by Linda Turner
Mumbling under his breath about stubborn women, Joe knew when he was beaten. Giving in, he escorted them both outside.
The Transit Tower was one of the city’s oldest office buildings and one of the most distinctive landmarks on the San Antonio skyline. With its steep pointed roof and radio antennae that seemed to climb straight up into the clouds, it stood out among the other skyscrapers like an old oak among saplings.
Circling the building and the surrounding blocks twice, Joe finally gave up the idea of parking on the street and headed for the large parking garage next door. With all his attention focused on the traffic, which was surprisingly thick for a Saturday morning, he never noticed Annie’s agitation until he started to turn into the garage’s entrance bay. Still leery of getting in a car with him, she’d chosen to sit in the back seat, leaving the front for Phoebe, but her comfort zone ran out before he even knew anything was wrong. He’d barely stopped to take the ticket at the automatic entrance gate when she fumbled for her door handle.
Startled, he glanced over his shoulder at her and frowned at the sight of her ashen cheeks. “Annie? What is it? What’s wrong? Dammit, honey, you can’t get out here! Let me park first.”
In a panic, she hardly heard him as she clawed at her seat belt and finally found the release. “No! I can’t go in there! I just can’t. Please…”
She had the same look of terror on her face that she’d had when she woke up and found herself in bed with him the previous morning, the one that ripped his heart right out of his chest. Alarmed, cursing the fact that she was out of reach in the back seat, Joe turned and stretched out his arm to her, needing to touch her. “Calm down, sweetheart. It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of—I’m not going to let anyone hurt you—”
The impatient blaring of a horn sounded from right behind them, cutting him off. Swearing, Joe shot the other driver a furious glare in his rearview mirror and saw that three other cars had lined up behind him and were waiting to enter the garage. “Damn! I’m holding up traffic—”
“Annie and I don’t need to go into the garage with you,” Phoebe said quickly, as she released her own seat belt. “Why don’t we get out here and wait for you at the front door? C’mon, Annie, let’s take a walk.”
Annie didn’t have to be told twice. She was out of the car as if the devil himself was after her, hurrying away from the garage entrance just as fast as her legs would carry her.
Frowning after her in concern, Joe almost got out to follow her. Then the driver behind him blared his horn again. “Take care of her,” he told Phoebe as she hurriedly climbed out of the car. “I’ll just be a second.” Pushing the button for a gate ticket, he drove into the garage, but not before he caught a last glimpse of Annie standing on the sidewalk with Phoebe, her eyes huge in her pale face as she stared in revulsion at the building.
What was going on inside that head of hers? he wondered as he cruised the first floor, then the second, for an available parking spot. She wasn’t a woman who scared easily. In fact, she didn’t blink an eye at showing property in parts of the city that most people wouldn’t be caught dead in. But she’d definitely been in a panic the second he approached the garage. Had something happened to her here?
Anxious to get back to her, he shot up the ramp to the third floor and sighed in relief when he saw that there were plenty of spaces there. Finally! Turning into the first empty spot, he quickly parked and locked the car and was halfway to the elevators when he stopped short at the sight of the car parked all by itself at the far end of the floor. Even in the shadows that engulfed the garage, there was no mistaking that it was Annie’s. As far as he knew, there wasn’t another ’62 Volvo that distinctive shade of yellow in the city.
He reached it in ten long strides, his brow furrowed as he tried the door. It was locked. Peering in the driver’s-side window, he could see her day planner lying on the front seat, apparently right where she’d left it. Nothing looked out of place or the least unusual.
“Dammit, why would she just walk off and leave her car here?” he muttered to himself. “She loves the damn thing. She wouldn’t just leave it.”
Scowling, he walked completely around the vehicle, looking for something, anything, that might tell him what had happened there two nights ago. But if she’d run into any kind of trouble there, there was no sign of it. The car was untouched, everything just as it should be.
Then he saw it. A brownish stain on the pavement a few spaces over from the one where her car was parked. Even as he started toward it, he tried to convince himself it was probably just an oil stain. But as he drew closer and went down on one knee to examine it, a sick feeling spilled into his stomach. Unless he was mistaken, it was dried blood.
For a long time, he didn’t move. He was going to have to tell Annie. Clenching his teeth on an oath, he would have given just about anything to keep it from her. but she had a right to know. First, he had to call the police. Returning to his car for his cellular, he quickly called Sam.Kelly.
Watching her friend pace restlessly as they waited for Joe, Phoebe said, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Annie. Are you sure you’re okay? You’re as white as a sheet. Why don’t you wait here and I’ll go back inside and get Joe and tell him you’ve changed your mind? We can do this another day.”
As her gaze darted to the garage entrance, Annie would have liked nothing better than to jump at the suggestion, but she couldn’t. Not when the fear gripping her threatened to render her powerless. It was a feeling, she was discovering, that she hated.
Glancing at the other woman, wishing she could remember her and the good times they’d had over the years, she asked quizzically, “What kind of woman was I before? You’ve known me all my life. Right now, you know me better than I do. What was I like? Was I a wimp or what? I can’t believe I was one of those women who looked over her shoulder every time she went out of the house, but I can’t deny that I’m scared. And I don’t know why. God, this is so hard!”
