Karen Robards

by Obsession

  Who was an impossibly thin beauty with a golden tan and shiny, straight platinum blond hair that ended in feathery layers that reached maybe an inch past her chin in front and was shorter in back. Right at the moment,the ’do was a mess, with the ends sticking out every which way and the back smashed, but she was pretty sure she was looking at a hundred-dollar haircut.

  Or maybe even a two-hundred-dollar one.

  The very thought of which boggled her mind.

  I can’t afford that. The thought popped into her mind out of nowhere.

  The woman in the mirror apparently could. Along with a big ole sapphire ring and diamond ear studs that had to be at least a carat each and a pricey manicure and who knew what else.

  This isn’t me.

  Heart pounding, staring horrified at the woman in the mirror who was—duh!—looking equally horrified as she stared back, Katharine broke into a cold sweat.

  Whoa. Calm down. Breathe.

  Okay, the bandage on her nose—which thankfully wasn’t nearly as big or noticeable as it felt—kept her from getting a good look at that feature, but she definitelyremembered getting her face smashed into her kitchen floor, so that was right. The bump on her forehead,too, had probably happened then, or maybe later, when she had flung herself out the window.

  Which meant that she was definitely looking at the woman who had been terrorized and almost killed in her town house last night.

  In other words, herself.

  Get a grip. Who else could you be?

  Her thick, dark brows were gone, replaced by elegant arches that were definitely lighter in color. But—and this was a biggie—her eyes were the right color: a soft, clear green. Very pretty, very distinctive. In fact, she had always considered them her best feature. She rememberedthem.

  She blew out a sigh of relief.

  See there?

  With her lips still parted from that relieved sigh, she discovered her teeth. They were—she leaned a little closer to be sure—perfect teeth. Two rows of china-whiteChiclets that gleamed at her when she pulled back her lips in a grimace to check them out.

  Her heart started pounding again.

  The thing was, she was pretty sure her teeth had never been that blindingly flawless. In fact, she distinctly remembered a tiny gap between her two front teeth.

  What the hell is going on here?

  Panic clogged her throat. Her heart stuttered alarmingly.She gripped the edge of the vanity tightly while the bathroom’s reflection blurred behind her, trying to hold on to her sanity.

  This is not me.

  The thought was solid with conviction.

  But it had to be her, because there was no one else it could be.

  Am I dead? Did I die yesterday, at the same time as this woman maybe, and somehow miss the Heaven Expressand wind up in her body?

  Cold chills raced down her spine at the thought. Cue the spooky music. As she stared in growing horror at the woman in the mirror, she realized that she was breathing hard enough so that her throat ached, and she was going all light-headed and woozy and weak in the knees again. A little more shock to the system, she thought grimly, and she was liable to hyperventilate and pass out right there on Dottie and her crotchety roommate’s bathroom floor.

  “Katharine Lawrence, please check in at the nearest nurses’ station. Katharine Lawrence …”

  Booming over the PA system, the announcement was repeated twice. Katharine only needed to hear it once.

  Her heart lurched. Her stomach dropped like she was on an elevator in free fall. The hair on the back of her neck leaped to tingly attention.

  The hunt was on.

  Okay, put the kibosh on the incipient panic attack. Whoever she was, whatever was going on with this whole body-switching thing, she was going to have to sort it out later. What she needed to do now was lose the IV, find some clothes, and get her newly skinny, newly blond ass out of the hospital.

  Fast. Before the people who were looking for her found her.

  Because no matter who she was, she still had the feelingthat being found by them would be a really, really bad thing.

  Her gaze lit on the tall silver pole looming beside her. New BFFs or not, there was no doubt about it: The IV had to go.

  Wrenching her eyes away from the horror in the mirror,she looked down at her arm. And never mind that now that she knew it belonged to somebody else, she saw instantly that it was too tan, too thin, too elegant to have ever been hers. Later, she could freak out. Now, she just had to get herself—or whoever—out of harm’s way. A piece of surgical tape secured the clear plastic tubing to her elbow. Beneath the tape, she knew a needlewas inserted into her vein.

