Cole shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans and made himself smile. “Forget it. Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Angela either until you started falling all over yourself apologizing.”
It was a lie, but only a half lie. Of course he’d been thinking about Angela, about her still body covered in blood, about her fragility, about his role in her death. Pete’s careless joke hadn’t affected that one way or the other.
“Listen, you might want to check the sidewalk and the grass for blood or some kind of weapon. She ran from between those buildings and got into a struggle with a sleazy guy who came up, probably harmless, begging, but he did grab her arm. She got away from him and ran into the street, right in front of my car. I don’t think she had time to injure the guy, but you never know.”
Pete nodded and went to check out the scene.
Cole could feel the woman’s needy eyes on him, pulling him as a magnet, and he returned his attention to her, moving closer to where she lay reluctantly on the stretcher. “She okay?” he asked.
“Seems to be,” one of the paramedics answered. “We still need to take her in, though. Just a precaution since she appears to have some memory loss.”
“No!” The bride pushed aside the paramedics and raised herself to a sitting position. Terror showed in her gaze, her trembling lips, the shaky, beseeching hand she lifted to him. “Don’t let them take me. Please don’t let him take me!”
He squatted beside her, gently easing her back onto the stretcher. “Shh. Just relax, okay?”
Him? Don’t let him take me? Why had she used the singular pronoun the second time when there were two paramedics? Was something else going on here besides a fear of being taken to the hospital by strangers?
“I’m all right now, really I am. I remember my name and where I live. It’s…Mary Jackson, and I live at…1492 Main Street.”
She was definitely lying now, making it up on the spot, her eyes begging him to believe her, to help her, looking at him as if he were a hero or Marshall Dillon. Well, he wasn’t. He was just a former cop who hadn’t even been able to protect his own family, so what did she want from him?
He rose abruptly, doing her the favor of breaking away from her.
“What day is it?” the paramedic asked, his voice gentle. He knew she was lying, too.
Tears flooded her eyes, but she bit her lip and blinked them back, then looked around her. The curious crowd chafed at the police tape as they tried to get a closer look, and a steady stream of cars inched along while drivers gawked at the scene.
“Saturday.” A good guess from the number of people out and about. “It’s Saturday night. I don’t know the date. Do you?” she challenged.
Cole shifted his stance from one foot to the other and released a long breath. The woman, in spite of being in a complete panic, not knowing who or where she was, had guts. He had to give her that. “I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said, cursing himself even as the words slipped out of his mouth. “I’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”
She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, then, as if suddenly aware of the bloodstain she was touching, she dropped them to her sides with a shudder. “I can’t get in that ambulance. Please don’t make me.” Claustrophobia? A bad experience in an ambulance?
“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “You can ride with me. I’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked in. I guess I owe you that much since I’m the one who ran you down.”
But it wasn’t only his guilt that motivated him. He wasn’t solely responsible for this woman’s problems. Something had been wrong with her before she ran in front of his car. A bride in full regalia with blood on her wedding gown had some kind of story to tell, even if she couldn’t remember it.
No, it wasn’t just the guilt that made him want to take care of her. This woman had that same fragile, helpless, innocent air that Angela had had. And in spite of knowing that the kindest thing he could do was to walk away, he couldn’t stop himself from responding to her pleas.
What the hell was the matter with him? Did he have some misguided notion he could get it right this time?
A psychiatrist could probably have a field day with that one.
“Evening, ma’am.” Pete strolled up. Cole noted that another squad car had arrived and the officers had taken over the search of the sidewalk and the surrounding area.
Instead of being relieved to see a uniformed police officer, the woman tightened her hold on his arm, and her breathing accelerated.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Pete asked in his best official mode.
“I can’t remember,” she said, her words barely above a whisper.
“A temporary fugue state,” one of the paramedics contributed.
Pete looked at Cole and lifted one eyebrow. “This guy here says you ran out from between those two buildings, a man accosted you and you ran into the street in front of his car. Is that true?”
“I don’t know.”
“You come from a wedding reception somewhere around here?” Typical cop, assuming she was lying, trying to con her into admitting something. Standard operating procedure, but Cole wanted to tell him to ease up on her, that she was too fragile.
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“Where’d you get the blood on your dress?”
“I don’t remember!”
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t remember!”
“She said it was Mary Jackson a few minutes ago,” Cole interjected. “Mary Jackson who lives at 1492 Main. But I think she was lying so she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.”
Pete’s dark eyes bored into her, and she trembled slightly. “Is that your name?” he demanded. “Are you Mary Jackson?”
She looked down to the pavement and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Mary Chapin Carpenter sings country music. So does Alan Jackson. I just put them together. 1492 Main Street. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And every town has a Main Street. I made it all up. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Where might that be?”
