by Alice Sharpe
He’d been looking out the back window—no need to ask who or what he was looking for—but turned back to her now.
“Stop at the first store that might sell a prepaid cell phone, will you? I need to borrow more money. Do you have credit cards? I’ll pay you back.”
“I know you will. I saw your bank account.”
“Speaking of the bank account, Paige, has it occurred to you that Korenev could be a hit man of some kind and that he could be coming after money I stole from someone or took as a bribe and then didn’t deliver what I’d promised? Or the money could be his? We could have been partners or something. The timing all seems to fit.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
He shook his head. “I have.”
“I can see that. But that’s because we disagree about you.”
“What do you mean?”
She glanced at him again. “I think you’re a decent guy with indecent problems. You think you’re a thief and a scoundrel and a crook—or worse.”
“Hmm…”
“And if you’re right about any of that, then why hasn’t Korenev even asked you for the money or demanded it back? He just seems hell-bent on destroying you.”
“I don’t know,” John said. “Which seems to be my catchphrase.”
They’d just entered the small town of Seeley and it appeared the pickings for something like a phone might be limited until they spied a new drugstore. They went inside and found exactly one pay-as-you-go model. Paige waited until they were back in the car before she asked John why he couldn’t just use hers.
“I want one that won’t trace back to either of us.”
“Because?”
“The police are about to get an anonymous tip about the current whereabouts of Anatola Korenev.”
Chapter Twelve
In Missoula, they stopped at a coffee shop for a late lunch. While John figured out how to get a tip to the people where it would do some good, his gaze never strayed far from Paige, who had found a power outlet and was busily booting up her laptop.
Had he ever cared about a woman the way he was beginning to care for her? Had anyone ever been as good a friend or lover, been as generous as she was? And what had he given her in return?
Well, he’d almost gotten her stabbed, shot, mutilated, her sister hurt, her old boyfriend mugged, and look at the way she kept glancing at the door as though waiting for a killer to walk through it with a pronounced limp and a missing finger.
All thanks to him.
He had to figure this out, get his memory back and reassure himself he was exactly the man he hoped he was minus all the confusion and doubts. He wanted reasonable explanations for his bizarre dreams and seemingly shady behavior. He wanted to find out if he and Paige could build something together that wasn’t fueled by mutual terror.
When he completed his call, he returned to the table. She tore her gaze from the door and looked up at him, producing a smile. “Good news. Kanistan does not require a visa. We have two tickets to New York and connecting flights to Kanistan. Only one plane a day goes there and it leaves New York at midnight, so connecting flight times are going to be tight. Bad news. We either return the very next day or we stay a week. I booked the next day.”
“That probably explains my short visit last time,” John said, not voicing his first thought, and that was if he was still wanted for murder, it was likely they’d never even make it to New York, let alone Kanistan. His stomach knotted at the thought of being taken into custody, or maybe it knotted because he was allowing Paige to travel with him and who knew what they would find—or who would find them. Instead, he said, “One day should be enough. This is the end of the road for me. I feel it coming to a head. I either find out the truth or I go to the cops.”
“I looked up news in Lone Tree, as well,” she continued. “The paper said the body of a retired fire chief was found in the residence of John Cinca. They also mentioned the gunfire and all that. Speculation is that you’re dead.”
“They’ll find Korenev’s fingerprints somewhere in that place,” John said. “I’m beginning to believe I may not rot in jail, after all.”
They ate sandwiches in a hurry, then made their way to the airport, where they parked Paige’s car in long-term parking in case they had trouble getting back to it. They stuck all their gear except for an overnight bag in the trunk, including John’s weapon.
Once inside the terminal, Paige called her sister, who didn’t answer her phone, and then tried Matt. He also didn’t answer. John spent the time on the lookout for security officers or anyone else who paid him undo attention.
As Paige pocketed her phone, he noticed she looked upset. Once again, he sought to set her free of this crazy ride-along role she’d taken with such conviction. “It’s okay if you go home,” he said.
She looked at him as though startled from thought. “What?”
“Home. If you need to go home, go. I’ll take care of Kanistan and you take care of your family. I’ll call you when I get there and tell you what I find—”
“Hold that thought,” Paige said. “Why didn’t I think to call home? As in my mother, I mean. She should be home.”
Paige pulled out her cell again and made the call, relief evident in her voice as she launched into a conversation with someone, probably her mother.
When she hung up a couple of minutes later, she gave a brief report. “Mom hasn’t seen Katy in a few days but didn’t expect to because of the move. She says no news is good news and she’ll go check on her at her new place tomorrow and call me back. Oh, and she’s devastated for me about what happened at the wedding and wants me to come home so the two of us can go over to Brian’s place and tell Jasmine what we think of her. And lastly, her current boyfriend asked her to marry him yesterday and she said yes and wants me to be maid of honor—again.”
“She sounds like a character,” John said.
“That’s one way to put it. Okay, now tell me what we’re going to do in Kanistan.”
“We’re going to that town near the island with the hotel. We’re going to find Sergi and Galina Ogneva.”
