Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 08 - Identity Unknown

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Or letting him walk away.

  Becca turned back to the window, feeling a sense of

  calm at her decision, feeling the pressure of her impending tears lessen. "I'll call Hazel, tell her to page me if Casey Parker shows up at the ranch again. I'll have her offer him some kind of financial bonus if he'll stick around until we show up."

  "He left the ranch?"

  She looked up at the perfect blue sky, wondering at the sudden note of interest that rang in his voice. ' 'Hazel said he got out of there pronto. Apparently he was ticked off by the fact that another Casey Parker had been there first." She turned to face him, certain she looked like hell, but grateful that at least she wasn't crying. "I think we should take a drive down to Wyatt City. Check out this shelter, try to talk to the men who brought you in."

  Mish looked as emotionally exhausted as she felt. "We?"

  "Yeah," Becca said. She crossed her arms so he knew she meant business. "Unless you lied and last night really was just a one-night stand."

  He shook his head in disbelief. "Becca, didn't you hear anything I said? I'm probably one of the bad guys. I need you to stay away from me."

  "Maybe," she said. "But what about what / need?"

  Wyatt City was as dusty and run-down as Mish remembered it.

  Except he only remembered it from the time he walked out of the Fkst Church Shelter to the time he left on the Greyhound to Santa Fe.

  It was one of those towns with a Main Street that hadn't had a face-lift since most of the buildings went up back in the late fifties, early sixties. It was crumbling. A true work in progress, as far as ghost towns went.

  The old movie theater was boarded up, as was the

  Woolworth's. Both looked as if they'd gone out of business a decade or two ago, and the space hadn't been rented out since then. A liquor store was doing a thriving business, as was an adult-video rental place, and a bar.

  "Have you considered the possibility that you lived here?" Becca spoke for the first time in what seemed like hours. She took a right turn on Chiselm Street, where a row of post World War II adobe-style houses had been turned into offices. A palm reader. A chiropractor/masseuse. A tax attorney. A tattoo parlor. ' 'You might have an apartment somewhere in town. Or a room. Or..."

  "Yeah," he said. "I guess it is a possibility." He didn't want to tell her about his hunch, his sense that he'd come to Wyatt City for a reason. A reason that he didn't know, but couldn't talk about just the same.

  "Oh, no!" She pulled to the side of the road and hit the brakes a little too hard. She looked at him, her eyes wide. "You could have a wife. You could be married."

  "I'm not," he told her. "I don't know how I know that, but—"

  "You can't know it," she told him. "Mish, the only things we absolutely know about you are that you've never learned to ride a horse, you were here in Wyatt City for some reason two weeks ago, and that you aren't Casey Parker."

  "If I am married..." He shook his head. "No, I know I'm not. I'm always alone. I live alone. And lately I work alone. I don't know how I know that, because I don't even know what it is I do." But he could guess. The list of possibilities was nice and short. Burglar. Thief. Con artist.

  Assassin.

  'But if that's not enough for you,'' he continued,' 'then last night..." He squinted as he looked out of the truck's windshield at the setting sun glinting off the still hot

  street. "I don't know, I guess you probably could tell— it's been a long time for me. Since I was with a woman." He glanced at her, embarrassed to admit it. "Since I even wanted to be with a woman."

  She laughed, a giddy burst as she tipped her head forward to rest on her folded arms on the steering wheel. 'That's very flattering, Mr. I-know-damn-well-I'm-a-sex-god-but-I'll-pretend-to-be-humble, but the fact is, you can't know you're not married if you've got amnesia."

  "No, there are some things I do just know. I know it sounds unbelievable, that I could know what size jeans I wear, but not even recognize my own face in a mirror. It doesn't make any sense, but Becca, I'm telling you, I know."

  She was peeking out from beneath her arm, and he held her gaze. "And I'm not pretending anything," he added softly. "It had been a while for me. I wanted to make love to you all night long, but somehow the night got away from me."

