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At his words, she almost sagged with relief. She was well aware that just making that concession went against the man’s ingrained wariness. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and he was still making no promises. But his cautious acceptance of her was a start. She had a ghost to thank for that, she thought.
“I couldn’t sleep at night in the hospital. At first it was just because of the—the pain. But my physical injuries weren’t that bad, and after a few days that wasn’t what was keeping me up.” She swallowed. “I’d lied to the doctors. I’d given them a false name, the most common one I could think of, and told them I was a street person so they wouldn’t ask me too many questions. But I knew they didn’t really believe me.”
“Why did you lie right from the start? If you knew your memory was a blank, wouldn’t you have wanted them to investigate?” Quinn was still playing devil’s advocate, but this time with no edge to his voice.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t an adequate answer, but it was the only one she had to give him. “I realize how crazy it sounds, but as soon as I regained consciousness and found that I couldn’t remember a single thing about myself, I felt like—” She stopped, her eyes squeezing shut for a second. Opening them, she took a deep breath and went on, feeling his gaze on her. “I felt like I’d been given a second chance. I didn’t want to know who I’d been before. I just wanted to slip into this new, empty life and start fresh.”
“That doesn’t sound so crazy.” His expression was unreadable. “Go on.”
She looked at him. “Anyway, at night the cleaning crew would come through the wards. One of them was an older woman—Olga Kozlikov. She would stop by my bed and talk to me sometimes, when the nurse on duty wasn’t watching. She said she was Russian, and had come here to make a new life for herself.”
“So you had a common bond.” He raised his glass and drained it. “Two refugees, right?”
Jane was startled into an unwilling smile. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but you’re right. One night I told her a little about my situation, and she seemed to understand how I felt. She said she’d lived for so long fearing the authorities under the old regime in Russia that she herself still didn’t trust the police, even though she knew it was very different here in America. She told me she’d help me.”
“So she set you up with some clothes and some money and helped you find a job?”
She nodded. “Three or four days after I was admitted, the doctor who’d been monitoring me suggested it might be a good thing if I talked to the police about the accident. That scared me, because there really wasn’t much to tell—a dozen witnesses had given statements saying that I’d run right out into the road, and there’d been no way that the woman who’d hit me was responsible. And although no one knew that I had complete amnesia, I’d told them I had no recollection at all of the accident.”
“And that’s true? You don’t remember it?” He gave her a searching look. “Whatever you’ve told anyone else, it’s important that you don’t lie to me, do you understand? If I think you are, then this meeting’s over.”
“I haven’t lied to you.” She sighed. “I’ve just left something out. When I was brought into emergency, apparently I was as high as a kite. They couldn’t give me any medication for twenty-four hours, because my system was full of drugs already. For the next couple of days I went through withdrawal—not as bad as if I’d been a longtime user, but bad enough.”
“What had you been on? Did the doctors tell you?”
“They rattled off some pharmaceutical names at me, but as far as I was concerned they could have been talking another language. I didn’t know what they were. But since I walked out of the hospital I swear I haven’t taken so much as an aspirin, Quinn. Whoever I used to be, the person I am now doesn’t take drugs.”
Unwaveringly, her eyes met his, and finally he gave a curt nod. “I believe you. If you were a junkie you’d be out trying to score, not sitting here talking to me.”
“And if I were an addict, then no one could help me but myself. But drugs aren’t my problem, and I don’t think I can handle this on my own anymore.” She felt the prickle of tears behind her eyelids, and forced them to remain where they were. “The night before the police were supposed to come and talk to me, I just walked out of the hospital. Olga had arranged for me to be hired on by the same firm she worked for, with a crew that cleaned an office building downtown, and at first everything was fine. Olga’s niece Carla was a nurse at the same hospital, and Olga persuaded her to help me get a small apartment in the rooming-house where she lived. I had a home, I had a job, and the new life I’d wanted was beginning to become a reality. Then he left the first sign for me to find.”
“What do you mean, the first sign?” Quinn frowned.
