The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “Can you manage for yourself?” he asked.

  She nodded, her smile grateful. She picked up the spoon using, Luke noted, her left hand. When it became apparent she wasn’t a southpaw, he folded back the blankets and found her right wrist swollen to twice its normal size. He probed it gently and heard her gasp.

  “Sorry. Can you move your fingers?” She flexed them. “How about your wrist?”

  She managed to bend at the wrist, but the effort drained more color out of her face.

  “I don’t think it’s broken, but it should probably be strapped until it can be X-rayed. A hairline fracture and a sprain can both cause swelling.” He should know. He’d had both. He opened the first aid kit and rummaged through it until he’d found everything he needed.

  “Are you a doctor?” A few bites of the soup put a slight flush in her cheeks.

  “Actually, I’m a cop. And an all-too-frequent patient.” He grinned at her. “My mom claims most of her gray hairs are my fault, but my brothers did their share, believe me. Most of it from rock climbing.” While he talked, he helped her out of her jacket, a painful exercise, then applied a wrist splint and wrapped it with elastic bandage. When he was done, he touched the tips of her fingers. “Can you feel this?”

  She nodded, relaxing back against the couch with a sigh of relief. “It feels a lot better.”

  “Let me know if the tips of your fingers start to tingle and I’ll loosen it.” He frowned. “Normally I’d apply ice, but you’re still pretty chilled.”

  “I feel wonderfully warm, but I’d rather avoid ice for now.”

  She ate most of her soup but only took one sip of the coffee. She stared into the cup, then looked at him. “I don’t think I drink coffee.”

  She looked startled. It did seem like something she should know about herself.

  “I’ll get you some water, but first—” Luke set the tray aside, and picked up the flashlight.

  “What now?” She sounded amused.

  “Looks like you took a pretty nasty tumble, could have a mild concussion. I want to look at your pupils.” He tipped her head up and flashed the light in her eyes, watching her pupils react. “Did you lose consciousness?”

  She smiled at the question. She’d lost more than consciousness. “Oh, yeah.”

  “It’s not unusual for the noggin to be scrambled after a fall.”

  He was a big man and strong, but his hands were warm and gentle cupping either side of her face. His face was close enough for her to see the texture of his skin as he probed her scalp for injuries. The words craggy and weather-beaten came to mind first. He looked like a man who lived much of his life outside. He wasn’t movie star handsome, but she felt an unexpected flicker of attraction flare where he touched her.

  “Besides the bump on your temple, there’s another here, above your ear.”

  “I’ve got one on the lower occipital, too,” she said, touching the base of her head with a wince. He looked surprised as he checked it out.

  “That you do. I’d say you did a top over tail today.” He sat back, his hands dropping away.

  To her annoyance, her skin felt cold, almost bereft without his touch. You know nothing about this man, she reminded herself. But that wasn’t the worst. She knew nothing about herself, except that she had an occipital. And a parietal, frontal and temporal. Very weird. It was as if she’d begun her existence when she opened her eyes a short time ago. She hadn’t even known what she looked like until she saw herself in the mirror. It was an odd feeling to meet herself for the first time. By most standards, even with the bumps and bruises, the face that had stared back at her would be considered beautiful. She’d felt no pride of ownership; no sense of I am a beautiful woman. No sense of herself at all. She’d fingered her clothes. They were of good fabric, but sturdy and serviceable, rather than glamorous. No perfume, cheap or expensive lingered on her skin. She’d sniffed herself twice and found soap. Just soap. And the smell of pine. Judging by the amount of pine needles she’d shaken out of her hair, the smell of pine was inevitable, rather than revealing.

  Her hands, beneath the scratches, were cared for. Her fingers were long, the nails that weren’t torn were filed but unpolished. To her surprise, despite the signs she’d taken a very nasty tumble, she felt relieved, as if she’d laid down a burden. Beneath the uncertainty, she felt free. If she had no past, that left a future full of possibilities.

