She'd only been writing for an hour when Barlow stirred, and she had to act quickly. She stuffed the notepad beneath the mattress, and then lay very still.
But it didn't matter. He glanced at his watch, and injected her again. Nonetheless she'd fooled him. And if he was going by his watch, and drugging her at regular intervals, that meant she would wake again before the next injection.
And maybe next time she'd find an opportunity to escape.
Hours—many hours, she suspected—later, she woke again. Sunlight streamed through the hotel windows and splashed over her face. She opened her eyes to slits, and tried to see the room around her without moving her head too much and giving herself away. She could hear Dr. Barlow moving around. Pouring something into a glass, swallowing it. The sounds made her painfully aware of the dryness in her own throat. But she forcibly ignored it, and closed her eyes again when his footsteps came nearer.
"How's the patient doing?" He lifted her wrist, took her pulse, dropped it again, and she let it fall limply to the bed. "Good. Now, you lucky girl, your Senitrate should be here. Guaranteed delivery by noon, you know." He patted her cheek, stinging little slaps no doubt intended to assure him that she was truly unconscious. She never flinched.
"I won't be long," he told her. "And since you seem to have become so devoted to a husband you don't even remember, I believe I've decided that after I erase your memory this time, I'll tell you that you're my wife. You'll stay with me then, won't you, Penny?" He laughed as he walked to the door. "Just think of it. I can create an entire life for you, and you'll believe every word of it. Oh, why didn't I think of it sooner?"
The door opened, closed again. Penny lay very still and listened. She could still hear him breathing. If that wasn't the oldest trick in the book, she didn't know what was. She lay there as limp and lifeless as a rag doll. The second time the door closed, it was for real.
She opened her eyes first, just to make sure. Then she sat up in the bed, dizzy and weak, but so determined she figured the entire U.S. Marine Corps couldn't stop her. She missed her husband, even if he didn't know enough to love her the way he ought to just yet. And she missed her bulldog, dammit. How was she supposed to sleep, tranquilizers or not, without Olive's warm little body curled up close on one side of her?
And Ben's big strong body pressed tight to the other side?
Her heart skipped a beat when she thought of him. Dammit, she wasn't going to give up without a fight, and it might very well be the fight of her life.
She put her feet on the floor and looked around the room. Everything swayed and loomed in and out of focus. Where was the phone? There had to be a phone somewhere, didn't there?
There it was, way over there on the stand by the other bed. She caught hold of the headboard, pulled herself to her feet … and fell to her knees. Okay, fine, she couldn't walk. She'd crawl.
Inch by inch she made her way across the room to where the telephone was. Gripping the stand, she tried to pull herself up again, but the stand tipped and the phone crashed to the floor.
Penny grated her teeth at the noise. Then she sat very still, looking around, listening, half expecting Barlow to come running any second. But he didn't. And she could reach the phone now.
She picked it up, pushed the nine, then the one, then the one again.
But nothing happened.
Blinking in confusion, Penny tried again. Then she rattled the cutoff, but still nothing. No dial tone, nothing. Finally she traced the wire coming out the back of the phone, and saw where it had been cut in half at the middle.
"No," she whispered.
She had no choice now. She had to get out of here. But first…
She had to take precautions. Give Ben some way to find her, in case she didn't make it. As hard as she had to fight to stay awake, she knew with a sickening certainty that she might well pass out before she ever made it to the lobby, and it didn't take a huge imagination to see how Dr. Barlow might find her right there upon his return. He certainly wouldn't leave her alone for very long.
Frantically she looked around the room. Okay, first her paper. She crawled to the bed, tore the top few sheets—the ones she'd filled with her thoughts—from the notepad she'd hidden there, and then stuffed them back underneath for safekeeping. She scribbled a fast, sloppy note on the pad, then tore that sheet free and jammed it into her pocket. Then she scribbled another, and dragged herself to the window. It was an effort to open the thing, but she managed, and then tossed the entire pad out, praying someone would pick it up and see her plea for help.
