I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

  "Stop talking and do it, cupcake."

  She released a shaky sigh. "All right. Since you apparently have an unnatural capacity for alcohol, we're going to have to do this the hard way. You must hold very still. I know that'll be hard." She paused. "In fact, it'll be damn near impossible. But you can't grab my arm. Understand?"

  He nodded.

  "Do you – do you want something to bite on?"

  Those eyes of his did a quick, suggestive sweep down her. "You offering?"

  A nervous laugh erupted from her. "Ha, ha."

  His smile faded. "You can do this, Tess.

  "I'll go as fast as I can."

  He blinked in reply, then looked away, mentally girding himself for what was to come. She pulled the halogen desk lamp close and switched it on. One thing she had on her side was the X ray they'd taken at the hospital. She'd seen it and knew where the bullet had lodged. Its trajectory had been deep, but constant. The challenge was to avoid the major artery that ran millimeters from the location of the bullet.

  After pulling on surgical gloves and swabbing his shoulder with whiskey, Tess lifted the scalpel she'd pilfered from the ER. She willed her hand to stop shaking as she poised it above his wound.

  Jack's eyes were squeezed shut, his whole body braced for the first cut. When it came, he stiffened and inhaled sharply, but didn't move. A four letter word hissed past his lips. Sweat broke out instantly on his chest and his chalk-white face.

  "Sorry," she whispered as she probed past the incision with the tip of the scalpel. Seconds ticked by. A minute.

  Nothing. The only sound in the room was the harsh rasp of his breathing. Fresh blood welled up in the wound. She prayed she hadn't nicked something. She followed the path of the scalpel with the forceps, but there was nothing of substance beneath the tips.

  "Hang on, Jack. Just a little longer." Where the hell is it? Her palms prickled and the instruments grew slick in her hands.

  She went deeper. A guttural sound escaped from his throat. With every millimeter, his breathing became shallower and faster.

  "I know," she told him. But she knew she didn't, couldn't. "Almost there." Please.

  Concentrating solely on breathing in and out, he clenched the rumpled quilt until his knuckles went white.

  She was working blind. She'd done this surgery a thousand times, but this – this was different. Nausea climbed in her throat. Moisture broke out on her brow. She needed suction, cautery—

  He gasped and arched backward, his hand clamping over her arm like the jaw of a mad dog.

  Her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. "Don't!"

  His lips curled back in a snarl that any sane woman would have shrunk from. But she couldn't quit now. She couldn't do this again. "Let go, Jack," she said carefully, holding the scalpel perfectly still. "You have to let go."

  If she'd been a fly, he would have squashed her. But some small particle of rationality lingered yet behind the haze of pain he was swimming though. Against every instinct he held dear, he released her arm. An animal-like sound of surrender erupted from his throat.

  Her breath returned in jerky gasps. "Good," she murmured. "Good, Jack. I know it's bad. I know it. But if I stop now I'll have to start over. Should I stop? If you can't take any mo—"

  He shook his head. "Do it." The muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched until she was sure she would hear his teeth crack. Sweat poured off his face. Rationality was rapidly losing the battle with the instinct to fight the invading pain. She had to hurry or all the promises in the world wouldn't matter.

  It had been years since she'd prayed. But as the small bit of metal evaded her every attempt to find it, she sent up a prayer that he would pass out.

  Less than ten seconds later, that prayer was answered. His eyes fluttered back and the tension flowed out of him like a wave receding from the shoreline.

  Tess let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and sent up a thank-you to whoever was listening.

  With the tip of the probe, she eased aside torn muscle and reached deeper. The probe touched something hard and she heard the blessed scrape of metal on metal. A shudder of relief coursed through her.

  "There you are … you little bugger." She eased the blunt tips of the forceps around the edges of the bullet. "Gotcha."

  After a moment, the mashed piece of lead released its hold on the deep muscle of his shoulder and appeared at the end of her forceps. A .38, from the looks of it – whole and unfragmented. Lucky, she mused, fighting to keep the bullet in focus as tears of relief blurred her vision.