  Lord, what was he doing? She was wary of him, wanting to keep her distance. So why was he saying things like that, things that would draw her back into his arms?

  Because he wanted her in his arms. And he had absolutely no willpower where this woman was concerned. He knew the best place for Becca to be was dozens—hundreds—of miles away from him, yet he couldn't stop himself from wanting to hold her.

  She lifted her head, still watching him. He could see the heat of her attraction for him in her eyes, doing battle with her wariness.

  He could see paradise lingering there as well, just a kiss and a heartbeat away.

  He turned away. "The church is in this neighborhood, not too far from the bus station."

  Becca hesitated, but he didn't look over at her again, and finally she put her truck in gear.

  "Jarell? He's a popular man these days," the woman who worked in the church office said with a chuckle. She pulled a file folder from a rickety old cabinet, and flipped through the pages. "He's a volunteer, so I can't guarantee his hours won't change, but let's see..." She frowned. "No, he's not working at the shelter this evening—actually, not until Wednesday night."

  "Isn't there any way we could get in touch with him tonight?" Mish asked.

  The woman shook her head, smiling apologetically at both Mish and Becca. "I'm sorry, we can't give out personal information about our volunteers. But there's a good chance he'll be in the kitchen tomorrow afternoon. There's a church dinner tomorrow night, and no one can make meat loaf like Jarell. At least not meat loaf for two hundred."

  Tomorrow afternoon. Becca looked everywhere but at Mish. If they had to wait until tomorrow afternoon to talk to Jarell, that meant they'd have to spend the night here in Wyatt City.

  She stood quietly aside as he thanked the woman, then followed him out of the church and into the hot evening air. They walked in silence until they got to Becca's truck, parked just down the street from the bus station.

  Mish turned to face her. "When we left Santa Fe this morning, I didn't think quite as far as tonight. I'm...sorry. I'll pay for the motel rooms."

  Rooms. Plural. Did he really want to stay in separate rooms tonight? Was it possible that, unlike her, he hadn't spent the entire day bombarded by vivid memories of sen-

  sations from the night before? Could it be that, unlike her, he wasn't dying for the chance for them to kiss again?

  All day long, all she wanted was to take him in her arms and kiss him.

  Becca closed her eyes. Please, God, let him be right. Have him not be married...

  "We should go have dinner and—"

  "Does it make sense," Becca interrupted him, trying to sound matter-of-fact, when in truth her heart was pounding, "to pay for two when we're probably going to end up in one? Rooms," she added, probably unnecessarily.

  His eyes looked luminous in the early evening light. "Do you really want that? Even knowing...who I am?"

  She reached for his hand. "You say that as if you're convinced you're some kind of monster. Why? Because you were carrying a gun and you don't believe in banks? For all we know, your license to carry that gun was in your wallet, which was stolen. Yeah, the bullet wound on your head is a little harder to explain away, but it is possible that you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, isn't it?"

  "Becca—"

  "So, okay, you dreamed of prison. I've rented movies enough times to be able to have pretty vivid dreams of prison, too. Dreams are dreams, Mish. They're not the same thing as memories. I sometimes dream that my teeth are falling out. It happens to be a common stress dream, with no basis in reality, fortunately." She took a deep breath. "So, yes, I really want us to get a room. A room. A room with
a shower, a pizza and a cold six-pack of beer. Let's lock ourselves in and forget about all this for a few hours. You know, for someone with amnesia, you're not very good at forgetting things."

  Mish smiled, and her heart leapt. But then his smile faded. "What if it turns out that I'm someone terrible? What if I'm an assassin? A hit man?"

  Becca had to laugh. "Only a man would what-if himself into the middle of a Clint Eastwood film. And that guy over there? See him? The one climbing into that van with the tinted windows?" She pointed down the street.

  As they watched, a man with short brown hair and a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his upper arm, carrying a cardboard tray with three large coffees, climbed into the back of the van. Another man, this one a movie-star-handsome blond, climbed out.

