Identity_Unknown

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Bobby had ended up lucky, in the company of a beautiful woman for dinner, while Lucky had wound up alone in a urine-scented bus station.

  Lucky would have assumed the odds of that ever happening were impossibly low.

  Kind of like the odds of Admiral Robinson’s top covert operative selling out his country by selling stolen plutonium to the highest bidder.

  God, what if it was true? What if Mitch Shaw had turned?

  Chapter 6

  Mish sat on the porch of his cabin, waiting for the sun to set.

  He’d slept fitfully all day, his dreams haunted by violence. He’d awakened countless times, his heart pounding and his side throbbing. He sat quietly now and tried to pull apart the visions into his past that his subconscious had belched up, like malodorous bubbles from a tar pit. Because dreams, although sometimes imagined events, were often based on things the dreamer had seen or done, weren’t they?

  There had been a man in religious robes, standing bravely in front of a group of men with assault weapons. Terrorists. It had happened in a heartbeat. One of them had raised his side arm and fired a double burst into the man’s head. And as Mish had watched, helpless as a child, so filled with fear and horror that he didn’t even dare to cry out, the man had slumped, a lifeless rag, to the floor.

  The image still made him feel sick.

  He’d dreamed of gazing through a sniper scope, dreamed of sighting a target and squeezing the trigger. He’d dreamed of more personal violence as well. Hand-to-hand combat, a martial-arts free-for-all with the only rule being survival.

  And he’d dreamed of a woman—his mother? It was hard to say; her face was turned away, and it kept changing. She sat, her head bowed in grief, weeping. When she did look up at him, her tear-bruised eyes silently accusing, he realized she was Becca, and he sat up, instantly awake.

  It didn’t take much to figure that dream out. He was trouble. He’d always been trouble, and the only thing he could bring Becca was pain.

  A party of riders approached, heading out for a late-afternoon trail ride. Becca led the way, giving him no more than a brief glance, lifting a hand in a vague greeting as she passed.

  True to her word, she’d kept her distance all day—except for that one brief appearance in his dreams.

  Hazel had brought him both breakfast and lunch on a tray.

  Dinner was going to be served in just an hour, but Becca would be out on the ride for most of that time. Mish could go sit with the guests and…

  He didn’t want to sit with anyone. He didn’t want to do anything except get into the ranch office and look at that personnel file. He needed to find out his former address, and then he had to go there—wherever “there” was—to see if anything was familiar to him.

  Frustratingly, the package that had come in the mail yesterday had held no answers—only more questions. It had contained only a key.

  It was a bank key—the kind that unlocked a safe-deposit box. But there were no markings on it, no note stuck in with it, nothing. It could have belonged to any of hundreds of safe-deposit boxes in any thousands of banks in New Mexico. Or the world. Why keep it only to New Mexico? This key could well have come from anywhere.

  It was driving him mad, his complete lack of a past.

  Mish had spent some time today gritting his teeth and trying to force himself to remember. Who was he? What was he? But the answers continued to elude him.

  All he knew for absolute certain was this relentless sense of unease. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t talk about why he was here. Don’t reveal his weaknesses…

  The sound of Becca’s laughter drifted back to him through the lengthening shadows, and he had to wonder—not for the first time—if maybe, just maybe he’d be better off not knowing.

  “Oh, my God, what are you doing in here?” Becca jumped back from the office screen door when she realized someone—Mish—was inside. She grabbed hold of the porch railing to keep herself from falling backwards down the stairs.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Mish stepped outside. “I was…” He cleared his throat. “I was actually looking for you.”

  She stared at him. “In the dark?”

  “Well, no,” he said mildly. “Of course not. There was a light on in the back. I knocked, but no one answered, so I went in.”

  Becca moved past him, trying not to notice how good he looked standing there in the soft moonlight, wearing the red shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Her heart was pounding, but only because he’d startled her. She refused to let it be for any other reason.

  “The door was unlocked?” she asked. Inside, she turned on the lights. All of the overhead lights, not just the pleasantly dim one on her desk.

  Mish squinted slightly in the glare as he followed her. “I had no problem getting in.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Hazel. This door needs to be locked at night.” She shuffled through the papers on her desk, aware that he was standing there watching her, aware that she was wearing her bathing suit under a very short pair of cutoffs, aware that she had virtually thrown herself at him and he had pushed her away.

  But he’d just said that he’d come there looking for her. She glanced over at him. “So what’s up?”

  He had the kind of dark hair and complexion that had helped coin the phrase “five o’clock shadow.” It was now after eight, and he had stubble worthy of the cover of GQ magazine. He rubbed his chin in a spot where he had a small white scar as he shrugged. “I just, um…I don’t know, really. I was feeling a little better, and I wanted to…” He shrugged again.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You look…” Delicious. “As if you’re…feeling better.” Oh, God, why didn’t she just go over and drool on his boots?

  “I’ll definitely be back before the week’s out,” he told her. “Helping in the barn, I mean.”

  “What are you, nuts?”