“Your grandparents.”
“Yes. I went to Kanistan a few weeks ago. It must have been to see and talk to them. They can tell me about my past and why I visited recently. It’s all I can think to do.”
“If they’re still alive.”
“We’ll take it as it comes. And they must have been alive if I went to see them a few weeks ago.”
“You’re assuming it’s them you went to see.”
“True.” He shrugged. “What other option do I have?”
“None.”
* * *
THERE WAS A TENSE MOMENT when officials perused John’s passport, but no guns were drawn, no handcuffs produced. They both fell into exhausted silence within an hour of taking off out of New York, knowing when they landed they would have lost hours.
It took John longer to fall asleep than it did Paige, and for a while he sat with his head back, studying her as she slept against his shoulder. Even from the angle of slightly above and looking down at her, she was perfect. The sweep of her lashes against her porcelain cheek, the shape of her nose and curve of her lips made him burn with the desire to tilt her face up to his and brush his lips against hers, to feel her closer, in his arms, make her his again, over and over.
How well did he really know her? Was she really over Brian, or was she fooling herself? If she was using him to disconnect with that guy, did it matter? Wasn’t he using her to try to stay sane?
Or was there something more growing between them, and whatever it was could it survive the transformations that would inevitably come when he recovered? One fervent wish: please, let there be no other woman in his life, waiting somewhere to know his fate. It seemed unlikely given what Natalie said about him, but sometimes old girlfriends were the last to know about new ones.
He scrunched down and kissed Paige’s forehead, and she half smiled and made a soft sound that drove his li
bido straight through the cabin roof. He had to settle for closing his hand over hers. Eventually, he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.
And he was walking. It was dark. Then he was in a room and there was a knock on the door and he answered it. A clown stood there, a clown with a big red nose and a blue ruffled collar. A clown with bright yellow shoes, huge shoes! He held a present in his hands, one with bows and ribbons. He gave it to John.
The door slammed. And then the owls came, wings beating. He threw up his arms and the present rose into the air above his head and exploded into a million little stars. He had to run. The owls were coming—
“John!”
The voice was soft but urgent, and he opened his eyes at once. The wings still beat, but Paige was there and she had her arms around him as much as she could given their seating.
He stared into her eyes, and then his gaze shifted to the red line from the chain that had choked her when she pulled it from around her neck. The owl was right there, under her clothes, nestled between her luscious breasts. He touched the old wound gingerly, then slid his fingers down her throat, moving aside the fabric until the gold chain sparkled against her skin....
She caught his hand and held it very tight in hers. She said something, but her voice was just a soft purr, soothing but indistinct.
She pressed her lips to his cheek and he shifted his head so their lips came into contact. He kissed her with all the fire that raged in his body, his hands grasping her closer, desperate to get past her clothes and touch her cool skin and tear away that owl.
With a gentle but firm shove, she pushed him away.
He took a deep breath and swallowed, straightening in his seat as she readjusted her clothes.
He’d been willing to strip her bare on a plane full of people. “You better lock me up,” he muttered.
“I have bigger and better plans for you,” she said with an uneasy smile. “But not until we get a hotel room.” It seemed to him she was trying to make light of something that had alarmed her, and he closed his eyes.
After several seconds of silence, she squeezed his hand and, leaning close, whispered into his ear. “It’s okay, John. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Opening his eyes, he tried a smile. It seemed to crack his face as though he’d never smiled before, and he took another deep breath and nodded.
The steward came around with hot coffee soon after that and then a light breakfast. The images of the dream faded as they always did, but he knew they’d be back.
* * *
UPON LANDING IN THE LARGE city of Traterg, they hired a car and driver at the airport to take them to an outlying village over a hundred miles away called Slovo.
It was cold and gray outside, rain turning into sleet as they traveled higher in elevation. John leaned over the seat and talked to the driver in fractured English. The man was young with glossy, curly black hair and bright red suspenders.
As they spoke, Paige sat back. She felt numb from the inside out. And when she tried to figure out exactly how she’d come to be at this place in this time with this man, it left her breathless.
Growing up, her mother had been so flighty and her sister so like her mother that it had fallen to Paige to be the sensible one, and after her father finally got tired of all the drama and left the family, Paige took on his roles, as well. When she was old enough, she drove her sister to and from activities, and did most of the cooking and cleaning because her mother was usually in the middle of a disastrous and time-consuming relationship and otherwise occupied.
Then Paige had left home, gone to school and graduated and proceeded to carve a little place for herself, building up a client base and gaining a good word-of-mouth reputation. The one silly thing she’d done was move into an apartment with her sister upon Katy’s urging, and that had served as a vivid reminder of how chaotic living with one of her family members could be. When Brian and she decided to get married, it had seemed life would now unfold in front of her in a stable, predictable pattern.
Paige sighed as she looked out the window. Common sense said she was being an idiot when it came to John. In her saner moments, she wondered if she found something familiar and kind of oddly safe in the danger that nipped at their heels. Wasn’t this kind of reminiscent of the way she grew up, only with way-higher stakes?
