Killing Joe

by Marie Treanor

  Her heart, her whole stomach, seemed to leap into her throat.

  Imagination! The light’s off! There’s nobody in there…

  A faint movement sounded, something brushing on the floor only a foot or so away from her, with only the half-open door between them.

  A mouse? A rat?

  But no, you’d never hear a rat breathe! And there it was again, a faint, ragged breath, difficult, uneven, but definitely human.

  Anna swallowed. She could run and phone the police. She could make a complete fool of herself. Again. Or she could think like a person of sense. It was only just past six o’clock. There could easily be workers still around—and it sounded to her as if one of them was in there. And hurt.

  “Who’s there?” she asked firmly, pushing open the door and reaching at once for the light switch. “Are you all right?”

  The harsh light from the bare bulb bathed the cramped room in a cold, yellow glow. There was no one there, no axe murderer waiting to do her in, no typist crying over her private troubles. Only shelves full of equipment, instruments, spare computer monitors, protective clothing, helmets, the crash test dummies. Slowly, Anna dropped her gaze to the newest, most prized dummy, which they’d left sitting on the floor, its back propped against the wall by the door.

  The open, pain-wracked eyes of a man stared back at her.

  Chapter Two

  It was the same face she’d imagined in the test: lean, strong, almost harsh-featured, with a straight, narrow nose, broad cheek-bones over shadowed-hollows, lips thinned now with pain. His skin was a beautiful nut-brown, warmed, clearly, by far hotter suns than ever shone over Scotland. A lock of black, straight hair fell forward over one side of his forehead; more clustered damply around his neck. Slumped against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, he shivered violently.

  No wonder—he was totally naked.

  Many questions clamoured in her head—like, what are you doing here, how did you get in, why did you take your clothes off and where’s my crash-test-dummy?—but instinct drove her at once to her knees by his side.

  “What’s the matter? Where are you hurt?” she asked urgently.

  He continued to stare at her, some fierce intelligence behind the clouded agony in his dark eyes. And surely…recognition.

  “You,” he uttered. There was disbelief in the deep, faint voice and then, astonishingly, she thought he tried to laugh. “Shit, did we take each other out in the end? This just gets better and better…”

  “Take each other out where?” Anna asked, totally bewildered. He must have a concussion, some sort of brain injury—I need to get an ambulance…

  His frown deepened. “Out of life. Don’t you believe that you’re dead?”

  “Not unless you just killed me with an axe and I didn’t notice.”

  “An axe? Lacks finesse.”

  “Oh dear. Listen, don’t talk, I’m going to phone for an ambulance…”

  “No point.”

  “There’s every point,” said Anna, already discovering her mobile phone in the side pocket of her bag. She stood up, holding it high above her head. “Damn, there’s no signal down here. I’ll need to go upstairs. First, where are your clothes?”

  “Clothes?” This time, it was he who sounded bewildered.

  Slightly embarrassed, and trying not to look below his face, Anna flicked her wrist toward his body. With an obvious effort, he shifted his head and glanced down at himself. Anna glanced, too, for despite the shivering, it was an impressive body, lean and thickly muscled across his broad shoulders and chest. An uneven scattering of dark hair above his waist and a well-defined, tantalizing line below. Even in this unflattering position, his stomach looked flat and hard, his thighs long and strong. And between them…

  Hastily, she dragged her eyes back up to his face. The man is hurt, probably brain-damaged and you’re inspecting his manhood credentials? Get a grip, woman!

  “No clothes,” he observed. “Suppose I don’t need them. Though I always imagined it would be a bit hotter.”

  Anna stared. “In Scotland?”

  He looked at her, frowning. The pain in his eyes seemed to have lessened, as if he had forgotten about it. Disconcerted, she set about finding his clothes. There was no obvious sign of them in the storeroom, so she grabbed an overall from the pile and shook it out.

  “Would this fit you?” she asked doubtfully, walking back toward him. She crouched down, holding the overall out to him. “Do you need help?” she asked awkwardly.

  Slowly, without answering, he lifted his hand, touched the fabric. His eyes dropped to inspect it. Anna released it, and abruptly, his hand moved, seizing hers.

  She gasped, staring at him as the fear galloped back with a vengeance. His grip was strong, inflexible, like warm steel bands around her wrist. His eyes, cold and pitiless, bored into hers. They were so dark they looked black.

  Christ who is he, what the hell is he doing here, and in this condition, and…

  “Where is my crash test dummy?” she demanded.

  His brows snapped together. Bewilderment drifted back into his eyes. As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he released her, his hand falling back to his lap as he stared around the room.

  “Crash test dummy,” he repeated. “Anna, where exactly is this? To you?”

  “To me? To everyone who works here, it’s our storeroom! And how the hell do you know my name?”

  He ignored the question. Slowly, as if giving himself time, he shook out the overalls and began to draw them over his feet. Scattered across his tanned skin, several pale, jagged scars stood out on his left thigh, his chest and shoulders, his thickly muscled right arm. It seemed the man was subject to accidents.

  “Fuck, this is weird,” he observed.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Anna, have you done many bad—really bad things in your life?”