“Just that.” She clasped her hands tightly together on the table. “I was teamed up with another woman and we cleaned the same area each night. Everyone worked in teams of two or three, and the area that Martine and I cleaned was a secretarial pool. On my third night there, we walked in and all the computers were on. All the monitors displayed a single line of type, sized large enough so that I could see it from the doorway, and they all said the same thing—I Know Who You Are.”
“That was it?” Across from her he raised his eyebrows. “For God’s sake, woman, it was probably a prank directed at someone who worked there.”
“I told myself that.” Stung, she glared at him. “My first reaction was that it was meant for me, because it seemed to fit my situation, but then I realized just how ridiculous that was. Martine and I cleaned the office, finished the rest of our area, and went back to the company depot with the rest of the workers like usual. I always took the same bus home every night and got off at a stop only a few steps away from my place. Except when I got off at my stop that night I saw that the bus shelter had been papered over with flyers. They were bright yellow, and in big black letters was—was—”
This time she couldn’t control the shaking. Her head bent, she didn’t see the waitress pause by their table, but when Quinn pushed the full glass across to her she looked up.
“Drink.” His tone brooked no argument, but she shook her head at him anyway.
“I don’t—”
“I said drink.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “It’ll help.”
Reluctantly she raised the glass to her lips, opening her mouth just enough for a trickle of the amber liquid to pass down her throat. But even that miniscule amount was enough to distract her, at least temporarily.
“It’s awful,” she sputtered.
“It’s not awful, you heathen, it’s good Irish whiskey. Look at your hand now—steady as a damn rock.”
She had stopped shaking, Jane saw. But she was only at the beginning, and there was much more to come. If she took a drink each time the tremors started she’d have to be carried out by the time she finished telling him everything.
Quinn took up where she’d left off. “The flyers had the same message as what was on the computer monitors?”
Jane nodded. “It was raining a little, and at first I didn’t look up. When I did the bus was just pulling away, and it felt like those garish yellow posters were screaming at me, each one saying the same thing. I was sure that whoever had put them there was somewhere close by, watching me, and I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was inside my apartment.” She grimaced. “Not very brave of me, was it?”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. That’d be enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.” He pronounced his e’s to sound more like a’s, and despite herself she smiled faintly at hearing such a quaint turn of phrase coming from a man as tough and hard-bitten as McGuire. Her smile faded as she continued.
“That was nine weeks ago. Since then the messages have come every few days, and always in a different way.”
“Like how?” He reached for his drink, forgotten at her elbow, and took a thoughtful sip.
“Like being whitewashed on the inside of the window of an abandoned store that I pass on Sundays. Like being written on a scrap of paper and tucked into the serviette I took from a dispenser in the coffee shop I frequent before work—I still can’t figure out how he managed that one.”
“He knows your routine. He probably knows which table you usually choose to sit at, and the approximate time you’d show up, if you were going to be there at all that night. If you’d checked, you probably would have found the first half-dozen or so serviettes had been tampered with, just to make sure one of them got to you.” Quinn rubbed his jaw. “Of course, whoever’s doing this could be a woman. What else?”
“More of the same until this week. It’s getting worse—that’s why I eventually went to the police.” She looked away, her gaze fixed on nothing. “Three nights ago Martine and I were taking bags of garbage to the service elevator. I was coming down the corridor and I could see Martine at the elevator, throwing her bags in. Then it looked as if she fell forward into the elevator, and the doors closed.”
Her eyes closed briefly and then opened again. “Serge, our supervisor, and another man took the regular elevator down to the basement, because that was where the service elevator was preset to go when the cleaning staff was working. I stayed where I was, waiting for them to come back. I thought Martine had had a fainting spell or something, and I was out of my mind with worry for her. Then I saw the indicator light above the service elevator show that it was beginning to climb again, and I assumed that Serge and Julio had found her and were bringing her up in it. But when the doors opened, Martine was in there alone, and she was screaming.”
Nothing, not whiskey, not the fact that she was in a crowded room with people all around her, not even Quinn McGuire’s reassuringly broad-shouldered presence across from her could stop the shaking now. The coldness of remembered terror seeped through her.