  God, I hate needles.

  This she knew. This was her. But this was also no time to be squeamish. Peeling off the tape, ignoring the churning in her stomach and the sweat that popped out on her forehead, she gritted her teeth and gently— ouch—pulled out the needle. A single drop of blood bubbled up in its wake. Fighting a battle with incipient nausea—obviously, she wasn’t a big fan of blood, either—she grabbed a tissue and pressed it to the wound. After a moment, the bleeding stopped, and she threw the tissue away.

  Yay. She was free of her best buddy the pole. Next up: clothes. Leaving the bathroom—

  “Dottie, is that you?”

  “Uh—she’s not back yet.”

  She stealthily crossed to the closet and opened the door …

  “Oh, I forgot about you. What’re you, one of her daughters?”

  “Yes.”

  … to find clothes. To wit, a short-sleeved blouse, dark, probably navy or black, with big pink flowers splashed all over it, and a pair of dark polyester slacks.

  “Which one?”

  “Uh, the oldest.”

  Ignoring the neatly folded panties and the bra laid out on the top shelf—no way was she wearing another woman’s undergarments, and, besides, the bra cups were so big and firm that they stood up on their own, rising like twin Mount Everests—she pulled the hospitalgown over her head …

  “Sandy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  … tossed it as far back along the overhead shelf as it would go …

  “Well, that’s good, ’cause I was wanting to ask you where you got that angel cake you brought in yesterday. It was good.”

  … and hurriedly dressed in the absent Dottie’s clothes. The blouse could have fit three of her inside it; the elastic-waist pants were instant low-riders. If she took a deep breath, she had a feeling they would be gone.

  So don’t breathe.

  The PA system crackled to life again: “Katharine Lawrence, please report to the nearest nurses’ station. Katharine Lawrence, we have an urgent phone call for you. Please report to the nurses’ station immediately.”

  Her heart thundered.

  Jesus. Move your …

  “Sandy? The angel cake?”

  “CVS.” There were flat-heeled black shoes on the closet floor. Hurriedly sliding her feet into them—they were a little short and a little wide, but if she curled her toes, they’d do—she headed toward the door.

  “CVS? They have a bakery?” The old lady sounded confused. As well she might, since CVS was a chain of pharmacies.

  Oh, well.

  “Some of them do.” Katharine listened intently at the door, heard nothing, and gave it up. She needed to go now, while they were still hoping she was going to turn herself in to a nurses’ station. “I think I’ll just go check on Mom. See you later.”

  “Bring some of that cake next time, would you?”

  “Sure. Bye.”

  Slipping through the door, she tried to look nonchalant.Which wasn’t easy when her heart was beating a mile a minute and her pants felt like they might take a dive with each and every step and her cramped toes were already killing her. To say nothing of the fact that her legs felt about as solid as limp spaghetti and her head was swimming and the only way she was getting any air was through her mouth. The elevator was, she thought, her best bet,
because the stairwell was too obviousand too easy to monitor. What she wanted to do was blend, blend, blend.

  The hallway was even busier than before, which was a good thing, she told herself firmly. Smoothing her unfamiliarhair with her hands—she’d forgotten what a mess it was until she caught a glimpse of it in a shiny brass doorplate that read staff only—she kept her face averted from the nurses’ station as she shuffled in the wake of an orderly pushing a man in a wheelchair toward the elevators.Not that they were likely to be circulating a wanted poster of her or anything—yet—but still her bandaged nose might, she felt, attract attention if, by some miracle, her hobbling gait did not. And attention was the very last thing she needed or wanted just at that moment.

  No one paid her any heed. She joined about half a dozen people in front of the elevators just as the last one on the right went ping.

  Holding her breath, pulse racing, she slid— unobtrusively, she hoped—behind the tall orderly for cover as the elevator doors slid open. Peeking warily around him, she huffed out a sigh of relief as she saw that the sole occupant was a blond teenage girl carrying a big bunch of flowers. She stepped out without more than a cursory glance at the group waiting to replace her, and walked away.

