“Did you see something out there that I didn’t? Before the deer?”
“No...I don’t think so.”
“Allison, maybe someone could help you pinpoint when all this began.”
“It began with the car accident.”
“Are you sure?”
Again he felt that speculative stillness, that poised alertness coursing through her.
“No,” she said slowly. “No, I’m not sure, Chas. I think the memory lapses may actually have started before the car accident. I just didn’t remember that until now. I wonder why?”
“Have you talked with your doctor about the lapses?”
“Of course. But we were only talking in relation to the accident. We know from the X rays that I didn’t suffer a fracture or anything. No brain scrambling.”
“What about hypnosis?”
She went utterly rigid in his arms. “What about it?”
“Couldn’t a good hypnotist take you back to the precise moment all this started? I mean, wouldn’t he be able to figure out wh—”
“No!” she burst out.
He knew that his nearly offhand suggestion sparked a conflagration of some kind in her. She broke away from him, all magic shattered, the deer forgotten, the warmth of her soft body stripped away. Her eyes were wide with anger and a fear he couldn’t begin to fathom but understood had something to do with whatever tormented her.
He didn’t try to stop her or restrain her this time. “What is it, Allison?”
“What? Just because I don’t happen to believe in that mumbo jumbo—”
“Fine,” he said. He lifted his hands and dropped them again. “It was only a suggestion.”
“Not for me. Never again.”
“Again?”
“What is this, the inquisition? I simply said I didn’t want hypnosis. Why should that create such a furor?”
She didn’t know why she was so angry with him. And strangely she wasn’t any longer. This anger was similar to the panic attacks that assailed her—there one second and completely gone the next. Only this one seemed triggered by something Chas said. Or rather by his suggestion that she seek psychiatric help.
“Allison, I’m sorry.”
With the draining of the swift anger came remorse. “No, Chas. It’s me who’s sorry. I...I don’t know why I reacted that way. Just testy, I guess.”
“You’ve been through a lot lately,” he said slowly, as if tasting the atmosphere while formulating his words.
She wanted to explain, even opened her mouth to do, but what would she say? How could she tell him that her anger at him was as mysterious to her as her memory lapses, her lost moments of time, her irrational panic attacks? She resorted to the half truths and half assurances she’d become accustomed to using in the past couple of months.
“I’m sorry, Chas. You’re right. I probably should seek some kind of psychiatric help. I’m just tired,” she said, and could see by the look on his face that she’d done nothing to allay his concern. If anything, she’d heightened it.
Chas was frowning heavily, and eyeing her as if she were about to suddenly fly apart and start shrieking. She didn’t want him looking at her that way. Not Chas. Not ever.
She should never have come back home. She should have known she couldn’t run from her troubles, that they would follow her home. She’d felt a moment of hope when she learned the dogs were drugged, a sick hope, certainly, but hope nonetheless. If someone had drugged the dogs, then perhaps she wasn’t insane, didn’t have some dread brain dysfunction. Maybe someone was using psychotropic drugs on her, the new designer drugs that distorted all perceptions of reality, that could even bend the subconscious mind.
But she’d panicked after the dogs were drugged, and for no discernible reason. She’d felt panic even while in Chas’s embrace. She’d wanted to run away, escape, race blindly through the house and outside into the fearsome cold night.
“I think I know why you wanted to run, Allison.”
“What?”
“Actually I don’t know the ‘why,’ but I think I know the trigger for it.”
“What is it? There’s nothing,” she said. But she watched him, hoping against hope that he’d discovered something she hadn’t. She glanced at the window and back to him. “What did you see?”
“You were looking at Tom Adams this morning... yesterday morning...right? Exactly at the moment he signaled Martha Jo to start playing the wedding march?”
“And...?”
“And you wanted to run tonight, but only after I pointed at the window to show you the deer.”
Allison thought about Tom Adams giving Martha Jo a single-fingered go-ahead. Reviewed her panic at the window only moments before. She shook her head. “It can’t be that. I think about it and it doesn’t scare me.”
Chas looked at her for a long moment, then slowly raised his hand toward the dawn-lighted window and deliberately pointed outside.
She followed his eyes to his steady hand. Her heart had started beating a bit faster at the moment he lifted his arm. And jolted into hyperspeed when he balled his fist, all but one finger.
“Allison...” she heard him say, but it was from so very far away. He couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t hold her now, wouldn’t be able to stop her terrified running.
He turned his hand until that finger was pointing directly at her. “And now?” he asked.
But she scarcely heard him. Everything in her told her to run, to run as far and as fast as she could. Now.
Chas caught her before she so much as turned. He held her tightly against his chest, cradling her, smoothing her hair, murmuring words of assurance.
“It’s okay, Allison. It’s all right now. You know what’s causing it now.”
Tears of confusion and fear sprang to her eyes. And relief let them spill free. “But why, Chas? Why would something so simple scare me so? I must really be going crazy.”
He thought he might know what haunted her, but didn’t know enough to speak his half-baked theory aloud. As Alva Lu Harrigan would have advised, “Ideas are like pies—they need to sit for a while before cutting into them.”
