by Linda Howard
“I’ll be happy to do that for you. Just give me a list.”
Aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, an ice bag, a throwaway cell phone… The items ticked off in her head. She shut that inner voice off before it triggered another attack.
“Thanks, but I think the fresh air will make me feel better.” That was a polite enough way of saying “Thanks but no thanks, and bye-bye.”
But Maggie didn’t take the hint. She went to the sofa and sat down; the dog squirmed to get down, but she held him tighter. Glancing down, she saw the photo album that was open on the floor near the coffee table. “Oh, you’ve been looking at old pictures.”
“Yes.” Lizette stood at the end of the couch and looked down at her neighbor, who had made herself comfortable and showed no sign of taking the hint and going home. An idea niggled at her; maybe she could ask Maggie if she remembered exactly when Lizette had moved in—was it three years ago, or five?—but that was a strange question to ask anyone. Not only that, what if the house was bugged?
Maggie gave her a strange look. “Are you all right?”
“Hmm? As well as I’ve been all day, so far. Why?”
Maggie made an odd sound in her throat, one of either concern or curiosity; sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two. “You were humming. Not that humming is strange,” she added hastily, “just that you had the weirdest expression on your face.”
“Sorry,” Lizette said, though she wondered why she was apologizing for humming. When one of those thunderbolt headaches threatened, switching her thoughts to the song she’d heard yesterday had become so automatic, she’d barely been aware that she’d started to hum. “You know how annoying it is when you hear a song and then can’t get it out of your head? Like that old Oscar Mayer wiener song? That kind of thing.”
Suddenly she found herself wondering exactly why Maggie was here. Why had she come over, instead of just calling? Before, she’d simply accepted the woman as the stereotypical nosy neighbor, but what if she wasn’t? Lizette covertly studied her visitor. Exactly how old was she? Fifty, maybe? She could be younger than that; the silvery gray hair made her look older, but she wasn’t what anyone would call elderly. Her skin was smooth, a lot smoother than her hair color should indicate. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, and what she did wear was tasteful and almost undetectable, which took skill. And beneath the baggy, nondescript outfit she wore, she was trim. Was she also muscular? In good physical shape? Maybe. She didn’t move as if she had any problems with arthritis or worn-out joints.
Maggie’s hands were all but hidden in the thick, long hair of the yapper. Lizette studied what she could see, because hands could say a lot about someone’s age. What little she could see seemed to be smooth and spotless.
And the dog. The ornate collar could be hiding anything—a camera, a voice recorder—
Lizette grabbed her coffee cup and stepped back. This time she didn’t sing or hum aloud, but she let the song play in her mind, concentrating on the words until they drowned out everything else. Normal, her mind shouted behind the lyrics, be normal.
“I’m sorry,” she said swiftly. “My manners are terrible. I’ll blame it on the bug; I haven’t been sick in so long I can’t remember the last time. Thank goodness these things don’t last very long.” She headed for the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee? I’m going to make a fresh pot.”
“That sounds great,” Maggie chirped, killing Lizette’s hopes that instead of accepting she would say she’d just wanted to check that everything was all right, and now she’d get back home.
Lizette breathed deeply as she stepped into the kitchen. Normal.
Almost an hour had passed before Maggie finally took herself and the yapper—whose name happened to be Roosevelt, which came close to taking first place for the most incongruous name for a tiny dog she’d ever heard—back to her own house. What kind of woman would have such a lengthy visit with someone who’d had such a recent bout with a nasty bug? A hypochondriac who wanted to really be sick for a change? Someone who was so hungry for companionship she’d run the risk of catching the bug herself? Just a nosy neighbor? Or was she snooping around trying to find out … what?
Every time Lizette reached that point in her thought loop, a headache would threaten and she’d have to mentally back away.
While she was getting ready to go out, Diana called to check on her. Lizette dutifully reported that she was feeling better, hadn’t thrown up in several hours, and was about to go pick up some OTC stuff in case things got worse. It was weird, but she felt as if she had to carefully choose every word, that everything she said was being analyzed and weighed—
Quickly she began humming, and the pain faded. Dang, she was getting good at this. Paranoid, but good.
What was the saying? Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you. But if you were paranoid, how did you know which enemies were real and which were imaginary? Look how suspicious she’d been of Maggie; would she have been as suspicious if Maggie didn’t insist on taking that rodent-dog with her everywhere she went? Was dislike of the yapper coloring her thoughts about Maggie?
Well, sure. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.
Being paranoid was a lot of work; she had no idea what to think.
But she knew what she knew, and she knew what she didn’t know. She didn’t know when she moved into this house. She didn’t know when she went to work for Becker Investments. She didn’t know anything that had happened during that two-year gap in her life.
The most alarming fact of all was that she’d spent three years not noticing any of this stuff, not even that she had a different face.
Until she knew exactly what was going on, wouldn’t the safest thing be to assume that all of her paranoid thoughts were true? If they weren’t, no harm, no foul. But if they were, then she should do her best to protect herself … from whatever.
