Memory Reload

by Rosemary Heim

  She nodded and he turned the key in the lock.

  The door swung in on silent hinges. He pushed it completely open, then stepped into the entry. Plants hung in front of each window, trailing vines and flowers. AJ stepped in behind him and he motioned for her to close the door.

  He moved into the next room, the kitchen. A flour-sack dish towel draped over a drainer filled with clean dishes, a second towel puddled on the floor beneath a hook. A cookbook lay open on the counter. A row of herbs in small clay pots lined the wide kitchen windowsill. A teakettle and a coffeepot sat side by side next to the stove.

  A soft thud warned him an instant before the cat brushed past his feet. AJ’s pet made a beeline for the water and food bowls tucked in a corner beside the cupboards.

  Ryan continued through the house. Each room was neat yet lived-in. Bookshelves lined the walls of the living room. He glanced at the photographs mingled with the books and trinkets on the many shelves. Most of the pictures were candid shots. AJ appeared in a few. Ryan didn’t allow himself to study the images too closely. There’d be plenty of time for that once he was sure her home was secure.

  He moved from room to room, checking behind doors and in closets, looking for signs that someone had been there.

  One of the bedrooms had been converted into an office. The room was an interesting mix of mess and neat. Two desks snugged up against opposite walls. A sea of papers, mainly printouts from various stateside law-enforcement agencies, from the look of it, covered the surface of one desk, barely leaving room for the computer. David would appear to have been something of a slob.

  The other desk held a scanner and the latest Mac, a tidy stack of files fanned out next to it. Ryan’s quick glance at the file contents confirmed this pool of tranquility to be AJ’s desk.

  File cabinets and bookshelves formed a dividing line between the two work areas. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  David’s bedroom resembled his desk. A king-size bed dominated the room. The lightweight quilted bed cover dragged to the floor on one side, the other side was caught beneath the mattress. On the bedside table the latest Turow novel lay next to a simple picture frame. The photograph showed AJ laughing with her arms around a dark-haired man who looked at her with an expression of complete indulgence. Ryan turned away from the display of such obvious affection.

  He held his breath as he opened the closet door. A quiet sigh of relief escaped as the door swung open to reveal nothing but men’s clothes. The closet floor doubled as a laundry hamper. Jeans, shorts and T-shirts piled next to running shoes. Empty hangers poked up between dress shirts fresh from the laundry.

  On the tall dresser a handful of coins, a pair of cuff links and a triple band ring lay spread out next to a wood-framed picture of a trio of kids. The colors had faded and from the clothes it was clear the snapshot had been taken some years ago. Even so, it was easy to recognize a much younger AJ standing between two dark-haired boys.

  Ryan poked at the ring, turning it until light caught on the inscription. Remember. An emotion he refused to name twisted the ache in his chest a little tighter.

  He moved to the last bedroom. This one had a decidedly feminine flavor. A chair in one corner was piled with a stack of neatly folded clothes. Mystery, romance and science-fiction paperbacks shared space on the bedside table. The dresser in this room also held pictures. Individual photos of grown-up versions of the boys flanked a duplicate of the kids’ photo. He turned his back on the happy images of the past.

  When he opened the closet, the scent of sunshine and ocean breezes surrounded him. He didn’t allow himself to linger.

  This was a home. AJ’s home.

  The home she shared with someone else.

  Ansel wound around his legs, but AJ had stopped following him before he got to the bedrooms. He missed her presence and hurried down the hall, back to the living room. That’s where he found her, standing in front of a bookcase, holding one of the picture frames. She turned when he entered. Tears streamed over her cheeks, an expression of loss and devastation clouded her features.

  He recognized that look, too. He’d felt like that the day he’d been moving to yet another relative’s home. It was the day he finally realized his mother wouldn’t be coming back for him.

  It was the day he’d decided he didn’t want to have a home. It hurt too much to want what he could never have.

  He’d been ten.

  AJ TURNED AWAY FROM the sympathy in Ryan’s face. She didn’t deserve it. Shame at all the betrayals squeezed her heart so tight she wondered if it would ever beat a normal rhythm again.

  She placed the photo back onto the shelf, turning it so the afternoon light would catch it. It’s all my fault. Because of me, they’re dead. She traced the features of the men staring back at her with laughter in their eyes. “I recognize them.”

  Sadness welled up, closing her throat, forcing her to swallow around the pain. This was how it felt when the last vestige of hope withered and floated away on an arid breeze.

  She glanced toward Ryan, but couldn’t look him straight in the eyes. “I remember. Some of it. There are still holes. But I remember them.”

  He came to stand beside her and looked at the picture. She wanted to reach out to him, to have him hold her, tell her it would be all right once more. But that would be a lie and the solace, which she didn’t deserve, would only be temporary.

  “The Angelinis?” He waited for her to fill in the information.

  “Justin and David.” She wiped nonexistent dust from the frame. “My guardian angels. Except now they’re gone and I don’t know how to go on without them even if I want to.”

  Standing so close to Ryan became unbearable. She moved across the room.

