by Fiona Brand
Something was wrong.
She didn’t know what exactly, but something was. Despite all of their precautions, the hours she had spent going over every detail, she had missed something important.
A low-pitched rumbling emanated from Baby.
She jerked her head around at a faint sound off to the left. She had a moment to register the movement of cool air off the patio. Simultaneously something wrapped around her shins and she was falling.
Her hands shot out, the remote went flying. Something hard caught the side of her face, snapping her head back. Her hand shot out, tangled in what felt like a phone cord. She had a dazed split second to register that aside from Baby’s glow there was another color in the room: red.
The insistent beep of the disconnect tone and the swipe of a wet tongue on her cheek registered. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” played softly. Rina touched the left side of her head and winced at the swelling. There was another lump on her right temple.
Another lick, this time on her jaw, was followed by an insistent nuzzle. She hooked her fingers into Baby’s harness. He whined, nudged her jaw again, then began to back up, towing her into a sitting position. Rina gave Baby the command to stay, keeping a firm grip on his harness while she waited out a wave of dizziness.
She had lost consciousness, again. Her head felt thick and heavy, and prickled like cold fire—the cerebral equivalent of pins and needles. Her eyes felt achy and pressurized.
She tried to remember every detail of what had happened. She had made the mistake of dropping Baby’s harness, confident that nothing could go wrong in the sitting room. Baby had growled, but the split second of warning hadn’t made any difference.
Something warm trickled down her cheek. The thick, sweet scent of blood made her stomach turn.
Blood soaking the leather upholstery and the tangled mess of objects strewn across the seat…
The notepad…in the water, the ink smeared…
“Repeat the numbers I gave you to remember.”
Numbers.
She frowned. The ache in her skull sharpened. Her blindness impaired her photographic memory because it was a visual talent. If she couldn’t look at words or numbers or images, she couldn’t remember them. But when she had been a child, she hadn’t had that problem. Esther had trained her to use her memory. She had been able to glance at a sheet of numbers and guarantee total recall.
Reaction shuddered through her.
The hood of the car snapped up in the air, hanging at an odd angle….
Esther must have given her numbers to remember while they were in the car, which meant they had been important. She had no idea what the numbers had been. They could be anything: telephone numbers, safe codes, account numbers, locker numbers…
In a moment of clarity the wrongness she had been trying to pin down ever since she had overheard the conversation between Cesar and Alex clicked into place.
Esther’s body had never been recovered. It was presumed that she had drowned, but Rina now knew that she had been murdered; in all likelihood because she had known about the drugs and had threatened to go to the police. For years Rina hadn’t been able to remember the crash or any of the events around it, but that didn’t change the fact that she had been there, and that she had quite possibly witnessed the murder.
Maybe her amnesia, or the fact that she was Cesar’s only child, had saved her life, but she didn’t think so. Cesar hadn’t had the power to save Esther. If Rina was a witness to Alex’s crimes, she should have died along with her mother.
Her survival and the fact that Alex had married her almost two decades later didn’t make sense; she should have died.
Keeping one hand hooked into Baby’s collar, Rina felt around until her fingers connected with the plush brocade of an armchair. Blinking to try to ease the pressure behind her eyes, she tried to orient herself. She had been on the south side of the room when she’d fallen. She could still feel sunlight across her legs, which meant only minutes had passed.
Relinquishing her hold on Baby, she lurched forward and gripped the arms of the chair, holding her breath against the throbbing in her head. Baby moved in close, using his weight to steady her, as if he was afraid she might slip back to the floor.
She blinked. The room looked gray.
She squeezed her eyes closed. The movement sent a flash of pain through her skull. When she opened her lids, the grayness was still there.
“What’s wrong?”
Adrenaline pumped. As preoccupied as she had been, Rina was stunned that neither she nor Baby had reacted to the stranger. She caught a whiff of a faint, clean scent—not cologne, soap—as he crouched beside her. Relief made her dizzy. It wasn’t Alex.
Keeping a firm grip on the chair, she pushed to her feet, gritting her teeth against a wave of nausea. A warm hand fastened around her upper arm, steadying her as she lowered herself into the seat. She tensed, noting that Baby had still failed to react. She couldn’t pin down the voice. It was possible he was part of Alex’s security team and had seen her through the French doors and realized she needed help. “I’m blind. I slipped and fell.”
“Looks like you walked into the armoire.”
For a blank moment Rina wondered if she was having trouble with her hearing. “What armoire?”
“The one pulled out from the wall. There are some tools behind it. Someone’s been checking the wiring.”
Cold congealed in her stomach. “Where, exactly, is it positioned?”
“It’s pulled out at a forty-five-degree angle from the wall.”
Right into the path she usually took to reach her chair. “I tripped over something before I hit the armoire. Are there any other obstacles?” She could clearly remember pressure against her shins, the sudden loss of balance.
“Just the armoire.”
