by Кей Хупер
"Are we talking about one person here, one enemy?" Faith asked.
"Somebody who influenced everything from the wreck and my hospital records to Dinah's disappearance? Maybe even what happened in Seattle?"
Bishop said, "There may be one person behind everything — always assuming it's all connected — but there'd have to be more than one person involved."
"Aren't you the man who told me once that true conspiracies are almost as rare as hen's teeth?" Kane asked.
"Yeah. But note that I said almost. They do happen. And if Dinah was telling you the truth when she was working on a story involving business, politics, and something criminal, then I'd say that's probably what we have here."
"How could a story like that have any connection to me?" Faith asked.
"That," Kane said, looking at her broodingly, "is the question. And we have to find the answer."
Bishop checked his watch and got to his feet.
"There's a flight out just after six. I'll head for home tonight, and if they don't put me on another plane before I can unpack, I'll see what I can find out about that restricted file tomorrow."
Faith was a little surprised. "Didn't I hear you say you weren't leaving until tomorrow?"
"That was the plan. But something came up." He didn't explain further.
Faith suddenly heard the whisper of a not-quite alien voice in her mind.
He wouldn't leave if he thought I was still alive.
She went absolutely still, conscious of a deep chill as she tried desperately to listen to whatever else that quiet voice might tell her.
But there was nothing else.
Just silence.
"Faith?" Kane's voice now.
She blinked and focused on Bishop. He was staring at her, his sentry eyes narrowed and an arrested expression on his face. As if he knew, as if he'd heard it too...
Faith drew a breath to steady herself and give herself a moment to think. Could she reach Dinah consciously, gain some information that might point them to her or her captors? Until she knew for sure, there was no reason to tell Kane about the voice in her head, no reason to baffle or unnerve anyone else, to try to explain the unexplainable.
"Is anything wrong?" Kane asked her.
"It was nothing," she said, so calm that she nearly convinced herself. "I thought I remembered something, but it slipped away."
Bishop didn't contradict her, but she wondered if he could have.
Faith debated telling Kane about her latest "dream" but decided not to lie because she could see nothing helpful in it either to his search for Dinah or her own search for knowledge of her past. The dream had revealed virtually no detailed information; the area had been too dark and unfamiliar for her to recognize, so she couldn't even provide a location from which Dinah might possibly have disappeared.
Always assuming it had been more than a dream.
That was what worried her most about the dreams and flashes of knowledge at they might well be no more than her imagination coupled with a few lucky guesses. It seemed so incredible that there could be some kind of psychic connection between her and another woman, one so strong that she was actually reliving the other woman's experiences and memories, feeling emotions not her own.
Hearing a voice in her head that belonged to someone else.
How could she believe such a thing?
And yet she did. Despite her worry and nagging uncertainty, she believed that a connection between her and Dinah did exist. She didn't know how or why that bond had formed, but she believed it was very real. If she could only figure out a way to use it to find Dinah ... But she seemed as unable to control that as she was to find memories of her own in the blankness of her mind. The helplessness was maddening. And sitting around doing nothing wasn't helping.
She could use her brain, though, couldn't she?
When Kane returned from seeing Bishop off in a cab to the airport, Faith was sitting on the couch with a legal pad and the small address book she had brought from her apartment.
Before Kane could ask what she was doing, she picked up the phone and placed a call to the women's clinic. It took several minutes of talking her way patiently past a couple of staff members and then her personal doctor's answering service, but she finally reached her doctor. She made an office appointment for the following day.
Kane said when she hung up, "So she'll see you tomorrow?"
Faith nodded. "And have all my records ready so she can fill me in on my life — the medical part of it, at least. She wasn't surprised about the accident, although she didn't say how she'd heard about it."
Kane nodded and gathered up all the notes and the police report they had been going over earlier. He saw her turn another few pages of the address book and frown down at an entry. "Find something?"
She shook her head half-consciously. "I'm not sure. In the in case of emergency section, there's an address and a phone number, but nothing to identify who or what it is."
"Local number?"
"There's no area code." She met his gaze, then picked up the phone. "One way to find out."
It rang three times before a brisk, female voice on the other end announced, "Haven House."
The name meant nothing to her, but given where she'd found the number, Faith thought surely someone there would recognize her name. So, tentatively, she said, "This is Faith Parker."
There was a moment of silence, then the woman exclaimed in surprise,
"Faith? The last we heard, you were still in a coma."
Faith didn't state the obvious. Instead, she said, "I just came home this past week."
"And you're okay? I mean..."
Faith barely hesitated. "I'm fine physically, but I seem to be having some memory problems. Forgive me, but I don't remember who you are."
"This is Karen." The answer came readily enough, but wariness had crept into that brisk tone.
Faith jotted the name down on her legal pad. "So we knew ... know each other?"
