by Кей Хупер
He shook his head. "Dinah and I didn't meet until about seven months ago. I know a lot about her, but certainly not everything. And if you were in any way connected with her work, I'd be even less likely to know about you."
Bishop said quietly, "Were you connected with her work?"
"From what I gathered from news reports, she's a journalist?"
"Right."
"Then I don't see how. According to the pay stubs I found in my apartment," she said wryly, "I worked for the city. I called and spoke to my supervisor. Apparently, I was a small cog in a very big wheel. I did routine office work."
"Which office?" Kane asked.
"Building Inspections and Zoning." She grimaced. "About which I know nothing. Or at least nothing I remember. My job involved typing and filing." She considered for a moment. "I think I know how to type."
There was something forlorn in her voice, and Kane acted instinctively.He reached over and covered her tightly clasped hands with one of his own.
"The doctor said your memory will eventually come back to you, Faith. You have to believe that."
She looked down at his hand, her eyes wide; and Bishop, watching her, was reminded of a deer frozen in a car's headlights, paralyzed and unable to save itself from certain death.
In a constricted voice, she said, "Something has been coming to me, but... not my memories. I thought they were at first, but now I see they weren't mine at all."
Kane released her hands and leaned back, frowning. "What do you mean?"
"They started when I was still in the hospital. just dreams, but maybe memories too, I thought. Dreams like ... like little vignettes, brief scenes of someone's life."
"Whose life?" Kane asked slowly.
She drew a breath. "Yours. And... and Dinah's."
Out of the coma.
Christ. From everything he'd been able to find out, that was the last thing he'd expected, that she'd wake up. Ever.
He paced for a few minutes, then went to the phone and called a familiar number. Barely waiting for the answer at the other end, he said, "Faith Parker is out of the hospital."
"What?"
"You heard me."
There was a long silence, and then, "It doesn't have to change anything. Even if she remembers what happened before the accident, the drug would've scrambled everything, left her confused at the very least and possibly psychotic."
"After so many weeks?"
"Look, don't panic, all right?"
"Dammit, I told you we shouldn't have stopped looking. I told you we needed to find it..."
"I said don't panic. The first thing we have to do is find out if she's even a threat."
"And if she is?"
"Then we'll take care of it."
"You dreamed about us?" Faith winced at the disbelief in Kane's voice.
"Oh, I know it sounds absurd. I've told myself that. But the dreams were too vivid, too real, to be something my own imagination conjured up. I think..." She swallowed hard. "The only answer I can think of is that somehow, in some way I can't explain and don't understand, I've ... tapped in to Dinah's memories."
Coolly matter-of-fact, Bishop said, "How is that possible?"
"I don't know. Maybe I was psychic before the accident." Her hands lifted and fell in a brief, helpless gesture. "Or maybe I am now because of the accident. I went to the library yesterday and looked up coma. According to what I read, a few people have come out of comas demonstrating unusual abilities — especially if there was a head injury involved."
She reached up and pushed her hair off her forehead, showing them a small square of adhesive bandage.
Kane remained silent, staring at her. It was Bishop who spoke.
"It's easy enough to claim you've ... dreamed something. How do we know you really have?"
She bit her lip again. "I don't know how to convince you. What I dreamed were ordinary little scenes. Things anyone could guess would happen between two people. Fixing meals together. Driving in a car."
She blushed suddenly and looked down. "Taking a shower together."
"Any birthmarks or distinguishing features?" Bishop asked dryly.
"He has a small scar low down on his left side. It... it's shaped like a triangle," Faith replied, almost in audibly.
Bishop looked at Kane with lifted brows. "Do you?"
Kane nodded slowly. "I was thrown from a horse a few years ago and landed on a pile of rusty tin pieces torn off an old barn. Took a chunk out of me."
Reflectively, Bishop said, "I suppose someone else could have known about it?"
"My doctor. A few women. Dinah."
Still flushed, Faith said to Kane, "I dreamed about the two of you at a beach house somewhere. It has a screened — in porch with a funny-shaped chair, like something from the sixties. It sticks out from all the wicker furniture out there. The house has a fireplace and a spa tub. Lots of books on built-in shelves. And at the end of the walkway to the beach, there's a flag that says, "Just one more day, please!" The house is sort of isolated, with dunes all around it."
Again Bishop looked at Kane questioningly.
Kane met his friend's gaze. "All correct. The house has never been photographed, and we never had guests there. It was redecorated a couple of months before Dinah disappeared, the porch screened in, the fireplace installed. She had the flag made our last trip out. It was a joke between us, because we always wanted just one more day there."
Faith looked back and forth between the two men and said, "Maybe I'm psychic. Does that make sense?"
Still looking at Bishop, Kane said, "You can't tell?
"No"
"Why not?"
Bishop shrugged. "Maybe because of the lack of identity. The lack of self. That sort of emptiness throws up its own barriers. And she's panicked by the memory loss. Trying to protect herself from to anything else that's probably blocking me as well. Completely reasonable on her part, but not very helpful."
"I don't understand," Faith said.
"Noah has a knack," Kane explained. "He calls it a bullshit detector. I call it something more."