“Dmitry here says the lake we’re going to was carved out of the land when a glacier retreated umpteen years ago and melted ice filled the basin it left behind,” John said. “The hotel is on the island. Slovo is on this side of the lake. He says it’s more like a village than a city.”
“There’s the bridge,” Paige said, leaning forward and gesturing at the green turrets visible through the rain-spattered windows.
And all of a sudden this seemed like the most naive trip in the world to her. This was a holiday destination. What in the world made them think that his grandparents lived here now or ever had? The photo had probably been taken during a vacation.
They arrived in Slovo in the late afternoon when the waning light made the wet cobblestone streets appear like black ice. Across the lake, as viewed through the driving sleet, the island hotel resembled a medieval fortress instead of the ice-crystal castle in the photo Paige had used years before.
“The village seems small enough that someone might know of them,” John said. “I mean I have to assume that when I was here a few weeks ago I knew where to find them. This time I’ll have to search.”
She heard the excitement in his voice and crossed mental fingers that he would find these long-lost grandparents who would fill him in on his missing childhood and explain the visit he’d made earlier that year.
And then that the nightmares would stop. Those were getting a little spooky.
“Let’s start at the post office,” John told Dmitry as they wound their way through the narrow streets.
“Posta?”
“Yes. Please, that would be great.”
“Does any of this look even vaguely familiar?” Paige asked as they parked in front of a modest stone building.
“Not even a little, but what’s new?”
Dmitry went into the post office with them. Two women and one man were busy sorting mail behind a well-worn counter. The small lobby area was empty of customers but looked similar to the old small-town post offices she’d seen in movies.
Leaning against the counter, Dmitry spoke rapidly and with enthusiasm to the man who had come to help. The two women left their tasks and wandered over to listen. “I tell them you are grandson,” Dmitry said in an aside to John. “Looking for the grandma and grandpa. Man say you look familiar.”
John smiled. “Really? Has he seen me before, is that what he means?”
“Yes, yes. Before. Not sure where.”
Everyone nodded and smiled, expressions warm and friendly as they waited expectantly, Paige assumed, for names.
“My grandparents’ last name is Ogneva,” John said. “Sergi and Galina Ogneva.”
One woman’s hand flew to cover her mouth. Her eyes above her knuckles watered. The other one gripped the edge of the counter and swayed on her feet while the man seemed to inhale his smile.
John looked from one of them to the other. “Wait a second, I have a picture of them,” he said, and produced the snapshot taken over two decades before. “That’s me in the middle,” he told them. “I think I lived here years and years ago. With them. With my grandparents.”
Everyone studied the photo but no one said anything.
Dmitry looked at John, shaking his head. “Something is wrong,” he said.
No kidding. “Can you tell what’s upset them?” Paige asked.
Dmitry spoke to them again. This time the man kept glancing at John, but the women wouldn’t meet his gaze. When Dmitry looked back at John, his eyes were sympathetic. “My friend, John, I have terrible news,” the younger man began. “Grandpa and Grandma die in horrible fire.”
The man behind the counter had more to say a
nd Dmitry listened, translating once he’d finished. “Bullets, too.”
“Bullets. What do you mean?”
“Bullets in bodies. This man say Sergi shoot his wife, set fire to his house and shoot himself. I am sorry.”
John stood there, eyes wide, disbelief shadowing his face. “When did this happen?” he said at last.
Dmitry talked to the postal worker and reported back. “This man knows where he see you now. You were outside house with Galina five weeks ago. He hear you leave for Traterg and the night there be the fire.”
“I can’t believe we came all this way and they’re dead,” John said, looking at Paige, disappointment darkening his eyes.
She gripped his arm. “I know. I’m sorry.”
John addressed Dmitry again. “Find out where the police station is.”
While the conversation continued, Paige walked outside to the sidewalk. Standing close to the building, so the overhang would protect her from the weather, she watched the cars and people hurrying about the end of their day, on their way home, perhaps, or maybe on their way to meet with friends. Ordinary activities, things that made up the bulk of a life. Turning, she glanced inside the post-office window, and for a second John and the others appeared like silent actors on a stage.
What was she doing here?
John turned just then and their gazes locked and she smiled. Poor guy looked miserable and yet he was still concerned about where she’d gone off to and if she was okay. When this situation resolved itself, would she have to get to know a whole new John Cinca? And considering the fact that he’d apparently never recovered from his first bout of amnesia, was it possible he would not recover from this one, either?
Could she live with all the questions?
A minute later, John and Dmitry joined her on the sidewalk.
“Let’s go,” John said, putting his arm around Paige’s shoulders. Dmitry opened the door and they piled inside.
“Where are we going?” Paige asked.
“The police station isn’t far from here we’re told.”
Sure enough, Dmitry dropped them at another stone building a few blocks away, begging off going inside because the man in the post office had told them that there were English-speaking officers here. Paige got the impression Dmitry wasn’t anxious to be around the cops.