Tears welled in Phoebe’s green eyes. Impulsively, she reached over to give her a fierce hug. “You, a wimp?” she laughed shakily. “Are you kidding? You’re the gutsiest person I ever knew. Why do you think we’ve been friends for so long? We’re partners in crime, kid. We always have been. So you quit worrying about what kind of person you are. You’ve got amnesia, for God’s sake! Who wouldn’t be scared?”
She would have said more, but Joe stepped out of the parking garage then. Annie took one look at the granite set of his jaw and braced for bad news. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I found your car,” he told her.
“And?” Phoebe asked, obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“And it’s fine. It’s on the third floor and appears to be untouched.”
His tone was matter-of-fact and not the least bit alarming. Annie should have been relieved, but she was starting to figure Joe Taylor out. When his eyes were shuttered, his face blank, he was hiding something. Her eyes searching his, she said, “But there’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re holding back because of me. Just spit it out, Joe. If it concerns whatever happened to me, I have a right to know.”
She was right, but that didn’t make telling her any easier. He’d seen her fear yesterday morning when she thought he was going to hurt her, and then again just moments ago. He didn’t need to know what she’d been through to know that it must have been pure hell. Given the opportunity, he would have made sure she never remembered it at all, but there were some things he couldn’t protect her from. This was one of them.
“There’s a stain two spaces over from your car,” he said flatly. “I can’t be sure what it is, but it looks like dried blood, so I called Sam. He should be here any moment.”
“Show me. Maybe it’ll jog my memory.”
“The hell I will!” he growled. “The doctor said you’d remember when you were ready, and not until then. Forcing the issue won’t do you or the baby any good.”
; Watching the interplay between the two of them, Phoebe sucked in a sharp breath. “Baby? What baby?”
“She’s pregnant,” Joe said curtly. “She didn’t tell you?”
“No! My God, a baby! That’s wonderful!” Joy lighting her face, she turned to Annie to hug her, only to freeze at the despair in her eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong? You’ve been wanting a baby for years—”
Realization hit her then, widening her eyes. “Oh, my God, you don’t remember!”
Miserable, Annie shook her head. “No. Nothing.” At her side, she could feel Joe growing colder and colder, but there was nothing she could do about the awkward situation. If anyone knew what she’d been doing the last few months, it was Phoebe, and there were questions that needed to be asked. Joe was entitled to hear the answers.
“Did I…” She glanced away, heat climbing in her cheeks. “Was I seeing anyone that you know of?”
Phoebe, clearly as uncomfortable as she, cast a quick look at Joe’s stony face and could do nothing but shrug. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but the only time we ever argued in our lives was when you left Joe. I thought you were making a big mistake and told you so. You didn’t want to hear that, of course, so we made a pact not to discuss your love life. If you were dating anyone, I didn’t know about it, but then again, I made it clear I didn’t want to. And you never whispered a word about possibly being pregnant.”
Annie wanted desperately to believe that she hadn’t said anything about the baby because she’d been so stressed about the possible breakup of her marriage that she hadn’t even realized that she was pregnant. But she only had to look at Joe’s set face to know that he’d jumped to a completely different conclusion—if she hadn’t even told her best friend about the pregnancy, it was probably because the baby wasn’t her husband’s.
No! she wanted to cry. She wasn’t that kind of woman! But even as the words hovered on her tongue, she couldn’t say them. Not when she didn’t know for sure who or what Annie Taylor was.
Silence fell after that, a thick, uncomfortable silence that no one seemed inclined to break. Then Sam Kelly arrived with an evidence team. “I’m going in with you,” she told Sam, and shot Joe a challenging look that just dared him to try and stop her. “I need to see whatever’s in there.”
The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife, and Sam obviously didn’t have to be hit in the head to know that he had just stepped into the middle of a disagreement. Glancing from Annie to Joe and back again, he didn’t take sides either way. “That’s your choice,” he said diplomatically. “I can’t tell you if that’s wise or not— you’ll have to use your own judgment. Joe said when he called that your car looked untouched, but we’re going to dust it for prints anyway, so don’t touch it until we’ve had a chance to go over it.”
They all headed for the two parking-garage elevators, where they split up, with the evidence team taking one and Annie, Joe, Phoebe and Sam the other. At the most, it was a forty-second ride to the third floor—it should have been easy. But the second the doors slid shut, closing them in, Annie knew she wanted nothing to do with whatever was on the third floor.
Trapped at the back of the elevator, however, she had left it too late to change her mind. Breaking out in a cold sweat in spite of the fact that it was a warm autumn day, she rubbed her chilled arms and tried to focus on positive thoughts as they rose slowly toward the third floor. She was perfectly safe. Joe and the police were here, and there was no reason to be afraid.
But when the elevator doors finally slid open and everyone else filed out, she stood flat-footed where she was.
Her gaze trained on the shadowy confines of the garage that stretched out in front of the open doors, she didn’t see Joe stop when she didn’t follow. “Annie?”
