by Don Prichard
“No. Information Henshaw got about three Americans rescued by the Philippine Coast Guard.”
“Henshaw.” Romero spat the name out. “How reliable is this information?”
“Unknown.”
“What does Eriksson say about it?”
“She hasn’t been told.”
Romero clenched his jaw. “I’m done coddling her amnesia,” he snarled. “Bring her in, now.”
Chapter 14
The dream impaled Eve against Marianne’s couch cushions. She was lying on the decayed leaves of a jungle floor, a myriad multi-legged insects crawling over her skin and wriggling under her clothes. Overhead, the cacophony of animal life in the towering treetops suddenly fell silent. Someone was coming.
Footsteps pounded the path next to her. A short, cocoa-skinned man ran past. Sunlight glinted off his glasses and the metal of the gun he carried in his right hand. He was not the one to fear. She scrunched lower into the foliage.
The thwack of a hand methodically slapping aside leaves came closer. The musky odor of her terror filled her nostrils, then the acrid fetor of urine as hot liquid dribbled down the inside of her thighs. He would smell her. She should run.
Before she could jump up, huge hands reached down and clamped onto her arms. A face ravaged with scars peered down at her. She screamed as he lifted her off her feet.
“Eve, wake up.”
She opened her eyes to find Marianne leaning over her.
“You’re having a nightmare.”
Eve bolted upright. “Two men. They found me.”
“Your brother …?”
“No. In a jungle—” Eve stopped in confusion.
“Oh, I bet it was that island in the Philippines.” Marianne gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“What island?”
“I shouldn’t have said that. Please, please don’t tell Brad. I’ll be in such trouble for gossiping.”
“Tell me!”
Marianne twisted her fingers, blinked rapidly. “I don’t know much. Just that three people said you were marooned on a jungle island with them this past year.”
Eve’s heart palpitated. “Who are they?”
“Brad’s checking them out. He thinks they’re Romero’s men and they were holding you prisoner.”
Eve rubbed her fingers in a circular pattern on the soft velour of the couch. “So … maybe my dream is actually a memory …?” She jabbed the velour with her fingernails. “Yes, I’m sure of it. Brad’s right. I’d never stay voluntarily on an island with those two men.”
“If you were a prisoner, you’d have no choice.”
“Until the yacht,” Eve said. “That’s why I was on it. It was my escape.”
“But why keep you a prisoner in the first place, when Romero wants you dead?”
Eve’s head jerked back. “How do you know that?”
Marianne sucked in her lower lip and turned away. She picked up a brown paper sack at the front door and scurried down the hall to the kitchen. “I brought home Chinese carryout,” she called over her shoulder. “From Chicago’s best. Are you hungry?”
She wasn’t, but she‘d had enough with lying on the couch for four days while the memory of her rape played over and over in her mind. She plodded down the creaky hallway and took a seat at the kitchen table. Rain pattered on the windowpane next to her. Water spots blotched the paper sack and Marianne’s skirt where the umbrella hadn’t protected her.
Eve removed the cardboard cartons from the sack while Marianne set the table with plasticware and oatmeal-colored paper napkins.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I can’t, Eve. I’ve already said too much.”
“All right. I’ll take some of that Moo Goo Gai Pan.” Eve dabbed a few spoonfuls of rice and Moo Goo onto her plate.
They ate in silence.
Finally Marianne sighed. “You were always a threat to Danny Romero. You won three big court cases against him, but he’s got them all on appeal. You and Brad believed all you needed to finally send him to prison was some last piece of evidence you went to Guam for. That’s when the word came out Romero wanted you dead.”
Eve nodded but kept her eyes on her food. “Thanks.”
Marianne took two more bites. “What you hated was not his drug dealing so much as his human trafficking. But that was a dead end street, so you went after what you could nail him for—drugs."