  The blond looked as if he could make a fortune on the rodeo circuit from just his smile, but he wore sneakers on his feet instead of cowboy boots, and a baggy pair of cargo shorts instead of jeans. His shirt hung open, revealing a chest of Baywatch quality. He made half circles with his head, as if relieving the kinks in his neck as he made his way across the street to the Terminal Bar. It was named after its proximity to the bus station, no doubt, rather than its dire medical condition.

  "They're not just waiting for the bus from Las Vegas, for the shorter guy's wife Ernestina to return from a visit to her sister, Inez, who's a dancer at Caesar's. No, they're probably sitting there, staking out the bus station on the off chance you'll show up. Right?"

  Mish looked at the man heading into the bar. His eyes narrowed, and he looked closer.

  "Mish." Becca pulled his chin so that he faced her. She kissed him lightly on the mouth to get his attention completely. "What if you're not a hit man? What if you're the UPS man? Or what if you sell washers and dryers at Sears? Or maybe you're extra-adventurous and

  you specialize in overnight fresh fish deliveries to towns like Las Cruces and Santa Fe?"

  He smiled at that, and she unlocked the door to her truck. ' 'If you want, we can drive around for a little while. See if anything sparks a memory."

  Mish nodded, glancing at the van sitting in front of the bus station. "Yeah," he said. "I'd like to do that."

  Becca climbed into the truck and started the engine, switching on the air-conditioning right away. God, it was hot.

  Mish swung himself in the passenger's side, picked her beatup cowboy hat up off the seat between them, and put it on his head, tugging the brim low over his eyes.

  And as they drove past the van, he slouched way down in his seat.

  "Today I am a very fountain of information," Wes said as Lucky swung himself back into the van after making a quick pit stop at the Terminal Bar. "The captain called when I was taking a nap. I don't know how he does it, but somehow he always knows when I'm sleeping."

  "That's why he's the captain and you're not," Bobby pointed out. ' 'He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake..."

  "What did he say?" Lucky asked. "Did he talk to Admiral Robinson?"

  "He knows if you've been bad or good—no, wait," Bobby said. "That's Santa Claus, not Joe Cat." He smiled. "I always get them confused."

  "Yeah," Wes said, "they're both so jolly. Well, Santa's jolly. Joe's not. In fact, he's getting pretty fed up and put out by the way the top brass are jerking him around. I don't know how many days running this is that

  ,

  first they tell him, yes, Robinson's on his way, only to call him later and say, no, he's been detained again."

  "Any word from Albuquerque?" Lucky asked.

  "Crash and Blue reported in. No sign of Mitch," Wes told him. "But he was there. At least the shop owner described someone who looks just like him, down to his pretty green eyes."

  "That's good," Bobby said. "That's great. He's alive."

  "Yeah, but the mystery thickens," Wes reported. "He spent nearly four hundred dollars. Bought himself a nice suit, a coupla shirts, some underwear. Total came to three and change, yet our boy used two of the counterfeit bills with two that were unmarked. What's up with that? And why's he buying a suit?"

  "A few days ago, I wished I'd brought a suit with us from California," Bobby said. "Because I—"

  "Had a date with the supermodel," Wes finished for him. "Yeah, rub it in."

  "Okay, so maybe there's a woman involved," Lucky said. "We need to make sure we look at everyone passing by. Mitch could be with a woman."

  "Or maybe he was just getting himself a disguise. If/ wanted to disguise myself," Wes pointed out, "first thing I'd do is buy myself a suit. Make myself look like a business geek. No one would ever recognize me."

  Lucky stared out the tinted window at the bus station. Mitchell Shaw was out there. Somewhere. Lucky had had a gut feeling that he'd come back for his "bag of tricks." But maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he and his new suit were long gone, the missing plutonium with him. Maybe the somewhere that Mitch was, was on the other side of the world.

  "Did the captain give Us any orders?" Lucky asked. "Sit tight," Wes said. "Just sit tight."

  "Stop," Mish said. "Bee, stop here!"

  Becca slammed on the brakes.

