But the picture was selling the story of the mysterious vanishing act of the veteran reporter, and everyone and their brother wanted a piece of it.
Of her.
Somehow her unlisted phone number was now in the hands of dozens of aggressive magazine editors, newspaper reporters, and talk show hosts. Her answering machine had stopped recording new messages because it was full.
Her building had doormen, and electronic security fobs to operate the elevator, so she’d been spared from having people knocking directly on her door so far. But it was coming. The doormen didn’t make enough money to buy loyalty, and sooner or later one of them was going to have a greasy palm. Or maybe the superintendent would be the one to give her up; she’d had to get a spare fob and key from him when she’d first come home, and the entire time she was in his small office, he slid long, assessing glances in her direction, thoughtfully chewing a toothpick.
The worst thing, though, was the phone messages. Not the ones from the hyenas in the press. Not the ones from Nola, though she grew increasingly frantic as the days wore on, and Jack hated to hear her so worried.
The worst were from the father she didn’t remember.
“Jackie. Baby. Why won’t you pick up the phone? Your work called . . . what’s going on? Please call me to let me know you’re okay.”
That was the first one, two days after her disappearance.
Then: “Jackie. I hope this isn’t about your birthday. Please call me. I-I love you.”
Snuffling, then a click, and Jack was left to wonder what the hell happened on her birthday. And why this man sounded so wracked with guilt.
There were more, and they got worse. As she listened to these messages, dozens of them, each one more gruff and weepy than the next, it occurred to Jack that what Hawk had told her may have had more meaning than what she first assumed.
Some things are better forgotten, Jacqueline. Sometimes . . . forgetting can be a gift.
Because she could remember only bits and pieces of her early life, and nothing at all of the past weeks, with the exception of a few recent days, she’d become obsessed with those words. She dug through her apartment, hunting for anything personal, a diary, photo albums, any kind of mementos that might trigger her memory or offer some insight into the person she’d once been—and what had happened to her—but there was nothing. Her apartment was utterly barren of clues that would have given her a glimpse into her past life. Or her current life, for that matter.
With the exception of the clothes in the closet, the toothbrush in the jar in the bathroom, a few cosmetics in a vanity drawer, and a handful of take-out menus in the kitchen, it was almost as if no one had ever lived there at all.
Jack found that telling. Sad, and telling. She also wondered about that look on Hawk’s face when Morgan tried to access her memory and failed. Beyond his disappointment, the glimpse of relief, swiftly erased.
It made her think Hawk knew something. Something she’d forgotten. Something that didn’t have anything to do with him.
Something bad.
But there was nothing to be done about it. She looked up hypnotherapists in the yellow pages, eventually deciding that if she couldn’t regain her memory with the assistance of a woman who could make you quack like a duck with only a word, a hypnotherapist was probably a complete waste of time.
And . . . did she really want to know?
That question continued to simmer on the back burner of her mind as she tried to piece her life back together, going through the motions in a daze. Though she didn’t remember leaving it there or even having one, a cell phone lay on the kitchen counter, next to a gleaming stainless-steel toaster that had obviously never been used. When she scrolled through it, a list of numbers appeared, only some of which she recognized.
“Dad” was there. So was “Work,” “Nola,” and someone named “Asshat,” among dozens of others. She stared at the names, her hands shaking, her eyes welling with tears, wanting to break something, wanting to run.
She scrolled to the Hs, but there was no “Hawk.” And why would there be? He wasn’t from her world. He was someone she knew for a few weeks . . . who she just happened to have the awful, impossible feeling might be her soul mate.
“Idiot,” she whispered as the tears slid down her cheeks. And then, “Fuck.”
The minute she said it, she wanted to take it back. It felt wrong, though she didn’t know why. Which made her cry even harder; stupid, useless tears that did nothing to quell the ache of longing or the crushing despair caused by the certainty that she’d never feel right again.
“You ready for this?”
Nola, dressed in an elegant black pantsuit, her hair scraped back severely from her face and gathered into a low knot, was watching Jack with worried eyes, just as she had been watching her for the past two days. Nola had appeared at Jack’s door the morning after her return, and had only left the apartment on forays for fresh clothes and food.
And booze. Jack wasn’t sure the exact quantity of alcohol one had to consume before being involuntarily admitted to rehab, damaging the liver beyond repair, or falling into a coma from which one would never awake, but she was well on her way to finding out.
Now it was Monday morning, and they were standing in Jack’s kitchen, preparing to leave for a press conference she was looking forward to about as much as standing naked in line at the DMV.
“Not even close,” Jack admitted, shoving a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “But if I don’t give them something, the vultures will never stop circling.” She gulped down the last of her coffee and set the mug in the sink. She was wearing a black suit, too, and between the two of them they looked like part of a funeral procession, which seemed apropos.
“You have your speech ready?”
Jack nodded. She’d spent hours working on it, and though it wasn’t long, it said everything she wanted to say. After this morning, she was determined never to speak of her lost weeks again.