So, in the dawn light, he held Allison in his arms, the way he’d longed to do for years, unwilling to lose her to whatever demons tortured her and vowing to never let her be frightened again.
But even as he rocked her, promising all would be well, swearing to be with her, he felt a dark certainty that he was lying to her, that his promises were empty. How could he protect her against an unknown assailant, an unknown quantity? It—the unknown he—could strike at her anytime, anywhere and when she was most likely to be vulnerable.
He wasn’t a Pete Jackson of the FBI and he wasn’t any Steve Kessler, Texas Ranger. He was only a country vet with a fifteen-year-old son and an ache where his heart used to be.
But just maybe, if he never let her out of his sight, out of his arms, perhaps then he’d be able to protect her.
As if negating his thoughts, she sighed and pulled herself free. She ran a hand through her hair. She looked at the floor, his hands still held out to her sides though no longer touching her, and finally lifted her eyes to his face.
“Someone’s brainwashed me, haven’t they?” she asked.
Chas let his arms drop to his sides. He hadn’t forgotten she was a reporter for one of the toughest news programs on television, and he’d never lost sight of her brilliance; he’d only swept those simple facts under the rug of his concern for her, his need to protect her.
He fought a minor skirmish with the desire to tell her to let him handle it, let him figure it out. So he could... what, present it to her as a pretty package? Look what I figured out for you, Allison. Now you’ll have to love me, right?
He realized he’d been as foolish as any of the triplets, and as childish in thinking she would appreciate his wrapping her in cotton wool. She was vulnerable now, yes, and scared with good reason. But she was no one’s property, not a porcelain figurine to be kept on a shelf an
d admired. She had brains and heart. And she had courage.
And what she needed from him was his help, not strong-arm tactics and heroics. And she needed his complete honesty.
“Hypnotized,” he said. “That’s what I think. Same thing.”
He saw the flinch that caught at her and watched her ponder his single word. Her nose wrinkled. “But I thought no one could be hypnotized against their will.”
“You don’t remember being hypnotized?”
“No. Never.”
“That’s what you said earlier. But you said ‘Never again.’”
He wanted to draw her into his arms again when she frowned heavily and ran a hand across her brow as if easing a headache.
“I did say that, didn’t I? When I was so angry at you a while ago. And I was angry for no reason.”
“Not for no reason, Allison,” he said wryly. “I was pushing you.”
She waved her hand as she turned from him a little. “Oh, that was probably a good thing.” She began to pace, the same way she used to do when agitated over something when she was younger. “No, the anger was like the panic, it just slammed into me, then backed off just as quickly.”
“Has that happened a lot?”
“The anger? No. I don’t think so.” She ran her hands down her robe, ducked them into her pockets, then out again. She moved to the kitchen drawers and opened the top one and closed it again..
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
She turned to stare at him blankly. “What?”
Chas felt a chill work down his arms. “You were looking for something.”
She looked down at her hand still resting on the drawer’s knob. She gave a shaky laugh. “Damn. After three months, you’d think the habit would have faded. I was looking for a cigarette.”
Chas drew a deep breath, then told her what she’d said earlier when she repeated herself about quitting smoking, the flat way she’d spoken, the dull expression on her face.
“And it was verbatim, Allison.”
She shoved her hands into her pockets then, unaware she was pulling the robe open in the front. “Three months ago. I quit three months ago. But I didn’t go to any hypnotist to do so. I just quit.”
“During that week you took off.”
Allison frowned. “You know, it’s funny, I really don’t remember anything about that vacation.”
“Nothing at all?”
“The first couple of days...I can remember those. But nothing else. Just quitting smoking.”
Chas experienced a strangely murderous longing to wrap his hands around the throat of whoever had done this to Allison, whoever had erased her memory, whoever had left her with terror and gaps and was even now apparently haunting her. A stalker? Was that what this was, a case of a stalker?
As he took in the implications of this thought, he derived a grim pleasure in the realization that the psychotic responsible for whatever was happening to Allison hadn’t reckoned on Almost. In a town as small as Almost, a stranger would stand out like a punk rocker in Bible school. It would only be a matter of time.
“Chas...”
“Yes?”
“What if I never figure it all out?”
“You will, Allison,” he said, wishing he were as confident inside as his voice sounded. “We will.”
“But what if I don’t know all the triggers and I have a panic attack right in the middle of an interview, while I’m on the air, or in public somewhere, like has happened before.”
She paced toward the sink and whirled suddenly, unaware that he was standing stock still, a coldness seeping through him.
She suddenly slapped her forehead. “The pointing. That explains it. I’ve been absolutely unable to watch the cameraman. He signals us and points when we’re about to go on. Oh, Jimmy must have thought I was crazy! Chas? What’s wrong?”
He was still standing perfectly still, feeling the effect of her words reached deep into his heart and tearing some vital piece loose.
