by An Anthology
The ride seemed endless, perhaps because she kept her eyes closed in an attempt to do a mental job on this latest insult to her cranium. She wiggled, trying to get more comfortable before realizing that her underwear was back in Jake’s washer instead of on her bottom, meaning that all the wiggling in the world would not solve her discomfort. Thank heaven she’d worn a fairly new pair of panties and one of her better bras. Mom was right; you never knew when you might be in an accident.
She sat up straight, eyes wide open now. “Jake, I remember my mom!”
“Way to go,” he said. He reached over as if to pat her thigh, then snatched his hand back.
It barely registered with A.J., still plowing around in her memory bank. Mom! Dorothy… The last name still escaped her, but…
“I can almost hear my dad’s voice shouting, ”Dotty, the man of the house is home!“ And Mom responding, ”Oh, Lord, there’s Pete! Quick, Norman! Out the window! And don’t forget your pants!!“”
Jake burst into laughter, a surprisingly rich and infectious sound.
“The names of the visitor changed each day,” she continued, her excitement building, “always in alphabetical order. It was a running joke between them for years.”
A sudden rush of tears startled her and she swallowed around the lump in her throat. “My dad’s name was Peter. He and Mom, they’re dead, gone within a year of each other. My childhood’s back,” she said softly. “I lived at 1422 Main Street, a block from my high school in Elm Corners, Virginia.”
She could almost see her picture in the yearbook, the list of all the clubs she’d belonged to. But not her last name. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t pin down her surname.
Roofies. She shuddered. Who could have slipped it to her? And why? Even if she never remembered the accident or how she’d wound up in that car, if she could recapture the hours before she was drugged… She needed a prod, something to kick her memory in the butt. Perhaps the contents of her purse. They had to find it.
“Heads up,” Jake said.
A.J. opened her eyes to see that he was turning right where three roads intersected. Here as everywhere else in this neck of the woods, there were no lights, no signs with the names of the road. Suddenly the area on the left of the pickup became one bright, blinding glare, thanks to the spotlight mounted beyond the windshield on his side. The beam swept across a dark emptiness then lowered until she saw a glittering black rush of water between rocky banks no more than a couple of yards from one another.
“This is it?” she asked. It looked nothing like what she’d seen from the car.
Jake must have detected the disbelief in her voice. “Don’t let that fool you. Around the next turn, it goes over a waterfall. When I was young and stupid, I jumped from it and damn near drowned, not because it’s that deep. It was the speed of the water.” He slowed, maneuvering a steep curve that practically looped back on itself. Immediately the sound of the creek escalated. “This is probably where the car skidded off. Keep your eyes open for it.”
Duke switched to Jake’s side again, suddenly on the alert, and stood up to peer out of his window.
“Is this it, boy?” Jake asked, as he played the big spotlight over the bank. “What the hell were you doing so far from home, anyway?”
Duke gave a soft woof, back legs practically prancing.
“Ah. Here.” He pulled over onto what little there was of the shoulder, hit the switch for his emergency blinkers, and got out. Duke wriggled between the seats to follow him.
“Wait for me,” A.J. protested, and got out, too, her clogs skittering on loose rocks. She was determined not to fall again. Been there, done that, she reminded herself.
Jake had crossed the road and stood directing the beam of the flashlight toward parallel ruts that angled from the bank to the stream. It was a long way down. “That’s probably what stopped the car.” His flashlight revealed a boulder at the edge of the rushing water below. “Lots of gouge marks from the undercarriage.”
“But no car.” Remembered fear slithered the length of A.J.“s spine.
“No car, which means it’s downstream somewhere, probably up against the bridge. We’ll go there next. Now, your purse. Color?”
“Black.”
“Stands to reason,” Jake muttered. “Stay put. Duke, come.”
A.J. felt a little guilty about leaving the search to them but couldn’t bring herself to help. She’d done enough climbing up and down banks for one night. Besides, Jake was the one with the flashlight; she wouldn’t even be able to see her feet, much less a black bag.
Jake gave up after several thorough sweeps alongside the creek. Duke spent most of the time investigating several spots he apparently didn’t like, considering the amount of growling elicited at each location, and the generous contributions of urine he left.
“Sorry, A.J.,” Jake said, scaling the bank with ease. “No luck. If you insist on staying in town, I’ll put the motel on a charge card. You can pay me back once you’re all squared away. And before you make another snotty remark about my not having a phone, I’ll give you a card with my address on it.”
A.J. couldn’t even toss a mental coin to decide. “I really would prefer the motel, Jake. Besides, it’ll get me out of your hair.”
She could feel his hard gaze. “There is that. Fine, if that’s the way you want it. A lot of help you were,” he grumbled at Duke as they climbed back into the truck.
A.J. camouflaged her despair over the purse by going to the shepherd’s defense. “He’s not a bloodhound. Maybe he’s been trained to look for people, not things.”