  Memories she’d just as soon never recover took over her thoughts. The vague fears she’d shoved to the background pushed forward, demanding her acknowledgement.

  It was her fault. March fifteenth, the day they’d brought her back to Oahu, was supposed to mark a fresh start. Instead, it was the day their lives had begun to deteriorate. They’d tried to hide it from her, but she’d known then and remembered now.

  Trouble had followed her from L.A. and landed hard in this island paradise, right on the Angelini doorstep. They’d paid the ultimate price for believing in her.

  Now Uncle Kimo had been dragged into the mess. And Ryan.

  She scrubbed the tears from her face and pulled her shoulders back. With each deep breath she took, calm settled a little more within her. She knew what had to be done. This had begun with her and she would be the one to end it.

  First, she had to tell Ryan the truth. She couldn’t do this alone, and he was her best bet. But only if he understood the situation and knew what she was.

  It shouldn’t be so hard to tell him. They’d met only yesterday. Ryan would be leaving soon to return to his duties. He wasn’t looking for an involvement. Neither was she.

  So the only thing at risk was respect. A small price to pay for avenging the Angelini brothers’ murders.

  She wiped away the last tear and turned back to him. “I’m sorry. That was a bit melodramatic, wasn’t it?” She tried to smile.

  “Understandable, considering the circumstances.” Ryan brushed his thumb over her cheek, drying the last tear track. “Can you tell me what you remember about them?”

  That was the last thing she wanted to do. She sank onto the large couch. Extra long to accommodate the Angelini boys’ height. Ansel hopped into her lap. He curled into the crook of her arm, just like always, and promptly fell asleep.

  With the cat’s soft purr lending an odd counterpoint, she began telling a carefully edited version of the bare facts. Ryan prowled the room, studying the various books and photos as she talked.

  “Mostly, I remember when we were kids. We met in grade school, David and I were in fourth grade, Justin in fifth. From the first day, we were best friends. They were the brothers I never had. We liked the same books, the same games, same music. We were the
three peas in a pod.

  “Then, shortly before my fifteenth birthday, my family moved back to the mainland. The picture you’re holding was taken on our last day together.”

  Ryan returned the picture to the shelf. “Did you lose touch with them?”

  “Not right away. For a while, we were pen pals. I’d write long, rambling letters about what it was like in L.A. They’d write short letters about how nothing changed on the island. After a few years, my letters got shorter and theirs became rarer.”

  “You never saw them?”

  “Only once. When my parents were killed, they came to the funeral. They wanted me to move back here, but I was stubborn and determined to make it on my own. I did pretty well, too. For a while.”

  “What happened?” Ryan settled on the far end of the couch. Even that far away, his attraction pulled at her.

  She wanted so badly to find shelter in his arms. But she wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time. Even with the sure knowledge that Ryan was different from the devil of her past, the end result would be the same. She couldn’t risk that kind of pain again.

  She shrugged. “Growing pains, learning a few of life’s harder lessons.” No need to tell Ryan the dirty details about her addiction and what she’d done to survive. Kimo had been right. There were some memories she would have been happy to leave behind the curtain.

  She left the details to Ryan’s imagination. Any scenario he came up with would be better than the truth.

  She couldn’t look him in the eyes, knowing how misleading this version of her life was. Ansel grumbled at the disruption when she stood and laid him on the couch. He stretched, walked over to Ryan and promptly curled in the crook of his crossed arms.

  Ryan’s startled expression as he looked at the pile of fur in his arms gave her five seconds of relief from his scrutiny. She escaped into the kitchen.

  The refrigerator was well stocked with bottled water. She pulled out one for each of them. When she bumped the door closed with her hip and turned around, Ryan was standing in the doorway, his steady green eyes watching her. Ansel, still snuggled in his arm, purred in contentment as Ryan kneaded his fingers through the cat’s glossy coat. “When did you come back to Hawaii?”

  She wished she’d never started telling him any of this. As tempting as it might be, she refused to use the amnesia to avoid answering his questions. She’d answer his questions with as few details as possible, but she wouldn’t lie to him.

  “About three years ago, for some reason they never really explained, Justin and David flew to L.A. one more time. They found me, packed up my pitiful life and hauled me out of there.”

  He accepted the opened bottle she held out to him, then followed her back into the living room. “They brought you here?”

  She nodded. “They gave me a place to stay, helped me get my life back on track. We made a home for ourselves. Along the way, I discovered a knack for photography.” She crossed the room and picked up one of her earliest attempts. The composition and lighting were terrible, but the brothers’ expressions were so vivid, she could still hear their laughter.

  The memory of that day squeezed her chest into a tight knot. They’d tolerated being her guinea pigs/models until she realized her true talent lay in nature photography.

  Ansel’s purr warned her of Ryan’s approach. “What do they do for a living?”

  “Justin, that’s him on the left, was a police officer. He made detective a couple years ago. He loved his work.”

  “And David?”

  “FBI. Undercover.” Sadness washed over her in a wave. Something had happened to David. She knew it in her bones, even if she couldn’t remember the details. She sank into her favorite overstuffed, oversized chair-and-a-half.