  She'd done it. And he was still breathing. In terms of where she'd been once, what she'd done this morning would seem relatively benign. But here, now, with the sun pouring through the east-facing window onto Jack's face, and warming the chill in her bones, she knew that it was no small victory in a battle she'd never again thought to fight.

  And he was breathing.

  She swiped at her damp cheeks, embarrassed by the breakdown of her normally iron-fisted control. Training and experience kicked in as she discarded the bullet, reached for the whiskey and poured it into the wound, cleaning it out as much as she could. She pressed a thick pad of clean tom sheet against the wound to stop the bleeding. Primitive but effective. When the bleeding slowed to a stop, she replaced the sheeting with bandages stolen from the ER, then immobilized his arm against his chest. It was then she noticed the tattoo on his left forearm. It was odd looking – eight arrows bound together by something that looked like a seabird, with "25th" entwined there.

  She checked his pulse against her watch. Thready and too fast, but his breathing had the slow rhythm of deep sleep. It was the best place for him. He needed rest to heal and to battle the fever that had already taken hold. Not once had Jack moved, or so much as blinked. The fight had gone out of him. He'd retreated to where the pain couldn't reach him.

  She covered him with two more blankets and sat watching him for the next hour. She left him briefly to clean up and trade her own bloody clothes for clean ones from Cara's closet. His fever held steady. Then she watched Jack some more. That he'd lived through that poor excuse for an operation said more about the man than about her skill. He'd already taken more than most men could and hadn't complained once.

  "Strange." she murmured aloud, brushing back the hair from his damp forehead. "You're a strange one, Jack. Whoever you are." She pulled the blanket up under his neck. "You rest. I won't let you die. I promise you that." She prayed it was a promise she could keep. Right now, there was something she had to do she couldn't put off any longer. She grabbed her car keys off the counter and slipped quietly out the door.

  * * *

  The pay phone outside Winston's Pharmacy and Drug was encased in an old-fashioned wood and glass booth, complete with a hinged door and a curved wooden seat. The number she dialed rang twice before the deep voice on the other end answered.

  "Detective Castillano."

  "Gil?"

  "Tess? Is that you?"

  She heard the smile of recognition in his voice and felt instantly better. In fact, she hadn't realized until this very moment how much she counted on him. Gil had been her rock since Adam's death. Adam had always told her that Gil, a fifteen-year veteran with the credentials of men twice his age, was the kind of man you'd want by your side in a fight. Her husband had been right. And she couldn't think of anyone she would trust with her life more than Gil. He also had the uncanny ability to always calm her down. And right now, she needed calming. "It's me."

  "Hey, I tried to call you last night," he said lightly. She heard the shuffling sound of papers. "You weren't home. And don't tell me you were at the lab. I tried there, too. They said you were on vacation."

  That, she mused, sounded less and less like a punishment, considering the past eight hours or so. "Not exactly."

  "What's that mean, 'not exactly?'"

  "Well, you might call it a getaway. On the other hand…" The rest drifted off as she came very close to
betraying the quiver in her voice. She could almost see the frown bisecting his brow.

  "What's going on, Tess? Are you all right?"

  "Yes. I'm – I'm fine. Really."

  "Why don't I believe you? What did you do? Forget the security code on the alarm at your house again?" He waited for a pithy comeback. It didn't arrive. "Tess?"

  She'd rehearsed what she was going to say to him a hundred times on the way into town, and now everything she'd practiced sounded idiotic. She owed him the truth, but she also owed it to him to keep him out of whatever danger she'd stumbled into herself.

  She chose her words carefully. "Promise me that this will stay between us."

  "What?"

  "You have to promise, Gil. It's important. My life could depend on it. A man's life absolutely does."

  She heard him rearrange the phone against his ear. "Now you're scaring me."

  "I'm sorry." She was. More than he would ever know. "Whatever it is, you can trust me, Tess. I hope you know that."

