Shadow Woman: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  When she sat back up—because her knees really needed the heat more than her ears did—she opened her eyes and looked around the bathroom, all white marble and polished chrome. There was this big bathtub and a shower, double sinks, and a separate room for the toilet, as well as more thick, fluffy towels than two people could use in a single day. She’d say this for Xavier: when he found a place to hide out for a night, he had much better luck than she did.

  Luck, hell! He was prepared for anything and everything. Having a fake ID and credit cards under a false name was much more effective than lying her way into an unrentable hotel room where she had to sit with the lights out, no sheets, and one crappy towel.

  Xavier. X. The man of her dreams, literally. She was still highly pissed at him for letting her pedal that damn bike for so long before stopping her, furious with him for terrifying her, and yet—he was here.

  Without him, she’d been bereft, and hadn’t known it. Only now that he was back in her life could she look at the interval between then and now and see how drab and joyless it had been. Xavier was the color in the colorless world they’d stuck her in. In spite of everything, she was relieved that she could now remember … some of what had happened. She remembered him most clearly.

  She still didn’t know how things stood. Were they the good guys, or the bad guys? Xavier certainly could break either way. Maybe both; maybe neither. She thought about that, and realized it didn’t matter that he wasn’t a certified White Knight. Her life wasn’t a black-and-white movie from the fifties where good and bad were easily defined and identified. White hats for the heroes, black ones for the villains. The real world was much more complicated than that. Her world was complicated.

  No, complicated didn’t begin to cover it. Her world was a cluster-fuck.

  The door opened and Xavier came in—without knocking, of course, but even though she was a little uneasy at being naked in front of him, she didn’t grab a towel, or otherwise show the modesty that felt out of place between them. He’d seen her like this before. She might not remember exactly when, but she knew it had happened.

  “I ordered food. It’ll be here in forty-five minutes.”

  She looked up at him. The man towered over her, fully dressed, armed—she didn’t know where he’d had the weapon hidden, unless it was in the small leather kit he’d carried in, but she was glad he had the big handgun. Even though logic said they were safe, he’d found her, so it followed that someone else could.

  “What did you order for me?” She was grumpy enough that she wanted him to have ordered something she didn’t like, so she could snap at him.

  “Crab cakes. And cheesecake for dessert.”

  She loved crab cakes, and cheesecake was one of her favorites, too. He’d remembered. Did she know his favorite foods? Out of the murkiness swam an obvious answer: steak. He wasn’t a picky eater at all, but he loved steak, rare.

  Because she was still grumpy, she said, “I get first pick. I might decide I want the steak. I earned it today, calories be damned.”

  His lips twitched. “Yes, ma’am. So you remember about the steak?”

  “Not specifically, but generally … yes.”

  He lowered himself down to sit on the floor beside the tub, taking her by surprise. He no longer towered over her, in a position of obvious authority. They were on the same level, almost face-to-face. She was naked and he wasn’t, which she might have been naive enough to think put her at a serious disadvantage if it weren’t for the way his gaze grew heavy-lidded as he looked at her breasts, and the dark hair between her legs.

  He’d be naked too, before much more time had passed; sex between them had always been immediate and demanding. She knew this even without specific memories. They might not get their dinner finished before he was on her. Playing coy wasn’t in the cards, not where he was concerned, not when she didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. It sounded corny, maybe, like one of those fifties movies she’d thought about a few minutes ago, but life was precious. Sometimes it was too short.

  And she was so tired of being alone.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said quietly.

  He reached into the tub and trailed his fingers through the water. “What do you remember?”

  “Not enough. It’s as if there’s a big dark hole in my head, and I can remember things around the edges of the hole—until I saw you this afternoon. You come from the two missing years, don’t you?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “When did you realize two years were missing?”

  “Last Friday.” She clenched her jaw. “I looked in the mirror and saw this face, and knew it wasn’t mine. Everything else came from that.”

  “It made you sick.”

  “Sick, and with the headache from hell.” Giving him a sharp look, she said, “So I was right: the house is bugged.”

  “Everything was bugged. The house, your phones, the car.”

  That was so repulsive, thinking of strangers listening to everything she said and did, that she closed her eyes and shuddered. He touched her cheek with his wet fingertips. “This should probably wait until you remember more on your own.”

  At that she opened her eyes. “What if I don’t? And why don’t I remember? Was I brainwashed?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Not in the classic sense.”

  “Why? We were on a … a team together, weren’t we? I can remember training with someone, a woman, but you were there too—”

  “Yes, there was a team, of sorts.” His dark gaze bored into hers. “Leave it for now, Lizzy.”

  She gave him an impatient glance. “Get real. Like you’d leave it alone, if this had happened to you? People are trying to kill me, and I don’t know who they are or why.”

  That wasn’t news to him. She saw it in his eyes, and suddenly she realized. “Wait—if they’re trying to kill me, and you’ve been trying to catch up with me so you can protect me—are they trying to kill you too?”

  “Yeah, but I’m better than they are.”

