I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, she waged war against the infection bent on killing him: rounds of struggle, forcing liquids down him until he would once more slip into a deep sleep. Without antibiotics, she was obliged to try some alternate methods of treatment. She'd concocted a drawing poultice of hot milk and the linseed oil she'd found in the cupboard. It required changing every few minutes to stay hot. The repetitiveness of the job kept her awake.

  Hours ago, she'd stopped kidding herself that her motives for saving him were purely altruistic, or had anything to do with the oath she'd taken. This battle was personal now, and his death something she would not accept. Sometime in the dark of night, she'd admitted that winning wasn't a goal in itself, but a means to an end – his survival. She didn't know why. She couldn't explain what it was about him that made her care. Perhaps the desperation she saw in his eyes. Or maybe it was the lack of artifice. A man with no memory had no walls and no defenses. Perhaps it was that lack of defense that made her want to protect him.

  She wrung out the cloth again and placed it on his fevered brow. No, she admitted, it was more than that.

  The intimacy that had grown between them was more than simply physical. She wanted Jack to live for selfish reasons, none of which she was prepared to explore.

  She forgot the time. Sunlight had faded hours ago, and. with it her ability to think coherently. She moved automatically from one task to the next, hardly seeing what she was doing. He'd been resting quietly for more than an hour when she rolled her tense shoulders and made the mistake of leaning one elbow on the mattress to reach the poultice bowl. She stalled there, unable to contemplate moving any farther.

  Collapsing on the soft comforter, she told herself that she'd close her eyes for just a moment. She was so tired. If he woke again, she'd know. Resting, her hand against Jack's arm, she let her eyes slide shut.

  * * *

  It was light when Tess opened her eyes. At first she thought she'd left the light on, but morning was pouring through the six-paned widow to her right and birds were chirping outside it. Languidly, she roiled onto her back and blinked up at the cabin ceiling, pondering how long it had been since she'd slept like that.

  She gasped and bolted upright. Jack!

  On all fours she crawled up the mattress to him. He was absolutely still. Dread moved up her spine.

  "Jack?" She touched his forehead. It was cool.

  Cool!

  "Oh, no … Jack! Don't be dead. Please don't be dead. I'm so sorry. I was just so tired. Jack?" As her fingers found the pulse at his throat, his eyes fluttered open.

  She jumped back with two hands over her mouth, her eyes brimming with a burst of unexpected tears. "Oh! Thank God, you're alive!"

  Jack blinked at her, then frowned. "Tess?" His voice was a croak. "You look like hell."

  With her hands still clamped over her mouth, she laughed. "Oh, you don't know how good it is to hear you say that." She reached out and brushed his arm to convince herself that he was really alive, then pulled it back. What she really felt like doing was hugging him. Getting emotional over a patient was unprofessional and unlike her. But she felt like crying and laughing all at once.

  "How long—?" he asked.

  "Two days."

  He rolled his eyes. "Ah … damn."

  "You should be thanking your lucky stars. You nearly died."

  A moan escaped him as he shifted on the bed. "You absolutely sure I didn't?"

  A laugh escaped her. "Not unless we're both there." She smoothed down her hair. "How do you feel?"

  "Steamrollered," he murmured, rubbing his temples.

  "Thirsty?"

  He grunted an affirmative reply, but she'd barely turned her back before she heard, "What the hell?" He was tugging at the bonds around his wrists. "You tied me down?"

  Tess bit her lip. She'd forgotten about the ties. "It's not what you think." She reached for the knot on his left wrist and began untying it.

  She knew the moment his gaze found the ugly bruise on her left cheek. Her hand went reflexively to the spot.

  He swore viciously under his breath. "Did I do that?"

  She freed his right wrist. "It wasn't your fault. You were out of your mind with fever. I just got in the way. You weren't aiming at me." She leaned over him to untie the other.

  He looked sick. "I'm sorry, Tess."

  "Don't be." She reached for a glass and held it up to his lips.

