by Кей Хупер
"For God's sake, don't be sorry. You've been through hell, and it's understandable. Besides, you've told us things we didn't know before. And you may be able to help us find Dinah." Bishop looked at him but said nothing.
"I want to," she said again, then sighed. A shadow of fear crossed her face. "if... if you could call a cab for me ..."
Kane's hesitation was brief. "Look, I don't think it's a good idea for you to go back to your apartment, at least not tonight. Until we figure out what's going on, until we're sure that what happened to you and what happened to Dinah are unconnected, it's better you stay with us."
Color crept into her face. "I can't stay here."
"Of course you can." He kept his voice matter-of-fact. "There are two bedrooms. Noah's in one, you take mine. I'll bunk down in here." He grimaced.
"These days, I'm usually in here most of the night anyway. Might as well get a pillow and blanket and make it official."
She bit her lip in indecision, and Kane thought about how terrified she must be, so alone that even the face in her mirror was unfamiliar to her.
Gently, he said, "We'll take it one day at a time, okay? Tonight, you need to sleep, and I think you'll feel safer here than at your apartment. Tomorrow we'll start trying to figure out what's going on."
Bishop said nothing.
Faith finally nodded. "Thank you."
Kane showed her the way to his bedroom, made sure there were clean towels in the connecting bathroom. He invited her to use Dinah's toilet articles but found one of his own shirts for her to sleep in rather than anything of Dinah's; that was an intimacy he didn't think either of them was ready for.
When he returned to the living room, he found Bishop sitting just where they'd left him, his frowning gaze fixed on the spot where Faith had been sitting.
Silently, Kane fixed drinks for them both, then reclaimed his place on the couch. "Do you believe her?" he asked abruptly.
"I don't know. She could have told us what we wanted to hear."
"I didn't want to hear that Dinah's being hurt." Kane's voice was very steady.
"No. But we might have expected something of the sort, if we're honest about it. And it made for a dramatic telling, didn't it? Virtually guaranteed to create an emotional reaction."
"The details about the beach house—there's no way she could have found those out. Except from Dinah." Kane wasn't ready to give up.
"Or from you."
Kane frowned, then realized what his friend meant. "You mean she could have gotten them out of my mind as we were sitting here?"
"If she's psychic, maybe. just because she was able to block me doesn't necessarily mean she can't use her abilities at the same time."
"Another psychic rule?" Kane asked wryly.
"Something like that."
"Okay. I have to admit that's possible. But there has to be a connection between Faith and Dinah, and what happened to both of them. Maybe the threat was against Faith—maybe she was into something dangerous and Dinah just stumbled into the situation.
But Dinah clearly felt responsible for Faith's accident, Noah. She felt guilty enough about it to spend a hell of a lot of money trying to fix things for Faith." Playing devil's advocate, Bishop said, "But she apparently has a history of giving money to people in trouble. So how do we know her guilt was excessive? Maybe Faith merely represented ... one more wounded soul she was trying to help."
"Maybe. But whether Dinah's story got Faith hurt or something in Faith's life became dangerous to Dinah, the answer has to be there, between the two of them. Maybe she won't be able to tell us much, but there are things we can find out. The facts of her accident, for one. What happened to the prescription drug she was supposedly taking and did a doctor actually prescribe it? How did she have a couple of drinks in her just minutes after leaving her job and going to meet Dinah?"
Kane's face was hard with determination. "The police obviously chalked the crash up to a careless, intoxicated driver, so they wouldn't have checked out the details. We can do that. We can do a background check on Faith and find out as much as possible about who she is. We can find out if Faith and Dinah were actually friends, if anyone saw them together or knew about the friendship. We can find out what Faith's job involved, and whether it might have provided Dinah with information she was looking for, a story that might have gotten them both hurt. We can look for facts, Noah."
After a moment, Bishop said, "So you're convinced both Faith and Dinah were gotten out of the way because of a story Dinah was working on."
"It's possible, isn't it?"
"Yes. It's possible."
"Then we have a lead," Kane said, his voice sharp with anticipation.
"We have a lead," Bishop agreed.
CHAPTER 3
it was fairly early when Faith woke up, and she stared around the unfamiliar bedroom with absolutely no idea where she was. The panicked confusion was mercifully brief, but it left her feeling shaky. A feeling she was very familiar with.
That was a sensation. She took a shower, and it wasn't until she was drying her hair with a blow dryer that she realized she had known exactly where it was in the en closet, even though Kane hadn't shown her the night before.
Then, when she became conscious of her actions, the brush in her right hand suddenly felt clumsy and wrong, and she had to transfer it to her left.
"Left-handed," she murmured. "I'm left-handed."
She had been using her left hand consistently since waking up in the hospital. So why had she used her right that morning? It was probably one of the strange little glitches wrought by her coma, and she forced it from her mind. She got dressed, then made up the bed and neatened the room, leaving everything as she had found it. Finally, unable to postpone the moment any longer, she left the bedroom.
Kane was up. He was freshly shaved, his hair damp and his casual clothing unwrinkled. He was moving restlessly around the living room, and she doubted he had slept much if at all.
