Not Without You

by Taylor, Janelle

  A few minutes later, Mitch appeared with plans in hand. By the obvious amount of effort and time he’d put into the project, Kelsey could tell Trevor had been seriously working on this acquisition for some time.

  It was difficult for her to keep her mind on the work in front of her, and by the time she’d listened to both Mitch and Trevor discuss what the overall plan should be from ten different directions, she felt slightly depressed.

  After glancing at her watch, she decided it was time to go. “Trevor, I’ve got to get to the hospital. I’ll be at work right on time tomorrow.”

  “The hospital? Now?” He looked up from the drawings.

  “He is my husband,” she pointed out. Without another word she headed back toward her office.

  Detective Newcastle wore the bland expression of a man who’d either seen too much or who simply was too tired to muster up enthusiasm over anything. His tie hung too short, leaving an expanse of belly stretched tight between a white shirt and navy blue jacket. He sat in a chair with his hands on his thighs and regarded Jarred.

  “I would prefer to talk to you alone, Mr. Bryant.”

  “I would prefer that my wife stay,” Jarred responded, ignoring the rustle of Kelsey’s skirt as she tried to rise from her own chair. He threw her a look. Don’t go, he pleaded silently.

  Slowly she sat back down, crossing her legs and hugging her arms around her chest. Today she wore a black skirt and a jacket, but the drape-collared, cinnamonshaded blouse beneath that ensemble added life and a much needed dash of pure color to the room. Her raintinged hair looked tousled and luscious, and as if divining his thoughts, she self-consciously finger combed the tresses.

  “I understand you don’t remember anything about the accident,” Newcastle said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t remember setting up a date with Mr. Rowden to go flying?”

  “No.”

  “You were friends with Mr. Rowden?”

  Jarred looked to Kelsey for help. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, they weren’t friends,” she said a bit tightly. “Just acquaintances.”

  The detective turned to Kelsey. “I understand you are close to the Rowden family.” “When my parents died, they became my family,” she said simply.

  “You were a friend of Mr. Chance Rowden’s then.”

  “Yes…”

  “What is your investigation focusing on?” Jarred interrupted. It made him uncomfortable to talk about Kelsey’s relationship with the Rowdens. There was something else there. Some furtive memory that kept slipping in and out of range.

  Suddenly he made the connection. A conversation between Will and himself. Not long ago. In his office. Will pacing to and fro enough to cause the newly installed carpet to fuzz up in clumps.

  “And along with everything else, she’s been stealing money for years. Giving it to that druggie friend of hers, Rowden. Thousands of dollars, Jarred. You can’t just sit by and say nothing. Call her on it. Damn it all! The woman’s a thief. Your wife is a thief! “

  Newcastle took his time answering. Eventually, as if coming to some carefully thought-out decision, he said, “The fuel line of your Cessna was tampered with. The engine eventually starved and you dropped out of the sky.”

  Silence followed those cold, careful words. Jarred inwardly shuddered at the mental vision, but he still possessed no memory of those awful moments before the plane crashed. It could have happened to someone else for all he knew, except for the injuries that kept him bedridden.

  “You’re saying someone purposely did it,” Kelsey said in a low voice. Her eyes were huge as they regarded Newcastle, her mouth grim.

  “Undoubtedly.” He turned back to Jarred. “We’re talking to people who saw you at the airport that day. And we’re checking who had access to the plane. I was hoping you could help in some way. Remember…anything.”

  “I wish I could,” Jarred muttered with feeling.

  “Is there anything you recall that might have some bearing on this?”

  The detective’s tone clearly said he didn’t believe Jarred suffered from amnesia. But ironically, when it came to the accident, Jarred did. And he could only recall bits and pieces of his past—they came to him in blocks of information—and most of them revolved around his relationship with Kelsey and their own marital problems.

  “Any enemies?” Newcastle asked.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have better luck interrogating my family and business associates.” Jarred’s voice was dry. “I seem to be kind of vague on any of that.”

