by Bobbie Cole
“I’m in the parking lot, and I need you to take a smoke break. Go out the south door, light up and walk around to your left. Hurry.”
Heather grumbled, but Charlie could hear the rustle in the background.
“This is a new pack, and if Jason catches me, my ass is grass—and so is yours if he chews me out,” Heather told her.
Pretty soon Charlie saw her exit the building and look around. “Go to your right, honey, I’m sorry, not your left. See that gray Lexus across the drive?”
“Yeah.”
“Walk over there like you’re talking to me.”
“I am talking to you, dumbass.”
Charlie couldn’t repress the grin. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“I am in clear view of Jason’s office, Charlie. He’s going to catch me.”
“Well, tell him I asked a favor and that you had to bum a cigarette from a customer. He’ll understand.” Charlie watched the two men in the car closely. “Walk around to their west side and act like you’ve spotted someone you know. Wave.”
“To you?”
“No! Like you see someone you know just beyond that Lexus where those men can’t see who you’re flagging down.”
Heather groaned. “With a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I’m to wave? Do I say anything, shout, do more than just look like an idiot saying hello to an empty parking lot across the street?”
Charlie could tell that Mason was amused, but thankfully he wasn’t the talkative sort. “Heather, you’re doing great. Those men are following us—rather they’re following Se—Mason. I need you to use your camera on the phone and take a shot of their car tag, whatever you can get me. Just keep talking and walking around, smoking, and acting like you’re on a break from work.”
“Crap.” Heather walked where Charlie had directed. “I’m hanging up now so I can take the photos.”
“Great. Send them to my personal email address, not my work.”
Her friend seemed to have forgotten she was to be covert. Heather looked in Charlie’s direction, frowning, and for a moment Charlie was afraid the two men would spot her and follow her gaze.
Charlie pulled out slowly and told Mason to hunker down in his seat. She ignored the two men and Heather, acting as if she hadn’t seen them, and whipped around a corner and into the main flow of traffic onto a nearby street.
Whoever they were, they wouldn’t be following a car they weren’t concerned about and didn’t recognize.
“Interesting,” was all her companion said.
Charlie took it as a compliment. “Ten years, most of it working cold cases, but my father was a cop. It’s in the blood to be suspicious.”
Mason knew without being told that once they were at the station, he wouldn’t be allowed past certain checkpoints. He asked if there might be a book with photos of missing persons to see if he recognized himself, though, and Charlie told him sure. Then she asked if he’d care to browse information or photos concerning the accident in Mexico if she could pull them up on the computer.
It was what he’d prayed for.
He acquiesced to a sample of his DNA as well as the fingerprints then settled into a comfortable chair in a remote corner of an unoccupied interrogation room with a stack of books while he waited on Charlie to come back with whatever she could find.
He figured it’d take several hours, not mere minutes before she returned, and he planned on delving into grisly photos and a mixture of Spanish and English reports, but she was back quickly, and the look on her face told him the news wasn’t good.
“Am I a mass murderer or an interior decorator?” he asked, half-joking but with a fist of dread punching his stomach.
“Maybe worse if my hunch is right. It means we probably won’t be able to trace you,” she replied, sitting across from him at the table. “Carla had almost an immediate hit on your fingerprints in AFIS, but the DNA, of course, will take much longer. We’ll have to come back for that, but I already suspect what it’ll tell us.”
Anxiety shredded him. “What? Who am I?”
“We still don’t know. One lead after another came up with the same response in one form or another—file closed, unable to obtain. We figure you’re a Fed.”
The news shocked him, seemingly more so than it had her, because her face was pale but not alarmed. Either the pert little blonde before him was a good cop with a poker face, which he highly suspected, or she didn’t give a damn, which somehow he doubted. “How about the name?” he asked. “Anything associated with those fingerprints?”
“Nothing on Seth Taggart, but then I’ve already searched every conceivable database, going back to his birth in Chicago and to his childhood in Port Charles. Maybe he doesn’t exist.” She paused. “As for the fingerprints, the database locked up on me. So nothing…yet.”