  He’d always been so damn cocksure of himself, and the worst part of it was, he had reason to be. She didn’t have any specific memories, other than the one she’d had in the shed, but she knew.

  She circled the conversation back around, searching for something he would tell her. Talking him around was going to take time. “How could I be brainwashed to lose two full years of my life? Well, and parts before that, too, because even though I know I worked in Chicago, at a big security firm, my memory is kind of like Swiss cheese.”

  “It was a chemical process,” he said, his tone a little remote. “You were the third person it was tried on.”

  She’d been a guinea pig. That was almost as repulsive as knowing she’d been spied on like a lab animal—almost, but not quite. For spooky, dirty feelings, having every minute of her life listened to and examined was at the top of the list. “What happened to the other two?”

  “One died from a heart attack. The other … the process wasn’t as extensive, covered just a couple of months. He did okay.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Did this process kill him?”

  “I didn’t say that, either.”

  She reached out and pinched him, scowling. “I’m getting tired of hearing what you didn’t say. Look at it this way: if I don’t know exactly what’s going on, then I don’t know what to do, and I may make a mistake that will get both of us killed. I have to know what I’m—what we’re—facing. Tactically, keeping me in the dark isn’t a good move.”

  She saw the flare in his gaze, knew that she’d hit on the one argument that was likely to get his attention. Xavier was a born tactician, constantly weighing the odds, studying cause and effect, action and reaction. For every move, he had a counter-move.

  “I don’t want to do anything that might … harm you,” he finally said, shaking his head, and she knew she’d lost this particular argument, for now anyway. “This is uncha
rted territory. You’re getting your memory back on your own, and that’s probably what’s healthiest for your brain.”

  “Can’t you ask someone?”

  He snorted. “The people I could ask are the ones who are trying to kill us.”

  “Well, that’s a bitch,” she said acerbically, earning a grin from him.

  “No disagreement there.”

  Something else occurred to her, and she poked him. “You found me. You had me bugged, too, didn’t you? I got rid of the cell phone, so what else did you have a tracker on?”

  “I put three trackers on you, when I saw the situation deteriorating. One was on the backpack you left at your house.”

  “Okay. That and the phone made two. What else?”

  “Your wallet. I figured that was the most likely item you’d keep with you, if you could. I was afraid enough of your old training would kick in that you’d dump everything you had with you and start fresh.”

  “My wallet.” That meant he’d been in her house, gone through her things. “When? When did you put them there?”

  “Monday night, after your shopping spree.”

  “You broke into my house? While I was asleep?” Outrage made her voice rise. He didn’t look the least bit guilty. If anything, he even looked amused.

  “It wouldn’t make sense to break in while you were awake, now would it?”

  “You went through my purse!”

  “Guilty. Nice one, too.”

  “And I had to dump it in a Walmart store, damn it!”

  “I’ll get you another one.”

  “You’re damn right you will.” She blew out a cool-down breath, slicked her hands over her wet hair. As huffy as she felt, the hard truth was that if he hadn’t put the trackers on her, he probably wouldn’t have been able to locate her again and she’d be all alone in this mess. Not knowing what was going on, not having all her memory back, she’d have made some sort of mistake and been caught. He’d saved her life. Grudgingly she said, “Thank you.”

  He looked even more amused. “I know it kills you to say that. You’re welcome.”

  “It doesn’t kill me. I just don’t like doing anything that makes you more cocky than you already are.”

  “Remember that, huh?”

  “Enough … Preciousssss.” With that out of her system, because he never liked being reminded of the few times he’d let people get under his guard, she crossed her arms on the edge of the tub and propped her chin on them. “Something really bothers me, though, more even than the creepy spying.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My face. Why did they change my face?” She heard the disturbed note in her voice and looked down, not wanting him to see the desolation she felt. It was silly, mourning for a face. This one wasn’t ugly; she was still attractive. Some people might like this face better than her old one. But this wasn’t her; she wanted to look in the mirror and see herself, feel that sense of being grounded.

  He was silent a moment, as if weighing how much he should tell her. Finally he said, “To keep you safe.”

  “Safe? Safe? The very people who are trying to kill us are the ones who gave me this face, so how is it keeping me safe?”

  Again that silence, that pause. “Because the people who are trying to kill us aren’t the biggest problem out there.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling tears burn. Oh, shit, that certainly wasn’t anything she wanted to hear. What in God’s name had she been involved in?

  He was evidently finished answering questions, because he fluidly got to his feet. “The food will be here any minute. You should probably get dried off. You can always have another soak if this one didn’t do the trick.” He got to the door, then stopped. “By the way—”

  She looked up, stubbornly blinking back the tears. No way was she going to cry.

  “I like your face,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter. I liked your face before, and I like it now. You’re still you.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  He’d never told her he loved her.