  He smiled. It was ludicrous. When he smiled he was even more good-looking. “No, just…bored.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Bored.” Becca found what she was looking for—tomorrow’s sign-up sheet for the tennis court—and she breezed past him toward the door. She held it open and gazed at him pointedly. He got the message and went out. She flicked off the lights, and shut the door behind her, making sure it was securely locked. “Is that why you came looking for me? Because you were bored?”

  “Oh, Lord,” he said. “No. Absolutely not. I just…I…”

  “Forget it.” Becca was embarrassed for herself all over again. And angry at herself, as well. She’d practically invited him to kiss her yesterday, and then when he had, she’d stupidly assumed that he’d been as affected by those kisses as she was. They had been nuclear-powered kisses, kisses that completely bulldozed over any of her doubts about bad timing. Hey, for the promise of more kisses like that, she would have invented a whole new calendar. It had been well over twenty-four hours since his lips had last touched hers, and her knees were still weak.

  Yet Mish had said no thanks and walked away. It was a new twist on an old story—a man who was in such a hurry to leave he didn’t even bother to start the love affair first.

  But right now he was blocking her path. “I was just thinking that even though the timing’s bad…” He couldn’t quite hold her gaze. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It feels kind of like playing with C-4…” He broke off, shaking his head slightly. “I mean, like playing with explosives,” he continued. “But…”

  “You want to go get a drink?” she asked him. “Or are you thinking we should skip the formalities and just go straight to bed?”

  Oops, her anger was showing. But at least she’d managed to get him to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me, and uncalled-for, and—”

  “This was a really bad idea,” he said quietly. “You’re still upset with me, and you have every right to be. I’m really sorry.” He turned to leave, and this time she blocked his path.

  She knew he would eventually
leave. Call it whatever you like, self-sabotage, a built-in defense mechanism, lowered expectations, whatever, but she simply didn’t hook up with guys who were viable candidates for anything long-term. She knew that about herself. She was okay with Mish leaving. In fact, she was practically planning for it to happen.

  That was because she was a realist. That was because she faced the truth and was honest with herself.

  But there was a very, very small fragment of time in every relationship, right at the very start, where magic could conceivably happen. There was a small moment, maybe an hour or a day or maybe even as long as a week, where hope reigned, and possibilities seemed as limitless and wide as the vast New Mexico sky.

  And during that moment, happily-ever-after didn’t seem as much like a myth. And true love didn’t sound quite so much like some con artist’s clever lie.

  Becca knew, she knew, that Casey “Mission Man” Parker’s vocabulary didn’t contain the word forever. But when she’d looked into his eyes as he’d slowly lowered his mouth to hers, something had shifted, and in that instant she’d been filled with enough hope to cloud her 20/20 vision.

  She could have squeezed an entire month of hope out of just one kiss.

  “How can you just ignore this?” she asked, gesturing between them. Once again she was throwing herself in front of the rejection train, heaven help her. But she had to know. “How can you walk away from something that has such incredible promise?”

  He smiled, a beautiful, regretful, slightly crooked smile. “Well, that’s just it. For someone who’s walking away, I seem to be back where I started, don’t I?”

  “So where on earth did you learn to swim like that?”

  Mish looked down into his glass of beer. He drank imported Canadian beer, he’d somehow known that without really having to think about it. The light from the pool area lit the amber liquid in a way that was completely familiar. Yes, he’d sat in the shadows and stared into many a glass of imported beer and—he tried to make it completely effortless—he’d learned to swim back when he’d…

  Nothing. Nothing came.

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “I’ve been able to swim since before I can remember.”

  He had to toss the focus back to Becca, but gently. He was treading a conversational tightrope here. If he asked her the obvious questions about herself—where are you from, how long have you worked here—she’d take that as an invitation to simply turn around and throw similar questions back at him.

  He didn’t want to lie to her, didn’t want to make up a fictional past. Yet at the same time, he knew he couldn’t tell anyone about his amnesia. Not even Becca with her beautiful eyes.

  “I bet you can’t remember the first time you rode a horse,” he said.

  She smiled, and he was glad she’d caught him breaking in to the ranch office. If she’d come along two minutes later, he’d have slipped out undetected, and he’d be sitting alone in his cabin, frustrated by the lack of information in his personnel file.

  That file had contained a previous address and a phone number in Albuquerque. There was a fax number jotted on the margin that had a Wyatt City exchange. Other than that, his so-called file was absurdly thin. Still, an address and phone number was more than he’d had to go on an hour ago.

  And, unlike an hour ago, he was no longer sitting in his cabin, alone.

  “Actually,” Becca said, “I can remember in complete detail the first time I rode a horse. I was ten, and it was May. It was warm for New York—I can still feel the sun on my face.”

  She closed her eyes, lifting her face slightly, as if toward the sun, and just like that, everything Mish was feeling flip-flopped. This was a mistake. Yes, he enjoyed Becca’s company. He enjoyed it too much.

  He knew he should stand up, plead sudden intense fatigue—which would go over better than insanity—and walk, very, very quickly, back to cabin 12.

  Alone.

