Kansas City Countdown

by Julie Miller

  He was considering sending a text to Hud about their failed pickup bet when he heard the scrabble of footsteps and a slurred, feminine voice from the alley behind him.

  “One. One. One is the wrong number.”

  Keir swung around at the garbled words, leaving the text half-finished and pulling back his jacket to rest his hand on his holstered weapon.

  A tall, slender woman stumbled to the edge of the alley. “Three... Two... One isn’t right.”

  “Ma’am?” She wasn’t drunk and she wasn’t a threat. She was hurt. Seriously hurt, judging by the blood on her face and clothes.

  She tried to raise her head, but she groaned and braced her hand against the brick wall as she swayed. “Please. Help me.”

  Keir leaped over the concrete barrier, taking in several details as he ran to assist the injured woman. Dark silvery blond hair bounced against her chin and clung to the bloody hash marks on one side of her face. The skirt of her fancy tan suit was ripped along one seam and there were dirty smudges on both sleeves of her jacket. She wore one ridiculously sexy leather pump on her right foot, and nothing but a torn silky stocking over the scraped-up knee and toes on her left foot.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” Keir slipped his arm behind her waist, taking her weight and guiding her to the concrete wall. Hoodie Guy’s curiosity about something Keir had missed was screaming at him now. Damn it. He should have followed up on his suspicions and stopped the guy for questioning. He helped the lady sit on the edge of the wall, wondering if Hoodie Guy was responsible for this. “What happened?”

  “I woke up. I got sick. Everything...spinning.”

  “Are you alone? Is anyone else hurt?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, turned her chin toward the alley, then looked away. “I don’t remember.”

  “Okay.” Clearly, she was a little disoriented. “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

  Once he was certain she wasn’t going to collapse on him, Keir pulled his weapon and darted back into the alley, making a cursory sweep of the trash bins and power poles. He startled a rat from its hiding place. But there was no one else in the alley. No signs of a struggle. Not even the missing shoe. This was a dump site. Whatever had happened to her hadn’t happened here.

  Maybe Hoodie Guy hadn’t attacked her, after all. He’d moved away on foot, and it would be impossible to transport an injured woman through this maze of back alleys without a vehicle or someone noticing the two of them together.

  Holstering his Glock, Keir jogged back out of the alley to find her on her feet, limping over to meet him. So much for staying put. “Is anyone else hurt?”

  Keir caught her by the elbows and turned her back toward the wall and the nearest lamp in the middle of the lot. “Just you. I thought I told you to wait for me.”

  “I don’t know where I...” she muttered beside him. “I don’t know how long I was there.” She flattened her hand over her stomach and bent forward, as if she was going to be ill. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Ma’am?” He stopped her beneath the light and waited for her to nod that she could stand straight again before brushing the angled line of bangs off her forehead. Keir swore under his breath as he tilted her face to the yellowish light. He knew this woman. “Kenna Parker? What the hell are you doing—”

  “Who are you?” She squinted against the light shining in her eyes and backed away from him, fear making her skin pale.

  He raised a placating hand to stop her wobbly retreat and pulled his badge from his belt. “I’m Detective Keir Watson, KCPD. Ms. Parker, how badly are you hurt? Can you tell me what happened?”

  She shook her head. But the motion made her dizzy and she grabbed the sides of her head and tumbled.

  “Watch out.” Keir caught her before she hit the ground and scooped her up into his arms. Her cheek fell against his shoulder and she curled into him without a protest as he stepped over the short wall and carried her to his car. “What does one mean?” he asked. Maybe her attacker had been wearing a jersey with a number on it, or she’d seen part of a license plate. “Why is it the wrong number?”

  “What?” Her fingers curled into the lapel of his jacket. “I don’t understand.”

  “You kept saying... Never mind.” Once he got the passenger door open, he set her feet on the pavement and helped her onto the edge of the seat before pulling the first-aid kit out of the glove compartment. “You were mugged. Assaulted. I can’t tell how badly yet. Can you tell me who did this to you? Do you know how you got into that alley? I don’t think the attack happened there.”

  He dabbed at the cuts on her face, tried to assess how well her eyes were tracking the movement of his hands as he knelt in front of her. Besides their sensitivity to the light, her pupils were dilated, both signs that she had a concussion. “I should have a purse. Or a briefcase or something. Where are my things? I always carry...” Her voice trailed away and the thought escaped her.

  “I didn’t see anything like that in the alley. Is one part of a phone number? If you need to call someone, you can borrow my phone.”

  “Who do I need to call?”

  He didn’t think she was married. There was no ring, nor any sign that she’d ever worn one, on her left hand. “A boyfriend? Any friend? Your doctor? Someone you work with?”

  She touched her finger to the drops of blood staining the knobby silk of her jacket and blouse, as if discovering the spots distracted her from the conversation.

  Stay with me, lady. Keir slipped two fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face back to his. “Do you want me to call them for you?”

