by Linda Howard
If she did anything the least bit suspicious, he’d have to move fast, and having someone already there would give him an enormous advantage. Al Forge had a formidable network, but Xavier wasn’t without his own resources; he’d spent years cultivating a spider’s web of allies and assets, knowing that he was walking a tightrope between being too dangerous to kill and too dangerous not to kill. He still took assignments knowing that putting himself in harm’s way made it easier for him to be eliminated without it appearing to be anything more than part of the job, but he needed the extremely good money he made from those assignments. What he did wasn’t cheap, and neither were the safeguards he’d put in place. Moreover, his services were needed, and that meant something. He could probably make more money by selling his skills on the black market, but he hadn’t crossed over to the dark side yet.
The “yet” was always there, looming like a storm cloud that never quite reached him, but kept him checking its position. If push came to shove, would he go there?
Probably.
Six years ago, he’d have said “no.”
Five years ago, he’d faced a hard reality that sometimes doing the right thing was the wrong thing to do, and vice versa.
Four years ago, he’d been enraged at the trap they were caught in.
Three years ago, he’d become the trapper.
He had no idea how in hell this situation was going to play out, but none of them could quit the game. He was in it to the end, whatever that end happened to be. But, damn, he was so tired of the status quo he was almost ready to push some buttons just to make things change.
He needed to see her. There had been pictures, clips, audio, but he hadn’t seen her in person in four years. As dangerous as it was, he needed to actually put eyes on her, hear her voice, make contact and see for himself if she had any reaction to him or if the block was still holding. The next time she left the house would be the perfect opportunity, a small gap in surveillance now that her cell phone was no longer operational. She’d get a new one, it would be duly cloned and bugged, but until then there wouldn’t be any ears listening unless she was in the house or in her car.
She’d probably be watched, of course, but if so he’d be able to spot that ahead of time. There was also the possibility that he himself would be followed, but the day he couldn’t lose a tail would be the day he quit the business. Actually, the day he couldn’t lose a tail would be the day he died, which equaled “quitting the business.”
There was nothing he could do now except wait.
Lizette dozed off again, and woke feeling as if she’d been beaten up and tossed into a ditch on the side of the road. The headache and nausea were gone, but they’d taken a lot out of her. Did she know what it felt like to be beaten up and tossed into a ditch? She could almost laugh, if she didn’t have an uneasy feeling that sometime during those missing two years she might actually have found that out.
Instead of actively searching her mind for memories, because she was afraid of what the result would be if she did, she took a deep breath, rolled from bed, and tried to think of something to do. This was Friday, so she was supposed to be at work, and doing something other than that wasn’t in her routine. She’d stayed home sick, so it felt vaguely like cheating to do anything other than be sick.
Now that she felt better—aside from the beaten-and-tossed-into-a-ditch thing—she could go to a doctor, but that seemed stupid. What could she say? “I was sick this morning but I’m feeling better now, and, by the way, I appear to have had facial surgery during two years that I don’t remember at all. Am I crazy, or brain-damaged?” She didn’t want to be admitted to a hospital for observation, and that alarm buried deep inside recoiled at the idea that someone might make some inquiries into her medical history.
But her stomach was calm, and her head wasn’t hurting, so she felt as if she should be doing something. It made the most sense to do what she did on the weekends, just to get a jump on things. She liked everything around her to be very organized. She was good at that, keeping things orderly—her ducks marching in a row—and following a routine.
She eased upright in the bed, took stock. So far, so good. Gingerly she stood, feeling as if her system might go haywire if she moved too fast, and shuffled out of the bedroom. In the kitchen, she put her hand to the coffeepot; it had long ago turned off, and the coffee was stone cold, but she could reheat it in the microwave. A big cup of coffee would go a long way toward making her feel better.
Uh—maybe not yet. She didn’t want anything in her stomach until she was certain it would stay there. She’d thrown up so much the muscles in her abdomen were sore from strain.
Instead she went into the small spare bedroom down the hall that she’d turned into a home office, not that she worked at home very often. Here was where she paid bills, balanced her checkbook, and occasionally played computer card games to pass the time. Now and then she browsed the Internet, and every year she filled out her taxes online.
Taxes.
That was it. Though she didn’t have to keep more than three years of past taxes on file, she didn’t remember deleting any of the older ones. They were ducks, like the others; just old ducks.
Moving with purpose now, she sat down in front of the computer, hesitated, then got up and disconnected her DSL modem. Could anything she did while she was disconnected from the Internet be detected? She had no idea, but at least she’d made the effort. She opened her files and clicked on “taxes.” In an effort to ward off a headache she silently told herself, I’m cleaning out my files. That’s all. This is an ordinary activity, not an attempt to access an old memory.
When she saw three years of tax returns in the folder, the beginnings of a headache teased her. She closed her eyes and thought about the show she’d watched on television last night, then about the next-door neighbor’s dog, the furry yapper. She liked dogs, but that one was a PITA, a pain in the ass. She deliberately thought about a song she’d heard on the radio yesterday, one that had turned into an earworm she’d been able to dislodge only by deliberately listening to something else just as repetitive; evidently the two had cancelled each other out. To her relief, the headache that teased her faded away.