The face of a young Asian girl popped into Eve’s mind. Mid-teens, maybe sixteen. Face, neck, chest, arms black-and-blue with bruises. Lying in a hospital bed. One eye swollen shut, the other eye—golden-brown—peering at Eve. Pleading for help. The face blurred, came into focus again. Eyes closed now, lids painted turquoise, lashes blackened with mascara. Lying in a coffin. Slender fingers made to clasp a small bouquet of petite, white flowers. Sampaguitas.
Eve leaped to her feet. Chinese food and white cardboard cartons flew as she pushed past the table. She dashed into the bathroom and bent over the toilet, vomited until there was only brown bile.
“Eve, are you okay?” Marianne stood in the doorway.
“A girl.” Eve rasped. She sank to her knees on the vinyl floor and clasped the rim of the toilet bowl. Between convulsive gasps, she described the teenager to Marianne.
“Marikit,” Marianne said. “Marikit Santos Torres. About half a year before you disappeared on the Gateway, she asked for you at Cook County Hospital and told you she wanted to testify against Danny Romero. It was your first big break to nail him on human trafficking. His men beat her up and dumped her into the Chicago River. Police rescued her and took her to the hospital, but before you could move her to a safe house, she … she ended up in that coffin.”
Marianne knelt beside her, and Eve collapsed into her arms. They held tight to each other and cried. Four days ago she had wept in Marianne’s arms and told her everything about the rape. Once again, Marianne’s sympathy enveloped her in a cocoon of tenderness.
Finally, Eve got to her feet, washed her hands, rinsed her mouth. She returned to the table and pushed away what was left of her food. “I don’t remember anything about Danny Romero.” She thrust her jaw forward and glared at the rain-streaked window. “I don’t remember any of the cases against him. I don’t want to. I want nothing to do with him.”
“Good.” Marianne dumped the spilled cartons into the trash and sat down. “Because he tried again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Romero. He sent someone here—here to my apartment—to get you.”
Horror clawed the back of Eve’s throat.
“You’re not supposed to find out, but Brad is wrong to not tell you.”
“Romero … still wants to kill me?”
“To take you prisoner again. He wants answers from you.”
“About what?”
“Something about his son. He didn’t say specifically.”
“You talked to him?” Eve’s mind spun. She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.
“No, no—Brad got permission to wiretap Romero’s phone. That’s how we found out his plan. He sent someone disguised as a pizza delivery man, and we nabbed him just as he was about to knock on the door.”
Blood rushed to Eve’s face and pulsed against her skin. “How dare Brad not tell me! He used me as bait. And put you in danger.”
“Omigosh, Eve, please don’t get me in trouble. Brad would never put you in harm’s way. He cares deeply about you and has had someone watching you every minute since you got here.”
Brad cared deeply about her? She straightened. “Were, were Brad and I … was there ever ‘anything’ between us?”
Marianne giggled. “He wasn’t your type, honey. Rich and glitzy was what you went for, and what you got without a problem.”
“Rich and glitzy?” Eve had to laugh at the description. It didn’t match up with the poverty and starkness she felt inside. “How about a serious romance or two?”
“If a man took a step towar
d serious, you moved on to the next guy.”
“C’mon, Marianne, that sounds pretty fickle. I hope I wasn’t like that.”
“Not fickle, just dedicated heart and soul to your job. When you worked, you gave your utmost, and when you played, you wanted nothing but fun and glamour. Your clothes, your shoes, your jewelry—you put every penny you had into them. You were the Cinderella whose life brought sparkle to us plain old office girls.”
“Cinderella.” Eve stood and slammed her chair under the table. “But with no Prince Charming, huh? I guess my father and brother took care of him, didn’t they.”
She shuffled back down the hallway to the couch, feeling every bit an ancient hag. “I won’t say anything to Brad about what you told me,” she called back to Marianne. But she would talk to him tomorrow.
She had a plan now, and it didn’t include Federal District Attorney Bradley Henshaw. Nor drug lord and trafficker Danny Romero. Nor her father, and certainly not her brother.