She locked up and went to her car, which was parked in the driveway between her house and Maggie’s, very deliberately not looking up at Maggie’s windows in case the other woman was standing there watching. Her car was a silver Camry, with all the bells and whistles available, reliable, unremarkable. A chill went down her back when she realized she didn’t know how long she’d had it, that she had no memory at all of buying it. She didn’t even know what model year it was.
The insurance card and registration were in the glove compartment. She started to open it up and take the paperwork out, but remembered that Maggie would have a very good view of what she was doing if she did it there, so instead she started the engine and smoothly reversed to the end of her driveway, where she stopped completely and checked in both directions, as she did every time she left, before continuing to back out.
It was as if caution, routine, and a complete lack of curiosity were as much a part of her as her blue eyes. And it felt wrong—not the blue eyes, those were definitely unchanged, but everything else about this life she was living. She didn’t let herself actively think about it because she didn’t want to bring on one of those killer headaches while she was driving, but deep inside she accepted that everything about her life now was just wrong. The car was wrong, the house was wrong, her job was wrong—she was wrong.
She didn’t know what she could do about it, but there had to be something, damn it. Maybe she should stop trying to reason everything out, which gave her nothing except a headache—with vomiting thrown in as a bonus—and just go with her instincts.
She was on the move.
Thanks to the extra electronics installed in her car, he’d be able to tell exactly where she went. So would Forge’s people, but with luck, they wouldn’t bother putting extra eyes on her. They knew where she was, what she was doing, and why. Besides, right about now Forge had his hands full trying to figure out how Xavier had gotten so much information on Forge’s people, and plugging the hole in his security. That should keep them busy for a while.
In the meantime, he had things to do.
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br /> When she stopped at the first red traffic light, Lizette leaned over and opened the glove compartment to pull out the registration papers and the original sale papers. She’d known they were there, but she’d never read them before—again, there was that lack of curiosity that now seemed so foreign to her. The traffic light turned green almost right away; before, Lizette would have either laid the papers on the seat beside her and waited until she stopped the next time or pulled into a parking lot to read them, but now she swiftly unfolded the papers and held them against the steering wheel, flipping through them, checking the date.
Three years. Everything went back three years, as if the person she’d been had ceased to exist five years ago, then after a gap of two years she’d come back to life as this new cautious, unexciting, routine-bound woman who hadn’t even had a real date that she could remember during those three years.
Maybe the reason was nothing more sinister than some sort of accident, which would explain the cosmetic surgery on her face and the gap in her memories. What it wouldn’t explain was the fact that she’d evidently been functional enough to buy a house and a car and get a job, which didn’t jibe with the whole not-remembering thing. People with brain injuries severe enough to cause that kind of amnesia didn’t just go forth again as a fully functional person; there would be all kinds of intense therapies that she’d remember, because as far as she knew amnesia happened from the time of injury backward, not the time of injury forward. Operating on sheer logic, the reason for all this couldn’t be a physical injury.
Mental illness, paranoia—that was more likely than an accident, which was a bummer because she didn’t want to be paranoid. But did mentally ill people ever consider that possibility, or did they simply assume the opposite?
She was doubting herself again, after deciding to go with her instincts.
The navigation screen in the dashboard caught her eye. The car had a GPS. That meant it was possible to monitor the position of her car, wherever she went. This was a car she didn’t remember buying, and it didn’t feel as if it were a car she would buy. Maybe it had been picked out for her, and came to her with all sorts of bugs and tracking devices installed. She didn’t know how to check for anything like that, but she knew it was possible.
Act normal. She just had to act normal.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Walgreens pharmacy closest to her house. There was an open parking slot right beside the door, the premium spot, the one everyone wanted. She started to wheel into it, then abruptly changed direction and circled around the interior parking spaces until she found two end-to-end empty ones. She pulled in and through, so she was facing out of the parking slot and could simply pull out and drive away. If she had to leave suddenly, not having to back out of the parking space would save precious seconds, and maybe her life.
A chill went down her back, prickled over her skull. Her instincts were suddenly shouting at her, and she didn’t like what they were saying.
They’re watching.
They’re listening.
They know where you are.
Chapter Seven
Xavier eyed the screen of the laptop that was sitting beside him in his truck. Her car was indicated by a blinking chevron, and the chevron had stopped moving. The map overlay told him she was in a Walgreens parking lot, which was good, because she’d said she was going to a pharmacy and that was the closest one to her house. She’d gone directly there, hadn’t made any unscheduled stops—in other words, she was acting exactly the way she should.
The big question was: would she do anything differently whether she’d remembered or not? If she’d remembered anything at all, wouldn’t she logically try to carry on as normal while she figured things out and made arrangements? From a distance, there was no way to tell.