"Of course. You probably spent more time here than in your own apartment up until the last few months. We always kept a bed ready for you, in case you wanted to stay."
Puzzled, Faith said, "I'm afraid I don't understand. Just what's Haven house?" She was thinking that perhaps it was a bed-and-breakfast, something like that.
The truth came as a definite surprise.
"It's a shelter," Karen replied, even more wary now. "A shelter for abused women."
Faith added that information to her notes automatically, and it was only as she watched her pen moving across the page that she realized she was writing with her right hand. She transferred the pen to her left hand, confused both by her actions and by what she was hearing.
"A shelter. Did I work there? As a volunteer?"
"You helped out when and how you could, same as the rest of us."
Karen's voice hardened slightly.
"Look, if you really are Faith and what you've told me is the truth, I'm sorry but I can't tell you anything else over the phone. We have to be careful here. Too many of us are in hiding."
"I understand." Faith wished that she did. "May I... is it all right if I come over there? I have the address." She recited it, just to make sure what was in her book was correct.
"Our doors are always open to women," Karen said. "But in case you've forgotten the rules — no men. No exceptions."
"I'll remember. Thank you, Karen."
"Don't mention it."
Faith cradled the receiver slowly.
"What kind of shelter?" Kane asked immediately.
"For abused women. And they know me there."
Faith felt peculiar just saying the words.
"But she wouldn't tell you anything else over the phone? "
"No. Understandable, I suppose. I need to go over there and talk to them. Now, today. I don't know if there's a connection to Dinah, but..."
"She did a story on a women's shelter," Kane remembered suddenly."Conrad, her financial manager, said she donated mo
ney." He paused. "If she donated her time as well, or went there at all, she never mentioned it."
"I don't think she would have. Judging by what Karen said to me, being secretive about the shelter was encouraged." She looked down at the entry in her address book. "I didn't even name it in my book."
Kane nodded, accepting that, then looked at his watch. "Lets go, then. They might not let me in, but I can make sure you get there and back safely."
Faith didn't argue. But when they reached the shelter — which turned out to be a large, pleasant old house in a quiet suburban neighborhood — she realized her visit might take some time and doubted Kane's patience to sit and wait for her.
"You said you wanted to talk to Richardson about that police report," she reminded him. "Why don't you go do that while I see the people here? If we divide the work, we're more likely to find out something useful quickly." She thought she hardly needed to tell him that, but did anyway because she knew he was reluctant to leave her there.
Kane jotted down the number of his cell phone and gave it to her. "If I'm not waiting out here when you get ready to leave, call me."
Faith nodded. She got out of the car and went to the front door of the house, conscious, as she rang the bell, of the closed-circuit security camera positioned near the entrance.
The door was opened by a tall, very thin woman of about thirty-five, with dark hair already going gray.
When she spoke after a long, steady look, it was with the brisk voice she had used on the phone.
"So it is you. Good to see you, Faith."
Faith went in, wondering, now that she was there, just what she was going to ask this woman or anyone else there besides a wistful "Who am I? Do you know?"
The house was fairly quiet, even for a Sunday afternoon. She heard, somewhere upstairs, the faint sounds of children laughing and talking, and someone softly — and inexpertly — playing a piano nearby.
"Let's talk in my office before you see any of the others," Karen suggested, obviously still feeling protective of the shelter and its inhabitants.
Faith was agreeable, and moments later found herself sitting in a small, cluttered, windowless office that had probably once been little more than a closet. The gracious old home showed plenty of signs of recent renovation, but it was clear the money had been spent where it would do the most good, the comfort of the director obviously far down on the list.
"I've been thinking about it," Faith said as Karen went around the desk and sat behind it, "and if you need someone to verify what I claim about the memory loss, I'm sure my doctor will explain everything."
Karen's sharp brown eyes softened. "That won't be necessary. I believe you. Besides, I've known you more than a year, Faith, and one thing I'm sure of is that you'd never do anything to harm this shelter or the women and children who depend on it."
"How did I ... get involved here?" Faith wasn't sure she wanted the answer, but knew she had to ask "The same as the rest of us." Karen's smile was faint and brief. "In your case, an ex-husband."
Faith swallowed, aware of a chill but no memories till no memories.
"Do you know his name? What happened between us?"
Karen shook her head. "Those are the kinds of questions we don't ask around here. And you never offered to talk about it, beyond saying you'd divorced him and that he worked somewhere out on the West Coast."
"Did I come here because I was afraid of him?"
"I think you came here initially because your doctor believed you needed to know there was some place in Atlanta where you'd be safe. That's common among abuse victims, the need to have a safe place. Also, I think, because you'd been at a shelter where you used to live, and it helps to spend time with people who understand what you've been through."
Faith wished she understood — or felt what she thought she should feel.
But she didn't remember being frightened or hurt by anyone, much less a husband.
Though that would explain several small scars she had found on her body, she realized.