She took a deep breath and resumed her research. All right, just three years of files in the “taxes” folder. Whether or not she remembered deleting the files, evidently she had. She couldn’t say that would be a noteworthy action, anyway, so not remembering doing so didn’t mean a thing.
Next she opened the right-hand drawer of her desk and pulled out her checkbook. She still paid bills the old-fashioned way, with a check in the mail rather than an electronic transfer, because it struck her as more orderly and safer, speed be damned. There was a neat, short stack of check registers, one for each of the past two years. Year three was with the checks in a neat, black cover. Lizette reached to the bottom of the stack and pulled out the oldest check register.
Was that her handwriting? Yes, definitely. Were there any payments that might indicate unusual activity? No, just as definitely. As she flipped all the way through that register, and then the next one, alarm began to grow. She paid her bills, but apparently that was it. She didn’t appear to have any outside interests, hadn’t gone on any trips, or done much of anything. Had she always been this way? She felt a definite reluctance to think about the subject at all, but, no, she didn’t think so. This didn’t feel right. Hell, she knew this wasn’t her, any more than this face was hers!
Another idea struck: credit cards. She pulled out the file folder containing her paid credit card bills. She had two cards, an American Express and a Visa. Flipping through the statements, looking at what her charges had been, she could only shake her head. Her charges were few, seldom more than one or two a month, and for the most mundane things: gas, groceries, stuff like that. The oldest statement was from three years ago.
She got up and fetched her wallet, pulled out her American Express card. She’d been a “member” for three years.
> Oh, shit.
The realization that she didn’t remember applying for and receiving the American Express card was another piece of the monstrous puzzle.
She returned to the credit card statements, looking through them, noting what she’d purchased. As with her checkbook, none of the charges said anything about her as a person. Nothing here helped her reconcile what she saw, what she remembered, with the woman she knew herself to be.
She hadn’t bought a concert ticket, or any jewelry, or a special pair of shoes. That was kind of good, because she didn’t remember going to a concert and if she’d bought a ticket and not gone she’d have been pissed. Nothing stood out; her financial records were as blah as what she remembered. Why, there wasn’t even a single charge to a gun store—
The attack blindsided her, hitting brutally fast, and was so severe she was literally blinded by the pain. Her body lurched in response and she gripped the armrests of her chair to keep from falling to the floor. Her stomach rolled, but before the nausea could hit she wrenched her thoughts to the song she’d heard on the radio yesterday, the one that had stuck in her mind for a while. She even sang a few bars—badly, because she couldn’t sing worth crap. But yes, that was her voice, the voice she’d always had: a little too deep, a little rough, and entirely off key. It was nice to know some things hadn’t changed.
As soon as she felt in control once again, and the headache faded to a manageable pang, she sat for a moment thinking over other avenues she could explore. Finally she plugged the computer back into the modem, let them connect, and clicked on the “history” tab. She didn’t expect to see anything that she didn’t remember from yesterday or the day before; she was simply looking back over a few days, that was all. She wasn’t looking for anything in the missing years; she was looking for herself.
Why did she never check out any of the news outlets? She didn’t care one bit about politics now, but once she had—
Lizette stopped that thought before her body attacked itself.
Let’s see. Swiftly she glanced down the list of sites, all so familiar. She played solitaire. She didn’t have an account at a single social media site. Occasionally she’d listen to a song on YouTube. That was about it.
Asking why would bring on another attack, so she hummed that song again, took a deep breath, and in one portion of her mind she asked … when did I become a zombie?
She almost laughed. Now and then her coworkers would make a joke about “the coming zombie apocalypse.” If there ever was one, she was better equipped than most people to—This time there was no stopping the pain that exploded in her skull. It happened too fast, slamming into her like a sledgehammer. Not a headache, she thought as she fell out of her chair and curled into the fetal position. It wasn’t a headache; it was an attack … maybe even a warning. She lay on the floor whimpering until she could see well enough to focus on a spot on the rug beneath the plain desk and chair. Concentrating on that helped, and as the pain eased off she began singing softly to herself.
Chapter Six
Two hours later, her stomach now settled enough that she could tolerate putting something in it, Lizette sat on the floor with a cup of coffee—lightened, sweetened, and warmed in the microwave—sitting on the coffee table within reach and the only photo album she could find open in her lap. There were baby pictures, photos of her with her parents, school pictures—not from every grade, but from most. Toward the end of the book there were some snapshots from college, always with friends with whom she had since lost contact. After that, nothing.
When had she stopped taking photographs? Not that she was a particularly good photographer, but still, who didn’t take pictures of…
Of what? She went to work, she read, she watched television. She didn’t participate in sports or join clubs or even date—at least not in a long while, which was weird, because she could remember a time when she’d had an active social life. But that was then, and this was … this was pitiful. What would she take pictures of now? Lunch at her desk?
Over the past two hours she’d been experimenting, exploring the boundaries of this weird crap that was happening to her. Now she could recognize the signs that the headache and nausea were coming, and she no longer doubted that it was any thought of the missing two years that brought on the pain. She had no explanation for that, not even a plausible theory, but she did have the good sense to believe what she saw—or rather, what she felt.
