn't Daniel know that? For the last two years, the lab and the research had been the glue that had held her together. Without it she might just crumble like a stale cookie.

  The sharp tang of damp eucalyptus filtered through her open window and the crisp night air slapped against her skin. Daniel was talking again.

  "…your own good … let me…" Static sputtered in her ear. "…when you … there, will ya?"

  She shook the cell phone. Damn. Her battery was dying. She must have forgotten to charge it. Again.

  "Daniel?" she said loudly. "You're breaking up. I – hello? I can't hear you!"

  "Nice try, Elroy," he said, obviously unconvinced by the dead-battery ploy. "I ex �
�� postcard … when you—"

  "No, Daniel, really." She was shouting now. "My battery is—"

  "…three weeks … hear me? … not a minute—" Sshhh.

  Tess pulled the receiver away from her ear with a wince, glared at it, then tossed it down with more force than strictly necessary onto the seat beside her.

  She blew out a breath. Damn technology.

  Damn Daniel.

  Just because he had a point about the dark circles under her eyes and about the crummy cafeteria food she'd been subsisting on, that didn't make him right.

  She couldn't be bothered to go home to cook for one. She considered that a waste of time. The work was what mattered. And they were close. So close.

  Shifting down as she approached another lonely curve of road, she thought of the hours, days, months she'd put into the research project they were working on. She'd put her body and soul into it, alongside the rest of the team. Like them, she'd sweated blood over each failure, and reveled in every inch forward they'd made.

  So she'd reveled quietly and alone. So she had yet to join in one of Kiki Rader's poolside celebrations, replete with laughing children, barking dogs, husbands and wives.

  "Is that a crime?" she asked the perfectly dead phone that lay on the seat beside her.

  Tess sighed. Why, she wondered, did people think that she'd lost her ability to manage her own life the day she'd lost Adam?

  Tess clenched her jaw, staring into the darkness ahead. Well, so be it. She'd go home, collect her things, head for the airport and fly somewhere. Anywhere. She'd dive into a good book, explore a pyramid, lose herself in a crowd. She'd do anything, in fact, but contemplate. Swimming with sharks sounded safer than that.

  As a matter of fact, swimming with sharks just might appeal to her sense of—

  By the time she caught sight of the figure stumbling into the cone of her headlights, it was nearly too late. She slammed her foot against the brake pedal and jerked the wheel to the left.

  Her Honda fishtailed violently sideways.

  The sound of squealing tires shattered the inky silence of the canyon. In horror, she watched the guardrail that separated the road from the steep-walled ravine below rush toward her.

  Wrenching the wheel hard to the right, she heard the left rear fender of the car scream against the metal as an explosion of sparks arched into the darkness behind her.

  Adrenaline rocketed through her like a punch of heat. Desperately, she fought the road for control. The tires spit gravel against the underbelly of the car as it left the shoulder and swerved back to the right side of the road. The car swam sideways one last time toward the sheer sandstone cliffs that walled in the canyon, then, miraculously, skidded to a grinding stop.

  Her thundering pulse slammed against her eardrums. She threw the car into Park and dropped her face into hands that had begun to shake violently.

  "Ohmigod…"

  No more than eight seconds had lapsed from start to finish – the longest eight seconds of her relatively short life. Long enough for every glaring mistake she'd made to flood past her in the dark.

  Enough of those for two lifetimes.

  Shaking, she tipped her head back against the headrest and looked in the rearview mirror, surprised by the unnatural pallor of the face that stared back. Dismissing it, she turned her attention to the darkness behind her. Only moon shadows occupied the empty road. Nothing else but the briefest notion that someone had been there.

  A man.

  Another punch of adrenaline squeezed through her chest. Had she imagined it? It could have been a deer or a bear – "In Levi's?" she said aloud.

  Turning fully in her seat, she peered out the back window.

  Who was she kidding? It had been a man. A tall man. And despite the color-robbing headlights and her fractional glimpse of him, she'd had the distinct impression of blood. And he hadn't been just walking along the road.

  Lurching was more like it. Staggering like he was drunk. Or hurt.

  There was no sign of him now.

  Every instinct screamed at her to put the car back in gear and get the hell out of there. She was a woman alone, for heaven's sake. And even she watched the eleven o'clock news on occasion. No one would blame her for driving away. It was the sensible thing to do.

  Still, she hesitated, cursing Daniel for forcing her to leave the lab at all tonight. If only she'd followed her normal routine, she'd be safely ensconced on her lumpy office couch counting genetically altered sheep.

  Maybe another car will come by.

  She glanced at the clock on her dashboard. Eleven forty-five. This road became deserted after ten. It would be morning before residential commuters used it again. By then, who knew? The stranger could be dead.

