Lovers in Hiding

by Susan Kearney

“Will a tiki hut work?” She pointed to a hut with palm fronds over it. While the roof couldn’t hide the entire vehicle, it hid the bulk of their car.

  Clay parked, unsnapped his seat belt and unholstered his gun. “Come on.”

  She slipped out of the car seat, hoping they wouldn’t have to run far on foot. “Where?”

  Before Clay could answer, the gray car pulled into the parking lot.

  Chapter Four

  At the sight of the gray car that he’d suspected had been tailing them, Clay grabbed Melinda’s hand and pulled her around the opposite side of the building. They pressed against the dingy metal, listening over the buzz of mosquitoes, the occasional seagull diving for dinner and the hum of motorboats.

  Out front, traffic on the busy two-lane highway served as background noise, trucks blowing their horns, brakes squealing and radios blaring. The peaceful lapping of the intracoastal waterway against the marshlands seemed to mock them. If the sedan followed them to the rear of the building, the occupants would spot their car under the tiki hut.

  Beside him, Melinda’s eyes grew big and her face paled, but she kept her composure, remaining silent, eyes alert. Clay thought he heard the car shift into Reverse, then pull back into traffic, but couldn’t be certain.

  “Wait here.”

  He edged around the building, gun out and ready to use if necessary, although he’d never fired in the line of duty. Clay bent low and peered around the building’s rusted metal corner. At the sight of the empty lot, he stood and waited to make sure they were really gone.

  Someone bumped into him from behind and his heart kicked into his ribs. He spun quickly, gun high, aiming right at…Melinda. “I told you to—”

  “—wait.” She scratched her chin. “I know. I know. But I don’t like being left alone. It comes from my childhood.”

  “How so?” he asked casually, reholstering the gun, fully aware that she was starting to remember things and yet not openly admitting it. Her pretending caused him to feign a casualness he didn’t feel. Her reluctance to admit to her returning memory bothered him on several levels. He didn’t like liars, but more importantly, he needed her to trust him. Yet, clearly, Melinda Murphy wanted to hold on to some secrets while apparently willing to share others.

  “Before my folks divorced, things were bad at home.” Her voice stayed even, low and slightly sad.

  They walked to the car and Clay started the engine, but he didn’t pull out of the lot. Better to let the search on the road pass him by before he poked his head out.

  “Did your father abuse your mother?” he asked, curious to see how far her memories would take her. He found it odd that she didn’t seem to notice that she could now recall things about her life that she couldn’t earlier. But then he supposed memories could be tricky things. Sometimes senior citizens could more easily remember an incident that happened forty years ago than a movie they’d seen last week.

  “My mother wouldn’t have tolerated violence. But what my father did to her was almost as bad.”

  Clay frowned, not sure he wanted to hear this but needing to encourage any memories at all. “What did he do?”

  “It sounds like such a little thing. But it wasn’t. Not to my mother. You see, my dad was a traveling salesman. Sometimes he sold bibles, other times vacuum cleaners or phone cards or service plans for computers. He was on the road a lot and didn’t come home on a regular basis. The separation was hard on their marriage.”

  “And?”

  “And he broke my mother’s heart. He’d tell her he would be home for Thanksgiving and she’d cook and clean and buy a new dress and…he wouldn’t show. Then she’d try to hide her tears from me, but I always knew her red eyes were from crying. Maybe because I’d been crying, too.”

  “Was he cheating? Drinking?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

  “The man had to earn a living.” Clay couldn’t help defending her dad, more to see what else she would say than because he believed her father had been in the right.

  “But he didn’t have to hurt her so much. Mom never talked about him after the divorce.”

  “Did she remarry?”

  “No, and we never again saw my father after I was five.”

  This memory was very specific. “You’re sure it was when you were five?”

  “He’d missed Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was my birthday in February. He actually made it home that time. He brought me a doll. Mom handed him divorce papers. We never saw him again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  “What else can you remember?”

  “That’s it. The memory just popped whole into my head. As if I dreamed it. But it was real.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’m not sure.” She frowned at him. “Do you remember your dreams?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can you tell me the difference between the memory from your dream and the memory of an actual event from your life?”

  He knew what she meant. Of course, he knew the difference. Everyone did. Yet he was at a loss to explain the difference with words.

  “We should go to my house,” she suggested suddenly, her tone rising with excitement.

  “You remember where you live?”

  “I see the house in my head. It’s wooden and yellow and has a front porch. I don’t know the address. Don’t you have it on file?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Maybe in familiar surroundings my memories will come back.”

  She might be right. “It will be dangerous to go there.”

  “It’s dangerous here.” With her fingers, she combed her bangs back from her eyes and looked straight into his with an intensity that showed she was set on convincing him. “I might have a pet that needs feeding. Messages on an answering machine to return. My mother might be worried about me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Damn. He hated giving her bad news. “I’m sorry. She died last year. Heart attack. Your file says she went to sleep and never woke up.” As if telling her that her mother hadn’t suffered could make her feel better. She seemed all alone in this world.