He’d just consoled himself with the notion that it was only a matter of time before they nabbed whoever was doing this to Allison. But at her words, he realized with the force of a thunderbolt that they didn’t have all the time in the world.
In just a few days, Allison would be returning to New York. The psychotic hypnotist or stalker or whatever he was could simply wait for her there, another nutcase in a big, big city.
But it wasn’t only the thought of her being unprotected so far from him that made him feel physically ill; it was the awareness that she would be leaving Almost.
Leaving him.
Again.
Chapter 8
The man calling himself Quentin kicked a low-slung nubby chair across the threadbare living area, then threw a metal wash pail against the dirty mirror in his equally dirty trailer. The mirror shattered but didn’t nearly satisfy the rage boiling inside him.
He knew he was out of control, felt the fringe of madness lapping at him, but continued nonetheless, kicking at furniture, throwing whatever wasn’t already destroyed or nailed down.
Allison still loved her country stud. After all the stud had done to her, after he’d impregnated someone else and married her, after he’d abandoned Allison...she still wanted him.
God, to watch them kissing in the lighted window of the kitchen. To watch her willingly wrap her arms around the stud’s neck and let him kiss her, let that man touch her body when she belonged, body and soul, to him.
He slammed his fist against the slivers of glass littering the battered dresser. A thousand tiny fragments of his rage splintered and danced in the air for a moment, capturing his attention, diffusing his pain.
He brushed the larger bits of glass from his hand, ignoring the rivulets of blood, not even wincing at the sharp reminders of the remaining shards. He ran his hands down his body, unknowingly smearing his own blood on the already bloodstained work shirt. He smoothed back his hair and schooled his features to calm composure.
He wished he still had the false glasses; he would push them up his nose, and that would further settle him.
But he knew only one thing would really ease the torment inside him...ridding the world of the woman who caused it. And ridding her of the man who had stolen her from her rightful caretaker.
He left the trailer, closing the door carefully behind him, and stood on the front stoop, breathing deeply of the fresh, cold air. It would be even colder by midday as a winter storm was predicted to sweep through the area. Ice, sleet. Blizzards in the desert.
But by midday, he would be hot. As hot and fiery as he would need to be.
He flexed his hands. The one with bits of broken glass in it began to throb a little. But pain had a way of making him think clearly.
He wondered if it would make Allison think clearly.
He hoped so.
When Chas left to go feed the animals at the clinic after a quick check on the boys’ dogs, Allison swiftly locked all the doors and windows.
While he’d been there with her, she’d felt distanced from the trouble, even calm about it. She’d felt safe with Chas.
But with him gone, the enormity of what might have happened to her came crashing in. And as the boys stirred from their rooms, grumbling about breakfast and not wanting to do any community service right now, “‘Cause, gosh, it’s a Saturday and we shouldn’t have to give up all our time, ‘specially since it wasn’t our fault and wasn’t even our video equipment,” the real magnitude of the problem flooded her with renewed terror.
Only this terror wasn’t the mindless, running, screaming fear, it was rooted in solid, painful possibility. If someone had drugged the dogs in order to more easily terrorize her, then that someone was right there in Almost. And so were the boys. Her nephews and Chas’s son. If they stayed close to her, by proximity alone they could become targets for whoever, whatever was after her.
And if that happened, she would never ever forgive herself. She’d already caused the death of one cousin; she
couldn’t bring danger down on. Taylor’s sons. Oh, please God, no.
While the boys ate their cereal, listening to winter-storm warnings on the radio, Allison stood at the kitchen counter making a list. A list of every moment of time loss, spot amnesia and the senseless, terrifying panic attacks.
Somewhere in that list was a pattern. Some discernible pattern.
She was a reporter. She was—or had been until recently—one tough cookie. She made her living looking for patterns, digging through seemingly endless mountains of material to discover that often elusive connection.
Why hadn’t she fought this the way she would have tackled a recalcitrant story? She’d been so accepting of the victim role that she’d lost sight of her own strengths. In her case, she thought with some disdain, it hadn’t been a matter of fearing fear itself, but rather fearing the fear of it.
The boys were finished with their breakfasts and off to get dressed before she was halfway through her list.
She began with the car accident, then thought perhaps Chas was right in that the car accident hadn’t been the source of any of her trouble, but just another incident in the middle somewhere. And for the first time, she actually considered the notion that the crash may not have been an accident at all.
She shivered as she understood the implications in the fact that she had no memories whatsoever of the moments following the crash. Before, yes. But after? Not one. She told herself this was a common complaint in accident victims. But how common was it really? Specifically what had triggered her memory lapse? What if it was something to do with whoever was after her? Because it now seemed very, very likely that someone was.
A stalker. She shivered at the thought.
She pondered the questions Chas had posed just a couple of hours earlier and his supposition that her quitting smoking had something to do with everything.
She grinned a little wryly at that notion. The hazards of quitting smoking. She’d like to let the surgeon general know just a few of the possible dangers surrounding her now that she had quit. Maybe he would put a little boxed warning on the side of the packet.
Almost Remembered Page 11