  “I can’t think of names right now.” Her fingertips tickled the back of his wrist as they danced against the skin there. “Aren’t you my boyfriend? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “No, ma’am.” He carefully plucked a stray lock of hair from the wound on her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Detective Watson, remember? I showed you my badge.”

  Instead of answering, she raised her fingers to touch the seeping gash. But Keir ripped open a gauze pad and batted her hand away to stanch the wound. This was more than a mugging or purse snatch. These cuts were fine and deep, made by something with a short, sharp blade. She was damn lucky she still had her eye. Carving up half her face like this indicated a lot of rage, and something very personal. The senseless brutality of this attack wasn’t something he’d wish even on the woman who’d humiliated him in court. “Here. Can you hold that there while I check the rest of your injuries?”

  “It hurts.” Her shaking fingers brushed against his as she reached up to apply pressure against the cut. Her eyes were pale gray, almost like starlight, in the dim illumination of the car’s overhead light. But though her voice sounded far less steady and sure than it had in the courtroom that afternoon, she was determined to hold his gaze. “My thoughts aren’t very clear, Detective. I can’t seem to concentrate. I don’t think that’s like me.”

  “It’s not.”

  “So you do know me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Keir gently tunneled his fingers into the straight, silky curtain of her chin-length hair, probing her scalp until he found the goose egg and oozy warmth of blood at the base of her skull. She winced and he quickly pulled away to open an emergency ice pack and crush the chemicals together between his hands to activate its frosty chill. He placed the ice pack over the knot on her scalp and tried to estimate if he had enough gauze or something else to anchor it into place. He sought out her starlit eyes again. “Looks like you suffered a pretty good blow to the head. Tell me what you can remember.”

  Although concentrating on the answer seemed to cause her pain, she bravely came up with an answer. “I was going to a meeting. Dinner. A dinner meeting.”

  Dinner would have been hours ago. “Who was your meeting with?”

  “I don’t know.�
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  “Where did you eat? Were you walking to your car? Do you remember where you parked? Did a chauffeur or taxi pick you up?”

  “I don’t know.” Seeming to grow more agitated, she pulled the gauze pad from her face and saw the scarlet stain on it. “Is all this blood mine?”

  “I need to get you to an ER.” She leaned over against the seat, closing her eyes as he placed a call to Dispatch and gave his name, location and badge number. “I need an ambulance...” He dropped the phone into her lap and cupped his palm over the uninjured side of her face. “No, no. Don’t close your eyes. Ms. Parker? Kenna? Kenna, open your eyes.”

  Her silvery eyes popped open. “Stop saying that.”

  Now, that tone sounded like the Terminator. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to the hospital if I have to drive you myself.”

  “What’s happened to me? I don’t understand.”

  “Ah, hell.” He swung her legs into the car and buckled her in. “That’s it. We’ll make sense of this later.” He snatched up the phone and relayed the necessary information to complete the call before shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over her like a blanket. “We’re going to the hospital, Kenna.”

  She grabbed the front of his shirt as he leaned over her, pulling her injured face close to his. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “You’re Ms. Parker. Don’t suppose I can get away with calling you the Terminator to your face.”

  Her pale lips trembled. “Why would you do that?”

  He was a sorry SOB for losing his temper for even one moment with this woman. She was probably five or six years older than Keir, and had been his enemy in the courtroom. He had less in common with her than that Tammy Too-Young from the bar. But he couldn’t look at the tragedy that marred her beautiful face or the fear that darted in the corner of her eyes and not feel something. He covered her hands where she still held on to him and eased her back into the seat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a jackass. But you’re the last person I expected to be helping tonight.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?” She gave him a graceful out for that question by asking another. “You know who I am?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Kenna Parker. You’re a criminal defense attorney.”

  Her fingertips dug into the muscle beneath the cotton of his shirt, holding on when he would have pulled away. “How do you know? You said you couldn’t find my purse.”

  She wanted to argue with him? Patience, Watson. The woman is scared. “You shredded a case of mine in court this afternoon. But I’m a cop before anything else. Now something terrible has happened to you tonight. I don’t know what exactly, but I’m going to help you.”

  Her posture sagged, although her grip on him barely eased. He couldn’t tell if she was frightened or angry or some combination of both.

  “Detective Watson. I don’t remember what happened to me tonight, much less this afternoon. I don’t know how I got into that alley. I don’t know why someone wanted to hurt me like this.

  “I don’t even remember my name.”

  Chapter Two

  Kenna Parker.

  Shivering in an immodest gown in the sterile hospital air, she silently worked the name around her tongue and wondered if she was truly remembering her name or if she’d simply heard it said to her so many times over the past few hours that she was now accepting it as fact.

  Kenna.

  She was Kenna Parker. She’d been named after her late father, Kenneth. She was an only child, a surprise gift to older parents who’d never expected to have children at all. No one had told her that tonight—or make that the early hours of Saturday morning. Kenna breathed a cautious sigh of relief. She was remembering. Some of her life, at least—like the growing-up parts that did her no good answering questions from the clerk at the reception desk or the admitting nurse or the criminologist who’d scraped beneath her fingernails and taken pictures of her injuries before the attending physician went to work.