  “Take me home, Clay. You need me to go there anyway since that’s where I left the papers my brother Jake sent me, right?”

  “You remember them?”

  “I remember the envelope they came in. My brother used a black marker and addressed the package with a bold scrawl. But I have no recollection of the package’s contents.”

  “Or where you put them?”

  “Or where I put them,” she agreed. “However, if we go back to the house, I’m hoping I’ll remember. Or maybe we’ll just find them.”

  “You sure you want to risk it? Why don’t you let me stash you someplace safe and search your house alone? That way, if anyone is waiting with any unpleasant surprises, at least you won’t be in danger.”

  She shook her head. “How long do you think I’d last, alone, fleeing from the CIA? Come on. I might as well go with you and let them get me now as opposed to later.”

  For a woman who didn’t have many memories, she sure seemed to know what she wanted. Her rationale did follow a certain kind of twisted logic.

  Still, he hesitated. “It’s likely someone is waiting to grab you at your house.”

  “Maybe we should call the cops and have them meet us. Wouldn’t there be safety in numbers?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He considered her suggestion. “On one hand, I’d welcome the backup—just to keep you safe. But if our opponents guess our plan, they can pretend to be on legitimate agency business and ask the cops to hand us over to them.”

  “Would the police do that?”

  “It depends.” With the sun setting and slashing the sky with purples and pinks, Clay finally pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Depends on what?”

  “On how well the head of the local cell know
s the chief of police. Or if the agency has worked with the cops down here and if they’ve stepped on any toes.”

  “In other words…you have no idea.”

  “I’m giving you possibilities.”

  “Based on pure conjecture.”

  “And experience.”

  “Well, unless you have a better suggestion, I vote you take me home.”

  MELINDA’S MEMORIES SEEMED to be a patchwork blanket. Some recollections came back whole, some in tiny bits and pieces. Some came without effort, while others persisted on being tucked away and remaining secret and hidden behind a wall of darkness. While part of her last week was clear, today still seemed very fuzzy.

  While she could recall the house where she lived quite clearly and had no trouble directing Clay there, she couldn’t recall her address. Yet she pictured the cozy house at the far end of a neighborhood with ease. Right now she treated clients in her spare bedroom, which she’d fixed up for massage therapy. Soon she’d have enough money saved to start up her dream salon, a full-service business in a wealthy area where she could draw an affluent clientele.

  Her goal of owning her own business, the building that housed it and the land on which it was located would happen soon. She would close on the land, give the contractor a down payment and order the expensive equipment needed to make the posh salon appeal to the wealthy. She’d saved and worked hard for this opportunity and she wasn’t about to let the surprise from her past ruin the future she’d worked so hard to attain.

  Melinda had learned the hard way that every woman should be able to support herself. After her parents’ marriage had failed, her mother had struggled to keep a roof over their heads. While Melinda had never gone hungry, she often had no more to eat than a free school lunch and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

  Melinda didn’t care about being rich. What she’d worked so hard to attain was security. She wanted to know she could pay her bills. She wanted to know she could never be fired. Creating the salon was her way of banishing her past.

  For now, she worked out of her leased home, content to live and work and save. She prayed the memories would keep flowing back, welcoming the bad parts in her past along with the good. She was anxious to see whether her newfound memories matched reality as they pulled up into her own driveway.

  Clay—being Clay—didn’t drive straight up to her home without making thorough preparations. He surprised her and used his cell phone to call the police, telling them mostly the truth—that she’d been attacked today on the beach, lost her purse and feared the muggers might be inside her home. He left out who he worked for and why he was with her. While the cops didn’t appreciate her failure to report the incident on the beach, after Clay told them she’d now willingly file a complaint, they’d dispatched a squad car.

  However, Clay still didn’t approach her home without a backup plan of escape just in case things didn’t go their way. After driving past her house twice, he parked one block north of her yard, and they strolled past her house once before he was satisfied that no one lurked, ready to pounce the moment they walked up her sidewalk. Still, he wouldn’t let her go inside until after the police arrived.

  The policemen parked in her driveway and introduced themselves as Officers Kevin Conley and Deke Jurgens. Officer Conley stayed with them while Jurgens inspected the outside premises.

  After taking their statements, Officer Conley insisted on checking inside while Melinda and Clay waited under the granddaddy oaks that shaded her wide front porch. Too nervous to sit on any of the comfy furniture, she paced. Finally, Conley signaled that inside was safe and she stepped over the threshold.

  The tidy two-bedroom bungalow stood neatly, much as she had left it, with the quiet yellow curtains swaying over the screened windows, welcoming her home. Her furniture might have been bought at garage sales, the appliances old, but she enjoyed living here at the far end of this quiet neighborhood where people minded their own business and raised their children with small-town values. Her plants, huge ferns in ceramic pots, a few orchids about to bloom and several trays of herbs, looked undisturbed. Her house hadn’t been trashed or damaged. From the neatly stacked china behind the glass doors of her cabinets, to her mustache cup collection, nothing looked out of place. The photographs on the wall of her windsailing and her neat stack of magazines on the coffee table looked untouched.