“Do you believe he’d have lied to you about something like that?” Mason’s eyes held hers. Do you think I could have done such a thing? What he was thinking hung in the air like some invisible blade above both their heads.
Charlene nodded. “He would have if he was undercover, especially if he was FBI or CIA.”
Mason rose and walked around to where she sat, and she stood as well, shoving the chair beneath the desk. He watched her throat as she swallowed, and the slight motion inflamed him with the desire he’d had since setting eyes on her in the restaurant. Suddenly he didn’t give a damn whether anyone was watching from the other side of the glass wall and he didn’t care if she slapped his face. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her toward him, and she didn’t resist.
“We’re both wondering if I’m the man you were with,” he said, his voice rough with a mixture of dread, desire and need. “Let’s find out.”
The kiss began slowly, with him pressing his lips against hers in what he’d intended to be a sweet, slow connection but what flamed into something else entirely. His tongue parted her lips and explored the interior of her mouth, savoring its sweetness, craving the passion he felt as she responded.
He could tell she was unwilling to wholly let him past the emotional barriers she’d constructed, but he knew when he had her, the moment she opened herself to him, sighing, even whimpering, as their bodies remembered what his mind couldn’t.
Her hands slowly left his forearms and slid upward to his shoulders. For brief seconds she clutched him, digging her nails into him before winding her arms about his neck and embracing him fully.
His legs and groin ached with need, and he had to consciously stop himself before he grabbed her bottom and drew her farther into the embrace, wanting to touch her, mold her and feel her warmth thawing the frozen memories of his past.
The air about them in the small room seemed to freeze in time, with a swirling sensation that threatened to undermine his resolve not to go too far with her in his arms.
“Seth.” His name was a whisper on her lips as he abruptly stopped kissing her and put her at arm’s length.
He stared at her hopelessly for a moment before speaking. “I guess that answers that.”
“What are we going to do? How do we prove who you are if you can’t remember and if there’s no physical record of your existence?” She sounded terrified, not unsure of him but frightened of the situation.
He wasn’t sure if he could move forward on his own with no skills he could remember, no access to information and no one to trust. “I’m more worried about whether or not you’ll be here…with me.”
Charlie nodded. “I’ll stay with you. We’ll work it out.”
Chapter Three
He’d called Hector from his cell phone at Charlie’s suggestion, and while it was late, he was tired and he knew she wanted to go home, he had been reluctant to leave the station. He lolled his head against the high-back leather seat as the chauffer drove toward his house, thinking of the past few hours and how he already missed her.
It was as if he’d known her all his life and couldn’t remember a day without her or a day with her. It wa
s a maddening situation. He’d wanted to ask her to accompany him, but he’d known she’d turn him down. She’d said she wanted to follow up on a project at work when he’d offered to follow her to her car, but he knew that like him, she also needed to adjust to what they’d discovered. Nothing. And everything.
Surely, he told himself, if he was her errant or missing…whatever…boyfriend or lover, her face and body would have haunted him. How could he have forgotten someone like her if that were the case? For all her candor and control, he suspected a feminine, slightly shy, yielding and giving woman.
She’d worn androgynous dark slacks and shoes, typical of a detective, but the soft crème-colored blouse with the open throat beneath the black business jacket had been pure female.
His thoughts segued to the two men at the restaurant. They made him apprehensive. Who were they and what did they hope to accomplish by following him? If he was indeed a Fed—and that’s what they looked like—they’d most likely wonder what he was up to, who he’d talked to, why he hadn’t contacted them, and what he knew about whatever situation he’d been involved with while in Mexico, since that was where his life had both ended and began. So why, if he was Seth, hadn’t they simply rescued him? Was it to keep him in play so he could maybe give them more information later?
