STOLEN MEMORY

by Virginia Kantra

  Was. Wasn't. Past tense.

  Simon lost his breath. Inhaled carefully. "Do you think he's dead?"

  Her mouth dropped open. She snapped it closed. "Dead? No."

  Okay, wrong question. He had no idea how to engage a woman in a discussion of her personal life. He couldn't remember ever wanting to before. Hell, he couldn't remember anything. But he did know that when one hypothesis failed, you tried another.

  "So what's the problem? Why won't you speak with him?"

  She turned to the water, for once not meeting his eyes. The wind flung bits of hair around her face, obscuring her expression. "I should have said he won't talk to me."

  He was missing something. Some fact, some variable, that would make sense of her words.

  "Fine. Why won't your father talk to you?"

  "Because he still hasn't forgiven me for getting knocked up in high school." She turned to look at him then, her face faintly flushed and perfectly composed. "He hasn't talked to me in ten years."

  Simon still didn't get it. He had his missing data; he just couldn't make it fit the equation. He tried to picture Laura, pregnant at seventeen, trying to find her way between an unforgiving father and an irresponsible lover. But the image didn't compute with the cool-eyed, competent detective sitting in front of him.

  I got over it. I am over it.

  Maybe, he thought.

  "So even after ten years, you still think you know him well enough to rule him out as a suspect?"

  Her chin stuck out. "Yes. Pete Swirsky doesn't accept mistakes or excuses. Everything is right or wrong with him. Black or white. If he was angry enough, he might have hit you. But he'd never have robbed you."

  Simon's blood ran cold with possibility and then hot with anger.

  "Did he ever hit you?"

  Her shoulder jerked. "What does that have to do with anything?"

  It didn't. But it mattered to him. She mattered.

  The awareness sat oddly on him, like a suit jacket that didn't quite fit. But he couldn't shrug it off.

  He made an effort to speak evenly. "I'm trying to figure out why you're so eager to defend him."

  The chin went up another notch. "I don't like to see the department make a mistake. And whatever is between us, the guy is still my father."

  "Too bad he doesn't feel the same way."

  "I don't care what he feels," Laura said flatly. "I do my job."

  Simon thought she cared more than she let on. But maybe her stubborn faith in her father was the ultimate payback for his lack of faith in her.

  "That's all anyone can ask of you," Simon said.

  "Yeah, well, speaking of which…" She got to her feet, brushing her hands on the thighs of her jeans. Nervous? Or dismissive? He didn't know her well enough to tell. "I should get back to it."

  He was surprisingly reluctant to see her go. "Don't you have the day off?"

  "Monday, yeah. But—"

  "Stay for lunch."

  She looked almost flustered. "I don't want to be a bother."

  "It's no bother," he assured her. "Quinn does the cooking."

  Her hands stilled. Her head came back up. "That's what I meant. I don't want to be a bother to your butler."

  "You need to talk to him about that guest list," Simon said.

  "Right. But—"

  "If we're going to convince him we're romantically involved, he's going to have to see us doing something more than argue on the deck," Simon said smoothly.

  "Maybe we could sell tickets," Laura grumbled. But she sat back down.

  It was a small concession. But he was unaccountably pleased by it.

  He pressed the intercom button he'd discovered by the tall French doors. "Two for lunch, Quinn."

  "Where's your brother?" Laura asked.

  "He returned to Chicago this morning."

  It had been a relief to be rid of Dylan's sharp eyes and barbed conversation. But the big house felt even emptier after he'd gone.

  Laura stood again and prowled restlessly to the railing. Simon stayed where he was, admiring the way she moved. "Are you sure there's enough food?"

  "Quinn will take care of it."

  She snorted.

  "He does his job, too," Simon said mildly. "But if you're concerned-—or very hungry—I can send him into town to restock the refrigerator."

  "You don't shop in town," she said. "You haul all your supplies in from Chicago."

  He filed the fact away, one more idiosyncrasy to be learned and dealt with. "Is that a problem?"