  She turned her back on the couple strolling arm in arm down the sidewalk past the phone booth, and cradled the phone against her shoulder. "That's why I'm calling you, Gil, and no one else."

  "What's happened?"

  "It's a long story. Are you sitting down?"

  She told him about finding Jack on the road, and about what had followed at the hospital. She recounted the hair-raising chase by the two officers and the slug she'd dug out of Jack's shoulder. Even to her own ears it sounded like she'd fallen off the deep edge of paranoia. The tale lost critical mass in the translation. And she was so tired she stumbled over even important details.

  A brief silence followed, before he said, "And you're … where?"

  "Don't ask me that. I can't tell you."

  "The hell you can't. Give me five minutes and I'll be on my w—"

  "No! You can't come. And I can't tell you where I am. You'll just have to trust me. I don't want you in the middle of this."

  Even years of training couldn't hide the anger in his voice. "I'm a cop. That's right where I'm supposed to be."

  "He trusts me, Gil. I promised him. I need time to figure this whole thing out. And so does he."

  "Judas Priest! He could be a serial killer for all you—"

  "He's not."

  A snort of laughter resounded from the receiver. "Oh, yeah? That's what they all say. 'Oh, him? He was such a quiet boy … he seemed so normal…'"

  "Nothing about this is normal. That bullet was intended to kill him. And those two cops had every intention of finishing him off."

  "You're in way over your head," he said quietly.

  "I know." She closed her eyes against the morning sun streaming through the heated glass. Fatigue pulled at her. She wanted nothing more than to let Gil take this whole thing off her shoulders. But she couldn't, wouldn't, do that to him.

  "You sure they were cops?" he asked finally, his voice grim.

  "Detectives. Their badges looked real," she answered, "but I don't know. The younger one, Rivera, lit up a smoke right there in the lounge. Don't you think that's odd?"

  "I wouldn't hang my case on it." She could hear him scribbling down notes. "Santa Monica, you said?"

  "Yes. But, Gil, be careful. Don't stir up any dust on this. I don't want them to know you're checking on them. If they find out—"

  "Hey, I do this for a living, remember? I'll be careful," Gil said, his voice tight and controlled. She knew him too well. He was angry. Not so much with her, she suspected, but with the fact that he wasn't in control of the situation.

  "And this guy claims to have no memory?"

  "None," she answered. "But considering the wallop he took on the head, that's not unheard of. I believe him."

  "I don't. This Jack character is trouble with a capital T," Gil said. "And he's dragged you into it."

  Silence stretched between them. Finally, Tess spoke. "I have to go, Gil. I have to get back to him. I'll call you in twenty-four hours."

  Gil exploded. "Twenty-four—!"

  "Sooner if I can. But listen, there's one more thing. Gil?"

  There was another pause as he reined in his temper.

  "What?"

  "There's a tattoo. On his forearm."

  Gil sighed. "This gets better and better."

  Tess rubbed her eyes. "I don't know if it means anything, but it's an odd-looking tattoo. Sort of an insignia." She described it to him. "Does that sound like anything you've ever seen?"

  "No, but that doesn't mean anything. I can run it through the computer. See if any hits come up."

  "Thanks, Gil," she said. "I have to go. I'll call you."

  "Tess?"

  "Yeah?"

  She heard him swallow hard. "You watch yourself. Don't turn your back to him, you hear? I don't like it. The whole thing smells bad. And it starts with your boy, there."

  No matter how she felt about Jack, she knew Gil was right. It began, and apparently ended, with Jack. And she had no idea how or why. "I'll be careful," she promised "Try not to worry."

  He laughed humorlessly "Yeah? Go tell it to somebody who doesn't give a damn."

  Tess's mouth trembled into a smile. Bless him. "Thanks Gil," she said, and carefully hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  «^»

  Heat.

  Unrelenting.

