Nica nodded. “Do you remember playing Rachel Bach in Steel ?”
This was crazy. How could she remember someone she’d pretended to be, when she couldn’t even remember who she was? Maybe that was why. If she’d played enough parts, her mind could be hopelessly confused. “You’re telling me I’ve been in a movie?” No wonder people were making a big deal—
Her head spun. A crowd squeezing her in, hollering, badgering. The woman’s weasely face. Accusations. Lies. Hungry faces all around waiting for one slip. She gripped the table edge. That was no fan club.
Cameron shook hands with the last of the rescue team, tossed his pack into TJ’s truck bed, and got into the cab. “Hit it.”
TJ started the engine. “Nevah tink you get out tonight.”
“Almost didn’t. That pilot’s good.” As TJ pulled out of the heliport, Cameron fastened his seat belt. “He picked us off like ants on an anteater’s tongue.”
TJ grinned. “Ant taste bettah.”
“No doubt. You got Gentry?”
TJ slid him a glance. “How you hang wit one movie star?”
He frowned. Jade hadn’t seemed like a movie star. But she wasn’t Jade. She was Gentry Fox. The only screen performance he’d seen her in had been extraordinary. But she’d been a brunette, and she’d spent much of the movie with bruises and dirt on her face. Maybe if he’d seen her the first night she stumbled out of the wild, he’d have known her right off.
“Does she know?”
“Nica wen tell her.”
His stomach tightened. Another person might get hurt if Gentry snubbed her; Nica would feel as though she’d released a stunned bird back into the forest. She wouldn’t expect Gentry Fox to remain on the same plane. “Guess she can pay the medical bills.”
TJ snorted. “You tink?”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Her uncle. Robert Fox.”
Her uncle. Cameron settled into his seat, taking that in. Uncle. He supposed famous people had uncles, just hadn’t considered such a benign relationship. He’d accused her of worse. Well, not accused. Insinuated. Her reaction should have told him.
They rode in silence until TJ turned into the dirt track that led to Okelani’s cottage. He pulled to a stop, and Cameron braced himself to go inside. He was thinking crow was on the menu.
Jade looked up as Cameron and Officer TJ Kanakanui came through the door. Cameron’s expression held something she didn’t recognize on him. Humility?
TJ went straight to the pot and raised the lid. “Mmm, Auntie. Squid luau?”
Okelani rose to serve him the squid in coconut milk. Cameron leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed.
A hard defensiveness seized her when their gazes collided. “Why am I here?”
“You wanted to avoid publicity. The hospital’s a madhouse.”
TJ nodded over the bowl he clasped in both hands. “Plenny TV crew and journalist.”
Jade sank back in her chair, touching the aversion. How would she face a crowd of reporters when she couldn’t fathom what they’d told her? A movie actor? A Golden Globe? How could she not know? The thought of facing a crowd worse than the one at the heliport—the crowd in her dream—made her legs weaker than if she were on a slippery cliff without ropes. But she said, “That’s not really the point anymore. I need to be with my uncle.”
Cameron didn’t miss her emphasis. He couldn’t begin to know how his suspicions had stung, but he had the decency to look away. He asked TJ, “Has other family come in?”
Other family. Her family. People she knew and loved—and might not remember.
TJ turned to her. “Your mother’s finding a flight as soon as—”
“No. She can’t leave Dad. He—” Gentry jerked up as memory rushed in. “He just had bypass surgery.” Taking sharp, quick breaths, she thrust out her hand, images filling her mind like a film on fast forward. “Let me use your phone.”
Cameron came off the refrigerator, his gaze rapier sharp, as though he shared whatever frequency her mind had seized to download her life. “Use mine.” He slipped it into her hand. “Keep TJ’s for official communication.”
She touched in a number without hesitation. She knew the voice that answered. “Mom?” Tears stung.
“Oh, Gentry, I knew you’d remember. Your dad—”
“Please don’t let him worry.” But as she said it she realized how unlikely that was. Her parents paid lifetime tuition to the school of positive thinking.
