Heir to Secret Memories

by Mallory Kane

  Stepping over to the wall, he pulled down one of the drawings. It was one of the thin woman who was lying on a bed. The paper crackled in his hands. He looked at it for a long time, then walked right past Paige and down the hall to the child’s room.

  She followed him.

  Standing in the doorway, he looked at the drawing.

  “My mother was ill. She was in bed for a long time.”

  Paige heard the anguish in his voice. She wanted to touch him, to offer him comfort, but that wasn’t what he was seeking right now. He was struggling to fit together the jigsaw puzzle of his memory and for that he needed time and space.

  So she waited, hardly breathing, as he explored the jumbled mess in his brain.

  “I don’t remember how long, but I know I wasn’t very old when she died. This room always smelled like a hospital.”

  He shook his head and looked across the landing toward the master suite. “After my father married Serena, he started complaining about me wasting my time drawing. He said men should work in business, not play around with art.”

  The drawing fluttered to the floor as Johnny grabbed the sides of his head. He groaned.

  Paige saw his face turn white as a sheet. “Johnny?”

  “Sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “Headache.” He swayed.

  Taking hold of his arm, she guided him back toward his room. “Lie down.”

  He complied without protest, still pressing on his temples.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  He didn’t answer.

  For a while she sat beside him with her hand on his shoulder. His rigid body slowly relaxed, but he still rubbed his temples. She knew he was experiencing pain that was beyond her imagining, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

  Her heart ached in sympathy for him even as renewed hope filled her.

  This was it. This was what she had prayed for since that first shocking moment when their eyes had met for the first time in seven years, and he’d told her he didn’t remember her.

  She had guessed that it would be difficult for him, but it hadn’t occurred to her that it would cause him this much agony.

  Finally, his clenched fists relaxed a bit. She caressed his brow and cheek, wiping away the dampness. After a while, his jaw muscles flexed, his mouth relaxed, and his breathing evened. He was asleep.

  She smoothed the frown from his brow with a gentle touch. If she could take the pain away from him she would. But this was something he had to go through alone. She only hoped that at the end of his suffering, he would find his past.

  It was the only way they could save Katie.

  SERENA JABBED REDIAL, breaking one of her impeccably manicured silk nails in the process. She listened to the phone ringing and ringing and cursed, using language she hadn’t used in twenty years, since she’d run away from the trailer park.

  “All right, Paige,” she muttered as she lit a cigarette. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for another two hours. Maybe you really are asleep.” She smiled. “Or dead.”

  She jabbed another number.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she snapped, when she heard the familiar twang on the other end of the phone. “They’re not answering the phone. Please tell me it’s because they’re dead.”

  “You ain’t going to believe what happened.”

  Serena gripped the phone more tightly. “Oh, I’m sure I will,” she grated between clenched teeth. She knew that tone. She wasn’t going to like what her brother was about to tell her.

  “They ditched the phone.”

  “No, no. No!” Her voice rose on each syllable, until she was screaming. “She wouldn’t dare! She wouldn’t give up her only link to the little brat!”

  “Well, Sue Ann, all I can say is we tracked that damn GPS signal all the way across to Lafayette. Turned out we was tracking a Cajun fisherman in an old pickup truck.”

  “You incompetent idiot!” Serena coughed, spewing cigarette smoke everywhere. “I have had it with you. You’re not getting one extra cent. Not a cent, do you understand? You can go back to Minnow Creek, Mississippi, and rot for all I care.”

  “Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Then I wouldn’t be a threat to you. Don’t forget, little sister, I know everything you’ve done. You owe me. You never would have figured out that trick with old Madison’s heart medicine without me.”

  “Oh, please. I knew all about that. I was just waiting for the right time. Now could we get back to the current problem?”

  “Don’t worry, Sue Ann, I got an idea.”

  She snorted. “Great. You have an idea. Congratulations on your first original thought.”

  “You’d better be nice to me, sis. I’m planning to deliver the happy couple to you.”

  Serena relaxed minutely and smiled. “I love it when you sound confident. What are you planning to do?”

  “You don’t worry about that. You just take care of the kid. They’re still going to be looking for her. And if I’m right, they’re probably getting pretty close.”

  Serena lit another cigarette off the burning end of the first and rang for her maid to bring her son to her room. She had decided they should order in pizza, before she had to go make sure the guards watching Johnny’s little brat were doing their job.

  JOHNNY WAS DYING. He understood that. What he didn’t understand was why they’d picked him. He’d been attacked and knocked out as he was unlocking his car after having dinner out. The last thing he’d seen were men in dark masks.

  Everything afterward was darkness. He’d been kept in the dark, starved for food and light for who knew how long. The only stimulation he’d had was sound, so he’d concentrated, memorizing each one, no matter how faint, until he could hum along with the eerie whistling of the wind through the building, the creak of the wooden boards as they rubbed against the steel rails, or the low faraway wail of the trains.

  He knew when a mouse or a roach came near him. Sometimes he would rock his weight against the walls of the wooden crate that was his prison, just to hear it squeak. If he angled his head just right at exactly the right time, he could catch a glimpse of light through the cracks in the boards.