  Pounding him down against the hot, damp floor of the jungle. Above him, the canopy of green shifted like a kaleidoscope, changing shape and dimension as it blotted out the sunshine beyond. His fingers curled into the thick rotting earth as he pulled himself forward, snake-like, through the undergrowth. Razor-sharp banana leaves sliced at his skin. Insects buzzed around his eyes and hummed in his ears and clustered at every bloody rivulet streaming from his arms.

  Behind him, he could hear them coming. He could hear the metallic rattle of M-16s; the muffled thudding of boots against the jungle floor; the jumbled Spanish imperatives, dampened by the sound-sucking vegetation.

  He wanted to run but the heat held him like a fist. His knees scrambled at the slippery slope he lay on, and the white-hot pain slapped him back down again.

  His fingers closed around the cool, thick handle of his knife and he slid it from its sheath. Wherever the hell he was going, he swore silently, he damned well wasn't going alone.

  Closer. Closer. Standing practically on top of him. Why couldn't they see him?

  Then another sound invaded his consciousness. Fainter, but growing closer. It was… He frowned. It didn't belong here. He couldn't identify it at first. Then somehow, it dawned on him. A dog. Barking. Louder. Louder.

  What the hell was a dog doing in the middle of—?

  Jack's eyes snapped open and the jungle vanished, replaced by thick, rounded logs and the vague shape of a room. Warm sunshine from a nearby window poured over him. Dust motes swam in the morning sun and drifted upward – toward the sound of the barking dog outside the window.

  He tried to sit. Pain sizzled up his arm and landed in his chest like a blast from a howitzer. He swore Viciously and pressed his head back against the pillow under his head. What the hell—?

  Then he remembered.

  The bullet. His shoulder throbbed in remembrance. Tess must have…

  He looked around the room. It was empty. He lay still and listened. Nothing. No sound of her.

  "Tess?" His voice sounded pathetic, like an eighty-year-old man's. He cleared his throat. "Tess?" Though it sounded stronger this time, he still got no reply.

  How long had he been out? Where the hell did she go? To the police? No answers came to him.

  And that damned dog kept barking.

  Jack eased slowly up on one elbow, blinking away the dizziness and watching the room swim. His brain felt scrambled. If she'd left him to go to the cops, he had no choice. He had to get out of here.

  Easier said than done, a voice told him. He felt as weak as he sounded and in no shape to go anywhere. And worse, he was trussed up like a turkey rea
dy for Thanksgiving.

  He rolled slowly to his knees and stayed there, unwinding the gauze from his shoulder and releasing the arm he needed. Damned woman. He should've guessed she'd take off on him. Then again, who could blame her, considering what had happened? He'd just thought – hoped…

  Dammit! He couldn't worry about her now. He had to get the hell out of here.

  Jack staggered to his feet and crashed into the lamp that was poised inconveniently nearby on a stack of books. He heard the shattering of glass as the bulb hit the floor. He clutched the thick, oak mantel on the fireplace and braced himself there until the room stopped turning. Remnants of a fire still crackled in the fireplace. The room was hot and he longed to make his way outside to fresh air.

  Slowly, he edged toward the sunlight pouring through the window. The light hurt his eyes and he squinted through the glass at the huge golden retriever standing twenty feet away, staring at him. The damned thing woofed at him. Jack blinked, wondering how the hell the animal knew he was here.

  The dog just looked at him for a moment, panting, tongue lolling out to one side, then turned around and trotted off. Disconcerted, Jack stared at the now-empty lawn.

  Had that been real or a figment of his imagination, too? He blinked hard as the world swam in and out of focus. A fierce heat was crawling up his skull and tangling his thoughts. Water. He needed a drink.

  He edged across the room, pausing to catch his breath. Last night's ordeal had left him more than weak. It had stolen his equilibrium. He felt like he was walking on one of those bridges that floated on – what was the word? – pontoons.

  He paused, leaning on a ladder-back chair. Pontoon. Was that a memory? A bridge with pontoons? And what about the dream? The jungle? Was it the fever, or was he remembering something that had happened?