Almost as an afterthought, she dragged the extra blanket from the foot of the bed, and tossed that out, as well, closing the window on one corner so it flopped in the wind like a flag. But only until it became too soaked with rain to do so anymore. Then it hung limply, plastered to the side of the building, and she thought it must be all but invisible from below. Still, she left it there, and drew the curtains closed so Barlow wouldn't see it right away.
She dragged herself into the bathroom, pulled herself to her feet by gripping the edges of the sink. A message. She'd leave a message, just in case. Lipstick, if only she had some lipstick. Soap. Soap would work. She gripped the tiny bar with the Holiday Inn wrapper on it, and struggled to peel the paper away. Then, bracing one hand on the sink for support, she scraped the soap across the mirror with a shaky hand. "Call police. Been kidnapped. Penny Brand."
Her body shook with the effort of remaining upright so long. But it was done. If she couldn't get away, maybe someone would see this before Barlow did. A maid. Maybe she'd call for help.
Now. Time to go. She'd thought she might get stronger, but she hadn't. In fact the dizziness was swamping her more than it had before. Damn those tranquilizers…
Wait. The tranquilizers. She should get rid of them.
She searched her foggy mind, and recalled Dr. Barlow bending low … on the far side of the bed opposite the one she'd been in. A cabinet. She saw it now, and made her way with excruciating effort across the room to it.
Dropping to her knees, she opened the door. And there she saw several tiny glass vials of the drug he'd been giving her. Anger surged. How dare that bastard do this to her? With one swipe of her hand, the tiny bottles all clattered to the floor. And Penny pulled herself upright, and stomped them to bits.
There. Let the bastard drug her now.
And let him try keeping her captive without the help of his evil little injections, she thought with venom. She'd get out of here. She had too much at stake to lose it all to a madman, even if he was the one responsible for saving her life.
Penny leaned on furniture and slowly made her way to the door. It took time, but she did it. She twisted the knob and pulled the door open. There was a hallway, and closed doors with numbers on each one. And there was a man coming around the corner at the far end. Another guest—help at last! Penny lifted a hand toward him, managed to cry out. "Help me. Please, help me…"
His head came up fast. Then he ran closer, and her blurred vision cleared, and she saw his face.
"No…" she whispered as Barlow closed his hands around her arms. "No!"
Not gently, he shoved her back through the door. Penny managed to tear the ring from her finger as she struggled against him. She dropped it on the carpeted hall before Barlow got her back into the room. Her prison. And she could only wait, and pray he hadn't brought the Senitrate back with him.
They had a lead on the drug, and Ben was frustrated with the way the police were handling it. DEA had been brought in, and their officers were all over the small El Paso post office the package had been addressed to. Ben and his brothers had been pushed aside, told to stay out of the way, despite Garrett's attempts to intervene. The closest they could get to the post office was the coffee shop across the street. Ben sat there in a booth with Adam, watching. There was little else to do right now.
"Barlow would have to be an idiot to walk into that place," Adam said, leaning close.
He was
right, Ben knew. Anyone who'd seen the docile area the day before would know something was up. No less than ten dark-colored sedans lined the street. Unmarked cars, they called them, though the police antennas were obvious to anyone looking. And the men sitting inside the cars watching the post-office door almost unblinkingly were not exactly inconspicuous.
"I can't just sit here, Adam. I have to do something."
"There's nothing to do."
Ben shook his head. "She's here, in this damned town, somewhere."
"But where?" Adam asked, staring out the window.
Ben shook his head. "If Barlow spots the cops, he'll move her. Maybe even decide it's too risky to keep her … alive."
"Ben, don't think that way."
Ben lowered his head, closed his eyes. "I'm getting out of here." He shoved his chair back. Its legs made loud scraping sounds on the floor as he got to his feet.
"To go where? You don't even know where to begin looking, Ben."