  He knew by the sound of footsteps whether it was the big man, the little guy or the woman who approached.

  He didn’t like it when the woman came. She whispered things to a third man who always accompanied her. The third man had a backwoods twang that reminded Johnny of someone. And he liked to taunt Johnny.

  “Your daddy must not care too much if you live or die. He’s refusing to pay the ransom,” the guy would say.

  Or “how does it feel to know your money can’t help you now?” Or “your old man’s just leaving you here to rot, ain’t he? And you thought he’d rescue you.”

  Johnny never spoke after the first futile days. He had shouted until he was hoarse, until he had no voice left. He’d beaten and kicked and scratched at the wooden crate until his fingers were bloody and his body was a mass of painful bruises.

  Finally he just listened, and wondered. Had his father refused to pay the ransom? Johnny knew his dad had always been disappointed in him, but he’d never thought he’d abandon him. It took him a long, long time to accept that the kidnappers were right and his dad was never coming to rescue him.

  It wasn’t like he couldn’t have found him. Johnny knew where he was, and knowing just increased the torture. He was in an old freight warehouse less than a mile from his home. It was on Bayou Lesgensfou, which hooked around to the back of the Yarbrough property.

  He’d loved to play there as a kid. He’d sneak out and go to his secret hiding place inside the old railroad car that sat on steel rails inside the building.

  The railroad ran nearby and he could hear its whistle blow. The pilings on the front of the warehouse would move with the water, rubbing the wooden floors against the steel rails, creating an eerie screeching sound.

  The wind would whistle through the top of the building, sounding like gho
sts crying.

  Those were the sounds that kept him sane.

  Long after he’d lost any sense of time, he’d been pulled out of the box. He was too weak to stand. He’d lost so much weight his pants hung precariously from his hipbones. His eyes were so sensitive to light he couldn’t open them.

  For a heartbreaking instant, he’d thought it was his father come to rescue him, but then he’d been thrown into the trunk of a car and transported for miles. When the trunk was opened, he’d tried to climb out, only to hear a sharp report and feel something hard and hot slam into his head.

  He didn’t remember much after that, until the shock of hitting the water revived him to full consciousness. As the water closed over his head and he ran out of breath, his body began to fight death, although his brain was ready to accept it.

  Paige! he screamed silently, for the thousandth or the millionth time, as water began to choke him. I never stopped looking for you.

  Chapter Nine

  “It’s okay, Johnny. I’m right here.” A familiar and beloved voice jerked him back from his dark, watery grave.

  He opened his eyes. Candles were burning all around him. What the hell? Where was he? And how did he end up here, dry and alive?

  He peered at the room in the flickering light from the candles and realized he was back at home, in his room. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, still trying to rid his brain of the suffocating panic, trying to clear his nostrils of the choking, dirty taste of the water. He coughed.

  A soft cool hand brushed his brow.

  “You’re safe now. You were having a bad dream.”

  He sat up and looked at the blond vision lying beside him on the bed. In the soft flickering candlelight she looked like an angel, wrapped in white.

  He knew her. She was the last thing he’d seen before he’d drowned, and now she was the first thing he’d seen upon awakening.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in wonder, his gaze taking in her long damp hair and his terrycloth robe from the hook on the bathroom door and wrapped around her small body.

  She was different, yet not. He stared at her, trying to make sense of the overlaying images that swam in front of his eyes like double vision.

  She smiled shyly. “I didn’t want to be by myself. So after you went to sleep, I took a shower and then crawled in here beside you.”

  “What happened? How did you get here? Where have you been?” He frowned. The questions didn’t sound right. He should know these things.

  Paige’s gaze was wide and wary. “Johnny? What were you dreaming?”

  He shook his head and leaned back against the headboard. He held out his arm for Paige to snuggle up against him like she always had, but she didn’t. She just sat up in bed, pulled the collar of the robe more tightly under her chin, and watched him.

  “I dreamed I was in a dark box. I was starving. I couldn’t see.” His heart started pounding and his head hurt. He rubbed his temple. “My father wouldn’t pay the ransom. He didn’t care. He left me alone in there—”

  “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Your father didn’t abandon you. He loved you.”

  “He left me alone.” His voice wavered. He sounded pathetic, but he couldn’t help it. The memories were sketchy, confusing, but that twangy voice echoed all around him, telling him his father hadn’t cared. “He wouldn’t pay the ransom.”

  “No, Johnny. Look at this book. It was sitting here on your bedside table.” She reached across him and picked it up. “There’s a note tucked inside. It’s from your father.”

  “My father.” He took it. “He hated me spending my time drawing. This must have been my book,” he said. “Great Twentieth-Century Artists.” He opened it and the slip of paper almost fell out before he caught it.

  He squinted at it then held it close to a candle.

  “Dear Son,” he read. “You should be reading this after my death, instead of me writing it after yours…” Johnny’s voice faded.

  Paige put her hand over her mouth.