  “What do you remember?” he asked.

  A better question would be, what am I trying to forget? She shrugged, then wished she hadn’t. The movement upped the pain quota enough to make stars sashay across her view.

  “Let’s start with something easy, like your name?”

  Her name. Everyone had a name. She had an impulse to make one up. To write something onto the blank canvas in her head, but her mind refused to play. It didn’t cough up a single consonant, let alone a whole name. She pushed at the gray mist and it pushed back. It did open enough to let out a single emotion. Panic. It spilled through her like a tsunami, threatening to sweep her away. As if he sensed it, he grabbed her left hand, held it, a lifeline pulling her free of the dark undertow.

  “You really did scramble your brains, didn’t you?” His voice was kind, as if not knowing her own name was no big deal. “How about I call you Goldie for now?”

  “Goldie?” From the jumble of letters in her head, the name formed into a row. So she did know the alphabet, in addition to the parts of the head. That was something.

  He curled a strand of her hair around his finger and held it up for her view.

  To her surprise, a slight, mischievous smile curved her mouth at the edges. “I wonder if it’s the real thing or out of a bottle?”

  He chuckled, drawing her attention to his broad, well constructed chest. When he went for the first aid kit, she’d noticed he filled out his jeans well, too. He walked with a relaxed, but determined stride, and he had kind eyes, with a hint of sad lurking in their depths. He was taller than she and had an air of calm competence. She’d never trusted handsome men, though she had no idea why that was.

  “Even if it’s not natural,” he said with a grin, “you reminded me of Goldilocks when I found you sleeping on my couch.”

  “Are you one of the three bears?” He was big and woolly enough. His hair was dark and unruly, with the shadow of a heavy beard on the lower half of his craggy face. At the base of his throat, where the collar of his flannel shirt exposed the strong column of his neck, she could see a tuft of thick dark chest hair. No question the sum of his parts had a distinct teddy bear quality. A teddy bear packing a gun, she reminded herself.

  “I growl a little in the morning,” he admitted.

  “Goldie does seem to fit.” She examined the name and found she didn’t mind it. At least there was no big, bad wolf in the story. “It’s nice to meet you, Luke.”

  “Nice to meet you, Goldie.” He held out his hand.

  Without thinking, she reached out with her injured right arm, but felt such a stab of pain from the movement, everything went black for a few seconds. From a distance, she heard Luke ask, “What’s wrong? Is the wrap too tight?”

  “No. Higher up, I think.” A few deep breaths cleared the haze, but the pain stayed, clinging to her arm like a pit bull. She saw a tear in the dark fabric of her tee shirt. Around the tear, the material was stiff with dried blood and stuck to her skin. Luke held a pair of scissors and she covered the spot protectively.

  “Going to have to cut the sleeve of your shirt.”

  His steady gaze reassured her. She nodded and lowered her hand.

  She wanted to look away when he inserted the blade of the scissors under the edge of her sleeve and began snipping, folding the soft cotton back as more and more of her arm was exposed, but she couldn’t. Whether she liked it or not, it was another piece in the puzzle of who she was. Up past the elbow he ran into the stuck-on material and, to her relief, stopped.

  “You’ve bled a fair bit,” Luke said. “You m
ust have sliced your arm when you fell. Hang on.”

  He returned with a pan of warm water. He wet the material until he’d bared her arm to the shoulder, exposing an angry gash in the flesh of her upper arm.

  There was something not right about the wound, something that stole the warmth from her body, replacing it with the chill of fear. She looked at Luke, hoping he’d reassure her, but his face was grim and worried. A cop’s face, she realized. He picked up her discarded jacket and examined the tear that matched the wound in her arm. She saw him sniff it, the worry in his face deepening.

  “What?”

  “It’s—” he stopped, then said, his voice as grim as his face, “it’s a bullet graze. I can still smell the gun powder.” He handed her the coat.