  It made him dizzy to sit up, but he drank greedily, despite the bitter taste of the water. It had a familiar taste, as did the feel of her hands against the back of his neck. There was something else, too, he thought.

  It struck him then why she looked like she'd been dragged under the same steamroller he had. Because she hadn't let him die. She'd willed him alive.

  His gaze scanned her perfect heart-shaped face, dragged down by fatigue, and the emotion still written there, despite her best attempts to deny it.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Why what?" She looked away.

  "Why did you bother? You don't even know me."

  She looked almost fragile standing there, as transparent as parchment. "I don't have to know you," she said, tilting her chin up. "I'm a doctor. It's what I do."

  "Bull. A hundred other doctors would have let me go. Why didn't you?"

  She flinched and started to turn away. "I'm going to get you something to eat."

  He stopped her with a hand on her arm. She was trembling and he needed to know why. "Tess?"

  "Because I couldn't," she said simply.

  "So then, was it me, or just the principle of the thing?"

  She regarded him with a slow, ironic grin. "I suspect no one's ever mistaken you for a principle, Jack."

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  «^»

  Gil Castillano slammed into the precinct and drew the uneasy stares of the desk sergeant and two beat cops as he took the stairs two at a time to the second floor.

  "Hey, Gil, where you been? Sullivan's lookin' for you." The stacked brunette who'd spoken to him was already ten feet behind him and talking to his back. "What, did we forget your birthday or something?"

  "I wish it was that simple, darlin'," he called back to her. He squeezed between two detectives and a hooker hashing it out in the hallway, and ignored their curious expressions.

  As he passed the reception desk, the plain-looking girl named Annie shot to her feet with a fistful of messages in her hand. "Gil!" she called, following hard on his heels. "The captain's been looking for you. He's called here three times and I told him what you told me to say, but he wasn't biting—"

  She bumped smack into his back as he came to an abrupt halt near his desk. He turned around and grabbed her by the upper arms before she could teeter and fall. She had that wide-eyed puppy dog look in her eyes as she peered up at him through those damned odd-looking, black-rimmed glasses of hers.

  "Oh!" she said. "Sorry."

  He set her away from him as his phone rang. "Thanks, Annie. Was there anything else?"

  She shook her head as Gil picked up the receiver. Annie placed the last of the messages on his desk and headed back to her desk.

  "Detective Castillano," he said into the receiver.

  "It's me," the voice on the other end said.

  Relief lurched in his chest. "Tess! Where the hell—!"

  "Please don't yell," she pleaded. "You have no idea how much I wished I could've called you earlier."

  He took a deep breath. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. Just tired. I couldn't call before – I was a little busy trying to keep Jack alive."

  Gil frowned. "Is he—?"

  "He made it. He almost didn't, though. The fever almost killed him. He's tough. Tougher than most."

  "Tough as you?" He stared at his desktop, piled high with unfiled paperwork, wondering what strength she was drawing from in all this.

  "I'm not."

  He smiled despite her denials. "That's why th
ey made you a doctor. Only the strong survive."

  She made a sound of disagreement. "I'm a little shaky in the survival part, as the last two years have proven."

  "The last two years have proven that you're human, Tess. That's all."

  He listened to the long silence on the line and could almost hear her gathering up her voice again.

  "What did you find out?"

  "Okay," he said. "Are you sitting down? There's no record of a gunshot victim being brought into the hospital three nights ago."

  "What?"

  His sentiments exactly. "Nothing. Zippo. Nada."

  "Oh, my God. That can't be. They can't just erase the records. Someone would know. There were others on the floor that night."

  "You certain it was Santa Monica?"

  "Gil—"

  "Okay. Just checking. I looked at the sign-in sheets myself. You're not there." He could almost hear the gears shifting in her head.

  "Waltrip," she said.

  "What?"

  "A surgeon. Dr. Dean Waltrip. He was scheduled to do the surgery on Jack. They had to call him in. Talk to him. He must know something."