"I have to try. It's Penny, for God's sake. She's fighting for her life, dammit, and she's doing it alone." He turned toward the door, but his brother came behind him, not about to let him alone.
"You're beating yourself over the head with guilt, aren't you?"
Ben whirled to face him. "Of course I am! How can I not be? I let her think it was over, Adam, just to soothe my wounded pride. I let her walk out of that dojo when I should have been on my knees begging her to stay, and to hell with what she did or didn't do in the past! God gave me a miracle, and I threw it away. I love her, Adam." He lowered his head, his face contorting in agony. "God, how I love her." He got himself under control, lifted his head again. "I'm going out there, and I'm damned well going to find her." He waited for Adam to argue some more.
Adam said, "I'm going with you."
* * *
Chapter 13
« ^ »
"I should have guessed you'd try something like this!" Barlow's voice was loud and angry, and Penny hit the bed hard when he shoved her toward it.
She said nothing when he loomed over her. But when he reached for another vial of the tranquilizer and saw them all smashed to bits, he looked even more furious. "Damn you! I saved your life!" His eyes narrowed. "Maybe you'd prefer death to life, though. Is that it, Penny? Is that why you're so ungrateful? Do you want to die?"
"You saved my life," she whispered. "And then you stole it from me. You lied to me, told me I had no one when—"
His hand lashed out to slap her face, and the impact knocked her backward on the bed. Then he went silent, staring at her with dead eyes. "We've worked far too hard. I won't let you do this to her!"
And that frightened Penny more than the blow had done. "Do … what … to whom?"
"You're trying to destroy her, aren't you? Well, I won't let you, do you understand? I won't let you!"
"Dr. Barlow," she whispered, "who in the world are you talking about?"
"We're getting out of here," he said. "If you weren't so valuable to my research, Penny, believe me I would leave you behind, just as dead as you would have been if you'd never come to me. But I can't do that. And I can't get the Senitrate." He shook his head sadly. "Believe me when I tell you, this would have been so much easier on you if I could."
He couldn't get the Senitrate. She wanted to ask why, but thought it best to keep quiet. He paced away from her, and Penny scooped several matchbooks from the stand beside her bed and buried them in her pocket. Her face stung, but her head was a bit clearer. Maybe his slap in the face had done more good than harm. She thought she might even be able to stand up without wobbling, maybe even walk now.
"We can take the elevator directly to the garage where I've parked," he said, thinking aloud. "With luck we'll run into no one on the way."
"Wh-where are we going?"
"Away from here. Where there won't be police surrounding the post office waiting for me to show up. Eventually, love, I'll take you back to England with me, but until you're … cooperative—"
"You don't have to drug me," she said quickly. "I'll go along, I swear it."
He smiled grimly at her. "No, you won't. We both know that, don't we, Penny? But you will, once you have enough of the drug in your bloodstream. You'll be as meek as a lamb if I tell you to be."
"Don't be so sure," she told him, glaring. "I wasn't last time, was I?"
His brows rose. "Which is why the dosage will be higher this time, Penny. Much, much higher. I'll make sure the effects are permanent this time."
His words sent a chill through her blood. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked, her voice less hostile than before. It trembled instead. Her heart was breaking, she realized. She'd only just found love, and he was going to take it from her all over again.
"To save lives, Penny. Don't you realize what you are? You're the first patient ever to recover fully from HWS. And it was my treatment that cured you. For years I've worked for this. I won't let you rob me of it now."
She shook her head slowly, seeing for the first time the glint of madness in his eyes. "But you have the cure. You did it—you … you did what no other scientist has been able to do so far. Why do you need me?"
"I have the cure, yes, Penny, but I've explained this to you before. It's failed for other patients. It failed … it failed for my mother."
She caught her breath, and thought perhaps she was finally beginning to understand. "You … you lost your mother."
"Oh, no," he whispered. "She's still with me, Penny. Guiding me, telling me what I have to do. I promised her I'd end HWS forever, and that's a promise I intend to keep."