  Katharine got on with the rest, crowding toward the back to make room for the wheelchair, just one of the group wedged in there. Looking studiously at the floor in case anyone was monitoring the security cameras with which she was almost positive the elevators were equipped, she rode down five floors to the lobby withoutincident, and got out.

  There her nerve failed her. The lobby was a huge space with tall, dark-tinted windows and polished terrazzofloors. Modern seating groups consisting of black-leather-and-chrome couches and chairs anchored by area rugs in a red, gray, and black abstract design were scattered about. Escalators ferried passengers up to a mezzanine that offered a gift shop and a McDonald’s, according to the signs. An information desk was located directly in front of the elevator bank. Fortunately, it faced the entry and it was busy, with each of the three women staffing it occupied with her own little line of the lost or the clueless.

  A pair of uniformed security guards, or maybe cops—it was impossible to be sure, because they were some distance away with their backs to her—idled near the main entrance, drinking from foam cups and chattingas they watched the comings and goings of the hospital’s visitors.

  Coincidence? Yes, probably. She was 99.99 percent positive that their presence couldn’t possibly have anythingto do with her.

  Still, her heart picked up the pace again. No way was she going to chance it. Shrinking back into the shadows near the elevator bank, she took a quick, panicked look around.

  And came up with plan B. It was pretty obvious, but still it was good to know that her shell-shocked brain hadn’t totally deserted her.

  Instead of going with the flow of the crowd and walkingon across the busy lobby and out the twin revolving doors, she was going out a side entrance: the one promisedby the small black sign affixed to the wall that offeredrestrooms and exit, and included a helpful arrow pointing the way.

  It might be pure paranoia, she thought as she headed in the direction indicated by the arrow, but she had a pulse-pounding fear that they might already be watchingthe exits. She hoped there were not enough of them yet to cover all the ways out. In that case, the front of the hospital would be the most obvious place to wait and watch.

  The question that gnawed away at her brain was, Who, exactly, were “they”? Ed’s people? The men from last night? Someone else? And was there even really still a threat to her at all? She wasn’t sure—she didn’t know. She just had this overwhelming sense that she was in terrible peril.

  That being the case, she was going to go with it.

  The hospital wasn’t a building, it was a complex, she saw as she left it. Tall, gleaming towers of industrial gray steel and glass were linked by a pair of glassed-in sky-walksmaybe eight stories up. Long, low buildings the size and general appearance of airplane hangars clusteredat the base of the towers, and it was through the side of one of these that she exited. Emerging onto a sidewalk that ran alongside a small, nearly full parking lot, she stopped, momentarily blinded by the glare of the sun bouncing off dozens of windshields. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the worst of it, she tried to get her bearings. The steady sound of stop-and-go traffictold her that there was a busy road nearby. The sky was a beautiful cerulean blue dotted with a handful of white clouds that looked like fluffy sheep. The sun, round and yellow as a tennis ball, hung just above the scalloped tree line that marked where the parking lot ended. The heat was palpable, wrapping itself around her like a thick, moist blanket. Already, at what she guessed couldn’t be much past eight a.m., D.C. was sweating.

  My hair’ll be in ringlets by noon.

  Oh, wait, it wasn’t her hair anymore. She was now the possessor of an up-to-the-minute blond bob, and she had no idea what it did when confronted with steamy summer heat.

  At the realization, her stomach cramped.

  Steady, she ordered her rapidly unraveling nerves. Don’t panic. It’s some kind of weird amnesia. It’ll go away.

  If she lived long enough.

  On that comforting note, she almost panicked again.

  Okay, this whole amnesia thing has got to go on the back burner. First things first: Before you go to pieces, you gotta get somewhere safe.