  Eyes wide, Goldie took it and sniffed. Someone shot at her. Close range, if she could smell residue. In her head she could see the words, but they didn’t make sense. Nothing did. What kind of person got shot at? How did she know about residue? No wonder she didn’t want to remember.

  “What…do we…do?”

  Luke looked toward the window. “Tonight? Nothing we can do. We’re completely shut off until the storm clears. When it does, my truck’s a four-wheel. I have a few contacts with the Estes Park cops.”

  “But…I don’t remember anything! What will I tell them?” Panic slipped its leash again. She could hear it in her voice, but was too weary to do anything about controlling it.

  Once again, Luke rescued her. He grabbed her uninjured hand and caught her gaze with his.

  “We’ll figure it out in the morning. Your memory can come back at any time. At least, that’s what the TV doctors say.” He smiled. It was a nice smile. A safe smile, a confident smile, but also a sexy smile.

  “Well, they must know.” She found herself smiling back as her body relaxed again. Something intimate and unsettling entered the space between them. She looked away, in the direction of her wound. Right now it was less scary than looking at Luke, so she studied it. “Looks like it plowed along the top of the epidermis. Shouldn’t need stitches. It should heal quickly if infection doesn’t set in.”

  There was a moment of silence. She looked at Luke.

  He grinned. “Maybe you’re a TV doc?”

  Or a real one. She strained against the gray mist inside her head, but it resisted her with painful firmness.

  “If I am, my brain isn’t giving it up. It’s like…” she stopped.

  “Like what?” Luke’s attention was focused on wrapping the white bandage around her arm, but his voice invited her to go on.

  Goldie had a feeling he was always the good cop. The urge to confide was almost irresistible. But what if she was confiding herself into jail? Was she a good guy? And if she was, what was she afraid to remember?

  “It’s like…” she hesitated again, but the need to put it out there, see if what she felt could sustain itself in the light of examination, overcame her qualms, “there’s two separate…issues.” That wasn’t the right word, but nothing better presented itself. “On the one side is this…relief. An incredible lightness of being.” She smiled, wondering who she’d just plagiarized. “I’m new and the world is full of possibilities.”

  “And on the other?” Luke finished his work and sat back, his gaze—sober and encouraging—fixed on her face.

  “On the other is…dread. Confusion.” She closed her eyes and out of the mist heard angry voices…Who am I? And why did it feel like a question she’d asked before? She groped toward the voices, but they faded into the gray. She shook her head in frustration. “It’s gone.”

  “Don’t try so hard. Memories like to be coaxed.”

  “What if—” she clasped her hands together, “what if I’m mixed up in something illegal?”

  “Do you think you’re that kind of person?” Luke asked, putting his hands over her clasped ones. His grip was warm and light. It gave comfort without confining.

  “No!” The word burst out of her without a second’s thought. She probed deeper. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it felt like the dread came from the outside in, not that it emanated from inside her.

  “I don’t know much about amnesia, but I do know about people. I see all kinds. The ones with character and the ones without. You’re all right, Goldie.”

  She stared at him for a long moment as relief flooded through her, but felt compelled to ask, “What if you’re wrong?”

  For just a moment, his eyes showed he’d asked himself that question. He seemed satisfied with his own answer, though, because he grinned. “I’m never wrong, though my brothers might disagree.” His gaze studied her face, then he added, “Relax. While this storm is controlling the board, trouble can’t find either of us.”

  It was a happy thought. The knot in her stomach eased, allowing relief’s return.

  He stood up. “I’m going to see if I can find you something to change into. We need to check you for any other…injuries.” He caught her chin and looked at her eyes again. Not like a man looking at a woman. “Headache?”

  “It’s hard to isolate my aches to any single area.” She touched the sore area at the base of her neck. It felt bigger than the last time she’d touched it. “I think I will try some of that ice, though.”

  He nodded, then made a beeline for the stairs. She watched him because she couldn’t help it and because it was a distraction. She had the weird sense that a guy in tight jeans was a rarity in her life. Maybe she was a nun? Her brain produced, “We are troubled on every side, but not in despair.”