Despite taking quick looks at the laptop to make certain she wasn’t on the move again, he drove hard and fast; he cut through parking lots, raced through yellow lights, and in general made it impossible for anyone to follow him without being spotted. His six stayed clear, though. In another few hours he might have eyes on him, depending on what Lizzy did, but not yet. He knew he didn’t have a tracer on the truck because he made damn sure it was clean, and it was an older model that didn’t have navigation or any of the other Big Brother shit that made it possible for anyone to know where he was, how long he’d been there, or how fast he’d been driving. His gas mileage sucked, but his doors were reinforced to stop anything short of armor-piercing rounds, he had enough power in the big eight-cylinder to outrun most street cars, a large-capacity gas tank, and with the big push bars on front he could bull his way through most attempts to block him. So far he hadn’t needed the truck’s extra capabilities, but he always planned for the possibility.
He was sweating the time factor. If she went into the store, got what she wanted, and checked out without taking the time to browse, he’d miss her. She might go straight back home, in which case this chance was blown. He wanted to see her for himself; he’d stayed away from her for years, not even driving past her house, but that was when the status quo was holding. If things were changing, he needed to know. He was taking a big risk, but because it was such a risk it wasn’t a move Forge would anticipate that he’d make.
Sometimes the smartest thing to do was the one that made the least amount of sense—especially when others expected him to hold the line.
Getting around the D.C. area was an exercise in patience at the best of times, but thank God it wasn’t rush hour; he wheeled into the Walgreens parking lot in record time. If he hadn’t had the tracer, allowing him to move at almost the same time she had, he wouldn’t have made it.
Rapidly he scanned the parked cars; he knew her make and model, the color, even the license plate number. There were several empty parking slots right against the building, close to the door, but none of the cars were hers. Then he spotted the unremarkable silver car, which she’d parked toward the back of the lot and pulled forward through a double space so she was facing out.
His heart gave one hard thump. He himself always parked that way. Everyone he knew in the trade parked that way, because a split second could save their lives. Park so you’re ready to go, without having to back out, turn, change directions—all little things that caused delays and could make the difference between getting out alive, or not.
And now Lizzy had parked like that, even though there were empty parking slots closer to the building. Maybe those slots had been full when she’d arrived, but that didn’t explain the way she’d parked now. Maybe he was reading too much into it; people did park that way, sometimes on a whim, or because they sucked at reversing. Maybe she was pulling into the parking slot and the person parked in front of her had just been leaving, so she’d simply pulled forward. He shouldn’t read too much into it. Neither should he ignore it.
He circled around, backed into an empty slot in the very last row, and got out of the truck. Before leaving the condo he’d thrown a denim work shirt on over his tee shirt, leaving it unbuttoned so he had easy access to his weapons. A discerning eye might catch that he was armed, but if anyone noticed he could always flip out his fake badge. Yeah, the badge was against the law; a lot of what he did was, so he didn’t sweat it. Even if he did get busted, he’d be released as soon as they ran his ID.
A rush of adrenaline burned in his veins, then his heart, his whole body; then he settled into the cool calm, every sense heightened, that always came over him when he closed in on his prey.
The automatic doors swooshed open and the particular scent of a pharmacy hit him, part plastic, part medicinal, barely detectable under the sweet scents of cosmetics and lotions. Cool air washed over his face as he stepped inside, already scanning left and right as he went in, something he’d have done even if he hadn’t been looking for her. She’d be in the pharmacy section, probably, so he bypassed the makeup and toys and candy, his long legs covering the territory fast.
There. There, ambling down an aisle of shampoo
and other crap. Her back was to him, and she carried a wire shopping basket with plastic-covered handles. No doubt it was her, though; he knew that mane of dark hair, the erect set of her shoulders, the way she carried her head and, holy shit, the inverted-heart curve of her ass. Lizzy—in person, after years of only hearing her voice or seeing photos.
Even so, he took the time to pause and make a deliberate survey of the area. No one was watching her. No one was watching him. The aisle was empty except for her; the next closest person was a plump, gray-haired staffer, two aisles over and busy shelving items.
One of the wire shopping baskets sat beside a center display of leftover Fourth of July stuff. He grabbed it up, seized a spray can of deodorant and a bag of candy as camouflage, tossed them both into the basket, then closed in, his rubber-soled boots silent on the tiled floor. Deliberately he turned so his shoulder was to her and bumped into her, hard enough to almost throw her off balance.
Someone pushed her, hard, making her take a half-step back to keep from falling on her keister. Without thinking, Lizette transferred her weight to her back foot and whirled, alarm skittering through her, her grip tightening on the basket handles as she instinctively prepared to swing it at her attacker as hard as she could.
“Sorry!” a man said in a deep, slightly rough voice as he turned toward her. “I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.”
On some level she noted that he’d been turned away from her, and the spurt of panic eased. He was carrying a shopping basket, and a quick flick of her gaze told her that the most dangerous thing in it was a can of deodorant—well, maybe the chocolate candy, depending on whether or not she was on a diet or looking for a weapon.
Then she looked up at his face, and her heartbeat stuttered. Her skin registered what felt like a physical impact, as if every nerve in her body was reacting to … something: chemistry, body heat, testosterone—whatever it was, it was too much, too strong and direct. The hair on the back of her neck lifted, chills ran up and down her arms, and her nipples shrank to tight nubs.