  What was he doing, sitting here this way? Letting himself dream about kissing the graceful length of her neck? Letting himself imagine burying his face in the soft, sweet-smelling cloud of her hair? Letting himself remember how it had felt to kiss her, the giddy, breathless sensation of her mouth and body pressed against him? Letting himself fantasize about waking up early, in bed next to her, and watching her sleep?

  He was a killer.

  Okay, maybe he didn’t know that with absolute certainty, but he was pretty close to positive. He’d certainly spent some time in jail—and if he had to guess what for, the carnage that splattered his dreams provided a heavy-duty hint.

  “I sat there in a saddle for the first time,” Becca continued, opening her eyes and giving him a smile that would have melted a glacier, “with all this power and grace beneath me. I was so awed, so completely overwhelmed, I nearly cried. The horse was a mare named Teacup, and she must’ve encountered a dozen little girls just like me every day. She was patient and dignified, and whenever she looked back at me, she seemed to smile. And I fell completely in love. From that moment on, my goal in life was to spend as much time riding as I possibly could. Which wasn’t easy, considering I lived in New York.”

  He couldn’t keep himself from asking. “In the city itself?”

  “No, about forty-five minutes north of Manhattan. Mount Kisco.” She paused, and he braced himself. Here it came. “How about you? Where are you from?”

  He’d actually prepared for this one. “I never know what to say when people ask me that,” he told her. “I’ve lived in a lot of different places. I’m not really sure which one I’d call home.”

  Thankfully, she didn’t seem to think his evasive answer was odd, and he turned the focus back on her. “But I don’t think I’ve ever been to Mount Kisco, New York. It’s hard to imagine a town with riding stables and horses only a few minutes north of New York City.”

  “The really good stables were in Bedford,” she told him. “I used to ride my bike ten miles…” She laughed.

  “So I could work in the stables for free. In exchange for riding time, you know? Funny, I still work for close to nothing, only these days I don’t have a lot of extra time to ride.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course, when Whitlow gets back and fires me, I’ll have a lot of free time, but nowhere to stable Silver.”

  “Silver’s your horse?”

  Becca nodded. “Yeah. This summer we’re celebrating our seventh anniversary.”

  “Silver,” he said. “Named after…?”

  “Yes, the Lone Ranger’s horse. Hi, ho Silver, away. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking—not very original. But I didn’t name him. And I didn’t geld him, either. He was already cut when I bought him.”

  She laughed then. “That’s one way to identify a man who’s a greenhorn,” she continued. “Talk about geldings. He’ll wince every time.”

  Mish laughed self-consciously. “Did I?”

  Her smile was so sincere and contagious. “Oh, yeah.”

  “It seems…so barbaric.”

  “Stallions can be pretty wild,” she told him. “And too much testosterone in one stable can create chaos. They fight, sometimes pretty viciously. And they get…shall we say amorous at the most inopportune moments. Like the time that the Mortensons—four kids under age eight—were staying here at the ranch. I swear, every time we turned around, Valiant had broken through his fence again and was mounting one of the mares.”

  How had this happened? They were sitting here talking about sex. True, it was only about horses having sex, but still…

  Mish cleared his throat and grabbed hold of the conversation with both hands. “You know, I just can’t believe Justin Whitlow would fire you.” He took another sip of cold beer. “This place can’t run itself. And from what Hazel’s told me, she’s not interested in your job.”

  Becca drew lines of moisture on the plastic table with the bottom of her glass. “I don’t blame her—the way things’ve been going, I’m not interested in my job.” She looked up at him. “I don’t suppose any of the places y
ou’ve worked recently were looking for a manager?”

  Mish forced himself not to shift in his seat. “Not that I know of, no.” He finished his beer, knowing that it was time for him to stand up and say good-night. He had to get out of here before her questions got more personal. Or before he did something completely idiotic, like hold her hand. If he held her hand, he would kiss her again. And if he kissed her again…

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She sighed, her chin resting dejectedly in her palm. “God, I despise the whole job-hunting, résumé thing. And the thought of going into a new position, in a new place, expending all that energy, hoping that this time it’ll be better or at least different, and then…” She sighed again. “It’s depressing. Finding out it’s all exactly the same. Same struggles, same old boss-induced problems.”

  “You need to work for yourself,” Mish told her. “Buy your own spread.”

  Becca laughed. “Yes, thank you very much, I should, but last time I looked, the millionaires weren’t exactly lining up with marriage proposals. And the bank’s not likely to give me a three-million-dollar mortgage with only a beat-up pickup truck as collateral.”

  He couldn’t seem to force himself to stand up. “Is that really what it would cost?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s so outside of the realm of possibility, I haven’t even checked to see if any local properties are for sale.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Why torture myself?” she challenged.

  “It’s only torture if you think in terms of what you don’t have. If you look at it as something to strive for, it’s a dream. And it’s amazing what people can achieve with just a little bit of hope and a dream.”

  She was looking at him the same way she had back in the barn, the same way she’d looked at him right before he’d kissed her in the office. Her eyes were soft and so impossibly warm.

  “What’s your dream, Mish?” she whispered.

  “Peace,” he said. He didn’t have to hesitate. “My dream is to find some peace.”