She still hadn’t called her father. She didn’t know what she could possibly say that wouldn’t sound insane. “Hi, it’s your daughter, I have no idea who you are?” That wasn’t a phone call she could imagine making. Instead she’d had Nola call him to let him know she was fine, just not ready to talk yet.
She’d asked Nola to leave out the part about not remembering him.
She was scheduled to go back to work first thing the following morning. Work was the only thing she could think of that might help her keep her ever-loosening grip on her sanity, and her boss, though proffering half-hearted protests that it was too early, quickly agreed. It would be great PR for the paper, and, in fact, it had been his idea to hold the press conference at the Times’s offices. She wouldn’t be able to go out on assignment for a while—she’d attract too much attention—but there was always work to be done around the office, and once the circus and its attendant carnies had left town, she’d be able to return to the only thing she was one hundred percent sure about: reporting.
Though she knew she’d forever have the bloated ghost of notoriety hanging over her head, cackling like a crone stirring a bubbling cauldron of newt eyes and frog toes.
Some demons, once summoned, can never be exorcized.
“Okay, before we go, I’m just going to put this out there.”
Jack looked at Nola, her eyes narrowing in suspicion at the tone in her voice. “What?”
Nola began to fiddle with the small gold hoop earring in her left ear. Fiddling was uncharacteristic for her, and it amplified Jack’s nervousness like a dial had been cranked.
“I know you don’t want to talk about what happened to you yet . . . or maybe ever.”
Jack’s face flushed. “I’m just . . . not ready, No. It’s too . . . strange. I can hardly get my own head around it. I’m only doing this to get the press off my back, and then I’m going to crawl back into my shell.�
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“I get it,” she said softly. “And I know you. You’re the most private person I’ve ever met. So I’m only going to say this once, and then we’ll consider the subject closed forever.”
Jack’s heart began to flutter. “Why does that sound so ominous?”
Nola looked at her with big, dark eyes, her expression pained. “You’ve said you don’t remember most of the past few weeks, and there are holes in your memory . . . from other times.” She glanced away for a moment, hesitating, then met her gaze again. “You’re my best friend. You know that, right? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
All the little hairs on Jack’s arms lifted. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she whispered, “You know, don’t you? You know what I don’t remember about my father? About my childhood?”
Slowly, Nola nodded.
Jack whispered hoarsely, “Do I want to know?”
The answer was immediate, blunt, as hard as two fingers snapping. “No.”
Jack closed her eyes.
Nola said, “And that’s why I’m not going to tell you. Because you and I have the same set of monsters, and there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do to escape mine. Even for a single day. Even for a minute.”
Jack opened her eyes to find Nola staring at her with fierce intensity, her dark eyes blazing wild-thing bright. “But you should know that your father is a good man. Flawed, but good. He never hurt you. Ever. And he never will. He loves you more than anything in the world. You can trust him.”
Jack put her face into her hands, her tentative façade of equilibrium riven with cracks. She whispered a curse, and Nola pulled her into a hug.
“I know. I’m sorry. This sucks. But you’re a tough cookie, Dolan. You’re going to be fine.” She pulled away and swiped at the tear that had begun to track down Jack’s cheek. “Okay. One other thing and then I’m shutting up.”
“Oh dear God. I don’t think I can take ‘one other thing.’ ”
“This guy you met in Brazil.”
Jack stiffened. She’d never told Nola about Hawk. How could she possibly know?
“Guy?”
“Yeah, the one you thought I bought you for your birthday. You know, the supermodel assassin rock-star sex god.”
Sex god? Birthday? She remembered the date of her birthday, she knew that it was a few days before she disappeared, when she was on assignment in . . . Manaus.
A picture flashed before her eyes. A burning building. The figure of a man, large and leonine, standing motionless across a cobbled street. Staring at her as if nothing else in the world existed.
A wave of heat flashed over her. Jack made an incoherent noise, which Nola took as an invitation to continue.
“When the police questioned me when you first disappeared, they wanted to know if anything unusual had happened to you within the last few weeks or months. So I told them about the guy you said you hooked up with. They looked into it, but I’m not sure if they found anything. Did . . . did he have anything to do with it? Your disappearance?”
Another picture, vivid as daylight. Jack on her back on a mattress in a hotel room, moaning, Hawk’s dark head moving between her spread thighs.
You like that, don’t you, Red?
All the breath left her body as if a giant, invisible hand had pressed down on her chest.
“Jack? Are you okay?”
She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes, hadn’t known she’d sunk into the wood chair at the small kitchen table. Her hand was cupped over her mouth, and she was fighting for air.
“I’m . . . I’m . . .” Jack swallowed, feeling as if the earth had just collapsed under her feet.
Hawk is a friend, and a good man, and whatever you remember or don’t, you should know that you’ve changed him.
Why hadn’t she asked Morgan who it was who’d brought her to the rainforest colony? Who she’d spent more than a week traveling with? How the whole thing had begun?