He paused near a lovely baby grand piano as soon as she appeared in the doorway, his awareness of her instant and his gaze sharp. "Good morning." His voice, a little abrupt, was softened by a quick smile.
"The coffee's hot, and everything's out on the counter. Fruit, bread, cereal. Help yourself."
"Thanks." Faith went into the kitchen and busied herself. She was too aware of him for her peace of mind, especially when he came to the other side of the work island to pick up his coffee cup.
"I hope you slept well," he offered conventionally.
Faith hesitated, then dropped a slice of bread into the toaster and said lightly, "I've slept a lot since coming out of the coma, but I've yet to sleep well. The doctors say it's natural and nothing to worry about."
"Bad dreams?"
"No, not that. just ... feelings. It's hard to let myself go, to trust sleep. I'm afraid I won't wake up, or that when I do, weeks or months will have passed. The doctors assure me that such a thing won't happen, but of course the fear isn't rational, and reassurances don't help much. So, because I'm so afraid of not waking up, I tend to wake up often during the night."
She didn't go on to describe the rushes of panic, the long minutes of calming herself down enough to sleep again.
"That must be hell," Kane said with sympathy.
"No wonder you..." When he broke off, Faith said, "Jump whenever anyone says boo? I Look like hell? Think I'm psychic? Or merely indulge in runaway paranoia?"
"I wasn't going to say anything like that." But instead of explaining, he changed the subject. "Noah and I have been talking, and we think the best thing is for you to stay here at least a few days. We need time to try to find some answers, and until we do that, we won't know if you might be as much danger as in Dinah. So we'll take you to your apartment today and you can pack a bag."
"I can't just take over your bedroom." I can't force myself into your life. I can't do that. I don't belong here. And you belong to Dinah. She concentrated on the tasks of spreading jelly on her toast and
not looking at him.
"I told you, I'm not using it much anyway. And I'd feel better if you stayed here for a while, Faith." He paused, then added, "Maybe that break-in at your apartment was just that, a random burglary. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it had something to do with Dinah and why she's missing. I think you can help me find her."
Faith's restless night had done nothing to settle her emotions or clarify the confusion in her mind, and frustration was obvious in her voice. "How? I can't even help myself. God knows I can't remember anything helpful."
"You might get your memory back, or at least some of it. In fact, you probably will."
"But will it be in time to help Dinah?" she murmured, more to herself than to him. Before he could reply, she asked restlessly, "Where's Bishop?"
"On the phone." Kane paused, then added deliberately, "Checking into your background."
That drew her eyes to his face, and she found him watching her intently.
"Oh. I guess he can do that, can't he."
It wasn't a question.
Kane's eyes narrowed suddenly. "Why do you say that? "
"He's with the FBI, isn't he?"
There was a moment of silence, then Kane said, "Neither of us mentioned that."
"You didn't?" Faith was startled, but quickly realized what the answer must be. "I suppose Dinah told me." She shook her head. "It happens like that — right out of the blue, I just know things I can't explain knowing. Either my memories are popping up here and there, or Dinah's are. And since I never met you or Bishop before last night ..." She returned her attention to her breakfast, unwilling to see disbelief or suspicion in his expression.
But Kane's voice was neutral when he said, "Do you mind that he's checking into your background?"
Faith took the time to chew a bite of toast, then shook her head. "Why should I mind? Maybe he can even find out enough to answer a few of my questions."
"Such as?"
"Such as ... why there are no photographs in my apartment and almost no evidence of my past."
"Some people don't like clutter. Even the clutter of ... visible memories. Maybe it's only that."
"Wouldn't that be ironic," she said. "If I'd kept out of my life the one thing that might help me remember my life."
She drew a breath and looked at him steadily. "I'm twenty-eight years old, and there should be evidence of that life. Signs that... that I lived those years. Photographs. A high school yearbook. A sweater my mother knit for me. But there's nothing like that there. It's as if I came from nowhere eighteen months ago when I moved into that apartment."
"Everybody comes from somewhere, Faith. But maybe you chose to walk away from your past for some reason. People do. Go to a new place, start over."
She toyed with the handle of her coffee cup, aware that the gesture betrayed her uneasiness but unable to stop herself.
"Maybe that's true. But what could have been so bad that I had to wipe out my past before I could start over?"
It was Bishop, coming to the kitchen at that moment, who replied to her question. "My guess would be murder."
"Amnesia?"
"According to her file, yeah." He scowled at a passerby, sending him on his way without stopping to wait for the phone, then he continued his conversation. "I got a look at the shrink's report. Seems her whole life is a blank, not just the days or weeks before she rammed her car into that embankment."
"Is it temporary or permanent?"
"Beats the hell out of me. And them, apparently. The gist of it is that nobody knows whether she'll ever regain her memory. She could get it all back, some of it — or none of it. And there's no telling how long it might take. She could wake up tomorrow remembering every detail."
"Or it could take years."
"That's what they say." He waited out several minutes of silence, then said, "I don't like it."
"No. Neither do I."
"So?"