“She was hysterical. Someone had pulled her into the elevator and then the lights had gone off and the doors had closed. She’d felt a knife at her throat, and her attacker warned her to keep quiet or he’d kill her. Just before they reached the basement, he whispered in her ear that he had a message he wanted her to pass on—to me.”
“The same message you’d been getting all along?” Quinn sounded grim.
“I Know Who You Are,” Jane agreed dully. “But this time there was an addition. The message Martine gave me was two sentences.”
“What was the second one?”
Her stricken gaze met his. “And I Know What You Did.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “How the hell could the police ignore you after that, dammit? What did they say when they came?”
“They weren’t called. The incident wasn’t reported.” At his incredulous expression she leaned forward, her words coming out in a rush. “I told you—the people I worked with weren’t about to draw attention to themselves. I’m pretty sure Martine was an illegal immigrant, and when I told her I was going to call the police, she said she would deny everything. The rest of the crew backed her up. They all liked me, but not enough to risk being deported. And not enough to continue working with me, either,” she finished hopelessly. “I was fired that night.”
Quinn grimaced. “Sooner or later your stalker’s going to stop playing around.”
“Playing? You call what he’s done so far playing?” Shocked, she stared at him. “He’s turned my life into a nightmare! He obviously knows everything I do, everywhere I go, and he’s either right behind me or just one step ahead of me, day and night!”
“That being true, he could have killed you by now,” he said brutally. “But he hasn’t. That’s why I say he’s just playing with you.”
“If driving me slowly out of my mind is playing, then yes, I suppose you’re right, McGuire.” She could feel the tears spilling over, and she knew that people nearby were looking at her, but she was past caring. “But you’re forgetting one vital component in his game plan—he knows who I really am. That gives him a weapon to use against me, and I can’t fight back!”
“Sure you can. You’ve got the same information he has, only you won’t admit it.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of the T-shirt he was wearing straining over his biceps. “I could agree to take on the job of keeping you safe, and while I was by your side, you would be. But as soon as I left, you’d be in danger again. The only person who can find out who your stalker is and why he’s targeting you is yourself. And for some reason you don’t want to do that.”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I can’t do that. My memory’s a blank!” She was shaking again, Jane noted with a detached part of her mind. But this time it was from anger.
“It’s a blank because you want it to be a blank.” Those pale eyes met hers emotionlessly. “I told you, true amnesia’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Besides, if you really wanted to find out who you were and why someone wants to harm you, you’d tell the police the truth and let them investigate you—and you haven’t, have you?”
“No.” She looked down at her hands. “No, you’re right. I haven’t told them the truth. I haven’t asked them if I match the descriptions of any missing women, and I don’t intend to.”
“Then your stalker will just bide his time until you’re unprotected again.” He shook his head. “The best advice I can give you is to disappear into yet another life, lady. I can help you get out of town without being followed, but that’s all I can do for you, since you’re so determined not to help yourself.”
He was turning her down. After everything she’d told him—and except for the amnesia, he hadn’t seemed to doubt her story—he was turning her down. She couldn’t believe it. She said the first foolish thing that came into her head.
“Is it the money? I don’t have much, but Serge gave me a couple of weeks termination pay so I’d keep quiet about what—”
“It’s not the money.”
“But you’re not on an assignment right now.” She heard a shrill edge to her voice, and attempted a more reasonable tone. “If you’re between jobs, why can’t you take this on?”
“I’m only between jobs because I took your phone call today, instead of making one of my own.” He shrugged. “If you’d called half an hour later, I doubt that we’d ever have met. If you call again tomorrow, I won’t be there to answer.”
“You’re going off to fight another war,” she said slowly. “I guess I should have known mine would be too insignificant to interest you. My little war doesn’t have the elements you’re looking for.”
“And just what the hell is that cryptic comment supposed to mean?” His gaze had been idly glancing around for the waitress. Now it sharpened.
“You seem to think I’m not willing to put up a fight, McGuire—that some part of me is willing to die. I think you’re putting your own motives onto me.” She felt for her purse, her movements jerky and awkward. “You’re the one who keeps letting yourself be led to the slaughter. Every time you walk away alive there’s a little twinge of disappointment in you, isn’t there?”