  “Mrs. Bryant?” He turned to Kelsey.

  “Yes?”

  “Does your husband have any enemies?”

  Kelsey blinked rapidly, a sign that she was thinking fast. Jarred knew these little tricks, these signs, these idiosyncrasies, but he’d be damned if he could remember anything else.

  I want her back, he thought suddenly, fiercely. I want my wife back.

  “Maybe business rivals? I don’t know. No one who would really want to harm him. Could…” She hesitated.

  The detective leaned toward her encouragingly.

  “Could they have been after Chance instead? He was— um—involved in drugs. A user mostly, but he might have sold some? I don’t really know.”

  “We know about Mr. Rowden,” the detective said.

  “I just thought he might be a more likely target. I guess that doesn’t really make sense. This crime is too huge.”

  “No, Mrs. Bryant. Anything’s possible. Mr. Rowden’s background is being checked out, too.” Newcastle hesitated a moment, rubbed his palms together, then laid them on his thighs once more. “Is there anything you remember, in the days prior to the accident?” he asked Kelsey. “Something you noticed?”

  “I… no. I don’t… live with Jarred. I didn’t see him… much.”

  “Did you see Mr. Rowden?”

  When Kelsey blushed to the roots of her hair, Jarred instantly panicked. She’d seen Chance? She’d met with him? What? What? It was all he could do to keep from screaming out the questions.

  Kelsey managed to meet the detective’s gaze and say in a calm voice, “Chance came to see me the night before the accident. He seemed to want to tell me something, but I thought-it had to do with my marriage. He knew that…it wasn’t going well. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it and he… hugged me.” Her voice broke off. “And then he told me good-bye.”

  Jarred’s confidence melted at the tender longing in her voice. She loved him. She still loved him. His wife loved Chance Rowden and even the man’s death hadn’t altered that fact.

  She probably hates you, old buddy. You killed her lover. It’s your fault.

  “He didn’t give you any indication that he was meeting your husband on Sunday for a plane trip? Nothing?” The detective sounded skeptical.

  “No.” Kelsey shook her head. “He was just really anxious about me. Or at least I thought it was about me. I don’t know anymore.”

  Jarred listened, detached, as the detective asked Kelsey a few more questions along the same line, but she continually shook her head in bafflement. Jarred felt old and used up. He wanted Detective Newcastle to leave and Kelsey to stay.

  When the detective rolled to his feet, Kelsey stood also. Jarred shot her a look. “Are you leaving?” he asked.

  Thinking Jarred was addressing him, Detective Newcastle nodded. “If anything comes up, I’ll let you know.” He rambled toward the door.

  “Kelsey?” Jarred demanded, seeing her reach for her purse.

  “Mmm-hmm?” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “You have to leave?”

  “Yes, I have some things to do. I’m sure your parents will be stopping by soon anyway and probably Will, too.” Now she shot him a quick, faint smile. “You’ll be well taken care of.”

  “Don’t leave. Please.”

  He hated begging. It didn’t sit well with him and he was pretty sure it never had. But he couldn’t let her go. He c
ouldn’t.

  Kelsey gazed at him in consternation. “Oh, Jarred,” she sighed.

  “I just want you to stay.”

  He could see the internal battle she waged, and he sensed it all had to do with their past history. “You look exhausted,” she finally told him. “I feel guilty keeping you awake.”

  “I couldn’t sleep now if I wanted to. Too much information.”

  “I guess Dr. Alastair lifted the ban on your being kept in the dark. I’m surprised.”

  “Well, I just think that was an experiment that failed.” Jarred wished he could find a way to draw her closer to the bed. “What difference does it make? If I can’t remember, someone will have to tell me eventually. And if I do remember, so what? It’s still the same outcome.”

  Kelsey almost smiled. “Your practicality hasn’t changed, I see. You’ve still got that in spades.”

  “You make it sound like a bad thing.”

  “No. It’s just…a thing.”