  The lengthening twilight was casting odd shadows in an alleyway that was probably poorly lit at best, even at high noon.

  Mish climbed down out of the truck and went between two buildings, one brick, one wood. The pavement—what little was left—was pitted and cracked. The scent of rotting garbage filled the air. It was familiar, as was the latticework of the fire escapes that decorated the outside of the brick building.

  Mish closed his eyes to see the image of those iron stairs and landings lit by a stormy night sky that flashed with lightning and...

  Yes, he had been here before.

  He knew without looking that a few steps farther in, behind the dumpster, was a basement door—once painted a bright red, long since faded by the heat—that stood ajar.

  "Mish?" Becca had parked the truck and now followed him.

  It was getting darker by the minute, and he moved cautiously past the Dumpster, with its sound of rats scurrying away. He moved closer and...

  A basement door.

  Ajar.

  Faded red.

  "I've been here." He was certain now. He turned to Becca. "I remember..."

  What? What did he remember?

  He closed his eyes. Thunder and lightning. His clothes soaked almost instantly after the downpour started. He'd been following...

  Following... Lord, he couldn't remember who he'd been following or why he'd been here.

  "I had my weapon drawn." Somehow he knew that. He'd gone down the steps to the basement door, and he'd hidden deep in the shadows, his handgun held ready.

  Nothing had moved. Nothing. The storm raged for many long minutes, and still he stood frozen, waiting, watching.

  But the man he had followed and was waiting for to return—and it was a man—had vanished.

  Finally, Mish had crept out. Up those concrete stairs and into the puddles of the alleyway.

  Something had made him turn. Some instinct, or perhaps a sound he'd managed to hear beneath the pounding of the rain.

  But he'd turned, and lightning flashed, and he saw the face of the man he was after for the briefest split second— before the muzzle flash from the man's handgun exploded his night vision, before the bullet from that weapon knocked him over and out.

  He focused everything he had in him on that scrap of memory, on that split-second exposure of a face.

  Forty-five to fifty years old, heavy set, graying beard, thinning hair. Small nose in an otherwise puffy face. He'd been up above Mish, on the roof.

  Mish scanned the roof, scanned the windows of the brick building. He longed for the feel of a weapon in his hands—not that wimpy little . he'd found in his boot and left back at the ranch, but a real weapon. A Heckler & Koch MP- room broom. Or even an MP-. Something with a real bite, something that would fit comfortably in his arms.

  Then it hit him—he was actually standing here, wishing he had
an assault weapon.

  An assault weapon.

  Who the hell was he?

  "Mish, are you okay?"

  Nothing moved along the roof-line now, and Mish could see, even with the rapidly falling shadows, that it had been sheer luck that had enabled the bearded man to get the jump on him. It was also equally sheer luck he hadn't killed Mish.

  Or maybe it wasn't luck. Maybe it was just ineptitude. Or amateurishness.

  But if the bearded man had been a real shooter, he would've made damn sure he'd finished Mish off before he'd left the scene.

  The scuff of a boot against the pavement made him spin around in a defensive crouch and...

  Becca.

  Her eyes were wide as she gazed at him, as he quickly straightened up.

  "What do you remember?" she asked quietly.

  "I wasn't here making a delivery for UPS, that's for damn sure."

  Chapter

  ~D

  JL lease," Mish said.

  His steak was as untouched as her grilled-chicken Caesar salad. Why had they bothered to come to this restaurant anyway, if neither of them intended to eat?

  Becca thought wistfully of that pizza and beer she'd hoped to share with him, preferably while naked on a motel-room bed.

  "You want me just to leave you here," she repeated. "To go back to the Lazy Eight tonight. Just...that's it? Good luck? So long? You're on your own? Thanks, but I'm no longer needed?"

  It had been too many hours since Mish had gotten close to a razor, and with all that stubble on his face, he looked positively dangerous.

  Except for his eyes.

  Mish's eyes gave him away.

  And his eyes told her he wanted her to stay.

  But he leaned forward now, to convince her otherwise.