Before Faith could ask for more clarification, Kane addressed his friend again, and she forgot all about Bishop's knack.
"It has to be Dinah," Kane said, his voice tight.
"We can't know that," Bishop insisted. "It could just as easily be Faith. People have come out of comas with new and inexplicable abilities."
"Maybe, but we know Dinah is psychic."
"We know." Bishop's voice was patient and careful, the tone of a man unwilling to assume anything or to raise false hopes. "But her abilities worked a different way, Kane. She wasn't a telepath, wasn't able to touch someone else's mind. She was precognitive, able to ... tune in to future events, to predict the turn of a card or the throw of dice. And it wasn't something she could control with any reliability. Maybe she could tell you the phone was about to ring, even who was calling, but she couldn't project memories into someone else's mind. Even the strongest psychic would find that virtually impossible."
"If she were desperate enough, she might be able to. If it mattered, if it meant the difference between life and... and death. She'd find a way, Noah. Dinah would find a way."
"It isn't that simple. Psychic ability has its own kind of rules, Kane. And a seer doesn't become a telepath. Not one psychic in a thousand has dual abilities."
Listening in fascination, Faith began to understand just what Bishop's "bullshit detector" was.
Kane said, "So tell me where Faith's memories are coming from. Either Dinah is sending them, or Faith is somehow tapping in to them. No matter which way you look at it, it means Dinah's alive, Noah. Alive."
His voice was exultant.
At that moment, Faith realized that deep down inside himself, Kane had believed Dinah was dead — and hated himself for giving up hope.
There was a brief silence, and then, with obvious reluctance, Bishop said, "Dinah visited Faith in the hospital a dozen times. Sat by her bed, read to her,
talked to her for hours. We can't deny the possibility that she talked about her past with enough detail to plant those images in Faith's mind, even though she was unconscious."
"But..."
"Kane. It's possible... Dinah is somehow able to transmit images to Faith. It's possible Faith came out of the coma with psychic ability, and that, combined with their friendship, is enabling her to reach out to Dinah telepathically. But the most likely explanation is that Faith's subconscious retained everything Dinah said to her with unusual vividness and in remarkable detail."
Kane shook his head and opened his mouth to dispute, deny, refuse to believe — but then Bishop cut in, speaking very softly.
"Past, Kane. All those scenes are from the past. if Dinah was in direct communication with Faith, don't you think she'd be trying to tell us where she is?"
His shoulders slumped, but Kane struggled to hold on to the newfound hope. "Dinah wouldn't have told her about the scar, dammit. How could she know that?"
"It's possible that happened in the hospital. Trying to wake up, and with psychic ability she perhaps didn't know she had, Faith could have reached out telepathically and touched Dinah's mind. She could have gotten all the details and images that way. It's possible."
"Possible," Kane said savagely. "Everything is possible except that Dinah is still alive. Is that what you're telling me?"
"I'm telling you we can't take anything at face value." And then, even softer, "Goddammit, Kane, don't you think I want her to be alive too?"
Faith, watching them in silence, realized with a stab of loneliness and envy that Dinah Leighton must have been a remarkable woman to inspire such strong emotions in these men.
She didn't want to intrude on so naked a moment but was agonizingly aware that she had to.
"There's ... something else," she said as steadily as she could.
Kane turned his head slowly, as if the effort took nearly everything he had. His face was white, his eyes dark. "What?"
She didn't flinch from the harsh question, but her voice began to shake.
"It's ... what made me come looking for you. I fell asleep late this afternoon, and I... I had another dream. Only you weren't in this one. But Dinah was. I'm not sure, but I think it was a basement ... or maybe a warehouse. Walls made of cement blocks, and they looked old, damp. It was cold."
Bishop said, "What was happening?"
Faith shivered; she really didn't want to say what she had to say.
"Dinah was in a chair, I think tied to it somehow. She could barely move. There was more than one person in the room with her, she knew that. Somebody was watching, silently, from the shadows or just out of her sight. And somebody else, a man, was asking her questions, over and over. I didn't see his face and I don't remember what the questions were. I've tried, but... but it's like there was a roaring in my ears and I couldn't hear him clearly. Maybe she couldn't either, I don't know. All I know is that he... he hit her. Again and again."
As though her hand were on him, she could feel Kane tense, all his muscles knotting in a blind, instinctive response, and her voice shook even harder as she finished. "Then everything went black ... and I woke up."
Bishop drew a breath. "You're saying she is, or was, being tortured?"
"I think so. No. I'm sure. It was too real, too hot — terribly vivid, to be anything but the truth. They ... want her to tell them something, and whatever it is, she won't tell them." Faith swallowed hard. "And it's gone on a long time. The questions. The ... punishment. I could feel how exhausted she was. And her pain ... She's hurting so terribly ..." Kane was staring at her with the expression of a man dealt a mortal blow, and she found it easier at that moment to meet Bishop's clearer — if slightly less human-gaze.
"That entire scene, he said, "could have come from some movie or book."