Her eyes widened and tears again glistened. “I don’t know.”
Involuntarily, Cole reached over and squeezed her hand where it clung to his arm. Her skin was smooth and silky, like her dress, and her fingers were long and delicate. The only contrast was a large diamond ring that pressed with sharp cold edges against his fingers.
“The way I see it,” Pete continued “you’ve got two choices, the hospital or the police station. You’re going to have some questions to answer when you come out of this fugue state, and we need to run some tests on that dress, see what kind of blood that is.”
She swallowed, the sound audible over the traffic and crowd noises as if the three of them stood in their own little universe. “What kind of blood?”
“Could be human. Or could be chicken. Maybe you were cooking for your own wedding reception. Could be goat. Maybe this was some kind of voodoo ceremony.” He stared pointedly at her hand on Cole’s arm, at the huge diamond solitaire. “Apparently the wedding wasn’t over. You don’t have the band to go with that rock.”
She held out her hand, studying the ring as if seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she tugged it off and extended it to Cole. “It’s not mine!”
“It is unless somebody else claims it,” Pete told her. “So what’s it gonna be? The station or the hospital?”
Her eyes, the pupils so shrunken they were lost in the silvery-blue mist, silently asked his advice, trusting him to make the right decision, to lead her in the right direction.
Couldn’t she tell just by looking at him that the only place he could lead her was straight into hell?
“If I were you, I’d choose the hospital,” he growled. “I sure wouldn’t voluntarily go with the cops.” And certainly not with an ex-cop who had the scent of death following him like
a shadow.
She studied him a moment longer, her hand still outstretched with the ring winking on her palm. “All right,” she said. “But only if you take me in your car. Only if I don’t have to get into that…that thing.”
“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he agreed against his better judgment. She certainly did seem to have a phobia about the ambulance. Of course, she seemed to have a phobia about everything.
Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you better let us take care of the lady.”
Cole flinched at his buddy’s words. Pete was only following procedure, but it hit Cole hard, like a direct attack, an affirmation that this frightened, confused woman would be better off with anybody in the world except him.
Pete knew his story. So maybe he was saying exactly that.
“Are you arresting me?” the bride asked, lifting her chin defiantly, that unexpected burst of strength again surfacing.
“No, ma’am. We’d just like to know where that blood came from. I didn’t find any more in the vicinity and I didn’t find a weapon, but you could have wounded the guy you were struggling with. If you did, he’s not around to press charges, and he did accost you first, according to your friend here. We’re not arresting you.”
“I’ll go to the hospital because I have nowhere else to go, but only if Mr. Grayson takes me.” She spread her hands several inches away from the dress as if she didn’t want to touch it. “And you’re more than welcome to have this…this thing as soon as I get other clothes to wear.” She shivered in the warm summer evening. “I don’t want it. It makes my skin crawl.”
She had amnesia…or a fugue state, as the paramedic called it. She had an aversion to ambulances and hospitals and cops. She was wearing a wedding gown but no wedding band, which probably meant she’d skipped out on her own wedding…after somehow getting blood all over the front of that gown…a gown that made her skin crawl. The only normal things about her were her knowledge of country-music singers and the date America was officially discovered.
She had problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she was looking to him to take care of her. What a joke!
“I can get her to the hospital, Pete,” Cole snapped. “I can handle that.”
“Please take this,” she whispered, still holding out her hand.
Pete reached toward her, but she jerked away from him. “I’ll take your jewelry in for you, ma’am,” he said. “Give you a receipt and you can have it back as soon as you get out of the hospital or anytime you want.”
“No. Not you. Him.”
“Look, lady,” Cole said, “I’m a complete stranger. The only thing you know about me is that I ran you down with my car. Give the ring to the police officer. You give it to me and you may never get it back again. You may never see me again.”
“I don’t want it back.”
“Take it, Grayson,” Pete snapped irritably. “We haven’t got all night. I’ll see that he doesn’t run off with it, ma’am.”
Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.
Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.
He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.
Chapter Two
Jane Doe.
That’s what she’d heard the doctors and nurses calling her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she hated it. Bad enough she’d lost all memory of self, but everyone’s insistence on using that generic, no-identity name stole any remaining sense of self.
They said it was normal that she could remember dates from history and the names of country singers but not whether she liked those country singers, not who she went to concerts with, nothing about the classroom where she’d learned those historical dates. Nothing personal. Nothing that made her anything more than a zombie with no soul and no name.
She tucked the hospital sheet more tightly around her as if that thin material could keep out the demons. She couldn’t remember their names or faces, but she knew they were there, watching from dark, soulless eyes, waiting to snare her with twisted claws.