  He could feel weariness entering his system like some kind of relentless virus. Soon it would overtake him, and the thought infuriated him. He needed this time with Kelsey. Before his parents and his half brother and anyone else descended upon him, talking and demanding and secretly seeking to override him. He might not remember everything, but emotions, sensations, and hidden agendas were as clear to him as Lucite.

  “Have you thought about what I asked?”

  “Umm…” Her hands tightened on the strap of her purse. “And that was?”

  “Moving back in with me.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I haven’t thought about it.” She bent her head, then eyed him directly. “Okay, that’s a lie. Yes, I’ve thought about it, but no, I don’t think it’s possible.”

  Her eyes were so expressive he felt lost in them. “Could you try?” he asked, his jaw tightening in spite of himself at the effort to cajole.

  “Jarred, you just don’t know what you’re asking! We don’t even… talk to each other anymore. You don’t like me.”

  “I think I like you very much.”

  Kelsey choked in disbelief. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not my husband. And I don’t mean that just because of this accident. You’re just not you, and I never knew who you were anyway!”

  Emotion radiated from her in waves. Jarred felt that insidious weakness flooding his system and silently pleaded with the powers that be for more time. “Then why did you marry me in the first place?”

  “Because”—Kelsey swallowed hard, fighting sensations that threatened to rob her of her strength—”I loved you.”

  It was all Jarred needed to hear. His lips faintly smiled and he closed his eyes. “Don’t leave,” he whispered again, then fell instantly asleep.

  Kelsey gazed down at his unconscious form, her gut churning and her foolish heart singing. Looking at her, one would only have seen a grim countenance and never imagined the emotions bubbling inside. She felt so weird! Almost maternal, yet there were thoughts scampering around the circle of her reason that were darn close to X-rated—and those thoughts filled her with hope and a sudden surge of joy and a flood of desire that made her knees go weak.

  Oh, my God, she thought, afraid.

  She shouldn’t have been so honest. She should have hidden the truth and never admitted why she’d married him. She should have lied for all she was worth. But he’d been so open and straightforward and interested in her that she’d been unable to think!

  “He’s medicated,” she reminded herself beneath her breath. Feeling stifled, she walked from the room, hesitating in the hallway outside. She could hear the faint sound of a television somewhere down the floor. Some talk show on which a man and a woman were screaming at each other. The woman accused the man of cheating on her, and he smugly told her that she was not enough woman for him. The audience reacted in gleeful horror.

  Kelsey pressed her palms to her cheeks. She was hot all over. Sick with a kind of poisonous hope that was somehow eating away at her own common sense. No, no, no! Jarred Bryant did hot want her. He never would— or could—the way she needed to be wanted. She hated what he stood for. Hated that he was a corporate monster who gobbled up family businesses and shared the spoils with his ungrateful, spoiled, and avid family.

  And he’d killed Chance….

  That wasn’t fair. Instantly, her own sense of fair play jumped forward, refusing to let her throw the dreadful blame on him. Hadn’t Detective Newcastle explained about the tampering?

  Suddenly she went cold. Maybe they were after Jarred. She’d said herself that Chance’s problems were too small to warrant that kind of malicious and deadly response. But Jarred—or more accurately Jarred’s company, Bryant Industries—was an ugly blot on the soul of corporate America. Someone might easily want to take out its president and majority stockholder.

  Well, it’s not exactly a blot, she reminded herself. That’s just something you told him when you were hurt and angry. One of your more impassioned moments, Kelsey, my girl.

  Kelsey pushed her hands through her hair and groaned. It was a killer to think back on certain moments in their embattled marriage. She couldn’t blame all the problems on Jarred, much as she’d like to.

  Glancing back inside the room, she recognized how deep Jarred’s sleep was. Don’t leave, he’d begged, but she had a few errands to run. Besides, she couldn’t stay here any longer. The hair on the back of her arms stood up straight from strange emotions, and she just couldn’t stand it one more minute.

