by Bobbie Cole
“How do you know this? How can you be that positive you aren’t Aldridge?” she asked.
“Instinct.” He leaned back in his seat. The muscles in his jaw worked, taut skin moving over well-chiseled bones. “Something tells me that we’ve met. Your face isn’t familiar, but your voice is. We were close, intimate, I think. Please, you have to remember, because I can’t.”
Heather cleared her throat, and Charlie looked up, perturbed but grateful. She needed time to think. Placing their orders would give her the chance to gather her thoughts, choose her words carefully, so she pointed at the menu and gave her choice of entrée.
Charlie reverted to cop, noting her companion’s order. Aldridge hadn’t even looked at the menu, just asked if they served chalupas. When Heather said yes, he nodded.
No big deal. Lots of people liked that dish.
Then he called Heather back. “I forgot to make a request—double beans, no rice and extra jalapeños. Thanks.”
Heather immediately glanced at Charlie and cocked an eye. It was what Seth would have ordered.
Charlie averted her gaze as she thought, and her eyes focused on two men sitting at a booth catercorner from them. Both men were looking at them but quickly turned away as soon as they caught her staring in their direction. She realized she might have been the one being rude and immediately turned her attention back to Heather and Mason.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, looking at Charlie.
“What?” She reeled herself back to what he’d said. “Not at all. That’s how I get my plate, only no jalapeños.” She debated on how much to reveal and decided to keep mum as to Seth’s preferences.
“You’re spicy enough, heh?” he joked.
Charlie choked and had to reach for her glass of water. Exactly what Seth had said on occasion, teasing her about her quarter-Mexican heritage and not being true Hispanic if she didn’t like the hot peppers.
When Heather left, Mason, or whoever he was, leaned forward and spoke quietly. “Let’s lay it all out here on the table. All I know is that I’m not trying to get into your pants. I have money—and while this face isn’t mine, it’s not that bad to look at, right?”
She could tell he wasn’t looking for compliments, so she nodded slowly. “No, it’s a nice face.” She frowned, trying to discern precisely how this face was different from the one she knew. “Have you had cheek implants or an alteration here?” She brushed the back of her hand against her jaw.
“Both, plus a new nose. Evidently, my face was crushed.” He sighed. “The doctors in Mexico did their best using a photo my sister provided them.”
“Seth Taggart didn’t have a sister,” Charlie murmured before she could stop herself. Now he had a name.
“Seth,” he mused. “Even that doesn’t sound right, but it’s a start, more than what I had before I arrived. Thanks.”
Well, that’s not good, not if the sound of his own name doesn’t ring any bells. The hope she hadn’t realized she’d been building deflated, leaving Charlie feeling once again at a loss. The push-pull conversation wasn’t tiring so much as frustrating.
“Charlene—for some reason I want to call you Charlie,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “That’s my nickname.”
“May I call you that?”
“Sure.” She squirmed but reminded herself she was a cop, a woman in what for years had been a man’s job, so it was natural for anyone with half a brain to segue from the female form of her name to a more masculine nickname.
He continued. “I don’t dye my hair—is it the same color as your friend’s?”
“Yes.” Weird that he is so analytical and thinks like a cop, but then he’s had time to wonder about himself and how he got here since he woke up.
He persisted. “And the eyes? Even if I’ve had surgery, those would be the same color, right?”
“Yes, again. They’re the same.” Exactly the same. Charlie stifled the sigh that threatened to escape as she found herself getting lost in their depths.
“So there’s a strong possibility that I’m Seth Taggart. You said you’re a police officer? Do you think you could help me check into this man’s background, maybe find someone who might have known Seth…or me?”
Charlie sighed. “Been there, done that, I’m afraid.” She tossed aside her previous reluctance to get involved. Now she wanted to know, too, for personal reasons. “When you—that is, when Seth disappeared, I followed up on everything he’d told me about himself, which wasn’t much.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “I was hoping, no offense, that we’d been closer than that.” His eyes lowered, and he looked at her mouth then quickly averted his gaze momentarily. “Don’t take that the wrong way, please.”
She chuckled nervously and decided the present wasn’t the time to tell him quite everything. “We only knew one another a few weeks, less than a month.”
“I see. What did you find out when you looked for me?”
“I had just told you what I did for a living, and one of the reasons I figured you’d disappeared was because I’m a cop. Most men don’t handle that information well. It spooks them.”
He nodded but frowned. “Was Seth the type of man who’d mind, do you think? Because that doesn’t feel strange to me now, knowing your profession.”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me what he did for a living.” She shrugged. “I checked hospitals for accident victims.” She felt herself blush. “I even ran the databases I have at work, everything from the Department of Motor Vehicles for a driver’s license to Vital Statistics to trace a birth certificate. Nothing.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I drive…ah.”
She finished for him. “You have a license as Mason Aldridge. Seth Taggart didn’t have one.”
“Didn’t he drive to meet up with you when you went out?” he asked.