The man who said he’d hit her with his car, Cole Grayson, the one person she’d felt connected to in this strange world, had brought her to the hospital and turned her over to the others then left. They had poked, prodded and examined every inch of her mind and body. She’d hated it, hated the invasion, hated and feared the strangers…medical personnel and police officers…with their questions she couldn’t answer and their sly insinuations that she might be lying.
Finally they’d put her in her own room and left her alone, and that was the worst of all. She was alone without even herself for company. But at least she was out of that horrible dress that had imprisoned her with its endless yards of fabric and the sticky blood that stained the front and clung to her skin like some foul creature. Even now, bathed and wearing a clean hospital gown, the metallic scent seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her tongue.
As she lay staring into the darkness, the door to her room opened. It made no sound except for a whisper of a sigh when it moved through the air, but she heard it and a nameless terror rose inside her. Pressing her nails into her palms, she fought the urge to bury her head under the sheet.
Instead, she forced herself to sit up and face the intruder.
He hesitated half in and half out of the doorway, the light from the hall turning him to a dark silhouette, unrecognizable except that he was the only recognizable element in this shadow world she’d been thrust into.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said. Cole Grayson, the man who’d caused her to be in this hospital in the first place, yet the only person her heart trusted even while her mind warned her against such insanity.
“No. I wasn’t asleep.”
He moved inside, closed the door and flipped the wall switch, flooding the sterile room with light. He was tall with wide shoulders that stretched the fabric of the blue knit shirt as it molded to clearly defined muscles. Faded jeans hugged muscular thighs. His brown hair was shaggy, had seen too many weeks between haircuts, and his square jaw was accented by the dark shadow of a man who needed to shave twice a day and hadn’t.
His appearance said he observed the rudiments of a civilized dress code but actually didn’t much care what he looked like. He bordered on disreputable and was surely someone she shouldn’t trust at all.
Yet there was a desolate emptiness somewhere behind his brown eyes that reached inside her and drew her to him, a sadness she suspected most people didn’t see. It was that desolate emptiness, an echo of what she felt inside herself, that had made her trust him while she was still in the middle of the street, virtually under the wheels of his car.
No, that wasn’t all of it. Behind her emptiness lay fear; behind his lay a stone wall strong enough to support that emptiness, to keep it from devouring him. She was drawn to that strength, to that stone wall, to the only security she’d seen so far in this unknown world into which she’d awakened.
“I brought your engagement ring back.” He walked over to the bed and laid the shiny object on her night-stand. She looked at it, somehow expecting it to take on a life of its own, to coil and snarl and attack her.
“I must have loved the man who gave it to me,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, you must have. I don’t think men go around giving that kind of jewelry to women who hate them.”
In vain she searched her memory for a picture of that man, for the love she must have felt for him, for some reason that would explain why she had such an aversion to the ring.
“I’m glad you weren’t hurt badly,” Cole continued. “I
talked to the cops, gave them my statement, and the officer said you were okay except for a little bruising, especially around your wrists. That guy you were struggling with must have grabbed you pretty hard.”
She lifted her hands and looked at the black-and-blue marks that marred the arms she didn’t recognize. Had she always been this thin or had she been sick? What event had occurred in her life to cause that small scar? Did she break that fingernail when she fell or when she grappled with the man on the street…or during whatever struggle had left all that blood on her dress?
“I guess he must have grabbed me hard. I don’t remember.”
“The doctors think you will, though. Soon.”
She nodded. “I know. They told me. Officer Townley said they’re checking missing-persons reports and they’ll put my picture in the paper and on the news. Somebody will recognize me. The doctor said as soon as I see a familiar face, that could jog my memory.” It all sounded quite logical. So why didn’t she believe it? Why did she fear being stuck in this foggy land of nowhere for the rest of her life?
“Yeah. The guy who gave you that ring is probably frantic right now. As soon as he sees your picture, he’ll come to take you home.”
“Yes,” she said. “If he’s still alive. If he’s not the man whose blood was all over my dress.” A memory beat leathery bat wings against the dark, closed windows of her mind.
“I don’t want that thing,” she blurted, scooting as far away from the diamond and from the almost-memory as she could in the narrow bed.
Cole looked as her as though she were nuts. Well, wasn’t she?
He rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture causing his biceps to bulge so that the sleeve of his shirt seemed certain to tear. He was a big man, a strong man. He could hurt anybody he chose to hurt, especially someone as defenseless as she.
Yet she felt no fear of him. Instinctively she knew that he would use that strength to protect her, and she desperately needed protection right now…from the dark, unknown terrors hiding in her mind, as well as from the unknown world around her.
Private Vows Page 2