  She blinked, then looked away as he stood a little gingerly and pulled the overalls over his hips.

  “I’ve had bad thoughts,” she confessed, trying to stave off even more of them concerning him. The knots of tension and fear in her stomach were getting all mixed up with the butterflies of sexual arousal, for now that he seemed to be recovering, she was very aware of a strong animal attraction to him, a magnetism that went beyond the splendidly fit and all-but-naked body. He didn’t seem to be shivering anymore either. It was she who trembled now.

  “No, I’m talking bad deeds. Bad enough to send you to hell.”

  “Christ, I hope not. Why?”

  “Because I don’t think you have, either. We shouldn’t be in the same place. Maybe I’m dreaming.”

  “Not unless you’re having the same dream as me. Look, what’s going on here? Who are you and what do you want?”

  “What do I want?” He stared down at her. He hadn’t troubled to fasten the overall across his chest. “I rather think that one’s out of my hands.”

  Hastily, she rose to her feet once more, but it didn’t make him less intimidating. She could feel the heat from his hard, lean body, smell his faint, earthy scent tinged with sweat. He stood a foot taller than her, big, physically impressive. And strange.

  She drew in a breath that wasn’t quite steady. “Look, you need help I can’t give. I’m going upstairs to phone an ambulance. I’m sure the hospital will be able to answer all your questions.” I just wish they’d answer mine…

  As if testing himself, he warily stretched out his arms, flexing his elbows and fingers, twisting from the waist, turning his head in both directions. Anna hastily stepped backward out of his way.

  “I don’t need an ambulance.”

  “Yes you do! You couldn’t move when I first came in here! You were in agony!”

  “The pain’s almost gone. I’m fine. I’ll go now.”

  “Go where?” she demanded.

  He turned away, but not before she glimpsed such blinding despair in his eyes that it caught at her breath as well as her heart.

  “I
t doesn’t matter.”

  “Wait!” she said in panic, as he took a step nearer the door. She’d found the man naked in her storeroom; he was large and scary and weird as hell. Even as ill as he’d just been, she had little doubt that he could take care of himself in just about any situation. Worse, there was an air of coiled threat about him, a barely suppressed violence that made her spine tingle in warning.

  And yet letting him leave here alone seemed tantamount to child neglect. Hastily, under his impassive gaze, she rummaged around her brain for the questions that had nagged her since she first saw him and now seemed curiously elusive. With triumph, she finally alighted on one. “You have to tell me first, how did you get in here?”

  There was a pause, during which she tried and failed to read his hard, veiled eyes. “I don’t know.”

  It was almost a relief. “You’ve lost your memory.”

  “No,” he said regretfully. “Or at least not much of it. I just don’t know how I got from there to here.”

  She frowned. “There? Where is there? What happened? Were you in some kind of accident?”

  He seemed to hesitate, then nodded.

  “Did you injure your head?”

  Again, the single nod. His tension was palpable, as if he really didn’t want to go there—and yet she had the feeling he expected her to come up with answers.

  “May I look?” she asked.

  “There’s nothing to see.”

  “Please.”

  Wordlessly, he knelt down on the floor in front of her, and with a feeling of delving into the unknown, she hesitantly touched his hair, skimming her hand lightly over his scalp. No matted blood. Gently, she probed among the surprisingly soft, black hair that fell almost to his shoulders. When she reached over to check the back of his head, she could feel his breath warm on her breasts, felt her nipples harden in silent request for more.

  She stepped back. “There’s some old scarring, but I can’t find any obvious cuts or bruises.”

  He rose fluidly to his feet, like a large cat.

  She said, “Do you remember what sort of accident it was?”

  “Oh yes.” His lips curled slightly, sardonically. “It was a car crash.”

  The blood drained from her head so quickly, she felt dizzy. Involuntarily, she reached out for support and found his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. The dreadful vision flashed in front of her eyes once more—the dummy with his face, hurtling to violent impact at her instigation.

  “Here?” she whispered through stiff lips. “Your accident was here?”

  “What does it matter? Don’t look so—shattered. It’s just another bloody statistic.”

  She dragged a shaking hand through her hair, uncaring that she pulled chunks of it free from confinement. “No one’s just a statistic here. What happened?”

  He shrugged, letting his hands slide off her shoulders, leaving them cold and a little forlorn. “I was driving into Edinburgh. Another car hit me, wham. Next thing I wake up and it’s all happening again, only different.”

  “Different?” Anna whispered. Fearful, terrible ideas swirled in her head, fighting for recognition.

  “Yes, like a—movie studio, or something, not real cars on real roads. Guess I was dreaming. Then I woke up again…sore like you wouldn’t believe, and I was here. It seemed to be a long time…but the pain began to get better. Then you came. Are you going to faint?”

  “No!” She stared at him, struggling not just for words but for understanding of the impossible. Then, defeated, she said, “I need a drink.”

  With that, she walked to the back of the room and began raking through the box on the bottom shelf. A moment later, she emerged with a whisky bottle and two glasses. “From last year’s Christmas party,” she explained.