  She straightened from the rail, her clear brown eyes gauging the seriousness of his question. "It can be. Some of the local merchants really feel the pinch in the off season. It doesn't help when the town's wealthiest resident buys his groceries someplace else."

  "I didn't know," Simon said.

  Or hadn't cared.

  He didn't much like that possibility, but he was still a scientist. He couldn't pick and choose his data to support whatever theory of himself he wanted.

  "Well, now you do," Laura said lightly. "Can we eat? I'm starved."

  They went into the long, polished dining room. The first thing Laura did was grab her place setting and slide it closer to Simon's. The table immediately shrank to more human proportions. Why hadn't he thought of doing that when Dylan was here?

  "Man, this is great," she said after Quinn had served them. Thin slices of cold smoked salmon rested on a bed of greens decorated with finely chopped egg and onion, crisp curls of butter and triangles of bread. "No wonder you don't cook."

  "I can cook," Simon said, surprising them both. He saw strips of red and yellow peppers against a scrubbed chopping block, and the wide silver knife in his own hand. It wasn't much. Barely a memory. But his heart pounded.

  To quiet it, he said, "I just don't take the time usually. What about you?"

  "Same thing. No time and nobody to appreciate it." Laura stopped piling lox on rye long enough to grin at him with that sharp, disarming honesty he admired. "Plus, I'm a lousy cook."

  "With a name like Baker?"

  Her laugh slipped out. "Yeah. It doesn't seem right, does it? But there was never anybody around to teach me. You?"

  "I…" He fished for another image, a memory, but there was nothing. Frustration tightened his mouth.

  "It's all right," she said quietly. "It'll come eventually."

  "Maybe it won't." There was a hollow inside him, keener than hunger. "Maybe I don't remember anyone because there's no one to remember. Cooking is all measurements and formulas anyway. I probably taught myself from books."

  Saying it made it feel real. Feel right. He could almost be that boy beside the bed, wedged where no one could see him, his back to the cool plaster and a book on his knee.

  Simon? Simon, come down and meet your new mother.

  "Simon?" Disoriented, he looked down at Laura's hand on his forearm and then up into her concerned eyes. "You okay?"

  "Fine."

  He wasn't fine. He felt dizzy, suspended between Simon past and Simon present, swinging between the needy, lonely boy he'd been and the self-sufficient scientist he'd become. Only Laura's hand on his arm anchored him.

  Quinn came in with a plate of fruit and cookies and went out again.

  Simon waited until he'd gone and then said, "You should bring some stuff over."

  Laura removed her hand to reach for a cookie. He missed her touch. "What kind of stuff?"

  "Clothes. A toothbrush. Stuff," he repeated. What did he know about what a woman needed? "To convince people we're actually involved."

  "You really think Quinn is poking through your closet and medicine cabinet for clues to your love life?"

  He had no idea. It was obvious he'd chosen to live his life uncluttered. Unencumbered. But he found he liked the thought of Laura's things in his house.

  "It's possible," he said stiffly.

  Laura bit into a cookie. Chocolate. It left a tiny smear at the corner of her mouth. "Okay."

  He watched her t
ongue chase that elusive taste of chocolate, wishing he could lick it off for her. "Okay, what?"

  "Okay, I'll bring a few things over. Do you like stuffed animals?"

  "Stuffed…" He dragged his gaze from her mouth to meet her eyes, bright with laughter. She was teasing him.

  He exhaled in relief. "Sure."

  "Perk the place up," she offered, straight-faced.

  "It is a little—"

  "Cold? Boring? Sterile?"

  "—impersonal in here," he admitted.

  Laura glanced around his beige-on-beige decor, all blank walls and clean, bare surfaces, without even the splash of color that hung over the fireplace. "Pictures would help."

  "Fine. Bring me a picture."

  Hold on. Just because she'd agreed to the girlfriend thing didn't mean she would roll over for him. "I'm not your personal shopper, Ford. Buy your own artwork."

  "No, a real picture," he said impatiently, like he was a shift commander and she was a not-very-bright patrolman. "Of you. For my office."

  Oh.