And Alex. She remembered seeing his colors just before she had passed out. He must have picked up the rope, or whatever it was he had used to trip her with, and left. The tools behind the armoire made it look as if work was in progress and she’d had the misfortune to have another “accident.”
Suddenly the series of accidents, the reason for the gazpacho and strawberry ice cream, the red salad—all foods that Alex knew triggered her blood phobia—made sense. He wasn’t trying to kill her; at least, not yet. The cold premeditation of what he was doing made her stomach hollow out. He was deliberately traumatizing her to re-create conditions that would stimulate her to remember.
The realization triggered a recollection. Twenty-two years ago, shortly after she had regained consciousness after the car accident, Cesar had spent an entire afternoon beside her bed. The first thing he had wanted to know wasn’t how she felt, but what she remembered. For weeks she had been questioned, by Cesar and a number of therapists, but always with the slant that remembering would help her regain her sight.
The reason the tactic had failed was textbook. Traumatic amnesia was a little-understood but well-researched phenomenon. There were recorded instances of people who had shut down so completely after being traumatized that they had forgotten their identities, their families, even their careers—anything and everything that might open up a pathway to remembering what had traumatized them. In several documented cases, years later something had triggered the subjects to remember. In more than one case it had been the emergence of an unexplained ability or knowledge or a language or skill they had no memory of learning. In others it had been an event that in some way duplicated the trauma.
Rina registered faint scuffing sounds as the bureau was repositioned against the wall. “Who are you?”
“James Thompson. I had a meeting with your husband, but apparently he’s gone out. I thought the house was empty until I saw you through the French doors.”
The voice was curt, nicely masculine with a hint of a Southern drawl. She realized she recognized it from earlier in the day. He had been the last of Alex’s “business associates” to leave. For him to be here at all—even at night—m
eant he had to have an appointment. The security around the house was very tight. No one gained admittance, or left, without passing through gate security.
“Keep still and I’ll clean that cut up.” She felt the touch of a handkerchief on her cheek.
Blood. Her throat tightened. She had almost forgotten. She could feel it now, congealed on the side of her face and in her hair. It would be on the carpet as well.
Inconsequentially, she thought of Therese. The old Hispanic woman would go crazy. The carpet was an antique silk runner that Alex had paid a fortune for on one of his trips abroad. Once Rina had gotten her to describe it and had spent hours trying to remember exactly what claret-red, royal-blue and turquoise looked like.
“I’m going to apply some pressure. Tell me if it hurts.”
He gripped her chin and tilted her head slightly. Rina winced as the handkerchief was pressed firmly against the side of her face. The bare skin of a forearm brushed the top of her arm as he worked. She froze at the contact. She had expected him to be in a suit jacket, not a short-sleeved shirt or T-shirt.
His fingers closed around her wrist.
She tensed. “What are you doing?”
“Taking your pulse.”
Heart pounding, she jerked free of his hold. She had taken his offer of first aid on trust, but she was over letting him help her. He was a stranger, in her house without her knowledge, and she couldn’t forget he was tied up with Alex. “My pulse is fine. It’s my head I’m worried about. My eyes are history, but I really would like to hang on to my brain.”
She sensed his surprise at the humor, but she was more interested in the fact that he moved away a step and took the blood-soaked handkerchief with him.
“Your pupils look okay, but you could have a slight concussion.”
“Just what I need to complete another perfect day.”
“Looks like you’ve had your share of accidents. Stay there. I’m going to find some ice.”
She heard him walking in the direction of the kitchen and turned her head enough that she caught a glimpse of deep blue tinged with bright turquoise around his head. She stared, for long seconds. Unlike any of the other auras she’d seen, the colors were bright and distinct and utterly clear.
When he came back he had ice cubes, which he’d wrapped in what felt like a kitchen towel. She set the ice against the side of her head, clenching her jaw against the shaft of pain the change in temperature caused.
“I’ve put a glass of water on the table to the right of you. Drink it all, the fluids will help ease off the shock. When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m not going to pass out again.” Now that she had the ice, all she wanted was for him to leave.
Rina blinked, distracted by the blurry grayness. She felt distinctly shaky. The pain in her head had increased and her skin felt acutely sensitive.
“I’ve called an ambulance. Is there anyone else you want me to call?”
“No one…thank you. I’ve got a cell phone, I can make my own calls.” She noticed Thompson hadn’t offered to escort her to the hospital or call any of the security staff. Neither had he mentioned contacting the police, but then he wouldn’t. Alex was involved with drugs and murder; by association, so was Thompson. He would be as averse to contact with the police as her husband.
And that brought her back to the appointment he had mentioned. Alex was meticulous about business. If he had arranged to meet Thompson, he would have been here, and it was highly unlikely he would have staged this “accident” with a business associate in the house. Which meant Thompson was lying.
As he left the room, Rina stared after him, transfixed, but the shimmer of color around James Thompson was eclipsed by something far brighter in the corner. The shape was regular and defined and nothing like the colors she saw around people: the light was clear and bright enough to hurt.