Even with the sensations he had experienced kissing Charlene Vargas, he was certain of nothing but one thing: he wasn’t Mason Aldridge. He was living in the Aldridge mansion, spending Aldridge money, but he wasn’t entitled to it. Without it, though, how would he survive? Definitely a conundrum. Live in luxury as long as he kept his mouth shut or wind up at Charlie’s mercy until he figured things out.
“Cheer up,” he mumbled to himself. “You could be at a homeless shelter.”
“Señor Aldridge?”
Mason looked up, realizing he must’ve spoken aloud, and he found his driver staring at him in the rearview mirror.
“Sorry, Hector. Just thinking.” Mason took a deep breath, considering his next move. Oh, why not? “Hector?”
“Sí, señor?”
“How long have you known me?”
The driver’s eyes widened slightly, but they soon narrowed, troubled, reflecting his hesitancy in answering. “I have worked for your family for about ten years.”
“Do I look the same to you now as I did before going to Mexico?” There were only the two of them in the car, so perhaps the chauffer would level with him. Couldn’t hurt.
Hector shook his head. “No. But you and I were never…you know?” He paused. “Buddy-buddy.”
Mason picked up on the small thread Hector had inadvertently offered. “Was I a snob or standoffish, or did I treat you badly?”
“Never, Mr. Aldridge. I only meant that we never talk except for you to give me instructions. It’s…it’s not your family’s way.” Hector’s eyes still looked concerned.
“Do you believe I am Mason Aldridge?” He had to know. “It’s not a loaded question. You won’t be penalized for being honest. I’m asking because I don’t see how, no matter who the others say I am. I don’t feel like an Aldridge, and I don’t remember anything from a life at the Aldridge mansion, so I want to know how you feel, what you think. Please.”
He could see it the moment the man realized he wasn’t getting out of answering, at least not gracefully. Hector’s shoulders seemed to ease from their tense, subservient but wary, position. He looked at Mason directly via the mirror. “The Mason Aldridge I knew would never have asked me such things. He wouldn’t have cared for my opinion, and he would not have said please.”
“Then why would my sist—rather the woman posing as my sister—and her husband try convincing me and others that I’m Mason?”
The chauffer shrugged. “Mason Aldridge—the one I knew—never socialized. He rarely went to his own company, preferring to handle business over the telephone from his home. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Weird, yes. Difficult, no.”
“Thank you. That’s all I needed to know.” In that moment, at least in his mind, Mason Aldridge ceased being, and Seth Taggart was reborn. That was the instant Seth reclaimed what little he could decipher of himself, and he made a decision.
And immediately forgot what it was. For a moment, he heard no sound, saw only darkness, couldn’t fathom where he was, much less what he was thinking or saying.
“Señor Aldridge?”
Seth rubbed his eyes. What the hell was happening? “What?”
“You mumbled something—I didn’t hear what it was.” Hector’s eyes were narrowed, their expression one of concern. “Are you okay?”
“Oh. Yeah. I remember. Turn around—head back toward town, please,” Seth instructed him. “Hyatt Regency on Louisiana.”
Hector immediately found a lane where he could reverse their direction. Without question, he whipped the sedan onto a side street, turned the vehicle around and headed toward a ramp leading to the heart of Houston.
Seth comforted himself with the thought that he had all of the information he needed from the mansion. He’d made copies of documents and put them into a safety deposit box, one of the few things to which Dorinda and Doug Wilkerson didn’t have keys.
They could have the run of the mansion, strip it bare and auction off what they couldn’t carry to some storage facility—he didn’t care. None of it was his, anyway.
Let them wonder where he was until they pried the information from Hector. Something told him, though, that Hector would hold out, that he wouldn’t divulge Seth’s whereabouts.
He’d phone Charlie the next day and let her know where he was once he secured a room, and he’d have Pink and Hector bring him whatever he needed at the hotel.