  Laura nibbled her lip. Should she be flattered? Or should she chalk his request up to that amazing consider-all-options, cover-all-bases mind?

  "You don't seem like the kind of guy who keeps a picture of his girlfriend on his desk."

  "That's what would make it so convincing."

  Maybe.

  "Okay," she agreed. "As long as you don't already have another woman stashed away somewhere in a silver frame…"

  His expression shifted. His eyes shuttered.

  Ha, she thought. Gotcha. But under the satisfaction she felt something very close to a pang.

  "What did you just remember? Ex-wife? Girlfriend?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  "But something," she guessed.

  "One picture," he snapped. "Upstairs. Do you want to see it?"

  "Is this like, 'come look at my etchings'?" But she pushed away from the table and followed him up the stairs.

  This time, instead of turning right toward his office, they turned left. Two doors interrupted the flow of this corridor: a linen closet and, there on the end, the master suite.

  During her earlier search of the house, Laura had barely been in the room long enough to notice the hardwood floors, the charcoal gray walls, the king-size bed under the supersize skylight. Okay, so she hadn't missed that bed. She wasn't blind.

  But she hadn't paid attention to the photograph on his dresser. Her mistake. Shoving her hands in her pockets, she studied it now, aware of Simon brooding beside her.

  The subject was white, female, mid to late teens. With makeup it was hard to say for sure. She had the soft cheeks of childhood, a mouth inclined toward sulking and Simon's eyes. Her hair, dyed blond, was chopped at chin-length, and a row of tiny silver hoops decorated one ear. Laura counted them. Eight.

  "Who is she?"

  "I don't know."

  And it bothered him. She could see how much in the set of his shoulders, the rigid line of his mouth. "I could find out for you," she said.

  "How?"

  "Tax records. Birth records. Driver's license, maybe. She looks old enough to have one."

  "Do you have time for that?"

  Not really. "I have the rest of the afternoon."

  He shook his head. "It's not enough."

  She wanted to help him. "I could get lucky. Although a search will take longer if she doesn't have your name."

  She didn't point out how much the girl resembled him. He could see that for himself.

  His face was set as stone.

  Gently, Laura said, "If she's out there, I'll find her."

  "Finding her is not your top priority," he said stiffly.

  His I-am-a-rock routine was pissing her off. She wasn't looking to take on his problems. She had plenty of her own. But he'd asked for her help, hadn't he? And she was drawn to respond by some reluctant recognition of soul, by a need more compelling than attraction, more dangerous than sex. "If locating somebody who looks enough like you to be your daughter is not a top priority, what is?" she asked.

  Simon drew himself up. "I appreciate your suggestions. But it's not my family you should be searching for. It's yours."

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  By the time Laura drove up to the gates of Lumen Corp Technologies industrial park, she was hyped up and anxious and in a seriously bad mood.

  Her fault, for ordering the triple venti mocha latte on the drive down from Eden.

  Her fault, for pulling strings and calling in favors to get the afternoon off, and then wasting hours on lost opportunities and missed connections.

  Simon's fault, for making her feel the whole damn trip was necessary.

  The uniformed guard at the gate leaned through her car window. "Ms. Baker? Laura Baker?"

  Not "detective," Laura noted. Simon obviously didn't want to advertise her police connection.

  She hadn't spoken to him in two days. But despite that, despite the fact that she'd stalked off from lunch on Monday in tight-lipped silence, he'd still given her name to his security people. He still took her cooperation for granted. Bastard.

  Or maybe he trusted her to do her job.

  She handed the guard her ID, choosing her driver's license instead of the leather holder with her police identification.

  He studied it, studied her, before handing back her wallet. Laura flushed. She'd accepted this gig. Resigned herself to it. But she felt naked without her shield, and she hated all this pretend girlfriend stuff.

  She scowled. Something to remember next time she was tempted to lock lips with Simon Ford.

  "Very good, Ms. Baker," the guard said. "Here's your parking pass. Visitors' lot is on the right. Someone will be there to meet you."

  "Thanks."