  The paranoia that had become a part of everyday life here was something she loathed. More than that, she detested her own impulse to walk away from someone who might need her help.

  Automatically, she reached for the cell phone, then threw it back down again.

  Damn technology!

  Still shaking, and with a reluctance that bordered on panic, she shoved the car into Reverse and made a three-point turn until her headlights pointed in the other direction. As she inched forward, the words of Gil Castillano – her late husband's partner and now a dear friend who had talked her into buying the cell phone in the first place – echoed in her head.

  "I worry about you, Tess," he'd said in that brotherly tone of his. "Living alone out there in the middle of nowhere. Humor me, will you, and take precautions?"

  "Precautions," she muttered. A little late for that. If she'd had any sense at all, she'd be dialing 911 like a sane person instead of driving intentionally into trouble.

  In the distance, something moved in the dim frame of her headlights. It was little more than a lump of darkness that pushed itself up off the ground and started to stagger in an erratic way down the road.

  She bit hard on her lower lip as she inched forward. A hundred feet down the road she caught up with him. His once-white shirt flapped open at his sides like a flag of surrender in the evening breeze. He seemed oblivious to her, or to the lights illuminating the uneven ground he was walking on. The dark stain on his shirt had a reddish cast in her headlights.

  "Ho, boy," she mumbled, chewing on her lower lip. Scratch falling-down-drunk as a possibility.

  She ducked her head out her window. "Hey!" No response. "Hey! Mister—"

  Like a switch had been flicked off, his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground again like, a load of bricks.

  Tess gasped and threw the car into Park. Yanking her keys out of the ignition, she closed her fingers around the pepper spray that dangled from her key chain. She grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and raced toward him.

  He didn't move as she approached. Aiming her flashlight until the beam struck his face, she fought the instinct to run. Her heart slammed against the wall of her chest.

  Dear God.

  Whatever had happened to him, it had been bad. Clinically, she assessed the nasty swelling that had formed around the bloody gash above his left temple, automatically calculating the number of stitches required to close it and the distinct possibility of head trauma. The left side of his face and chest were covered with blood.

  Crimson glistened across the swollen cheek and eye of what she suspected was a wickedly handsome face. His skin was pasty looking, and what wasn't covered with blood glimmered with a sheen of sweat. She crouched down and gingerly palpated the pulse at the side of his throat, relieved to feel a thin, reedy throb beneath her fingertips. His skin was clammy and cool. Shocky. No surprise, considering the amount of blood he'd already lost. She let the arc of light drift down the rest of him. She'd been right. He was tall. Very tall. Six-three if he was an inch, and though his clothes were a mess, this man was no drifter. Expensive jeans hugged long, muscular legs, and his cowboy boots – though scuffed and dirty as the rest of him now – were crafted of fine leather. The buttons had somehow be
en ripped loose from his ragged shirt, which was wound halfway around his back, exposing a truly impressive set of abs amid a mass of purplish bruises. He looked as if he'd been dragged behind a horse.

  He was Montgomery Cliff and a young John Wayne, with a brooding dash of James Dean etched in the dark crescent of lashes shadowing his high cheekbones. Sweat dampened his hairline, forcing his straight, dark hair to hang in spiky hanks against his brow. The lines bracketing the firm set of his mouth appeared grim, unrelenting. The overall effect actually made her forget to breathe for a minute, in a profoundly unprofessional way.

  Shaken, she purposefully redirected her light back at the road he'd just navigated. Could be a car accident, she reasoned, tightening her shaking grip on the flashlight. Cars plunged over the sides of this canyon on a disturbingly regular basis. Had he gone over and climbed up out of the ravine on his own?

  Some darker instinct warned this was more complicated than a car wreck. She'd seen enough accidents, enough battered faces to recognize the difference between an accident and fist-inflicted damage. But more worrisome was her suspicion that even the gash on his forehead couldn't account for all this blood.

  Gently, she touched his arm. "Hey … can you hear me?"

  He groaned, but didn't move. He lay sprawled half-on, half-off the road's shoulder. Any car rounding the curve just ahead would not have time to avoid him.

  She cursed silently. "No way I'm moving you alone," she muttered, knowing she'd have to do just that if he didn't wake up. For a moment she could only stare at the labored rise and fall of his rib cage, wondering how a man in such prime condition had wound up in such a state.

  A wave of dizziness accompanied that thought. Survival had less to do with conditioning than it did with luck. That point had come home two years ago when Adam's luck had flat run out. Since that awful night she'd worked feverishly to forget a life's calling that seemed determined to rear its ugly head again tonight. That night she'd sworn off trying to fix broken bodies. She thought she'd made that abundantly clear to the universe.