  Gil scribbled down the name. "Okay, I'll check with him. Next, I just heard back from the charge nurse I called earlier. Seems your nurse, Earline Bradberry? She left yesterday on an extended vacation. No forwarding number."

  The sigh Tess heaved sounded shaky. "This is bad, isn't it?"

  "Uh, it's not good." He leaned back in his chair and looked around the squad room. A handful of detectives had their noses buried in paperwork. Peter Kimbrough sat chewing on a pencil, staring vacantly in his direction. Gil swiveled his chair around. "That's not the worst of it."

  Tess sighed, bracing herself. "Let's have it."

  "There's an APB out on a man with your boy's description all over it. He's wanted for murder in the death of a mid-level drug dealer named Ramon Saldovar."

  "Drugs?" she repeated incredulously.

  "It's bigger than that. This ring has its hands in more than one candy jar. Seems Saldovar might have been connected to a car theft ring run out of L.A. into Mexico City by some genuinely unsavory characters."

  The name Jack had called out – Benedicto – leaped to her mind. But despite the implied connection, she discarded the possibility as ridiculous. It could mean nothing. "I don't believe it," she said flatly. "It's not him. It's not."

  "There was no name on the wire. Just a description." Gil paused pointedly. "It could be someone else."

  "Yes. Or someone else could be setting Jack up," she said. "Isn't that possible? Look at the lengths to which someone's already gone to erase that night."

  "It's possible. But why?"

  Frustration vibrated her voice. "I don't know!"

  "There's more."

  "Tell me."

  "The tattoo you described? It sounds military, circa the Gulf War. And if my source is correct, it's Special Forces – SEALS."

  "As in … Navy SEALS?" she asked incredulously.

  "That's the one."

  She'd heard about the SEALS. Who hadn't? The most elite branch of Special Operations for the Navy. They were reputed to be ruthless killers. Loyal to the death, they were commandos so fear less they went places other soldiers didn't have the guts or the wherewithal to go. It made a strange kind of sense. After all, Jack had survived injuries few other men would have, and when she found him he was still on his feet. But it didn't explain what he was doing out there all alone, involved in something like this.

  "So," she summarized, "he's a military, drug-running car thief? That makes no sense to me."

  "Or it could make great sense. I don't like the idea of you being alone with him."

  "He won't hurt me," she said. "I know it."

  Gil's sigh was filled with more than sheer frustration. "Rose-colored glasses were never really your style, Tess. Let me help you. I think I can hazard a guess where you are."

  "Don't say it!" she said, loudly enough to make Gil pull the phone away from his ear. "Your phone could be tapped."

  Gil glanced at the phone receiver before he decided how absurd that was.

  "Anyway, I'm not where you think I am," she said.

  He didn't believe her. In the background, he could hear a Steller's jay squawking, could practically smell the crisp mountain air. "C'mon, Tess, I could easily trace your call."

  "No, you can't."

  That meant she was on her cell phone. "Fine, then I'm coming."

  It took a moment of self-control before she could answer. "Gil, they may even be watching you. You could lead them right to us."

  They? "You're sounding—"

  "Paranoid?" she finished for him.

  He paused, glancing around the squad room again, feeling the first traces of it himself. Kimbrough was staring down at paperwork on his desk. J. C. Daniels, Kimbrough's partner, was laughing about something with Dan and the only female detective in the squad, Maria Bellanetti. All of them seemed to be looking right at him. Gil swiveled back, shrugging off the ridiculous notion that any one of them could be involved. Hell, all he needed now was to get spooked by ghosts where none existed.

  Ten minutes from now, he'd be in his car, on his way to the mountains where he knew she was. But he wouldn't tell her that. She was too involved to see straight.

  "All right," he said at last. "You win. I'll wait. But I want to hear from you again by tonight. Got it? No more forty-eight hour gaps with me thinking you're lying on some road somewhere."