  She clipped the pass to her rearview mirror. As she drove away, she spotted a second security camera mounted on the outside of the gate house, recording her license plate number.

  A smooth black ribbon of road wound through an immaculately tended landscape edged with bike paths and crossed with trails. The industrial park was twenty miles south west of downtown, between Midway Airport and the Argonne National Lab. Laura's lip curled in a purely defensive sneer. Simon probably paid more in property taxes than she made in a year.

  The road curved around a stand of trees and emptied into two parking lots. And Laura's sneer dissolved in amazement.

  Simon's headquarters were built into the side of a hill. One long outer wall of glass rose like a cliff from a reflecting pool, its double row of windows glinting like precious metal in the afternoon sun. Even the standard corporate landmarks—a flag, a sign, the massive glass-and-steel entrance—couldn't detract from the power and imagination of the place.

  Laura parked her car, feeling as though she'd tumbled into some high tech fairy tale. Alice down the rabbit hole, maybe. The king under the hill. She reached into the back seat for her brown leather jacket and shrugged into it, adjusting it to cover the holster on her hip.

  Her guide was waiting on the flagstone walk. Only instead of a white rabbit or a surly dwarf, her escort was a steel-haired woman in a red power suit and an ID badge on a silver cord.

  Laura whistled silently. Even if she'd reviewed the dress code before she drove out here, she didn't have anything in her closet that fit these guidelines.

  The woman smiled. Her lipstick was the exact same shade as her suit and her shoes. "Ms. Baker?"

  Laura jammed her hands into her jacket pockets. "That's me."

  "You'll need this." The woman handed Laura a bright yellow visitor's badge with the Lumen Corp logo in the background.

  Laura studied it before slipping it over her head. "Quite a security system you've got here."

  "Yes."

  "Will this let me go anywhere in the building?"

  "Only in the public areas."

  "Right. So if I wanted, like, a tour, I'd have to…"

  "You would need to be accompanied by an employee
with the appropriate identification and coded passcard. This way, please."

  Laura sighed. She hadn't really expected to hear anything different. One of the reasons her father looked guilty was that the lab could only be breached by someone with an appropriate passcard. She had requested a copy of the lab's computer access log and a list of people who had been issued the magnetic passcards from the security company. But since Denko had taken her off the case, that list had gone to Palmer.

  Her guide moved briskly through the smoked glass doors. Laura followed, trying not to gawk. This soaring, sunlit entrance was a far cry from the Eden Police Department's shabby veneer-and-linoleum lobby.

  A guard loomed on her left. Instinctively she stepped back and bumped into another guard on her right. One old, one young, both massive in matching black uniforms. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

  "Step this way, please."

  She planted her feet. "What's going on?"

  Tweedledee grabbed her arm. She considered jabbing her elbow into his gut and slamming her boot down on his instep; decided against it. He was just doing his job. And she was…

  Ouch. She winced as he tightened his grip. She was getting mauled in the process.

  "This way," he insisted.

  Ms. Power Suit looked distressed, the first flicker of real feeling Laura had seen on her face. "Ms. Baker is Mr. Ford's personal guest."

  "Yeah? Well, Mr. Ford's personal guest just set off the metal detector," Tweedledee—the older guard—said grimly.

  "Take off your jacket, please," Tweedledum said from her other side. Laura glanced at his name tag. Dwayne something.

  "You're new here, aren't you?" Laura's guide asked. "Mr. Ford is not going to be pleased that his guest was inconvenienced."

  "Mr. Ford isn't going to be happy if his guest is packing heat, either."

  Damn. They were attracting attention from all the shiny young people behind the desk. Laura could just imagine their reactions when rent-a-cop here discovered the sub compact Glock at her hip.

  "Let's go someplace private. Dwayne," she suggested. "And we can—"

  He brushed against her, too close for comfort. Too close, period. He swore. "She's armed."

  The older guard spun her into the glass wall. The impact jarred her, shoulder, hip and thigh. Power Suit gave a distressed little cry as the guard grabbed Laura's forearms and wrenched her arms over her head.