Jake gave the observation a moment of thought as he maneuvered back onto the road. “I hadn’t thought of that. Like I told you, he isn’t mine. He and his handler were shot in the line of duty. Duke survived, Mack didn’t. Mack and I were really tight,” Jake continued, his voice flat and without inflection. “I assume Duke associates me with that crazy Irishman. He kept jumping the fence at home and winding up on my doorstep. So Mack’s wife agreed to let him spend some time with me to see how things work out.”
“So are they? Working out?”
“More or less, if I can ever convince him to stop coming to the rescue of everybody and everything.”
“And dragging them home to you,” A.J. finished for him, then decided to keep her mouth shut until they got wherever the hell they were going. Oh, yeah, the bridge.
Silence hung heavy in the cab until, without warning, Jake ended it. “Oh, shit.” The pickup shuddered to a tire-squealing halt.
“What’s wrong?” A.J. leaned forward. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly No car and no bridge either.” He angled the spotlight straight ahead. “Oh, just dammit!”
The whole of the center section of the old wooden bridge was gone, it and most of its supports strewn about like giant toothpicks, piles of debris swirling around them. The water was higher here, overlapping the banks in places.
Jake got out, slamming the door behind him. Duke scrambled into the front seat and vaulted through the window. With little incentive to be left behind, A.J. hopped out and went around to join Jake and the dog.
“Stay,” he snapped at Duke, his expression grim as he walked as far as he could onto what was left of the near end of the bridge. Torch in hand, he knelt to examine the ends of the broken timbers, then the mounds of debris beneath them. Duke whined, prancing with eagerness to follow him, but remained on the roadway for all of two seconds before wandering to the water’s edge to sniff around.
“What are you doing?” A.J. asked Jake.
“Trying to see if the water took out the bridge or whether something might have hit it.”
“Like the car, you mean?”
“Yeah. I see what might be a tailpipe and a muffler, so I guess that answers the question.” He picked his way past splintered boards and massive clumps of trash and tree limbs. “This complicates things, though. Looks like you won’t be going anywhere.”
A.J. fr
oze for a moment, then trailed him back to the truck. “Excuse me?”
“That bridge is the only way into Adamsville, unless you want to wade to the other side, which I don’t advise.” He gazed at her across the width of the hood. “Check the speed of that water. It would wash you downstream in a heartbeat.”
“But… but… What’s in the other direction? I mean, this road has to go somewhere,” A.J. protested.
“It does, to a couple of places too small to be called towns. Definitely no motels. Hey, I don’t like this situation any more than you do, but until the creek goes down and I can carry you across, you’re stuck in Nowhere with me and Duke.”
A.J. managed to control her frustration for a few seconds before she erupted. “Damn it, Jake, this is ridiculous! I can’t stay here.”
“Got something against Nowhere?” His tone was ash-dry.
“Puh-leeze,” she said. “Since I arrived out cold in the backseat of someone else’s car, it’s obvious coming here was not my idea.” Looking around, she threw up her hands. “Nobody in their right mind would, unless they were a hermit or—or running away from something. Which makes me wonder about you.” She eyed him, anger fueling suspicion. “Just why are you here? Why come with no means of communication with the outside world? Don’t want to be bothered with calls? Unplug the phone, or if it’s a cellular, turn the damned thing off. At least you’d have it for emergencies. Why aren’t you more upset about no way to get back to wherever you come from? For that matter, where do you come from?”
Jake’s obsidian eyes bored holes through her. “The bridge gets washed out every few years,” he said, ignoring her question. “For me it’s just an inconvenience, especially since I hadn’t planned on going anywhere. As for lack of a phone, I don’t see this as an emergency, at least not for me. For you either, come to that. At least you’ve got a roof over your head for the time being. Duke, come!” Temper showing, he yanked open his door and climbed behind the wheel. “Duke!”
The shepherd had other things on his agenda, specifically something worth pawing through—a yard-high clump of trash lodged against a foot of the bridge. Mud, leaves, and other unidentifiable matter scattered in all directions as his big paws disappeared lower and lower into the pile.
“Oh, for… Duke, come away from there!” Clearly exasperated, Jake got out and strode down the bank toward the dog. “Duke!”
A.J. rounded the front of the pickup, amused in spite of her previous eruption. The dog was now a mess, his thick coat caked with dollops of mud, as was his muzzle as he rooted for his quarry. Suddenly, his tail in hyperdrive, he began to back up, his prize between his teeth. It was long, black, and thin.
“Oh, my God, he’s got a snake,” A.J. exclaimed, retreating to the far side of the truck again. She did not like snakes, a fact she remembered without having to think about it.
“Which is where I draw the line. Drop it, boy.” Jake grabbed the Duke’s collar and tugged, in effect, helping the dog break the suction of the mud in which the thing had been buried. His prize dangled from the shepherd’s massive jaws, clearly visible now: the filth-encrusted water-logged remnants of the big black purse. A.J. retraced her steps, closing in on Jake. “Is that what I think it is?”