He didn’t say anything else, just her name, but he told her without words that she didn’t have to do this. All she had to do was push the button for the first floor and turn her back on whatever was out there waiting to terrify her. He and Sam would handle this for her, and no one would condemn her for it.
No one but herself. She could turn tail and run and all it would cost her was her self-respect.
Dragging her tortured eyes from the shadows, she lifted them to Joe. “When you were a kid, were you ever afraid of monsters under your bed at night?”
He nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Everyone told you there was no such thing and there was no reason to be afraid, and you wanted to believe them more than anything. But every time you got anywhere near that bed once the sun went down, you got this big lump in your throat. Do you remember?”
“I remember, honey.”
“This garage is where my monsters live.” She couldn’t tell him how she knew—she didn’t know. She just knew she had a lump in her throat the size of the Alamo and she wanted out of there. But running wouldn’t accomplish anything. The nightmare went with her wherever she went.
“I have to face this monster, Joe.” She barely spoke above a whisper, but she was already stepping out from the corner of the elevator, her shoulders square and the glint of determination in her eyes.
From his scowl, he clearly didn’t agree, but all he said was, “Just remember, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”
She didn’t agree, but she only nodded and forced herself to walk to his side. At the far end of the floor, the bright yellow Volvo drew her like a magnet.
This was her car? she wondered in surprise as she slowly walked toward it. According to Joe, it was her baby, her pride and joy, a member of the family that she’d polished and waxed and changed the oil in as often as you wiped an infant’s bottom. It had been beautifully restored and no doubt drew looks from everyone who passed it on the street. And it didn’t look the least bit familiar to her.
Watching her carefully, Joe asked, “Do you remember it?”
She shook her head numbly. “No. How long have I owned it?”
“Eight years. You bought it right after your twenty-first birthday.”
He could have told her she’d bought it last week, and she wouldn’t have known any different. Joe handed Sam his set of keys, then joined her and Phoebe off to the side as the evidence team dusted the vehicle for fingerprints inside and out. And she felt nothing, absolutely nothing.
“There are quite a few prints,” Sam told them a few minutes later. “But considering the condition of the car, I don’t think we’re going to find anything out of the ordinary. It looks like Annie just locked it up and walked away.”
Squatting down on his haunches, he examined the rust-brown stain on the concrete fifteen feet from the car. “It’s blood, all right,” he said curtly as he pushed to his feet and stepped out of the way so his men could collect what evidence they could. “And a hell of a lot of it.” His sharp eyes meeting Annie’s, he arched a brow at her. “Are you getting any flashbacks? Anything that might tell you what happened here?”
“Besides fear?” she replied, shivering. “No. Nothing.”
She was trembling and from the looks of the green cast to her complexion, on the verge of nausea. Wanting to take her in his arms and reassure her, Joe reminded himself that he couldn’t lose his head over her just because she was in trouble. “Why don’t you and Phoebe wait for us downstairs, then?” he suggested. “There’s nothing more you can do, and you’re only torturing yourself by hanging around here.”
“I agree,” Phoebe said, adding her two cents. “This place gives me the willies. Let’s get out of here.”
This time, Annie didn’t have to be told twice. Leaving the men to finish investigating the scene, she hurried toward the elevator with Phoebe on her heels.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Sam said, “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Annie, Joe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these bloodstains turn out to match the ones on her clothes. What the hell was she doing here?”
Joe explained about Annie’s meeting with the potential renter from Houston. “We don’
t know if the guy ever showed or not. Phoebe’s going to call him as soon as she gets back to the office and find out.”
“I’ll get his name and number from her and do it for her,” he said. “If I can’t get him, I’ve got a friend on the Houston force who owes me a favor. He’ll track him down and see what he knows about what went down here on Thursday night.”
If he was still alive.
Sam didn’t say the words, but they were both thinking them. If the dried blood on the floor matched that on Annie’s torn clothes, someone had lost an awful lot of blood. And if that someone was the renter from Houston, he could not only be missing and hurting right now. He could be dead.
Chapter 4
From the garage, they walked over to the Transit Tower and checked out the tenth floor. To Annie’s relief, the enervating fear that had gripped her in the parking garage was noticeably absent in the office building, and she was able to look around with interest. The rental space was empty of furniture and similar to that found all over the city. If she’d ever been there before, she had no memory of it.
Sam, however, was taking no chances. He had the evidence team check for fingerprints while he questioned the building security guard. The place was covered with hundreds of different prints that could have belonged to anyone, however, and the security guard was little help. He recognized Annie from a previous visit but didn’t remember seeing her or anyone else on Thursday night.
At a dead end, there was little more anyone could do for now. One after the other, they drove out of the parking garage, with Joe following Sam in the Regal and Annie and Phoebe bringing up the rear in the Volvo. Since Annie’s purse and driver’s license were still missing, Phoebe drove, cracking jokes all the while to tease Annie out of the somber mood she’d fallen into.
They didn’t see him. But he saw them. Especially her. Sitting in the passenger seat of the familiar yellow Volvo, she looked him right in the eye and didn’t even blink. Stunned, he almost ran off the road.