  Like where? The question twisted like a snake through her already holey brain even as she walked as rapidly as she could manage away from the hospital. Balancingon the sides of her feet to save her scrunched-up toes, she tottered across the glistening black macadam of the parking lot toward the narrow, quiet, tree-lined street beyond it. Home, was her instinctive answer, but then it occurred to her with a renewed sensation of disorientationthat she didn’t even know where “home” was.

  A picture of the town house shimmered to life in her mind’s eye. That was home. She knew it. But it just didn’t feel right.

  So what else is new? she asked herself in despair. Nothing feels right.

  In any case, she couldn’t go back there. Last night Lisa had been murdered there. She had nearly died there herself. The memories would be overwhelming. The police might still be there, investigating. The place had been torn up. There would be blood… .

  Sooner or later, Ed’s people would almost certainly come looking for her there. And for all she knew, they weren’t the only people interested in her whereabouts. But no matter who was looking, that would be the first place anybody would check.

  Think. You have to go somewhere.

  Clothes: She needed clothes that were hers, clothes that fit, clothes that she could wear while going out and about without attracting undue attention. She needed underwear. She needed her purse, and her driver’s licenseand credit cards and money… .

  In the middle of the narrow strip of tired grass that separated the blistering parking lot from the shady street, she stopped dead.

  She wasn’t going home. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  She couldn’t. She didn’t have any way to get there. She had no car, no money, and nobody she could trust to call for help.

  As she faced that awful truth, her heart started to pound. Her fingers curled into fists. Her …

  “Katharine?” a man’s voice called.

  7

  Katharine jumped what felt like a mile in the air, stumbling over her own cramping feet as she whirled to see a black Chevy Blazer pulling to a halt not ten feet away. It was leaving the parking lot, and had paused at the stop sign at the junction of the parking lot entrance and the street. The driver’s-side window was rolled down. The man behind the wheel was looking her over with a frown.

  Recognizing him, she felt a wave of relief.

  “Dan!” Waving, she stumbled toward the car. He was the answer to a prayer. Her neighbor, the doctor. They might have issues about his garbage or her cat—okay, so she couldn’t remember—but at least he didn’t want to kill her. That
she was sure about. Well, fairly sure. “Can you possibly give me a lift?”

  “Sure.” His eyes slid over her once more, and his frown deepened. But if that meant he was harboring reservations about doing as she asked, too bad, because she was already on her way around the car. Whatever the frown was about, it didn’t stop him from leaning over to open the passenger door for her from the inside. Slipping into the black-leather seat, which was hot from the sun and which felt wonderful because of it, she closed the door and pressed the automatic lock button, which with an audible click locked the car up tight.

  Just in case.

  “Thanks.” Giving him a quick, grateful smile, she cast a—she hoped—furtive glance back over her shoulder. A woman was walking out the same exit she had just used, and several people were now scattered throughoutthe parking lot, going their different ways, but none of them seemed to be in any way looking for or connectedto her. They for sure weren’t Starkey or Bennett, which was a major plus.

  “Not a problem.” If he was curious about what was going on with her, he didn’t show it. His voice and expressionremained untroubled. “Fasten your seat belt.”

  The Blazer started moving again, turning left onto the shady street with its tidy row of older, two-story brick houses across from the hospital as Katharine obedientlyfastened her seat belt. A slim young woman with a shiny dark ponytail and jeans pushed a stroller with a toddler in it along the sidewalk in front of the houses. A white minivan with a ladder on the top and some kind of lettering on the side rumbled past. Two prepubescent boys careened down the street on bicycles, heading straight toward them, and Dan swerved around them without comment.

  With her seat belt secure, Katharine let her head drop back onto the warm, cushiony headrest with a silent sigh of relief. Against all odds, it looked like she had escaped.

  From what? The question ate at her. She felt like she should know.

  But she didn’t. The harder she tried to remember, the more elusive anything beyond the present became.

  “Where to?” Dan asked after a moment, which she spent working on remaining calm. Among other things, this involved doing her best to get her breathing and heart rate under control, staring sightlessly at the ceiling,and letting her feet slide unobtrusively out of those torturous shoes.