“My apologies, boy,” Jake said. “I should have trusted your instincts. Let go.” He extended a hand for the bag.
Obediently, Duke backed up onto the bank, his brown eyes gleaming with triumph as he dropped it at Jake’s feet.
“Good dog.” Jake obliged him with a couple of pats before taking the purse and swishing water on it to clean as much of the exterior as he could. He brought it dripping back up the bank and handed it to her. “Yours?”
She took it, her heart fluttering with anxiety. Its contents had to be past saving. Fingers trembling, she opened the clasp. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d feared. The top third of the lining was damp but that was all. Everything else appeared dry.
“Come on, dog,” Jake said, leading him back to the truck. He dug behind the front seat, found a rag, and began trying to eliminate the grime from Duke’s coat. “At least you can find out who you are,” he said to her.
Thank you, God, A.J. thought, returning to the passenger side. Standing in the open door, she began removing what she found, depositing it on the seat, the roof light just bright enough for her to see.
A cosmetics bag, bulging at the seams. Why in the world would she need so much makeup? Keys, one to a Honda. A pack of soggy tissues. A ziplock bag containing something dark and soft that slid into her hand: a wig. A blond wig. She sighed.
There was a penlight on a key ring with a small Swiss Army knife and other assorted stuff but no wallet. Not that it mattered, she thought, as despair crept over her again. The purse couldn’t be hers. The blond wig convinced her of that. No way would she have been caught dead in a blond wig.
She turned the purse upside down, just in case she’d missed anything and realized that for an empty purse, it was certainly darned heavy. Inexplicably, the lining dropped from the mouth of the bag and dangled, bulging oddly. A.J. stared at it. “What the hell?”
Jake, watching from the open door on his side, eyed it with disinterest. “Must be a rip in the lining. Easy for things to drop through. Use the knife.”
She checked and found that there was indeed a breach held closed by a strip of Velcro. Increasingly unnerved, she began to remove the contents: a wad of greenbacks secured by a thick rubber band, which she dropped as if it was hot to the touch.
“My God,” she wheezed, checking a few of the denominations, then flipping through them all.
“These are hundred dollar bills! Where in the world… ?”
Jake tossed the cleaning rag back under the seat and rounded the pickup to stand beside her.
A.J. groped into the lining again, her fingers encountering something firm and smooth, a billfold as opposed to a wallet, black leather, several twenty dollar bills peeking from the currency pocket. Far more interested in the window containing the ID, she read the name on the driver’s license, examined the photo. It wasn’t flattering but how often were they? The name, though—
“Annemarie Johnson?” She repeated it, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked.
“I… don’t know.” She pried the license out. And gasped. Another appeared in the window. Same face, hers. Different name. Anna J. Jamieson.
It was Jake’s turn. “What the hell?” He snatched the wallet from her, long fingers wedging the second license free to expose a third. Allie C. Jordan.
A.J. stared at it, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. That meant something. Allie C. Jordan. The image of the room with the cement walls flashed behind her eyes again. Was she an escapee, a fugitive from justice?
Jake’s gaze locked on her, his dark eyes hard and cold, then at the purse lying on its side, the lining spilling from it like a lolling tongue. He picked it up and something thudded against its bottom. Poking into the lining, Jake suddenly stilled, then removed his hand. In it was a small but lethal-looking pistol, perhaps a Beretta subcompact, she wasn’t sure. It looked like a toy against his broad palm.
Closing his hand around it, he glared at her. “Okay, lady, just what the hell’s your game?”
She backed away from him. “I don’t have a game. I swear, Jake, I’m completely in the dark. I have no idea why that stuff is in the bag. When I saw it in the car, I wasn’t even sure it was mine. I grabbed it because it was there with me.”
Jake snorted. “Well, does it make sense somebody else would be walking around with three ID’s, all with names that match your initials and your photo on them? They’re yours all right. Which means this pop gun is, too.” He checked to see if it was loaded, then jammed the pistol into his pocket. “Just my luck,” he grumbled. “I come up here to get away from dealing with the scum of the earth, the dealers, the gang bangers, the just plain stupid, and who winds up on my doorstep? A woman obviously on the wrong side of the law, comple
te with fake IDs, a bankroll, and a piece.”
A.J. opened her mouth to bite his head off but never got the chance. The explosive retort that ripped through the night, along with the solid thunk against the pickup was proof that someone intended to save her the trouble.
Chapter 5
A.J. stopped breathing, which was just as well since almost instantly she found herself face down, nose pressed against the tarmac with Jake’s heavy weight assuring that’s where she stayed.
She turned her head to one side so she could inhale. “That was a shot!”
“Ya think?” Jake rolled off her just as she realized that the odd rumble in her ears was not a reaction to the blast. It was Duke, rounding the truck. He stood at the front right fender on full alert, staring into the woods behind them, ears scanning for sound. “Down, Duke!” Crablike, Jake scuttled toward the dog. “Come, Duke. Now!”