Her chest tightened, the pain in her head grew, and for a moment she thought she was going to pass out again.
She was looking at a window.
Fifteen
The curtains of the cubicle Rina was occupying in Winton General’s ER twitched aside.
A woman stepped into the room. “Damn, you are hurt.”
Baby whined in welcome. Rina dropped a hand on his head, where he lay beside her chair. His tail thumped the floor.
Taylor’s gaze skimmed the cubicle. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m getting you out of Winton now.”
Rina stared at Taylor through eyes that were painfully sensitive. She was tall, with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, smooth, tanned skin and dark eyes. She was dressed in black track pants and a plain white tank, and she was wearing running shoes. Despite the fact that Rina had been blind for most of her life, even she could recognize that Taylor made no concession to fashion or style. With Taylor, what you saw had always been what you got. “How did you find out?”
“JT called me.”
Rina frowned at the unfamiliar name. “James Thompson?”
“That’s him.”
Comprehension dawned. Apart from the clear colors around Thompson, that was what had been different about him. “He’s an agent.”
“He’s been in place for months. Thanks to JT, we’re finally reeling in Lopez and a big chunk of his network. He broke cover because he was worried about you.”
The fact that James Thompson was an agent explained why he had been in the house when Alex wasn’t there.
Taylor’s brows jerked together. “Something’s happened. You’re looking at me.”
Rina lifted a hand to the bandage on the side of her face. She still felt wobbly, and now that the shock of what had happened had mostly worn off, she felt even sorer. It had taken a few minutes for the ambulance to arrive and, once it was established that she didn’t have any serious injuries, a further half hour to see a doctor. She had examined the swollen areas and the butterfly dressing the medic had applied to the cut and checked her for concussion, of which Rina did have a mild case. One concussion was bad, two in as many weeks was evidently very bad. After trying to convince her to check into the hospital for the rest of the night as a precaution, she had reluctantly prescribed a few quiet days at home and had gone to get painkillers from the dispensary.
Rina stared at Taylor, and resisted the urge to close her eyes. Her head was on fire and her eyes were burning. She was having trouble with the light and focusing, and difficulty with perception and balance. On top of the pain and disorientation, the bewildering speed with which people and vehicles moved and the brashness of the colors was unnerving. After years of craving light and color, all she wanted to do was crawl back into the dark shell she’d lived in for so many years and hide. “I can see. When I hit my head, it must have done something.”
Taylor’s face lit up. She crouched down and pulled her into a brief, fierce hug. “I can hardly believe it. I’d almost given up hope.”
Emotion pushed past Rina’s rigid control. Until Taylor had hugged her she hadn’t realized how much she needed the contact. “It wasn’t an accident. Alex set it up. I saw him.” She met Taylor’s gaze. “Why am I still alive? What does he want?”
“My boss will have my badge if he finds out I’ve given you any details, but you’re going to find out soon enough. Lopez wants money.”
Finally, something that made sense.
“Esther stole from Lopez. He thinks that before she died she gave you an access code for an offshore account that contains a very large sum of money.” Taylor stated a figure. “Don’t quote me on it. That’s just in the ballpark.”
The numbers on the notepad. Now it made sense. Esther had found out what Alex Lopez was and cut him off at the knees by taking his money. There was no other explanation. Her mother had had rigid principles and values; she wasn’t a thief. Rina frowned. “If that was the case, why wasn’t the theft, and Alex, investigated twenty-two years ago?”
Taylor checked the corridor. “Lopez used his influence to cover it up. No crime was ever reported. In
directly, about a year ago, we received information through a South American source. The information fitted with Esther’s death and a few other events that happened at the time. The FBI’s been gathering the threads of Lopez’s operation and chasing the money ever since.”
She glanced at her wristwatch. “We don’t have much time. You can’t go back to the house. Let them keep you in for observation for the night. We’ll put twenty-four-hour protection around you. That’s as believable a way as any to take you out of the equation, with the added bonus that Alex won’t be suspicious, since he was the one who put you here. Does the doctor know you can see?”
“I didn’t tell her. I haven’t told anyone.”
At first she hadn’t been able to believe it. Like the auric sight, she had waited for the vision to go. Then, when the ambulance had arrived and one of Alex’s security staff had come in to see what was wrong, an innate caution had kicked in. Alex’s attempts to stimulate her memory had been brutal. If he knew that she had regained her vision and that she was beginning to remember, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. It was even possible he would attempt to remove her to some place where Taylor and the FBI couldn’t reach her.
Taylor checked her watch again. “Time to go.”
“No. I’m going back to the house. I need one more day.” Esther had entrusted her with the account numbers because she had known she wouldn’t survive and she had wanted Lopez stopped. It was now the FBI’s job to stop Alex, but making sure Alex never recovered the money was her responsibility. She was beginning to remember, bits and pieces—fragments. She knew what she needed to remember. With the right stimulus she could get it all back.