  Laying them down at his feet, she took off her jacket and threw it to one side before she turned to the shelf behind, hauled a few protection suits off the shelf and scattered them like cushions.

  “Make yourself at home,” she invited. She was beginning to feel hysterical, so it wasn’t really surprising that she sounded it, too.

  With an expression of slightly wary fascination, he sat, adjusting the suits to make a comfortable nest to sprawl on. Anna followed his movements—quick, deliberate, economical, lithe as a cat. A panther…

  Dragging her eyes away from him, she unscrewed the bottle cap and splashed whisky into both glasses.

  Pushing one toward him, she raised the other in a silent toast, then took a sizeable gulp. The alcohol burned a path right down to her stomach, at once jolting, warming and soothing.

  “Okay,” she said, a trifle hoarsely. “What’s your name?”

  There was a faint pause before he said, “Joe.”

  She glanced up at him through her eyelashes. “Sure about that, Joe?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “All right. You don’t work at the Institute, though, do you? I’d have remembered you.”

  “Only if I’d wanted you to,” he said cryptically.

  She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Never mind. I don’t work here and never have, so it’s academic.”

  “Are you American?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Your accent. Sometimes it sounds American, others— kind of European. Spanish or something. You look a bit like a native American.”

  Though his hard, dark eyes remained steady on hers, he was silent and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer even so trivial a question. Then, as if the words didn’t come easily, he said, “I’ve lived a lot in the States. But I grew up in Brazil.”

  “Not a bad guess, then. What brought you to Scotland?”

  “Work. Is this the sort of polite conversation that goes on at your Christmas parties?”

  “Not exactly,” she said ruefully.

  “What, do you get rollicking drunk with the girls and then seduce your boss?”

  “No, I get quietly drunk in a corner and then take a taxi home alone.” She didn’t mean to say it, but since the words were out, she smiled as if they were a joke and finished the whisky in her glass. Disconcertingly, his eyes didn’t laugh back. In fact he didn’t seem to be one for much laughter at all. He seemed to be…

  “What did you do with my crash test dummy?” she demanded, interrupting her own speculation.

  “I haven’t touched anything. There are several at the far end.”

  “Not these ones, the one that was sitting there, where you were when I came in.”

  He shrugged. “Why are you so concerned about it?”

  Anna licked the last drop of whisky from her upper lip. Joe’s eyes followed the gesture, making her self-conscious. Hastily, she hid her tongue again.

  “This is weird. But the whole situation’s so weird that I’m going to tell you anyway. Do you know what we do here?”

  “Automobile crash research.”

  “Yep. We do mock-ups of various situations to test car safety and try to improve standards. Well, we had one such mock-up today, using the dummy that has now disappeared. Just before the impact I saw…I thought I saw the dummy’s face change. It became—it seemed to become a man’s face. Yours.”

  His eyes searched hers, but not with either surprise or derision. As if the idea had already occurred to him.

  Oh Jesus Christ…

  How could either of them believe such a thing? There had to be a rational explanation.

  He was in an accident—sustained some head injury I’m not qualified to discover. Somehow, he wandered in here unseen and fell asleep…

  So where are his clothes?

  He took them off somewhere, obviously in a daze. They’re probably in a corridor or something…

  But his face…I saw his face on the dummy!

  “I’m wondering,” she said shakily, “if that—seeing your face—was some kind of warning. When did your accident happen?”

  He shrugged again. “About nine-thirty, I suppose.”

&n
bsp; She drew in a breath. “That’s when we tested.” And the dummy had gone. Was it lying around the building somewhere with Joe’s clothes? Why would he have moved it? It didn’t make any sense. None of it made any sense, unless…but that was impossible.

  Forcing herself, she met his gaze once more. “Joe, what does this mean?”

  He said nothing. So she poured herself some more whisky and drank gratefully. He hadn’t touched his. At last he said, “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

  Anything like what? Like suspecting a man of changing bodies with a crash test dummy? Was she really that insane?

  No! So pull yourself together, woman. Think logically.

  She shook her head. “No. At least not really…” She slid her eyes away from his penetrating gaze. “When I first worked here and we set up the crashes…I should tell you my family died in a car crash. I saw it happen from a bus stop where they’d just dropped me. Anyway, I used to…imagine…the dummies were family members. But it wasn’t really like that today. Then I knew what I was doing—the test just brought back the memory with extra vividness. This today was…it was like it was really you. And I’ve never seen you before in my life, have I?”

  “No,” he agreed. “No, you haven’t.” She had no idea what he was thinking, how mad he thought she was, how scared he was by his own situation. Not very, it seemed. She could find no trace now of the despair she had sensed earlier. He seemed almost resigned, though to what, she still had very little clue.

  She returned to her own more immediate alarm. “You know my name.”

  He nodded.

  “And you know where I work.”

  “Yes.”

  She took a breath. “Were you stalking me, Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “No you weren’t!” she disputed, perversely. “Stalkers like their victims to know about them.”

  “Perhaps I was waiting for my moment to get you alone, ask you out for dinner, sweep you off your feet…”

  “Aye, right,” said Anna derisively, resorting to the language of childhood, which at least lightened his hard eyes, brought a faint curve to his lips.