As they wound through the business district, a horrific thought struck Seth. Where was the real Mason Aldridge—or his body? He had to be dead if his sister was deliberately trying to pass off any warm body with a crushed face as her brother. And if Hector had figured something was amiss, surely other servants were suspicious. Why hadn’t anyone said anything? Was Aldridge that big of an asshole that nobody cared? Or were the servants afraid of Dorinda and Doug?
The partial fingerprints hadn’t yielded much, but four points out of ten on the Galton details wasn’t bad, Charlie thought, studying the results Carla had given her. Seth must’ve seared off some of the skin, thereby altering his prints a bit, but there were still enough identifying marks to run, and if he didn’t have a set on file before he walked in, he could certainly have one after he left if she was so inclined.
His kiss had left her shattered. She was a small woman, and while it might be unlikely but still possible for a man to overcome her in strength, few had breached her guarded heart, the core of her that lived behind the badge and intellect. She’d learned long ago that whenever that happened, it was time for her to step back, take a second look, a deeper breath, reassess and revise, come up with a plan just in case her emotions became tangled.
If Mason wasn’t Seth, there was something seriously wrong with her rationale and her bullshit barometer, because she couldn’t find anything to dislike about the man with whom she’d lunched, yet she hadn’t discovered anything to love either, nothing other than a kiss she could define as belonging to Seth.
It was as if the Seth she’d known had vanished then reappeared in a different package, and part of what had drawn her to him was the entirety, the whole man, not facets of him. She didn’t know what to do with him parceled out to her in a process that required she study and evaluate him one moment, kiss or thought at a time.
She flipped open her cell phone and checked the time. Late, but maybe not too late. She pressed the number two. She was relieved not to get voice mail. “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
She took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “It’s me.”
“I know who it is. I was there when your mother gave birth to you.”
Charlie smiled weakly. “You up for a chat? I need to run something by you.”
“You bring the bee
r, and I’ll provide the nachos.”
“Be there in twenty minutes.”
She’d missed the first twenty years knowing her father. His name was Samuel Gordon Vargas, but her mother had always said he was just Sam, which stood for some asshole man. Of course, upon reflection, her mother hadn’t been exactly unbiased. Their divorce, like their marriage, had been volatile, and June Vargas hadn’t been pleased with the piddly child support a beat cop could deliver back in the day.
Charlene had been named for her paternal grandmother, and while she hadn’t any brothers or sisters, she and Sam had never been close. Probably, she figured, because he couldn’t stand coming around June, and it wasn’t like he could see his daughter without encountering her mother.
June had stopped speaking to her for months when Charlie joined the academy. Her mom still couldn’t be in the same room with her more than ten or fifteen minutes without dredging up the past and comparing Charlie’s faults to those of her father. Charlie loved her, but June was a cold-hearted, unforgiving, grudge-carrying shrew at times.
Sam, on the other hand, was so laid back he was almost comatose. He’d retired a detective, the benefits had been great and the two shots he’d taken to the chest hadn’t hurt his settlement upon leaving the department as an injured cop. He was delighted his daughter had Vargas blood, as opposed to a trailer trash princess mentality, as he called it, that she had grit and the desire to give something back to the community.
“Nah,” she’d told him when he’d bragged on her once, “I just like that conceal and carry permit and the license to beat the crap out of men who piss me off.”
She’d still been in the academy when he took his retirement bullets, as he called the shots that almost felled him. She’d gone to his hospital bedside, run errands and somehow managed to soften the old codger, who took to inviting her over for the occasional poker tournament with his retired buddies or to watch his team, the Texas Longhorns, play football.
Charlie wasn’t stupid. She knew that fifty percent, if not more, of his sudden interest in his daughter once she was out of high school and college, was that he wanted to keep tabs on her. He had friends in every nook and cranny of government and law enforcement across the state who watched her and reported back to him. Maybe it was because he had such a strained relationship with her mother that he wasn’t more forthcoming and didn’t simply ask her how she was or what she’d been doing. Hell, maybe he just didn’t trust that she was capable of looking after herself. Not like he didn’t know the dangers young women faced, much less female cops.