“I go into an assignment aiming to walk out alive. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare was flat, his posture rigidly tense. He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Dammit, I’m not the one who hated my life so much that I sealed it up in a box and buried it six feet under.”
“Even if your theory’s right, at least I want to hold onto some kind of existence. That’s the difference between us.” Getting out of her seat, she stood, looking down at the man she’d hoped would be her salvation. “You won’t admit it, but that’s the reason behind every choice you make. I want to live, but deep down, you want to die. Did she realize that, too—that sister of yours who won’t leave you alone?”
“You just crossed the line, darlin’. Back off.”
He’d half-risen, and with the difference in their heights, that brought his gaze on a level with hers. His face was inches from hers, and even at that moment Jane felt her focus slipping away. His eyes were like crystal, she thought, her breath catching in her throat. Everything else about the man was harshly masculine, but those mesmerizing eyes and those thick, sooty lashes belonged on the parfit gentil knight she’d wanted him to be.
It was one more reason not to believe in fairy tales. She drew back, suddenly uncomfortable at his nearness.
“Have a nice war, Mr. McGuire,” she said coldly. “I doubt that our paths will ever cross again.”
For one long last moment their gazes remained locked, his still brilliant with anger, and hers, she knew, showing nothing at all. She’d tried, Jane told herself tiredly. She’d tried, and failed. Now her Pandora’s box of troubles had lost its only saving grace. All of a sudden she knew that the tears that had been threatening all night were about to burst forth in a humiliating flood.
“Let me get you out of town, at least,” Quinn began. His anger had faded as completely as hers had, and there was a rough sympathy in his voice.
“I’ll arrange something myself.” She shook her head furiously, wanting only to get away before she dissolved right in front of this man and a whole roomful of strangers, most of whom were already casting interested glances her way. “You’re right, it probably is the best option. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—” She saw a tiny muscle tighten at the corner of his mouth, and changed what she’d been about to say. “Goodbye, Quinn.”
Even before his name had left her lips she’d turned abruptly on her heel. The next second she was blindly making her way through the crowded tables toward the back of the room where the washrooms were, both hands clenched around the strap of her shoulder bag, her face averted.
If she was lucky—and God knew she deserved some small scrap of luck tonight—there would be no one in the ladies’ room. She would lock herself in a cubicle and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she would get up, splash cold water on her face, and leave—preferably without running into Quinn McGuire.
She’d only known the man for an hour or so. For most of that time they’d been antagonists. If he was right, and she could wipe her memory at will, then it should be easy for her to forget that moment when his hand had touched her arm and his thumb had stroked her skin.
But Quinn’s theory was wrong. And she had a feeling she’d be proving it wrong for a long, long time to come.
Chapter Three
She’d been about to cry. No, Quinn corrected himself, she’d already started to cry by the time she’d spun around and taken off from him in that clumsy half-walk, half-run that had nearly cannoned her into a handful of bar patrons and at least one waitress before she’d disappeared into the washrooms. He’d seen the tears shimmering at the corners of those dark blue eyes, and they’d made him feel like a dog.
He’d done the right thing, there was no doubt about that. “No doubt at all, McGuire,” he murmured under his breath. “Someone had to make her face facts.” He downed the last of the whiskey in his glass, and wondered if he was drinking out of the same side as she had. She hadn’t been wearing lipstick—as far as a mere male could tell, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup at all on that poreless, creamy-pale skin—so there was no way of knowing what part of the rim her lips had touched. But he thought he could taste her.
He drew himself up sharply. He’d been heading for drunk tonight. Obviously he’d achieved his goal, if he was sitting here trying to persuade himself that under the smoky, peaty flavor of Bushmills he could discern a hint of crushed strawberries. But that would be what she’d taste like, he thought unwillingly. Like the wild strawberries he could just barely remember picking when he’d been a boy—the small, sweet ones that had looked like tiny jewels against the green, green grass.