Faith shook her head. "It didn't. You don't understand. I wasn't observing. I was there. I was Dinah, was inside her body, her mind and spirit. I felt her pain and her fear and — and her determination." She lifted her chin and met Bishop's eyes. "There's something I'm absolutely sure of. Dinah won't tell them what they want to know because she's protecting somebody, or believes she is. It's more important to her than her own life."
"And this is happening now?"
Her certainty wavered. "I... I'm not sure. There was no way to tell."
"A basement, maybe a warehouse. But you have no idea where?"
"No, I didn't see anything but that room. And if Dinah knew where she was, it wasn't something she was thinking about or feeling." She paused, then said desperately, "I want to help her. You have to believe me about that. I have to try to help Dinah."
"Why?" Bishop's voice was flat.
Faith felt the burning of tears but refused to shed them before these men. She drew a steadying breath.
"Because she's my friend. Because she did everything in her power to make sure I could get my life back on track when I woke up. And because ... she's all I have."
"I suppose," he said, watching her, "that's a good reason to want to help find her. And maybe gratitude as well. After all, she did settle half a million dollars on you."
Faith shook her head. "Not half a million directly to me. The trust fund she set up is worth a little more than two hundred thousand dollars, according to the lawyer. And there was a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit directly into my checking account. But she arranged to pay my current debts and the hospital bill, and I have no idea how much that was altogether."
"You didn't have insurance?"
"Liability on the car, according to the paperwork I found. But no health insurance. I gather I had changed jobs recently, and the new coverage hadn't begun yet."
"Six weeks in a coma," Bishop mused. "Another three weeks of care and physical therapy. In a good hospital. I'd say that could easily run a quarter million, maybe more."
"One of the things I want to ask her," Faith said, "is why. I don't understand why she would do such a thing."
Kane stirred and spoke, his voice raspy. "Because she felt guilty."
"About what? The accident? They told me it was only my car and my fault. No one else was involved. So why would she feel guilty about that?"
Faith was relieved to see that he had regained a bit of color and that he no longer looked so stunned.
"We were wondering the same thing," he told her.
Bishop said, "What caused the accident?"
She tried and failed to smile. "The doctor said it was ... a few drinks on top of a prescription muscle relaxant. He said the combination was toxic and that I don't handle alcohol very well."
"Why were you prescribed muscle relaxants?" Kane asked, making a visible effort to be methodical.
"I don't remember. Obviously."
He frowned. "You didn't have the prescription bottle with you?"
Her purse had been with her other things at the hospital. It had contained the usual items — a billfold, a checkbook, a small, unused spiral-ringed notebook, a couple of pens, and a compact and lipstick.
No prescription bottle of any kind. And there wasn't one in the apartment.
Slowly, she said, "Maybe the police took it as evidence."
Kane was still frowning. "Alcohol. That isn't right. Dinah said you were on your way to meet her for drinks after work. But you never made it. And you'd come straight from work — that's what she said."
"So," Bishop said, "unless you make it a habit to keep a bottle at work in a desk drawer."
She blinked. "I doubt it. There's no alcohol of any kind in my apartment."
Kane saw her swallow convulsively, and when her eyes fixed on his face, there was fear in them.
"What?" he demanded.
"Somebody broke into my apartment." She spoke very carefully now. "The funny thing is, nothing was stolen. Not that I have any way of knowing for sure, but the police said the usual things weren't taken. The place was turned upside down, though. Drawers emptied, things tossed about."
"It sounds like a search,
" Bishop said.
"When did this happen?" Kane asked.
"I'm not sure. I mean, it was discovered early in the week when the lawyer arranged to have a cleaning service come in and get the apartment ready for me."
"When could it have happened?" Bishop asked.
"Was anyone else in your apartment between the time of your accident and when the cleaning service discovered the break-in?"
Faith thought about it, reaching up to rub her forehead as though fretful. "I don't think so. Except Dinah."
"Dinah was there?"
"Her lawyer mentioned it. He said she had gone through my desk at home to find out what bills I had so they could be paid. That must have been just after the accident." She was about to mention the missing laptop, but Kane was speaking and her wavering concentration lost the thought.
"So we have a span of weeks." Kane looked at Bishop. "Great."
Bishop's mind was on something else. "The apartment was searched after Dinah went there to go through your desk." His pale gaze was intent on her face. "And just a few weeks later, Dinah disappeared."
Faith tried to make her mind focus on what he meant. "Are you saying that Dinah might have disappeared because someone thought she found something at my place? Something she wasn't supposed to find?"
"Maybe." He turned to Kane. "Maybe we've gone about this the wrong way. Maybe there was no direct threat to Dinah, no story someone wanted stopped before she could write it. Maybe it isn't her past we should be looking into."
"But mine," Faith said shakily.
Kane realized suddenly that she was exhausted. It showed in her eyes, darkened with strain, and in the shadows beneath them. She was trying to sit up straight, but her shoulders kept slumping, and her skin was ashen. He was sure that if her hands hadn't been clenched together in her lap, they would have been shaking uncontrollably.
"You need to get some rest," he said.
Apologetic, she said, "I haven't quite got my strength back yet. It hits me all at once and ... and then I just need to sleep. I'm sorry."