“And Rob—he’s all right?”
“I’m not sure.” She didn’t want to pop their balloon, but Uncle Rob had looked far from all right.
“But they found him, and …”
“Yes.” She relived in a flash the moment Cameron had said, “I found him. He’s alive.” “They’ve taken him to the hospital, and I’m sure they’ll do everything they can. Mom, please don’t leave Dad. He’ll root out every bag of chips in the house.”
“You’re right.”
Her mother’s laugh sparked more tears, but she blinked them back. “I’ll stay with Uncle Rob. He’ll be fine. You know how tough he is.” And with another rush of memories, she did too. Uncle Rob!
From the time she could keep up, they’d escaped to the wilderness, rugged mountaineering in remote locations where it seemed that only the two of them had ever stood. Had he considered Kauai such a spot? And there she found the gap. She didn’t remember coming to the island, or taking the trail or anything that happened before she went over the falls. She stopped the sinking feeling in its tracks. She would remember.
“All right, then, if you’re sure you can handle it. Well, of course you can. Dad said you would.”
Right. Sure. She could do anything. “I love you both.”
She signed off and handed Cameron back his phone, relief and fear running neck and neck inside her. Ecstatic to have a past again, she nonetheless focused on the present. “I need to get to the hospital.”
Cameron set down his bowl of squid and pocketed his phone. “You want to face it?”
“I want to be with my uncle.”
He looked at TJ. “They know your truck?”
TJ shrugged. “Probly. Though I wen drive like one NASCAR racer.”
“Lucky you nevah get one ticket.”
“Why I’m one cop.”
Cameron set his dish in the sink and turned to his sister. “Still got press hanging around the house?”
“I don’t know.”
Press at Nica’s? Gentry slumped. “If they’ve staked it out, they’re still there.” And now she found another hole. Her experience with the press. So how did she know what she’d said was true? From a bad feeling with no specifics? Her memory was Swiss cheese, as intact as if it had never been gone, except for the holes as blank as air bubbles.
Cameron raised Nica to her feet. “You and TJ drive around and engage them. I’ll sneak up the path and get my truck.”
He would take her, with all his doubts and suspicions? Or did he deign to believe her? It didn’t matter. Anything that got her to her uncle.
He bent and kissed Okelani’s cheek. “Thanks for dinner.”
The Hawaiian woman patted his bearded jaw. “Special for your return, Kai.”
“My return wasn’t certain. That squid could have been wasted on TJ.” He jabbed his thumb at the big Hawaiian.
She tapped her heart, her face warm with affection. “I wen know you be here.”
He kissed her again. “Keep Gentry till I get back.”
Strange, hearing her real name from him, from the others. As the screen banged shut behind them, she was left alone with Okelani, who seemed too competent, too aware, to be blind. “Nica told me you helped her that first night I came. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Okelani sat down across from her. “You like da kine squid?”
From the moment it had been mentioned, she’d tried not to think what she’d just eaten, but in truth it had been tasty. She nodded. “What was the chopped green?”
“Taro leaf. Healthy. Keep you nani kōkī.”
“Nani …”
“Supremely beautiful.” Okelani smiled.
She couldn’t be talking about her personally, because she couldn’t see one way or the other. Or could she?
“Da beauty come from inside. One mā ‘ona ‘ōpū, filled-up stomach, bring a peaceful spirit. Da woman’s hina power, like one sun leaning down, da sunset.”
Gentry smiled at the imagery. A fat, filled-up sun leaning toward the horizon. “And the sunrise?”
“Ku. Man stay da morning and hot noon.”
Yes, she could see that, a different sort of energy.
“Ke Akua, he make ’em for complement, strong and beautiful.” Okelani exemplified her lesson, her supple beauty potent in spite of gray hair and poor teeth. In spite of eyes clouded white.