  Yet, the hair on the back of her neck prickled. One picture was crooked. Very crooked. But it was more than just one off-kilter picture that made her heart pound against her ribs and caused her to feel violated.

  Clay must have guessed from her expression that something was off. “What’s wrong?”

  The front rug over the hardwood floor was too close to the door and would jam it. She never left her jacket hooked over the doorknob by the hood, but by the neckline. She fought to keep her voice calm. “Someone’s been here.”

  “Is anything missing, ma’am?” Officer Conley asked as he took out a notebook, clearly ready to write a report. Jurgens had rejoined them and looked around warily.

  Melinda didn’t want to tell them about her amnesia just yet and kept her reply vague. “I’m not sure.”

  “Where do you keep your mail?” Clay asked, seemingly uninterested in anything but retrieving the missing documents her brother had sent.

  “I don’t have a set place for the mail. Sometimes I dump it on the kitchen table. Or on my nightstand in the bedroom. Or on my desk in the therapy room.”

  “Therapy room?” Conley asked, looking up from his notes but continuing to write.

  “I’m a massage therapist. Since my house fronts commercial property on the corner, building and zoning allows clients to come here.”

  “Could a client have disturbed your things?”

  She shook her head, positive no client had been in her private area. “There’s a separate side entrance and they only use that one room.”

  Clay methodically searched the kitchen counter-tops, then ducked into her bedroom. His gaze swept over her nightstands before he followed her into the therapy room. Her massage table dominated the twelve-by-twelve room. Massage oils, extra sheets and clean towels stood ready for her clients next to her desk, which held a message machine and a CD player.

  She’d had a busy day yesterday, two clients in the morning, then three in the afternoon. While Melinda couldn’t recall this morning, she knew all she had to do was check her day planner and her appointments would be listed.

  She glanced toward her mahogany rolltop desk and hurried over. “My appointment book’s gone.”

  “I doubt someone would steal that,” Conley said. “Maybe you misplaced it.”

  She frowned, knowing that he didn’t understand how meticulous she was about keeping her appointments straight. “I always leave the book right by the phone. It’s gone.”

  “All the same, would you mind checking the desk drawers?” the officer suggested.

  Melinda did as he asked, knowing the search would prove fruitless. She always, always, always left her book and pen right there so she wouldn’t get confused about her appointments. Without her book, she couldn’t even call her clients to cancel their massage appointments tomorrow. “Who would want my schedule?”

  “Someone who wanted to find you might look in there,” Clay suggested. “Did you write that you planned to go to the beach today?”

  “I doubt it.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes in exasperation. “I only schedule work.” Out of habit, she hit the play button on her answering machine. The machine clicked oddly as if the tape was stuck. Lifting the clear panel, she expected to find the cartridge. It was gone. “They stole my tape cartridge. I wonder if Jake tried to call?”

  “Nothing else is missing?” Conley asked. “Money? Jewelry? Electronic equipment?”

  Before she could answer, Clay spoke up. “The mail is gone, too.”

  “What’s so important about her mail?”

  “We think that’s why she was attacked on the b
each today,” Clay explained, then proceeded to tell Conley about the incident on the beach earlier while his partner again went outside to check to see if the neighbors had seen or heard anything unusual.

  Conley finished his report by the time his partner, who’d learned nothing new, had returned. Conley wrote down Clay’s cell phone number and promised to get back to them if anything turned up. Then, after presenting cards with their numbers to call if new troubles arose, both officers departed.

  “How much can you remember?” Clay asked Melinda once they were alone again.

  The house seemed more intimate with only the two of them. While Clay was a large man, he didn’t dominate the space around him so much as fit into it. He seemed as comfortable inside her house as he had on his Harley, and she liked that about him. He wasn’t stiff, but made himself at ease in her home as if he’d always been there.

  “I’ve got almost everything back now.” She saw no reason to lie to Clay anymore. “Except for the accident on the beach and the earlier part of the day, I seem to have recovered most, if not all, of my memories.” She slumped on her couch. “Those guys who attacked me must have come here and stolen the package Jake sent me yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “I remember it arriving yesterday and putting it by the phone. I’d scheduled two appointments and probably didn’t open it until this morning.”

  “Which you still don’t remember?”

  She nodded. “But if that’s what they were after, I’m safe now.”

  “Not necessarily.” Clay took the chair opposite her. “They might still come back.”

  “But why? They have the envelope.” She fought to keep disappointment from her face and a whine from her tone.

  “People in this business like to tie up all the loose ends.” Clay leaned toward her. “You’ll be safer if you don’t spend the night here.”

  His expression indicated that his mind was working at top speed. She assumed that he was analyzing every possibility like a chess master before making a move.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, wondering if she really wanted to spend the night alone, but figuring he wouldn’t let her.