  Appropriate, but not exactly significant. And didn’t nuns have to cut their hair? Luke was almost out of sight, which seemed a pity.

  “Luke?”

  He paused, one foot on a stair and turned. “Yeah?”

  That was better. “Where am I?”

  “I told you. Our cabin—”

  “No, where in the world am I?”

  “Oh. Colorado. Not far from Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Ring any bells?”

  “North American continent. Between forty-one and thirty-seven degrees north latitude and one hundred and two and one hundred and nine degrees west longitude. Thirty-eighth state—” She stopped the flood of words, though more minutia hovered on the tip of her tongue. More about Colorado, plus the fact that Rocky Mountain National Park was founded in 1915 and was part of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. She also, apparently, knew that Estes Park was located at the east entrance to the park.

  Despite the mini-flood of information, none of it gave her a sense of place, of where she was in the larger tapestry of life. Outside the storm raged against their beachhead of warmth. So far the cabin held its own against a wind that howled at the door and rattled windows that had frost building from the corners out of its panes. Away from civilization and city lights, the darkness was deep and impenetrable. She could be anywhere. Even on the moon, she realized, and she wouldn’t know it.

  Goldie smiled weakly. “At least I know what continent I’m on.”

  “I’ll say,” Luke said. He looked amused and bemused. “Maybe later we can play Trivial Pursuit, see what else you know.”

  A name floated into the front of her brain. “Oh. I remember something else! Carmen Sandiego!”

  Luke laughed. “It’s a game, Goldie. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I’ll bet you kick ass at it, too.”

  He left her alone, feeling silly and frustrated. Why could she remember skin layers, streams of facts and games, but not her own name? And why the peculiar sense that she’d never known who she really was?

  Unsettled, she padded over to the window and peered out. All she could see was the unfamiliar reflection staring back at her. She smiled, watching it appear on the stranger’s face in the window. Visibility was zero. Outside the window and inside her own head. She turned and looked at the stairs where Luke had vanished. Unbidden, against her wishes, a thought worked its way to the front of her head. What wa
s he doing out here away from everyone?

  All she knew was what he told her. The wind rose in a howl outside. A howl that sounded too much like mocking laughter.

  TWO

  The moon was a recent memory in the night sky. A few stars broke the cloud cover that added a layer of cool to the shrubbery surrounding the laboratory. The night smells of shrub and flower filled the air, a symbolic reminder of what they were there to protect—Mother Nature herself.

  Green One, a darker shadow in a sea of shadows, scanned the area through his night vision glasses. A guard strolled around a corner, pausing to light a cigarette. Not far from him, One could see Green Two’s heat signature, also waiting for the guard to move on. When the guard resumed his patrol, One moved forward a few steps, crouched for another scan of the area, then forward again. Against the side of the building, Two and Three joined him. Four was elsewhere, neutralizing the electronic security system.

  No one spoke. No one needed to. They had their assigned target inside the laboratory. Only he knew the real names of the members of the team. This was a world at war, with too few soldiers signed up on Mother Nature’s behalf. Green was his brain child, his underground army, modeled after the French Resistance of World War II. At first, Green had been small with few cells, hitting environmental polluters in a few isolated incidents and then vanishing into the night, but it had grown in the last five years. Gore had made it “in” to be green, and it had also helped his cause when he established a legitimate non-profit front that lobbied Congress, raised money, conducted peaceful protests—and found him recruits for his more aggressive goals. Gore was a joke, but it didn’t matter. Green was a mighty oak now, with strong, deep roots able to withstand the winds of change.

  From his unique perspective as its gardener, it had been fascinating to see his sapling grow and flourish. The battle was like a living chessboard, with him controlling the white pieces and big business in charge of the black. The government tried to referee this unequal match, but the money that flowed from the anti-green forces to the open hands of elected officials had neutered it. Soft money for softer brains.