  He heard her breathe a shaky sigh of relief. "Thanks, Gil. I will. Promise. I just need some more time. Okay?"

  Gil listened to the dial tone buzz in his ear and felt his back teeth grinding in an unconscious response. He didn't know why she was being so stubborn about this, but he'd damn well protect her whether she wanted it or not. He owed it to her. Moreover, he owed it to Adam.

  * * *

  Tess crammed the cell phone into her purse on the way back into the house and felt like she'd just dodged a bullet herself. She never should have dragged Gil into this. Of course he would want to come. Even if Gil had figured out where she was, she believed he'd keep his word and give her more time. Time to figure out who Jack was and how to get out of this mess. Gil couldn't protect them if he brought them in. No one could.

  Jack was sitting at the edge of his bed, looking pale and wobbly, by the time she made her way back to his room. The covers were dragged across his naked lap.

  "What are you doing?" Tess hurried to him, worried that he was about to topple over.

  "Where are my pants?" he growled.

  "You shouldn't be getting out of bed. You're too—"

  He swiveled a look up at her, effectively silencing the rest of what she'd been about to say. "It's a matter of some urgency that you hand me those damned pants," he said, "unless you're lookin' for a cheap thrill, cupcake."

  Understanding dawned.

  With a smile, she opened a drawer and handed him the Levi's she'd washed earlier. "Ah, and humble, too," she quipped. "But you should know that after the last two days, I've seen just about everything you've got, pal."

  A slow, sexy grin tilted his lips as he started to rise. "Not everything."

  She did the prudent thing and turned around before he could see the heat she felt spring to her cheeks. Behind her, she could hear the rustle of the stiff denim as he tugged the jeans on, and the effort he expended doing it. She listened to the snick of copper buttons sliding into place, the rattle of the nightstand as he bumped against it and his subsequent curse – her cue to turn back.

  For more than a moment, she forgot to breathe. He was so right. She hadn't seen everything. Standing upright and alert, Jack hardly resembled the man whose fever-ravaged body she'd coaxed back from the edge these past days. Her gaze traveled unbidden down the length of his broad chest to the rippled definition of his belly disappearing below the waistband of his jeans.

  Lord have mercy, she thought. He's beautiful.

  "Where's the head?" He st
eadied himself against the nightstand.

  She blinked in confusion. "The head?"

  "The facilities," he clarified.

  She pointed down the hallway. "On the right. Second door." Watching him leave, she was reminded of a wounded cat, his natural grace hindered by days of inactivity. But nothing could erase the prowling essence of his movements, nor the danger inherent in them.

  It took her a moment to settle her jangled nerves. His effect on her shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it had. The medical blinders she wore out of necessity when it came to patients of the opposite sex had lost their power in this situation. She had somehow allowed herself to become emotionally involved with him. When she looked at him, she no longer saw a wound in need of healing, but the whole, complicated, vulnerable man instead. That, she knew, was dangerous territory for both of them.

  Still, as she pulled his sheets off his bed to change them, the memory of his solid, oh-so-masculine warmth beneath her cheek as she held him replayed in her mind. She tried to reconcile the gentleness she'd felt from him with the picture Gil had painted of him. Drug smuggling car thief? She couldn't wrap her brain around it. Like someone else's clothes, these descriptions didn't fit the mental picture she had of Jack.

  Tess pulled fresh sheets from a dresser drawer and snapped the first one over the mattress like a wind-filled sail.

  She could be wrong, of course. God knew, people who ended up in prison didn't always look like criminals. They looked like the man next door, or the teacher you had in high school. They didn't, however, look like Jack. Here was a man with everything going for him – looks, brains and, indisputably, brawn. Why, she wondered, tucking the second sheet under the mattress, would a man like him resort to dealing drugs from a Central American cartel? Or stealing cars for some underworld ring?

  Why would someone be trying to kill him?

  These questions, as usual, dead-ended in her head. There would be no fast answers until Jack's memory returned.