The woman had stirred up far too many memories, he thought abruptly. He needed another drink.
Like magic, his waitress appeared, her smile a little harried as she set down a new glass, but then turning to a puzzled frown as Quinn stopped her from taking the empty one away.
“Humor me, Molly. Leave the glass here, and take this.” He dropped a thick wad of bills on the round cork-topped tray she carried. “That should cover the tab I’ve been running. The rest is for you.”
This time her smile was real. He’d made one woman happy tonight, he thought ruefully, as he lifted his glass and stared into the golden liquid. He’d made one happy, and he’d torn another one’s world apart.
Actually, if he were honest with himself, the odds were more like two to one. He was forgetting the nun.
…you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
He’d welshed on his debt. He could call it whatever the hell he wanted, but what it came right down to was that Quinn McGuire had weaseled out of an old debt. He closed his eyes, and there she was in front of him, the way he always remembered her….
In the antiquated conditions of the jungle hospital, she’d worked miracles. Of course, she hadn’t taken credit for them. There’d been a gleaming brass crucifix above her packing-crate desk. It had been the only thing in the place, besides the few surgical tools, that hadn’t been allowed to tarnish in the tropical humidity.
She’d been changing his dressing. Whenever he thought of her, that was how she appeared in his mind’s eye, but she looked like no one’s idea of an angel of mercy. If truth be told, Quinn had often thought, she’d always seemed forbiddingly unapproachable in the heavy black habit that she persisted in wearing. She had a slight limp, the legacy from a bout of polio when she’d been a child, he’d learned, and besides her bat-like attire, she’d been as blind as one. Her speech was sharp, and her English, though good, was heavily accented.
“You want to die. I want you to live. We’ll see who wins, Mr. McGuire,” she’d said grimly the first time he’d drifted up out of unconsciousness. One look at those angry brown eyes, ludicrously magnified behind the thick lenses she wore, had been enough to send him spiraling down into oblivion again. But she’d dragged him back, again and again, pitting her faith and her steely strength of will against the shadowy figure with the scythe. Only once had she even come close to losing hope, and that had been the day that his fever had climbed to its highest. He had been delirious, and whatever he’d been babbling, it had shaken her badly. All he could remember of that delusional day and night were two things.
He’d had wings, and he’d known if he only let himself go he would find himself soaring straight up from the sweat-soaked sheets he was lying on into a colder, lighter sky than the blazingly blue one that hung over the hospital. He’d heard them calling him, and he’d felt himself rising to meet them—
—and the second thing he remembered was Sister Bertille’s angular face, her mouth working soundlessly, huge tears standing out behind her crooked glasses, pressing a heavy, chilling weight against his forehead and bringing him crashing back down to earth. Just before dawn the fever had broken. He’d opened his eyes and she’d been sitting beside his bed in a golden pool of light from the gas lantern above her, her rosary in her hands and her mouth slightly open in exhausted sleep. He could still feel the heavy weight on his forehead, and with returning lucidity, he’d reached up and removed it. It had been the cross she usually wore around her neck.
You will know when the right case presents itself…
She’d been right. He had known. And still he’d done his level best to get out of it. Hell.
“You’re a stupid man entirely, Quinn McGuire,” he said out loud. “A stupid, bad man. A debt’s a debt, and you must have been crazy to think that you could get out of paying it with a clear conscience.”
He’d catch her on her way out and tell her he’d changed his mind. She didn’t have to know why, and although the nun was part of it, Quinn wasn’t sure he knew the whole reason either. If anyone needed someone to protect her, though, Jane Doe did.
Even if only half of what she’d told him was the truth.
“…know who you are. It was creepy!”
“It had to be some crackpot. I kept expecting some jerk to look over the stall partition, for God’s sake.”
The two young women passing his table had taken a couple more steps before what he’d overheard them say registered. Before they’d taken a third, Quinn was up and out of his seat and somehow blocking their way. One of them was a blonde, and she gave a little jump.
“Hey, you scared me!” Her gaze took him in, and she relaxed visibly. “I think he should buy us a drink to make up for it, right, Kathy?”