Funny, isn’t it, the strange ways love stories can begin?
Why hadn’t she thought to ask Hawk why she was staying in his home while she was there?
Did he have anything to do with your disappearance?
“Jack?”
She looked up to find Nola staring at her in obvious concern. “Your face is as white as a sheet. What’s going on?”
I don’t know what’s real anymore, she wanted to say. I think I don’t know anything at all.
But instead she said, “Just . . . just nervous. I’ll be fine. This is all . . . it’s all just a little overwhelming.” She stood, gripping the edge of the table for support, and offered Nola a shaky smile, which didn’t appear to convince her.
She crossed her arms over her chest, lowered her head, and said in her most lawyerly, intimidating way, “Jack. What’s. Going. On?”
Jack said, “Nola . . . have you ever been in love?”
“That’s it,” she said flatly. “We’re cancelling this press conference.” She pulled a cell phone from her jacket pocket.
“No, wait, no!”
Nola cocked a brow at her, waiting.
Jack began to pace back and forth over the kitchen floor, wringing her hands, knowing she had to give Nola something good—something convincing—or else she absolutely would cancel the press conference, which Jack didn’t want to happen. She wanted to get this over with, as soon as possible, and move on with her so-called life.
“It’s just driving me crazy, this . . . not knowing. And it’s not only my father, my mother, my childhood, it’s . . .” she swung around and stared at her friend, her anguish like a gnawing thing inside her. “It’s that I think I might have forgotten the most important thing I ever knew.”
“Which is?”
Jack’s face crumpled. She said, “Love.”
For a long, silent moment, Nola studied her face. Then she looked at her watch. She crossed to the cabinets, took out two glasses, crossed to the other counter, and filled the glasses with a shot from the bottle of Patrón that Jack’s neighbor, Mr. Flores, had given Jack when she came home. Nola, handed Jack a glass, and raised her own in a toast.
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
“That’s a good toast,” Jack said, her voice weak.
“Nietzsche. Drink up.”
Jack did. When she finished, Nola set the glasses on the counter. She turned back to Jack and said, “I don’t know what happened to you, and maybe you don’t either. And even though I’ve spent my life in pursuit of logical things, rational things, things that are concrete, and can be measured, I know deep down that nothing worth knowing can be grasped with the rational mind.” She touched Jack’s chest. “Everything you need to know is in here. Just trust that, no matter what happens.”
She stared at her friend, her eyes welling with tears. “Damn. You’re smart.”
“Of course I’m smart. I’m an attorney. We’re the smartest people in the world. Just ask us.” She gave Jack a swift, hard hug, then released her.
“All right, kiddo, let’s get this show on the road.”
Jack exhaled, nodding. Then she grabbed her handbag from the counter, and, with one final deep breath, followed Nola out the door.
Jack knew the press conference would be bad. She was expecting bad.
What she wasn’t expecting was a riot.
The New York Times Building was a massive skyscraper in the heart of midtown, built only a few years prior, a masterpiece of contemporary design with 1.6 million square feet of retail and office space. It also sported a 400-seat auditorium that was annexed to the lobby, complete with a stunning view of a glassed-in aspen grove and moss garden, open to the sky.
It was in front of the lovely garden view, on a riser in the auditorium, that Jack was scheduled t
o speak.
Her first clue that something was amiss was the traffic being redirected off forty-first Street. The limousine she and Nola were riding in, however, was waved through the line of orange cones and barricades by a white-gloved traffic cop, who closely examined the Times pass on the dashboard, then nodded at the driver.
After attempting to peer through the windshield into the back seat to get a look at Jack.
Too bad for him, the tinted divider window between the driver’s seat and the back seats was up. Sitting beside her, Nola took her hand, muttering, “This should be interesting.”
It was when the car pulled to a stop at the curb outside the main lobby entrance that Jack understood the reality of the situation.
“You can’t be serious.” She recoiled in horror as a flock of reporters with cameras and microphones surrounded the car, shouting and jostling, clamoring over each other to get close. There were no fewer than six television news vans parked along the curb, their satellite dishes sprung in the air like mushrooms, and a crowd of pedestrians and onlookers had gathered beyond the cordoned-off entrance to the building.
Nola sent her a sympathetic glance. “I know you haven’t been watching TV, but, sweetie, you’re the chum in the shark tank at the moment.”
Jack made a small, choked noise in her throat.
“Veteran reporter, Pulitzer nominee, notorious for all her anti-Shifter rhetoric, vanishes without a trace from New York then reappears from the Amazon jungle weeks later without a scratch . . . think about it.”
Jack closed her eyes and tried not to hyperventilate.
Nola added, “And it doesn’t help that you’re young and pretty and Ivy League . . . and regarded as kind of a bitch.”
Jack moaned and slumped farther down in the seat, hiding behind her hands.
“Hey.” Nola pried Jack’s hands from her face and stared into her eyes. “We bitches have to stick together, okay? Maybe we’ll form a union,” she joked.
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