  “This book is the birthday present I never got to give you. There were so many things I never did. I never told you how proud I was of the drawing you did of your mother for me. I listened to your stepmother instead of to you. I know now that she deliberately tried to poison my mind about you. If it weren’t for Brandon, I’d divorce her today. But Johnny, you’re my—” He stopped, his head bent over the paper.

  Paige took it from his unmoving fingers and continued reading by the candlelight. “Johnny, you’re my son. I’d give my life to have you back alive and safe. Oh dear God please tell my boy I love him and I’ll always miss him.”

  Johnny closed his eyes as the words swirled around him. The chill, the horrible stomach pains and headaches, the unrelenting darkness, tried to suck him in again. The twangy voice echoed through his head, but the words from his father’s letter echoed louder. He began to shake.

  “He tried to save me. He loved me.” He took a sharp breath. “It wasn’t a dream,” he whispered, clenching his fists. “I was dying.”

  Not a dream. The words helped him ground himself in the present. He lifted his gaze to hers. “It was a memory. They really tried to kill me.”

  Paige’s gaze was riveted on his face. She nodded slowly.

  “I didn’t know who I was. I’d been shot in the head.” He touched the scar. “I thought I was a criminal.” He took a long, shaky breath before continuing. “I hid.”

  “For three years,” she said. “Do you know who you are now?”

  He frowned. “I’m John Yarbrough.”

  Her face changed, seemed to light from within, although her eyes remained wary. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I think so.” He nodded, and he realized he did. The overlaying images merged, and he knew that the lovely vision that had given him hope the whole time he was lost was Paige.

  After all this time, he’d found her.

  Or had he? He had a fleeting vision of opening a door and seeing her there. Maybe she had found him.

  “Oh, Johnny.”

  He was still shaking when she leaned over and put her hand on the side of his face. “I am so glad you’re back.”

  “Paige, what are you doing here? I’m not sure what’s happening—” He couldn’t go on. Confusion twisted his tongue.

  “I know. But everything’s going to be okay. You know who you are now.”

  He took the slip of paper and tucked it carefully inside the art book.

  “I know who I am now,” he repeated, still confused. The past and the present were getting all mixed up in his brain. “What are we doing here?”

  Paige frowned and watched him. “We’re looking for my daughter. Our daughter.”

  Our daughter. “You found me.”

  “And you helped me.”

  “This is my room. My home.” He took in the dark paneled room, with the stacks of books and closets full of clothes. It was as if he’d only left yesterday. A shirt hung on the bedpost, where he’d tossed it. A half-drunk bottle of water sat on the bedside table.

  It was a surreal experience, to see his room looking like yesterday, when in fact it had been three years. His head ached. There was so much he didn’t understand.

  “Somebody’s after us.” His mouth formed the words before his brain consciously knew it.

  Paige nodded. “They’ve been trying to kill us. So far we’ve managed to stay one step ahead of them. But now we don’t have the cell phone and I’m so scared I’ll never see my baby again.”

  He wasn’t sure what she was talking about. He was still a little uncertain how they’d ended up here, but he heard the rising panic in her voice, and he knew that she, like he, needed reassurance. Someone to depend on, someone to share the fear and the darkness. Someone to hold.

  He put out his hand and touched her cheek. She held his gaze as his palm cupped her face. Her fingers tightened on the neck of the terry-cloth robe and her eyes drifted closed as her head inclined toward the warmth of his hand.

/>   He leaned over and touched her mouth with his. The contact startled her. Her eyes flew open and she gasped, her warm breath whispering across his skin.

  As the vision continued to meld with the reality of her, he kissed her tentatively, teasing her lips to open.

  She hesitated for a moment, pulling back slightly, and for an instant he froze, remaining still so as not to frighten her. Then he reached for her mouth with his again, not releasing her from the kiss this time, moving with her, urging her gently back until she lay beneath him with his length pressed against hers.

  Something was driving him, something beyond physical desire. He needed her on a level he’d never experienced before. It was a desperate, frightening thing, this need, as if he was striving to prove he was still alive, still a man, still worthy of her.

  He took refuge in the warm, delicious recesses of her mouth, loving the taste, the feel of her. When at long last she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, his sense of relief was so sharp it startled him. He made a low involuntary sound deep in his throat.

  Placing his hands on either side of her face, he kissed her again and again, feeding on her sweet taste, on her beauty, on her soft, tender strength. He’d always been in awe of her quiet determination. He’d loved her more than his life.

  “I thought I’d never see you again, except in my dreams,” he whispered.

  “I thought you were dead.” Her lips moved against his skin as he buried his head in the curve of her neck and he breathed in her familiar scent. His body grew and hardened until he thought he could come just from being close to her.

  Paige felt Johnny’s desperation in the strength of his embrace. She’d felt that kind of urgency from him only once before, the night before he’d left her. For a brief instant, the memory of him walking away overwhelmed her, but then his tongue dipped into her mouth and teased hers, and she forgot everything but his caresses.

  His fingers caught in her hair, and he spread it out around her. “When did your hair get so long?” he asked, his lips moving against hers.

  “I haven’t cut it since you left.”