Her memory was gone. Her past was gone. She didn’t want her future to disappear too.
Chapter 15
The next morning, Eve dug out Chaplain Peterman’s business card and invited him to Marianne’s for a lunch of any carryout except Chinese. She needed someone to talk to. Someone she could trust.
He arrived with a large sack and a broad grin. “Since I didn’t know your favorite, I brought mine.”
She opened the sack and inhaled rich, spicy tomato sauce, garlic, and pasta. “Good thing I didn’t invite you yesterday. You’d be in jail, wondering why lasagna and breadsticks were a crime.” They sat at the table, and she divided the food onto two of Marianne’s plates while she told him about the pizza delivery and Romero’s thwarted attempt to abduct her.
“Sounds like the sooner you head for your father’s, the better.”
“My father’s?” Eve stabbed a piece of noodle onto her fork. “I won’t be going there. Ever.” Peterman’s brow creased into deep furrows. Confusion, or disapproval? She wanted desperately for him to understand, to be on her side.
“The night my brother …” Eve’s throat closed, and tears seeped into her eyes. Peterman nodded, signaling he knew which night she was talking about. She had sobbed out the whole story in his arms at the hospital after Dax left.
“That night”—she cleared the hoarseness from her throat—“when my father and his boss returned, Dax and the boss’s son met them at the door. They … confessed.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks, and she brushed them away with her fingers. “My father decided—before he even came to check on me—to not prosecute his boss’s son.
“I didn’t know about the law. All I knew was that my father didn’t want to touch me. He didn’t take me into his arms to comfort me. He wouldn’t even look at me. He just … stood there staring at the floor and mumbled he was sorry, that he was afraid he’d lose his job. At dinner, he had been promoted to vice president of the company.”
She inhaled and released the air slowly until she could gaze steely-eyed at Peterman. “He chose his career over his daughter. He’ll never get me back.”
The sympathy in Peterman’s eyes set her lower lip quivering.
“Are you sure that’s what you want, Eve? When you came out of your coma, the first word out of you mouth was Dad.”
“That’s because I saw you and thought you were my father.” She knew it was more than that. She remembered the delirium of her joy, remembered the longing. From the depths of her soul she had wanted to love and be loved. By her father.
“You also told me you could tell your father was sorry about whatever had happened between you. You wanted to deal with it. Shouldn’t you at least talk to him before you cut him off?”
“No. All that was before I remembered. Now I have the facts, not emotions born of ignorance.”
Peterman looked unbearably sad. His expression dragged her to the edge of the despondency she had just spent four days fighting.
She put her fork down and reached over to touch his hand. “I know what I want to do now.”
“What?”
“Use my back pay to go to graduate school and start a different career.”
“And not be an attorney?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember any of it. If I have to start from scratch, I may as well start with something I like. Something that doesn’t send a drug lord stalking me.” She could add to the list: An office where she could be a rising star, not a fallen one. Co-workers who didn’t know more about her than she knew—and certainly not about her rape. She winced at the thought of their eyes following her, knowing her dark secret. Why had she ever confided in Marianne?
She scrunched her nose. “The hard part is—I don’t know what I like.”
Peterman’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “How about another possibility—a business venture with my niece? She’s looking for someone to invest in a new shop with her. A fashion boutique, I think. With your beauty to advertise it and her experience as a buyer for Macy’s, you two couldn’t help but succeed.”
Eve blushed. She was wearing no makeup and had pulled her hair straight back into a frumpy ponytail. The scar from the bullet made a bright red bulge on her forehead, like the budding horn of a unicorn.
Still, hadn’t Marianne told her she was the Cinderella who brought sparkle to plain old office girls’ lives? “I’d like to talk to her.” A spark of confidence burst inside her and raced along her nerves to buoy her heart. She had two options now: education or business. Neither was a magic wand, but for the first time since she’d lost her memory, she was holding the reins of her life in her own hands.