  They lay naked in bed together, the curtains pulled against the night, against the whole world. The room wasn’t dark; one bedside lamp remained on, because she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her. Their lovemaking had been slower this time, longer, but just as exciting because a part of her couldn’t get over the fact that this was Xavier, and she had been so long without him. She was still caught between everything feeling so new and different and at the same time so familiar. Her head was on his shoulder, his arm was around her, one hand absently stroking over her side, her arm, then brushing the backs of his fingers over her nipples. How many times had they lain together like this? She had no idea, but perhaps that was what made the memory surface.

  Her heart squeezed in pain. Maybe he didn’t love her. Even with the huge gaps in her memory, she knew that she loved him; that particular emotion came through loud and clear, despite everything.

  He cared for her; it was evident in every kiss, in the way he touched her, watched her, in the controlled ferocity of his lovemaking. But caring wasn’t loving, and how much of it stemmed from a sense of protectiveness, of guilt? Whatever had happened in the past, they’d been in it together, but she was the one who’d paid a big price.

  “Don’t feel responsible for me,” she murmured, knowing that whatever it was they had, she didn’t want him to feel bound to her for that reason.

  He tensed beside her, the muscled arm under her head turning to iron. A few beats of time passed. “You said that before.” His voice was sharp as he pulled his arm free and jackknifed to a sitting position.

  “Before?” She frowned at him as she propped herself up on an elbow, tugged the sheet over her breasts—not out of modesty, but because she was a little chilly, with the air conditioning blowing across her. “I did? When?”

  “Before you let them wipe your memory,” he said curtly. “I was against it. There were … problems, but nothing I couldn’t have handled. You sent me off on a wild-goose chase, and by the time I got back, it was too late.” The black look he gave her said that he was still more than a little pissed about it, too.

  “Wait a minute.” She wiggled to a sitting position beside him, staring at him in astonishment. “I chose this? I agreed to it?” That couldn’t be right; she couldn’t imagine willingly letting someone wipe out a huge part of her personal identity. Never mind that it had been very skillfully done; she’d been living a perfectly normal life, with her earlier memories intact, until that morning less than a week ago. My God—less than a week, and her life had been completely turned upside down.

  “Nothing I could do after that except take steps to keep you safe.”

  Damn it, this conversation was going in two different directions, and she wanted to follow both of them. “What steps? Keep me safe? And why did I choose to have my brain tampered with? What the hell was going on?”

  He threw back the cover and got out of bed, stalking naked to the sitting area and coming back with a bottle of water. He twisted the cap off and drank deeply, then silently offered the bottle to her. She took it, sipped, then gave it back. “Tell me what happened. I don’t want to be kept in the dark any longer, no matter what happened.”

  “You want to take the risk that not letting your memory recover at its own pace could cause some real damage?”

  “I don’t see how it could. Brain damage is a physical thing.”

  “How about emotional damage?” he demanded angrily. “I don’t know what could happen. Telling you stuff might prevent you from ever really remembering.”

  This felt oddly familiar. She got the feeling that he seldom got angry, but that she’d always been able to push his buttons. She liked that; she didn’t enjoy making him angry, but she did like that she could get to him when no one else could.

  “Let me ask you something. Exactly what are you planning to do about this situation?”

  His expression was instantly veiled, all anger wiped away. It was as
if his face had been turned into stone. If he knew her as well as she thought he did, he probably already knew where this was going—and he didn’t like it at all.

  “Are you going back?” she prodded. “To D.C., or wherever you have to go to take care of this little problem of people trying to kill you?”

  “Yes.” Just that one word, his lips barely moving, his gaze narrow and hard. “This isn’t something we can run from. It has to be handled.”

  “What were you planning to do with me? Stick me somewhere, come back to pick me up when it’s all over?”

  “Exactly.” He said it without a hint of apology in his tone.

  “What if something happened to you? I’d never know, would I? You wouldn’t come back, and I’d be a sitting duck, because sooner rather than later I’d need a job, a place to live, and then they’d have me.”

  “You’d be taken care of. I have people who’ll make sure of that.”

  “How would I know them? C’mon, you know that isn’t going to work. The odds are, more of my memory is going to come back and if you think I’d let it slide that someone had killed you, then you’re full of shit.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” he snapped, then glared at her because he was doing what he’d just told her he didn’t want her to do. “Fuck!” he said explosively.

  “If I know what’s going on, I’ll make smarter decisions.”

  “Damn it all to hell and back, you never could just let something go, could you?”

  “Beats me. I don’t remember.” She gave a little shrug, knowing how much it would annoy him.

  “We’re in this situation because you couldn’t handle it before.”

  Okay, now she was annoyed. “Say what?” Exactly what couldn’t she handle? Yeah, she’d been terrified a couple of times since her memory had started coming back, but all in all, hadn’t she done okay? She’d escaped an attempt to kill her. She’d shaken the people who’d been spying on her, and if Xavier hadn’t been such a smart-ass and planted three trackers on her, she’d have shaken him, too. And as scared as she’d been, it was nothing compared to the downright terror she’d felt when he was riding the Harley across the field at her. She still owed him for that one.