"So where is she now?"
He swore. "I don't know." There was a pause, and then, "I told you to check out her apartment last night."
"I did. She wasn't there."
"And?"
"And I got pissed."
In all her imaginings, Faith had not thought of murder, and a chill raised gooseflesh over her body.
"What?" She groped desperately in the darkness of her mind, but there was absolutely nothing, no memory, no knowledge at all. Nothing but the terrifying possibility that she had done something horrible.
Bishop continued to speak as if reciting items on a list. "A little over two years ago, you were living in Seattle with your mother and younger sister. Your sister was still in high school, your mother worked in a library, and you worked as a receptionist at a construction company during the day and waited tables at night." He paused. "I don't have all the details, and I won't until I go up to Quantico and get access to the records. But the facts are simple."
"What facts?" she asked unsteadily.
There might have been a softening of Bishop's steely gaze, but it was difficult to tell. "I'm sorry. Your mother and sister were murdered, and the house was burned to the ground."
Faith felt shock, but it was distant, impersonal, little more than dismay. She could not conjure even a fleeting image of this mother or sister, and the grief that should still have been strong in her was totally absent.
It was Kane who asked quietly, "Who was responsible?"
"The case is still open, that's all I can tell you."
Bishop looked at his friend. "And the file is restricted, maybe because it's an ongoing Bureau investigation, something like that."
"Could Faith be a protected witness?"
"Not likely. If that were the case, I would have been warned off the moment I tried to access her file."
She cleared her throat. "Could I... was I a suspect?"
"According to the Seattle P D., which I called after running into that restricted file, you had an alibi. You were waiting tables in a busy restaurant, in full view of dozens of people, when the murders were committed and the house burned. But the police refused to tell me anything else. It seems their file is off-limits as well."
Kane looked at Faith. "So two years ago, the people closest to you were murdered. No arrests, no convictions. A few months later, you came to Atlanta and started over."
Faith tried to think. "Which would explain the lack of some things in my apartment. Photographs, old clothing. If the house I lived in burned to the ground, I could have lost everything."
Kane frowned at Bishop.
"My imagination is probably working overtime trying to figure out how two unsolved murders in Seattle could connect to a traffic accident and a disappearance here in Atlanta two years later. But ... here's Faith. One very real connections"
"Until we have the details," Bishop said, "there's no way to know if there's any other connection."
"And we get the details only if you go to Quantico."
"We have a chance of getting them if I go to Quantico. My clearance might not be high enough, depending on why the file was restricted."
"Weren't you going to have to go back tomorrow anyway? Something about this new unit of yours?"
"I don't have much choice, I'm afraid. And I don't know when I'll be able to get back." He paused. "If I thought there was anything I could do here that you couldn't do just as well or better..."
"You wouldn't leave. I know that."
Bishop went to pour himself some coffee, and Faith was glad their attention had shifted away from her. She needed time to try to cope with the shock of knowing her family had been murdered.
"I'm not too crazy about leaving here just now," Bishop said. "With no solid evidence surfacing, the search for Dinah was going along pretty much according to standard operating procedure, with very little progress and no real surprises." He looked at Faith. "And then you came out of a coma and walked out of that hospital."
Kane frowned again. "Meaning?"
"Meaning the balance has been upset, the sta
tus quo disturbed. if anybody is paying attention, now would be the time I'd expect them to make a move."
Faith was puzzled. "You mean ... whoever has Dinah would have to change the plans because of me?"
"If you figure into this at all — yes. Think about it. If you are or were a threat to someone, that coma kept you safely out of the picture. The fact that you're up and about again has to give them pause. Even if they find out that your memory is gone, chances are they won't feel secure enough to just ignore you. Not for long, at any rate."
"My apartment was probably searched," Faith said slowly. "Maybe they found whatever it is they were looking for."
Then a sudden memory made her look at Kane. "Does Dinah have a laptop?"
"Yes. Her briefcase was missing when her jeep was found abandoned near her office, though, and she always carries the laptop in it."
Faith hesitated. "According to what she told the lawyer, she also had my laptop. Did you ever see it?"
Kane didn't have to think long. "No. I mean, I never pay particular attention when she uses it, so I suppose it could have been yours. But I never saw two of them. And we didn't find one in her apartment when we went through the place after she disappeared. No disks either."
Bishop said to Faith, "I don't suppose you have any idea of what was on yours?"
"No. All I know is that I hadn't had it long before the accident."
"Another dead end." Kane sighed. "Last night I thought we had a lead, but now it looks even more murky than before."
"I don't believe in coincidence," Bishop said. "Somewhere in all this there's a single thread, one fact or occurrence that ties everything together and makes sense of all of it."
"Even the murders of my mother and sister?" Faith asked.
"That might have been the beginning of it," he answered. "Everything that's happened since could date back to two people being murdered in Seattle two years ago. Or they might turn out to be — pardon the expression — incidental to everything else, important in this instance only because they were the catalyst that brought you to Atlanta."
Faith was beginning to get a headache. She wondered how a mind so empty of anything useful could feel so crowded with questions and facts.