She reached over, and Gentry felt heat from her fingertips before they touched her forehead. But the tips were cool when they rested just above and between her eyebrows. They sat in that strange position a long time, yet it didn’t feel awkward.
“Your hina strong. Fruitful. Ke Akua bless you.” Okelani removed her fingers and shook her head. “My Kai, all close up, all cloud cover da sun.”
“You mean Cameron?”
Okelani sighed. “His wife squeeze da heart till it wen shrivel like one lousy guava, all seed and no juice.”
His wife? Gentry straightened. And she’d been out alone with him for two days, overnight. Just perfect. She knew without knowing it was the kind of thing the press would jump on. Why? What would anyone care? But a dark shadow rose up inside, nothing more—once again—than a feeling, yet there must be something behind such a negative impression.
She turned at the sound of a truck outside the front screen door. She had the unreasonable desire to run out the back, but she stood up, thanked Okelani again, and headed for the truck. Her legs had no more running in them.
THIRTEEN
Cameron let Gentr y into the truck, noting her exhaustion. He guessed she knew what she could handle—or at least believed she could handle whatever she had to. If she had to walk the gauntlet to get to her uncle, she’d do it. At least now she knew what she was in for—which was more than he could say.
He could have let the emergency personnel convey her at once, or had TJ provide a police escort. Instead he’d assumed responsibility. She hadn’t asked for his help before and didn’t ask now. The urge was his, like a toothache he couldn’t ignore.
It had sent him into the mountains when she would have gone after her uncle alone. She might even have found him. Then what? She’d have had no phone, no way to get him out of the cave or off the mountain. Had she thought of that?
No. As in the pool beneath the falls, she just jumped in. And there he was jumping in behind her. Was it some subliminal manipulation? Was he chronically exploitable? Or was it his own need to get at the heart of the matter, to make sense of things that had no sense—was it him trying once more to order a universe spun out of control?
He reversed down the track from Okelani’s cottage to the road, spun, and started for the hospital in Lihue. Traffic after dark on the Kuhio Highway would be minimal. Except for the handful he’d outmaneuvered at Nica’s, the press were probably at the hospital, knowing that sooner or later she would show up.
Her uncle’s rescue would have been news, but Gentry made it big news. The numbers of reporters would be greater and the boundaries lower for the mob awaiting them. Celebs were fair game and couldn’t expect the privacy of a tourist or local. She must know that. But he couldn’t shake the look on her face or the tone in her voice when she’d described the scene they were going into. And that was why she was in his truck and no one else’s.
He glanced over. “You okay?”
She nodded and turned back toward the window.
On the mountain they’d experienced cooperation, companionship. More than that if he was honest. They’d formed a bond of hardship and endeavor. Then he’d offended her. He swallowed. “Gentry.” The name felt wrong. He wanted to backtrack to Jade, to the forest, the cave. He wanted to take back what he’d said. “I made an assumption.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
True enough, but he couldn’t leave it at that. “I shouldn’t have said it. Even if—It wasn’t my business.”
She turned. “Are you apologizing?”
“Pretty poorly.”
“I forgive you.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“Dat one, da kine, chilly pardon.”
She leaned her shoulder to the door and eyed him. “I thought you’d stopped.”
“Stopped what?”
“Suspecting me.”
Had his assumption been rooted in doubt and distrust? “Well, suspecting … it’s what I do.” Their gazes locked long enough for her to transmit disappointment, and for a moment he shared it. He had his reasons, but that wasn’t something he intended to discuss.
Turning in at the hospital, he viewed her nightmare. Cars and vans choked the lot, reporters standing ready, cameras on shoulders, lights and microphones, the press en masse with eager fans intermixed. A handicapped spot was all he could find.
Gentry brought her hand up to the side of her face and said, “You can go.”
“Not likely.”
“I appreciate what you’ve done, Cameron, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and it’s not going to help that I spent the night in the jungle with a married man.”
He jerked. “Married?”
“Okelani told me.” She frowned. “It wouldn’t be any big deal; nothing happened. But things get twisted.”