  Feeling like a traitor, she hurried down the hallway and away from the stranger who was her husband. But as soon as she stepped outside and gulped rain-choked air, she abruptly twisted around and sped back upstairs, where she stationed herself like a guard at Jarred’s bedside, all the while asking herself what she really thought she was doing, but unable to come up with any clear answers.

  Outside Silverlake, inside a small, slightly dilapidated home with a long, weed-choked, fir-draped driveway, a man examined the fruits of his so-called baking labors. A thin layer of crystals grew from thick goo spread across a remarkably clean countertop. The smell was beyond pungent—a dead giveaway to anyone who’d ever had experience with making crystal methamphetamine. A meth lab, as quoted in the papers, was generally little more than an ordinary kitchen with a few extraordinary ingredients. The risk was that the chemicals sometimes collided and exploded. One had to be careful. Very, very careful.

  The man gazed on in satisfaction, but his thoughts touched on Chance Rowden. Chance—his friend, his compadre, his partner in crime and best buddy when they had still both been normal college students at the University of Washington. Ah, but that was a long time ago and now there wasn’t much to think about but the joy of shrieking along on a crystal meth ride. Except Chance was gone. Killed. Murdered.

  The man shuddered from the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet. He’d heard once that fear was the most powerful of human emotions. Hatred, rage, love, desire, envy… Nothing compared to fear. And fear was what he felt these days. Ever since that corporate suit had walked through the front door and scared the bejesus out of him and Chance.

  It really pissed him off, too. He really wanted to wring the bastard’s corporate neck.

  The shuddering worsened, and he sat down hard on a worn ottoman, which was black leather with tufts of stuffing sticking out around ripped stitching. He chewed his thumbnail furiously. Chance had stared at the stranger through eyes the size of full moons, and the damned suit had smelled the distinctive odor in the room and done the addition.

  “This is where the money goes?” he’d said in a deadly voice.

  Chance had shuffled him out of the place, and the next thing you know, he was dead and gone.

  And that was when the phone calls had started.

  Glancing at the instrument that lay unplugged on the floor, he chewed even more desperately on his nail until his thumb bled. He was sure to end up dead, too, if he didn
’t think of what to do.

  What to do… what to do… what to do…

  Kelsey. Chance’s girl. She was the one to help.

  With sudden energy he leaped to his feet, ran to the bedroom, and threw dirty clothes and sneakers into an army surplus duffel bag. Then he hurried to the kitchen, scraped the precious crystals from their bed, and placed them in a Ziploc bag.

  Hearing an engine, he dashed to the window, his own eyes wide and staring. He could feel them jutting out of his head.

  Coming toward the house was a slow-moving black sedan. God almighty. Or was it a police cruiser? No. No. It was all black. All black.

  Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit!

  Slipping out the back door, he sped into the dusky woods that crept right to the back of his house and he was gone.

  Chapter Four

  The space between memories and dreams was infinitesimally small, Jarred decided, drifting in a twilight world where all he sensed was Kelsey’s presence somewhere in the dim recesses of the room. A blurred line separated memories from dreams and that line seemed to fade in and out. But he was dreaming, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? Still, it felt as if Chance Rowden were close enough to touch.

  No, it was a dream because Jarred was standing in his office, staring down at the scruffy, nervous man, feeling disdain and anger and even jealousy. Jealousy because this man was his wife’s friend and lover. And Chance was talking, rattling on with ever increasing speed. Jarred concentrated on the man’s mouth, intrigued. He was confessing, and it was as if confession were some kind of fuel for his voice. Truths fell from his lips, tumbling one upon another until Jarred’s brain actually hurt from the effort of filing them away.

  ”…none of it was true. I never slept with Kelsey before the wedding. I never even slept with her at all. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. And Kelsey was never, ever a user. You know that. All of it was a lie and Sarah let you think it because she wanted to break you and Kelsey up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’ve got big problems of your own, but they’re not Kelsey. Never Kelsey. But you can smell the problems, can’t you? You can smell them! And they’re here. Right here!”