  “Which one did you marry?”

  She hadn’t expected that question. A startled laugh escaped her tight throat. “Neither.”

  Ryan visibly relaxed at her answer. He returned to his corner of the couch and settled against the cushions.

  “Or maybe it’d be more honest to say both.”

  He sat up straighter. “You lost me there, sugar. Maybe you could explain it a little more?”

  “We, none of us, were interested in changing our relationship. We were too good at being friends to ever risk losing that to become lovers. Even if I’d been interested in getting married, I certainly couldn’t have ever picked one over the other.”

  “What about the brothers?”

  “They dated, but really, if there was any kind of marriage, it was between them and their careers. You can understand that, I’m sure. We all had our own careers and we had our home. Everything seemed to work with the three of us. We didn’t really need any others.”

  “Do you remember what happened to Justin?”

  Another of the memories she could have lived her life without ever recovering. Even after two years, the pain washed over her in a strong wave. Time might heal, but this particular wound went too deep for an easy recovery. “He was working a case, something for Internal Affairs. One night, he never came home. He just…disappeared.”

  “The police—”

  “‘HPD is not in the habit of commenting on open investigations and the disappearance of Detective Justin Angelini is so designated.’ She parroted the official statement.

  “The living hell of limbo.”

  She nodded. That put the situation in nice sharp focus.

  “How is David handling it?”

  It would be simple enough to tell him everything. But she couldn’t, not without knowing him way better than she did. “How would you handle a situation like that?”

  Every trace of the sympathetic listener disappeared in a flash. Ryan’s jaw tightened, his lips thinned, his eyes narrowed. Before he spoke a word, she knew there’d be little trace of his soft southern drawl.

  “My entire career is based on bringing traitors to justice.”

  The plain statement exposed the truth so carefully hidden under the guise of the southern gentleman Ryan liked to perpetuate. Just like that, she knew everything she needed to know about Ryan Williams and the kind of man he was.

  She could so easily fall in love with him, she was halfway there already. But it would be futile.

  In the end, enlisting Ryan’s help would cost her any hope of a future with him. But if it meant bringing justice to the Angelini brothers’ killers, she wouldn’t hesitate to pay the price. The cost to her friends had been so much higher.

  “Then you understand exactly how David handled it.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Every spare moment David had, he dedicated to tracking down those responsible for Justin’s murder.”

  “What did his SAC say about that?”

  AJ shook her head. “I doubt David ever even mentioned it to the Special Agent in Charge. Would you tell your boss if you were engaged in a personal vendetta on the side? Or would you just use every resource you had available to track down the—” She stopped.

  Her shoulders sagged and she leaned back against the cushions. Exhaustion dragged at her, in spite of all the sleep she’d had last night. It hurt so much to keep remembering and know she was still forgetting…something.

  She could feel Ryan’s steady regard. The silence stretched between them, interrupted only by Ansel’s constant purr.

  “How much did David tell you?” His quiet question didn’t surprise her.

  She wondered the same thing. “Very little, I think.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  She sat up a little straighter and thought. “I’m not sure. We used to discuss their cases all the time, bouncing theories off each other, trying to make sure they’d covered all the angles. I remember that.” She raised her hands, helpless, frustrated with the shroud that still clung to some memories. “I don’t think Justin ever talked about the Internal Affairs case. At least, not with me, maybe because it was IA. David didn’t tell me anything, either. Not until…” She kneaded at her temples, trying to force the me
mory free.

  “Not until when?” Ryan set Ansel on the ground and leaned forward.

  “It’s so close. I can almost see it….”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something about one of the other agents in the office, the police, there’s some connection.” Her hands fell back to her lap. “He shouldn’t have been so damn secretive.” Anger pushed her out of the chair and sent her pacing along the bookshelves and around the borders of the room.

  Everywhere she looked, another shadowed memory hinted at what she’d forgotten. She stopped at a grouping of photos hanging on one wall. “I remember every detail of taking these shots a year ago, the location, time of day, selecting the crop, even picking out the frame and mat. Yet all I can recall about what I shot for David is that it was night.”

  She nudged one of the frames back into alignment and continued skirting the sisal rug covering the hardwood floor.

  Ryan rose from the couch, turning to watch her progress around the room. Awareness of him and a longing to lose herself in the comfort of his arms lit a need she wouldn’t allow herself to explore. Not now, not yet.

  She moved to David’s bookcase. His collection of Stephen King paperbacks triggered another memory. “We always argued, rather energetically, about whose favorite author was the better writer.” Sliding her fingers over the book spines snugged the occasional book tighter into the row but did nothing to release any more information.

  “You keep referring to David in the past.” Ryan took a step in her direction. “You think he’s dead, don’t you?”

  She nodded and crossed to Justin’s bookcase, restoring some of the distance between her and Ryan.

  “Why?”

  She pushed a boxed set of Mozart CDs back against the bookshelf and stereo system. “Because, I think I saw him killed. I was there. I think.”