Thinking about—or trying to think about—why she’d stopped taking pictures brought on the first, very recognizable signs of distress, so she stopped trying to figure it out and turned back in the album to photos of her childhood. Halloween, Christmas, a summer vacation at the beach. Damn, she’d been skinny. Look at those beanpole legs! Concentrating on things she definitely remembered did the trick, and once again she was in control of her own body.
The doorbell rang, and she almost jumped out of her skin. Her shoulder bumped against the coffee table, her mug shook, and caramel-colored liquid splashed close to the rim. She steadied the cup, set the photo album aside, and stood.
The hair on the back of her neck was standing up. She could feel alarm like a cold chill all over her body, shouting a warning.
Who would come to her door in the morning, when anyone who knew her would know she was normally at work at this hour? It was too early for the mail, not that she expected a package or anything that would need to be signed for, which would be the only reason the mailman would knock. Door-to-door salesmen were kind of rare these days, and the only friend she had who would check on her—Diana—already had.
Lizette approached the door cautiously, her hands opening and closing as if seeking a weapon that wasn’t there. She eased around to the side, so if anyone shot through the door—shit! Quickly she hummed a song under her breath, concentrating on the tune, warding off the hammer of pain that had drawn back in preparation to knock her block off.
The sickening sensation ebbed, but she still eyed the door uneasily. Her heart was suddenly pounding, as if she expected a snake to be on the other side, waiting to strike when she opened the door. Her reaction was … new, and definitely disturbing. On any other day she’d have answered the door like a normal person, with curiosity but also confidence. Now she was very wary of who might be on the other side, and she couldn’t bring herself to relax. What should she do now? Maybe if she was quiet, whoever was on the other side would go away. On the other hand, maybe it was a burglar checking to see if anyone was at home before circling around to the back and breaking in, in which case she could yell Who is it? or even look through the peephole, if she could steel her nerves to take that chance.
But before she could do either, a familiar voice called out, “Yoo-hoo. Lizette, are you home?”
Her heart returned to a normal rhythm; her muscles uncoiled. Not a snake, just a busybody—a busybody who actually said “yoo-hoo,” for God’s sake. Who did that, outside of old sitcoms?
With a different kind of dread, Lizette blew out a breath, resigned herself, and opened the door. Her next-door neighbor stood on the porch. Maggie Rogers lived in the house on the left, and she’d been there as long as Lizette could remember—which, evidently, was only about three years. Maggie was a widow, too young for retirement but living well enough on her late husband’s insurance money. She had silvery gray hair cut in a short, slightly edgy, and definitely fashionable style, a pretty face that looked younger than her hair said she was, a trim and athletic figure, and a small yapping dog that was, oddly enough, almost exactly the same color as her hair.
The dog was in her arms, peering at Lizette with beady dark eyes. Lizette normally liked dogs. She just didn’t like dogs that looked as if they had rodent DNA. To keep from being hypnotized by that beady gaze, she forced herself to look only at Maggie.
“Are you all right?” Maggie asked. “I saw your car in the driveway and I was so worried.” Maggie stepped forward and Lizette automatically stepped back and, bingo, just like that, Maggie wa
s inside without having been invited. Lizette was annoyed with herself for not standing her ground, though she had to admit her normal modus operandi was to avoid confrontation, to not speak up, to be … passive.
Maggie held the dog close in her arms, to keep the little varmint from jumping down and playing “can’t catch me” throughout Lizette’s house. Her gaze scanned the room, but that was nothing unusual. Every time Lizette had encountered Maggie, the other woman had checked out everything, as if looking for some little clue that Lizette had a secret bondage fetish, or drug addiction, or anything else salacious. She was doomed in that, because Lizette couldn’t think of even a tiny salacious detail in her life—damn it. “You never miss work,” Maggie said almost accusingly, as if Lizette had disrupted her life by being sick.
Okay, it was kind of creepy that Maggie knew so much about her schedule, but not surprising. Maggie was the type of woman who sat where she could see out her windows and keep tabs on all her neighbors, a champion curtain-twitcher. Lizette managed to keep her expression neutral. Even if she did have enough money that she never needed to work, this woman needed a job in the worst way. Her day revolved around watching her neighbors and monitoring their every move; she gave real meaning to the phrase “get a life,” because the only one she seemed to have belonged to everyone around her.
Still…“I don’t feel well,” Lizette found herself explaining. The sweatpants and tee shirt she wore, along with no makeup and a face that had been, at last glance, much too pale, should have given that away. Give Maggie an F in observation skills.
“I was afraid of that. What can I do to help?” Maggie finally looked directly at Lizette, her pale blue eyes probing, alight with curiosity. “God, you do look awful,” she added, sounding sincere.
Gee, thanks, Lizette thought sarcastically, then felt guilty because, even if her main motivation was curiosity, Maggie had come over to check on her and offer to help. “Nothing major, just a bug. I’m feeling somewhat better now. I still haven’t tried any solid food, but I’m keeping liquids down. As a matter of fact, I was about to change clothes and go to a pharmacy or Walmart to pick up a few things.”