Penny swallowed hard. So the "she" he'd been ranting about was his dead mother … and he still spoke to her. And she to him. She closed her eyes, wondering if things could get any worse.
"On you," Dr. Barlow went on, "the treatment worked, and there has to be a reason for that. Something in your body chemistry. You should be honored, Penny, to be given an opportunity like this—to save lives, to cure an incurable disease. You'll go down in medical history."
She shivered, and he reached for her. "Come, it's time we left. They're getting too close to us here."
She drew back in fear, and he paused, studied her with bunched brows. "You still don't understand how important this is, do you?"
Shaking his head sadly, he pulled a gun from somewhere beneath his jacket. He pointed it at her. Penny stared at the perfectly round black barrel, and felt her knees go weak all over again.
"I told you this would have been easier for you with the tranquilizer. But you've ruined that. And now I'll have to shoot you, Penny, if you don't do exactly as I say. If you don't think I will carry out that threat, Penny, you will be in for a surprise. Because I will. And unfortunately the same fate will befall anyone who gets in our way. Now up, on your feet, come on."
Swallowing hard, Penny got up.
Adam and Ben had stopped at a dozen hotels in El Paso, talked to the clerks, shown them Penny's photo. And so far nothing had panned out. Ben was scared. Afraid Barlow had already fled, taking Penny with him, and God knew how he'd find her again.
At least Barlow didn't have the Senitrate. Ben clung to that with everything in him as he paced the sidewalk toward the Holiday Inn, Adam at his side.
Adam stopped walking, tugged on Ben's sleeve.
"What?" Ben looked at Adam, saw him craning his neck and then followed his gaze. "What the hell…?"
"Looks like somebody stuck a blanket out the window."
Ben went stiff. "It's a signal. It's Penny!" He ran forward, but Adam was beside him in an instant, gripping his arm, stopping him. His foot came down on a notepad some slob had dropped, and he kicked it aside impatiently.
"Ben, slow down. Let's do this right. Call the police and wait for them before we—"
"And have them show up en masse, ready for a shootout? Dammit, Adam, we don't want to turn this thing into a standoff. Barlow could panic. He could hurt her." The thought made him sick to his stomach. "I'm going up there."
<
br /> Adam looked at Ben, and finally nodded. Then he glanced upward again. "Fourth floor, corner room. Come on."
Together they ran to the entrance. Adam seemed inclined to stop at the desk, but Ben had no such inclination. They'd never give him a key for the asking, and he didn't have time to go into explanations. He took the stairs two at a time, and after a moment of indecision, Adam came running after him. He knew they drew curious glances, and figured the desk clerk was probably calling security right now. He didn't care.
At the fourth-floor landing, he burst into the hall, turned in the direction he knew the room to be and ran all the way to the room at the corner. Then he stood outside the door, terrified of what he might find beyond it.
Adam caught up, reached past him and tried the knob. Useless, Ben knew, without a key. Adam glanced up at him with a quick shake of his head. "You want to knock?"
Ben looked at the floor. A glimmer caught his eye, and he knelt, gathering the tiny golden ring into his hands.
Penny's wedding ring. He closed his palm tightly around that ring and straightened. "Yeah," he said. "You bet I'm gonna knock. Step aside, Adam."
Adam grimaced, but stepped out of the way. Ben drew a breath, let it out and then delivered the most powerful kick he knew how to perform, shouting as he did so.
The door crashed open, banging into the wall on the other side. Ben leaped into the room, ready to do battle.
It was empty. A rumpled bed gave him nightmarish chills. The lamp lay broken on the floor beside an overturned stand. When he moved closer, his boots crunched over shattered glass, and he bent to pick up a piece of a vial with the label still on it.
Adam was already checking the closet, then the bathroom.
"They're gone," Ben whispered. "Dammit, he's already taken her somewhere else."
"She's not making it easy on him, though," Adam said from the bathroom.
THE HUSBAND SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER Page 19