Trying to concentrate, she said, "So you don't know much about my past?"
"We try to live in the present here. You may have talked more to the others, but this is considered a temporary shelter, and we have a fairly high turnover rate. I'm afraid there aren't many still here who'd know you. Andrea and Katie, maybe Eve. I can't think of anyone else."
"I suppose you wouldn't consider giving me the names and current addresses of any of the women I might have confided in months ago?"
"Against the rules. I'm sorry, Faith."
"No, I understand." She said. "If I could talk to the women who did know me, I'd be very grateful. But I also wanted to ask you about Dinah Leighton."
Karen's thin face tightened. "God, that's just awful, her disappearing like that. When it first happened we all wondered about that guy she was involved with — but then we would, wouldn't we? Not exactly an unbiased group here."
It was the first time it had occurred to Faith that Kane might have been suspected of involvement in Dinah's disappearance. Slowly, she said, "Did the police think he might have ... hurt her?"
"The usual speculation from the media, as I recall, but I don't believe the police ever considered him a serious suspect. According to the newspapers, his movements were pretty well accounted for during the time they think she vanished, and nobody could offer even the whisper of a motive why he might have wanted to get rid of her. She wasn't afraid of him; I knew that and so did everyone else."
"How did you know?"
"She didn't have that look in her eyes." Karen's smile was a little sad. "the one we all see in the mirror and recognize instantly in another abused woman. The one you don't have anymore."
That startled her. "I don't?"
"It's how I knew you really had lost your memory. You don't remember being hurt, Faith. You don't remember the fear, the humiliation, the shame. You don't remember cowering the way we've all cowered while a man used his strength and his rage as weapons."
Faith had another realization — that there were some things in her past she hoped she never remembered. But before she could comment, Karen continued.
"Dinah had never experienced that either. And though she didn't talk much about Kane Macgregor, what she did say was pretty clear evidence that she cared about him."
Faith wanted to stay on that subject, but she knew all too well hers was a personal curiosity, that it wouldn't help them to find Dinah. And they had to find Dinah, they had to.
Soon. Before it was too late.
"How well do you know Dinah?" she asked, consciously using the present tense.
The director considered the question. "In some ways, I knew... know her quite well. In other ways, I'm not so sure. She was intelligent, compassionate, unusually generous. She was easy to confide in and kept other people's secrets as well as she kept her own. But I couldn't tell you anything about her past, or about what she did or where she went when she wasn't here." Karen paused. "She came here to do a story on the shelter months ago, and after her job was done she kept coming, volunteering her time, donating money. She met you here."
Faith stiffened. "She did?"
"Yeah. And it was very unusual, the way you took to each other right off. An instant bond. I remember that first day, you sat on the front steps and talked for hours. I asked you about it later, and you said that for the first time in your life you were beginning to believe in reincarnation, because Dinah must have been very close to you at some point in your existence, and yet you two had never met before. You said she was the only person you could ever remember trusting instantly and totally."
Faith thought about that for a moment. "Was I... did I claim to be psychic in any way?"
Karen's eyebrows shot up. "You never did to me. You were always very down-to-earth, even laughed at yourself for considering that reincarnation might be possible."
"What about Dinah?"
"Never heard anything like that from her, either."
Which
, Faith thought, meant nothing. Dinah had clearly kept the "sections" of her life separate as far as she was able. What Faith was still unsure of was which section of Dinah's life she had belonged in: the humanitarian section where a shelter held abused women whom Dinah had clearly felt sympathy for, or the work section where there had been a story that might have endangered them both.
"Did she spend much time here right before she disappeared?" she asked finally.
"No, we hadn't seen her in weeks. In fact, we hadn't seen her until just after your accident, when she came to tell us what had happened. We wanted to send flowers or visit, but she discouraged us from doing either."
"She did?"
Karen nodded. "Said you were In a coma and the doctor thought more visitors wouldn't be advisable, that she'd keep us informed. She came by a few times, and then ... we never saw her again. Things got hectic here, the way they usually do, and ... time passed."
And Faith had been forgotten. She understood that, even though it caused her a pang, and managed a smile.
"I'm sorry, Faith. You and I weren't close, but I should have been a better friend."
"Don't worry about it. One good thing about having no memory is that the slings and arrows hardly hurt at all. Karen, may I see those women who might have talked to me?"
"Katie's the only one here today, I'm afraid. That's her trying to play the piano. Her mother, Andrea, made the mistake of letting her ex get too close a couple of days ago, and now she's in the hospital. As for Eve, she's out of town visiting relatives. Should be back any day now, though."
Faith was getting used to disappointment. She listened for a moment to the distant, inexpert piano notes. "I gather Katie is a child. How old?"
"Seven, though she seems older." Karen's sad smile returned. "They all grow up too fast in this house. But you can talk to her. She always liked you, as I recall."