  She couldn’t remember whether or not she was in a relationship. She couldn’t remember where she’d eaten dinner or even if she had eaten. And hard as she tried, she had absolutely no memory of being brutalized and left for dead, no image of her attacker haunting her thoughts. She had no memory of who hated her or something she represented or had done so much that splitting her head open and taking a sharp blade to the left side of her face seemed justifiable. The nicks on her hands, and the scrapes on her knee and foot, indicated she’d put up a fight. Surely she’d eventually remember a face or mask or height or voice or something if she’d done that kind of battle with her assailant.

  But there was a black void in place of where any memory of the assault should be. Bits and pieces of her life before whatever had happened to her tonight were coming together like an old film reel being spliced together. Yet Kenna was afraid some parts of the movie would never be recovered. Even the last few hours after the assault were filled with holes. According to the doctor, scrambled brains were a side effect of the head trauma she’d received. Plus, he’d said that the amnesia could be psychological, as well—that whatever she’d been through had been so awful that her mind might be protecting her from the shock of remembering.

  That didn’t seem right, though. She wasn’t sure why, but Kenna got the feeling from her defensive injuries, and her inability to relax until she figured out at least some part of what had happened to her, that she had a strong will to survive—that Kenneth Parker or someone in her past had taught her to think and fight, not surrender to a weakness like hysterical amnesia.

  A glimpse of something sharp and silver glinted in the corner of her eye and Kenna shrieked. “Stop it!” Throwing up her hands, she snatched the man’s wrist to stop the sharp object coming at her face.

  “Nurse.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Small hands tugged at her shoulder and Kenna twisted away. “Easy, Ms. Parker. We’re trying to help you.”

  “Get away from me!” Kenna evaded the hands and shoved the weapon away, fighting to sit up.

  “Kenna.” A firmer hand clasped her shoulder, refusing to be shrugged off. “You’re safe. I’ve got your back.”

  Kenna froze at the deeply articulate male voice. She tilted her gaze to the dark-haired man with the badge and gun on his belt. Blue eyes. She knew those blue eyes. He was Detective...? The name that went with the piercing gaze escaped her for the moment. Still, she appreciated the clip of authority in his tone. If he said so, she believed he would keep her safe.

  “The last thing we need is for her to panic. Isn’t that right, Doc?”

  The other man chuckled beside her. “It’s never a good thing in the ER.”

  Kenna turned to the gentler voice and looked into the black man’s warm brown eyes.

  “That’s where you are now. St. Luke’s Hospital emergency room. You have a concussion, several abrasions and some deep cuts I’m in the process of treating now that I know what medications I can use.”

  Kenna drew in a deep breath to calm the pulse pounding in her ears and nodded. She dropped her gaze to the plastic ID badge the doctor in the white lab coat wore around his neck. “Dr. McBride.” She realized she still had his forearm clenched between her hands and quickly opened her grip. “I’m sorry. I thought you were... That someone was... I don’t know what I thought.”

  “Did you remember something about the attack?” Detective Blue Eyes asked. “Is the syringe significant?”

  “There was no evidence of drugs in her preliminary blood work,” the doctor offered.

  Keir nodded. “But there are some drugs that leave the system quickly.”

  “That’s true. And I estimate these injuries occurred eight to ten hours ago.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” Kenna interrupted. “Something was coming at my face. I could see...” A black
void filled the space where the memory should be. She shook her head. A syringe? She eyed the object in the doctor’s hand and frowned. She couldn’t have been cut with a syringe. Her focus narrowed to the tiny hash marks and numbers marking the syringe—3 ml. 2.5 ml. 2 ml. 1.5... A door slammed shut in her head and she wanted to scream.

  So what did that mean? She tried to recall what it was that had triggered her panicked reaction. But when she closed her eyes to concentrate, she was greeted by the frightening abyss of her amnesia. Kenna quickly opened her eyes to focus on things she could recognize and shook her head. “Sorry. I’ve still got nothing.”

  “Not to worry.” The detective pulled away, retreating to the doorway where he must have been waiting, out of the doctor’s and nurse’s way. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  He winked. “I’m always right.”

  His confidence surprised her for a moment before she felt a smile softening her bruised, swollen face. His roguish charm distracted her from her fears and gave her back some of her own confidence. “Then we’d better get to it. I’ll do my best not to freak out on anyone again.”

  While the nurse tucked a warm blanket around her, Dr. McBride rolled his stool back to the examination table and pointed to the items on the stainless steel tray beside him as he explained the procedure. She watched him pick up the syringe again, and her chest grew tight. Kenna breathed in deeply to dispel the uneasiness quaking inside her. Maybe she just had a thing about needles. With the nurse’s help, she turned onto her side, looking away from the doctor as he went to work. “Go ahead, Doctor.”

  “I need you to relax. This is the same localized numbing agent I used on your scalp when I stitched that up. You’ll feel three little pinches before I’m done.”