***
As soon as Chaplain Peterman left, Eve called Bradley Henshaw. Best to get her boss off her plate right away, wipe the District Attorney’s office out of her life. Somehow she’d make sure Danny Romero was included in the crumbs scraped into the trash.
She sat on the couch, one leg folded under her, and dialed Brad’s direct line included in the files he’d handed her. He answered immediately. Her nerves pulled drawstrings on her stomach. “Uh, hi, it’s Eve.”
“Eve, how are you doing?” The genuineness of his concern made her feel like a traitor. She was going to dump him and everyone in the department simply because, well, because they meant nothing to her. How could they when she had no memory of them?
She planted both feet on the floor and sat erect, stiffening her backbone and shoulders. “Better, thanks. I’ve been thinking, and—Brad, I’m sorry—I’ve decided not to come back.”
“What? What will you do?” His voice rose in astonishment.
“I’ve thought about it for four days on Marianne’s couch.” She told him her two options.
“But why leave something you excel at for something you don’t know?”
“Because I don’t remember what I excel at,” she snapped. “Not one tiny bit of the law.”
“The doctor said your memory would come back. You’ve already remembered some things, haven’t you?” Brad stopped abruptly. No doubt he was thinking about her brother.
The whirr of the window air conditioner broke into her consciousness, and she realized she was sweating. She stood and turned her face to catch the cool air. “The doctor said maybe. No guarantees. I’m not going to sit around waiting until I wake up one morning and remember how to be a lawyer. I need to find a way to be who I am now instead of chasing after who I was.”
“Have you read the files I gave you at the hospital?”
“About Romero? No. And I don’t intend to.”
“I see. Is that what you’re worried about—Romero?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes, you should.”
She blinked in surprise.
“I was waiting to tell you …” He cleared his throat. “Romero sent someone to Marianne’s apartment to abduct you.”
He gave her more details than Marianne had. She started trembling, then shaking so hard she had to sit. Her lungs tightened into a fist and she couldn’t get
the air out, couldn’t get more in.
Then the fist let go and she gasped in oxygen, breathed out fire. “That’s it, right on the bull’s eye! I don’t want Romero coming after me. I don’t want him thinking I’m a threat. I don’t want him getting me killed.” She slumped forward and closed her eyes. “There’s no reason any more,” she whimpered. “I want him to know that, to get the news I’m out of the picture.”
Brad drew in a deep breath that snuffled through his nose. “You want Romero to believe you’ll leave him alone, even if you get your memory back?”
“Yes.”
“And would you believe him if he told you he’d leave you alone, no matter what?”
Her chin jerked in a spasm. No. She could never trust Romero.
“Eve,” Brad said softly, “going into another career won’t stop him. And I won’t be able to protect you if you’re in another job.”
Her mind raced. She’d have to use her back pay to disappear. She didn’t even have a life yet, and here she was needing to leave it.
“Help me get away. Please.” She fought to keep her voice from mewling. “Someplace where Romero can’t find me.”
The faint, rhythmic tapping of fingers on wood echoed on the phone. She paced back and forth in the small living room. Each footstep set the floorboards creaking. The squeaks climbed vertebra by vertebra up her spine until the hair at the nape of her neck stood on end. She stopped and held her breath for Brad’s answer.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said at last. “I’ll send Marianne home with a box of your earliest cases. I’ll keep you on payroll, and you take a couple of days, weeks if you want, to read them. If you decide to leave after that, I’ll help you.”
She wanted to laugh out loud. Did he think the cases would prod her memory? Ha! They’d only convince her to run faster. “I don’t want to be cooped up here all that time. I want to get on with my life.”
“Go anywhere you want while you’re reading. I’ll send a bodyguard to look out for you.”
A bodyguard. She’d need a bodyguard the rest of her life, wouldn’t she?
She touched the scar on her forehead and flinched at the stab of pain that shot through her. It was her or Romero, wasn’t it? One of them had to go.