“No, he was always in the neighborhood or took a cab, and unfortunately, at the time, I never really noticed things like that.” She wet her lips, feeling both them and her throat go dry. “Lots of people don’t drive. Not many of them are in Texas, but the subject just never came up. I always had a vehicle, he was always on foot or nearby or something when we’d meet up.”
“Did you check other states?”
She was aware of the depth of her feelings for Seth with her next statement. Her voice was low, quiet and laced with the anger she’d sat on for months. “All fifty states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and the Philippines. I even searched through records for an international driver’s license, the kind people get when they travel a lot overseas.”
She could tell by the slow smile that lifted the corners of his mouth that the implication she hadn’t meant to divulge had registered with him. He knew she’d had a big emotional stake in her relationship with Seth.
“You must’ve wanted to find this man pretty badly.”
“I did, for fifteen months.”
“Ah. Which is precisely when my medical records show that I was in the car crash.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Care to tell me more?”
“Don’t look so smug,” she said, as if he really were Seth. “It’s my job.”
“But you were dating him, I take it, not looking for him because he owed you money or had committed a crime.”
She shifted in her seat, starting to get pissed off the more she thought about Seth. “Can we change the subject?”
He nodded. “If we don’t, you’ll likely make some excuse to visit the restroom or say you have an important phone call to make. I may have lost my memory, but not my sense of propriety.”
Charlie felt a chill of unease but refused to rub her arms or give any indication that she was unnerved. Telling him to discuss something else was enough of a clue that he’d upset her.
True to his word, he brought up another topic, circling back to what he’d previously asked. “Do you think you might help me?”
Easy enough—she was obligated as an officer to help. “I�
�ll do what I can. What would be best would be for you to speak with someone at the police department or find a good private investigator and give them all the information you can.”
He pulled a small notebook and pen from his jacket and began to scribble until ink appeared. “Do you know of anyone I could call?”
When she didn’t readily answer, he looked up. She knew her face must’ve drained of color. He was a lefty, a southpaw, just like Seth, and he curved his hand the same way around the pen that Seth did.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Charlie cleared her throat and finally found her voice. “Nothing. I was just thinking.”
He gave her a direct look. “You were being a cop. What did I do or say that triggered that look? C’mon, tell me.” Then he followed her gaze to his hand with the pen in it. “Was Seth left-handed?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything either. Lots of folks are—”
“What do you mean ‘anything either’? There’s something else?” he pressed her.
Charlie leaned back. “Damn, you don’t miss much, do you?”
At that moment, Jason walked up to the table, leaned over and hugged Charlie. “Hey, girl.”
“Hey, Jason.” Charlie made introductions, glad of her friend’s intrusion. It gave her time to assess Mason more carefully while he and Jason spoke. His plastic surgeon had to have been a wizard with a scalpel, because she couldn’t see so much as one hair’s width scar anywhere on his face, neck or the strong column of throat that was exposed in the V beneath his Adam’s apple where his Oxford shirt buttoned.
She felt her lips part as she looked at the smooth, hairless chest, what little of it she could see. Her throat felt dry, parched, as she recalled the nights she’d spent lying against Seth, running her tongue along his collarbone and into the small V, much like Mason’s.
Jason only stayed a few seconds, but Charlie could tell he was checking out her companion, looking for anything that might reveal Seth.
After he left, Mason set down the pen. “Did you and I come here often?”
“Quite a bit, considering we didn’t know one another that well. That is, if you are Seth Taggart. We don’t know that you are.”
He nodded. “And the hostess who seated me, and the owner…they’re friends of yours, I take it. Did they know Seth?”
“How do you know they’re friends of mine?” she asked, turning the tables.
He shrugged. “Maybe I dated a cop and some of her quirkiness rubbed off on me.”
Charlie couldn’t help but smile. So he wasn’t backing down or giving up. Good. The man was growing on her.
“Maybe you were a cop yourself,” she said.
He scoffed. “Doubt it.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
He splayed his fingers expressively. “Just makes sense. Because if I was an officer of the law, there would be fingerprints, a driver’s license, some form of public record unless I lived in a hotel, considering I’d have to live somewhere, and they pull a credit file for things like that, have for some time.” He paused. “I think.”
Charlie sat up straighter as a thought hit her. “What do you know about police work?”
“I have no idea. That just popped out as we were talking. Surely, if I’d been in the same line of work as you, though, I’d have mentioned it once you told me your job.”
“Unless you were I.A.,” she said.
“Internal Affairs? Why would I be checking up on you?”
He’s doing it again. Another chill swept over her. For someone who didn’t know much about himself, he had an uncanny ability to drift in and out of law enforcement jargon with ease, and he certainly had a ready answer, a comeback that thrust the questions back upon her, giving him the opportunity to avoid answering something himself. Just like Seth, now that she thought of it.
“You said something I haven’t tried.” She indicated his water glass, still full. “When you’re finished with that, why not let me run your fingerprints though AFIS?”