His throat felt like paste. Okelani had no business bringing that up. It had no bearing on this or any other situation. “You can cross that off your list of concerns. I’m not married.” With a bitter taste in his mouth, he got out of his truck. She’d given him the chance to walk away. Why hadn’t he taken it? Because she had gotten under his skin, and he wasn’t finished, even if he wanted to be.
He could blame it on Nica’s phone call, dragging him into the mix. But everything since then had been his choice. Or had it? Maybe they were all molecules on a crash course, bouncing against each other with no pattern and no control, every choice a random act of futility.
He would get her inside, then make his escape. Someone else could pick up the slack. He didn’t have to be the one. Who was she anyway?
He rounded the hood as Gentry Fox emerged. Transformed from the woman in Nica’s kitchen to a magnetic presence that drew every eye, she stepped out. She had not even run a comb through her hair, yet the strength and courage she’d pored into her performance as Rachel Bach, the vulnerable but indomitable spirit, could not be mistaken. Every stupid thought he’d just had coalesced into a fist that caught him low and hard.
People started squealing. The reporters pushed in close, shooting questions from all sides. “Look here, Gentry. Over here.” A flash and more flashes.
“How did you lose your memory? Do you know who you are? What happened? Tell us what happened.”
“I don’t remember.” She moved toward the entrance.
“Is it a closed-head injury? Is it permanent?”
“The doctor says I’ll recover.” She could barely move. “I’m sorry but I need to get in to my uncle.”
“Why did you leave him out there?” From a woman on her right. Gentry turned. “I didn’t remember.”
Someone else jumped on. “How long have you known? Why didn’t you get help?”
“I tried, but…” None of them had seen how hard she’d tried once she knew.
He’d intended to stay out of it, but now clamped his arm around her shoulders and moved her through the microphones and flashing cameras. People shouted questions, but she followed his lead and kept walking.
A short man with a rash of moles darted in front of them and flashed his camera. “New lover, Gentry? One past puberty this time?”
She stopped. �
��What?”
Cameron shouldered the man aside as his own recall kicked in. Accusations of Gentry’s affair with a minor. All the tabloids had carried a version, complete with photos and the young man’s claims. No wonder she’d avoided publicity.
“What did he—”
“Keep walking.” Cameron pushed her along. If she didn’t remember, the parking lot was not the place to explain. He thought the claims had been discredited, but obviously the scandal lingered.
Questions shouted at them blurred. The reporters merged into a human jungle, a force to engage and defeat. He had vowed to avoid personal involvement, but he ignored that to aid Gentry once more. He didn’t ask himself why.
She was shaking by the time they got through the police stationed at the doors into the relative quiet of the lobby. He sensed her confusion. That last question had thrown her. But why?
An attractive Asian woman followed by a chunky security guard approached and offered to escort her. Again Cameron ignored the chance to escape. Gentry might not even know he was there, so tight was her focus. She had closed up like a Japanese puzzle box after the jerk accosted them, and he wasn’t sure how to unlock that rigid control. But she needed an ally, and he was in position.
He’d seen her determination. He’d also seen her shaking from the centipede, sobbing at her uncle’s side, stinging from his assumptions. He’d seen her unguarded—or had he?
She was Gentry Fox. Professional pretender. His doubts kicked in big time. Who was he fooling? She didn’t need him. And yet …
They entered a tiny room where her escort indicated they could wait. “We’ll try to keep them away, Ms. Fox. No guarantees. The doctor will come see you when your uncle is moved to recovery.”
Gentry’s face paled. “He’s in surgery already?”
“He gave consent in the ambulance and was prepped on arrival.”
“Then, he was conscious.”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t have any details. Sorry.”
Gentry sank into a chair. “Thank you.”
“Coffee and soda machines down the hall.” The woman pointed in their direction. “Mr. Pierce can go out for it. Adam will watch the door.” The guard nodded, and they both walked out.
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