“Sure.” He took one sip and then another. “Just don’t let them refill the glass. No matter who or what I am, I’m sure my body has limits on how much it can hold.”
She fished in her purse. “No need.” She brought out tape and a plastic bag and secured the prints she wanted.
Mason cleared the table, making room for his plate when their food arrived. Charlie did the same. She glanced back toward the table where the two men had been watching them and frowned. They were still staring, but they both lowered their eyes again and went back to talking as soon as they saw that she noticed them.
“What, or who, are you looking at?” Mason asked, turning in his seat.
Charlie was about to say something when she saw his face, the way he scrutinized the two men. Just as a cop would have done, his eyes covering middle then top then bottom and back to their midsections, where most men carried their guns, somewhere strapped to their upper thighs or around the chest, if not within an inside a pocket.
“Maybe we’re on to something,” she admitted.
“You’ve aroused my curiosity again,” he told her. “Why do you say that?”
She told him, following with another thought. “Let’s check. Work with me?”
“Sure.”
She leaned forward and quietly asked, “What are they wearing, and what are their ages?”
His gaze never wavered. He seemed not to flinch or even consider turning around for another look. It was if he channeled someone or went into a clear-minded trance as he spoke. “Stouter man is about five-eleven, weight of two-ten, balding head, nondescript brown jacket that doesn’t go with the black shoes. I’d say he’s in his mid-forties, as is his buddy.”
He took a quick breath. “The guy facing us sits about two inches higher, so he’s taller or has a taller torso. Same shoes, blue shirt with a small diamond pattern and dark jacket.” He perked up. “The shoes—both pair look like standard uniform fare, like for someone not undercover. Right?”
Charlie grinned, unable to contain her excitement. “You’re either someone with a military background, you’re involved in law enforcement or you’re an interior decorator. Whichever, you have good powers of observation.”
He smiled back. “Nothing to bank on, but I’ll take it. Thanks.” He took another long drink from his water glass and set it down. “Crap.”
“What?” She stiffened, expecting something she wouldn’t like to hear.
He held out his hands, palms up. “I forgot. I burned my hands and fingertips somewhat in that wreck. Will it matter much?”
She sighed. “Won’t know until we get back to the station.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to run the prints on this?”
“Matter of hours if we catch my friend Carla on duty.”
“Then let’s eat quickly,” he suggested. “And no staring at me to see if I do this or that like Seth would have done. I’m self-conscious enough.”
Charlie bit her lip to keep from smiling again. She realized she’d been concerned about being the one under scrutiny, never thinking of her companion’s worries. She’d entered the restaurant wondering how she’d handle his neediness but hadn’t considered her own emotional state. Now she was drawn into a situation she hadn’t bargained for, one of giving a damn about him if he wasn’t Seth.
I don’t, she told herself. Then honesty kicked her. Well, maybe a little.
He insisted on paying for her meal once they’d finished eating, telling her he was a man of means, and while he did so, with a gold credit card she recognized but figured she’d never own, she scoured the restaurant for the two men. To her surprise—and then again, not, considering how they’d stared—they were leaving, closing in on them.
She touched his arm and whispered. “Don’t go to your own car. Come with me, but hurry.”
After he collected his card and receipt, she led him through the kitchen, out the back entrance. He seemed to sense the urgency and didn’t ask qu
estions, merely followed closely on her heels. When they got to the rear entrance where supplies were delivered, she led him around to her own car and motioned for him to get inside.
Once there, she asked where he’d parked then slowly pulled around to within a few yards of the expensive sedan.
“Who’s that beside the car?” she asked.
“Hector, my driver.” At her surprised look, he added, “I told you—I have money.”
“Guess so.”
“Why all the secrecy?” he asked. “You’ve already pulled my fingerprints with the tape you had in your bag. I’ve told you I’d let you swab my mouth at the station—but I’ll need to tell Hector so he can follow us.”
“Hector will have to do with a phone call. Just wait.”
Sure enough, the two men got into a car and waited, and they seemed to be watching the sedan, waiting for someone to get inside and for it to pull out.
“I think you’re being followed,” she said.
Mason’s shoulders squared and his face hardened. He asked her to point them out. “The men from the restaurant?”
“Yep. Any idea who they are?”
“If I’d noticed what they were wearing and didn’t comment on their faces, then, no. But now I’m wondering why they’re watching me.”
“Maybe you’re a spy,” she joked halfheartedly, praying to God she wouldn’t find herself shackled to him like some moll to a gangster or a bimbo to James Bond.
She fished out her cell phone and punched a number. When Heather answered, Charlie asked her, “Are you still smoking?”
“What?” Heather shrieked. The pause on the other end of the line was brief. “You know Jason told me to quit when we started a family.”
“Heather, I don’t care, I just need to know. Please—it’s important.”
“Damn, Charlie,” Heather huffed. “If you wanted a smoke, why didn’t you say something while you were here? Where are you now?”