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The unease slowly began to return. “Why are you repeating everything I say?”
Luc passed a hand over his forehead. “Just trying to get a clear picture in my mind.”
Or any picture, he thought. God, but his head ached. The pain was crowding out any thoughts he was trying to grasp, squeezing them away.
Looking at his eyes, Alison sat back on her heels. “Anybody would be muddled after going through what you just did.” The blank look on his face had her adding, “Coming to my rescue like that was nothing short of sheer bravery.” Something straight out of King Arthur, her favorite section of literature. She smiled at him. “Don’t see much of that these days.” Guilt began to nibble at her again. He did look rather out of it. “Sorry you seemed to have gotten the worst of it. I beamed the second guy with a garbage can lid, but it didn’t seem to hurt him very much. Man probably had a head made out of stone, which would be in keeping with his Neanderthal behavior.” And then she smiled at her rescuer. “Not like you.”
He was trying, but he just wasn’t following any of this. “Not like me what?”
“Hurting him. I didn’t hurt him the way you did the other guy.” Now she was really concerned. She looked at him more closely. Her initial impression held. His pupils hadn’t dilated, but that didn’t mean they were out of the woods. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
The pounding in his head was beginning to jar his teeth. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure what all right is.”
Oh, God. Anxious now, Alison held up her hand in front of him.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she moved her hand back and forth until she secured his attention. “How many do you see?”
Luc blinked, but even that seemed to bring about an avalanche thundering in his brain. It took effort to speak. “Two, you’re holding up two fingers. When you’re not wiggling them.”
“Good number. Could be a guess,” she added under her breath. She tried something else. “Do you know what day it is?”
He thought for a long moment, then looked at her. “No.”
Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s not bad yet, she told herself. There were times, when she was very busy, that she lost track of the days, as well. Still, the uneasiness was building within her. “It’s Wednesday. Do you know where you are?”
Though it hurt to move his head, he looked around very slowly. The street was narrow and there were two tall buildings vying for the sky. A distant smell of something rotting drifted toward him. “An alley?”
Alison suppressed the sigh before it could escape. This was looking worse by the second. “Nothing more than that?”
He looked again, this time moving only his eyes. it hurt less that way. “A dirty alley?”
Batting zero. She leaned in closer. “Do you know who I am?”
Her name, along with a license number, was on the back of the front seat. She remembered he’d read it out loud once he’d given her the address of the hotel, commenting that it was pretty. There had been a short, pleasant conversation about nothing on the drive over here.
He paused now before answering. Was she someone important to him? He had a feeling that she might be, but it was nothing that he could actually put into words. “A beautiful woman?”
The answer immediately dredged up suspicions. Was this all a ruse? Was he just trying to hit on her? He had gotten a blow to his head, but maybe he was all right and just milking the incident to elicit sympathy from her and possibly something more.
She sat back on her heels, straightening. “Is this a trick?”
“No, no trick.” He pressed fingertips to his head, wishing he could somehow push back the all-encompassing pain. “Unless you’re doing it with mirrors.” He winced suddenly as the pain seemed to spike upward, all but piercing his skull.
Falling back on professionalism, Alison examined the back of his head more closely. There was no blood, thank God. Still, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t something going on internally. He needed to be seen by a doctor, the sooner the better.
She sighed again, this time exasperated with the situation.
“No mirrors,” she answered. “Just what do you remember?”
He tried to think, but there was a low-grade buzzing in his ears and it made it hard to knit any words together, never mind forming a coherent reply.
After a frustrating moment, he raised his eyes to hers. “Nothing.”
The single-word answer felt like a bullet that had gone straight to her chest. This was her fault. She should have taken her chances with the construction and just let him off in the middle of the block. But she had been in a hurry and had wanted to get to her next fare.
She struggled against the implications that were staring her in the face. “Nothing? What d’you mean, nothing?”
His eyes held hers. She sounded concerned. Who are you? Are we lovers? Friends? Fragments of questions came and went, leaving small, colored trails through his head, which led nowhere.
“I don’t remember anything. It’s all…just a blur.” There was wonder in his voice, as if he was discovering all this for the first time as well. Discovering it and being appalled at the same time.
“You don’t remember where you came from?” She knew what he was saying, yet she had to say it all out loud for herself, stalling for time. Hoping it would all return to him in a flash and absolve her of the responsibility she felt.
He paused and tried to think again. There was nothing. Except defeat. “No.”
He’d given her the hotel’s address. Maybe he was meeting someone there. At least it was a place to start. “How about where you were going?”
This time, the negative reply came accompanied with a sigh that was both weary and frustrated. “No.”
With effort, she drew on what she’d been taught, plus an inherent way of being able to comfort everyone but herself. Her voice was calm, displaying none of the sympathetic panic she was experiencing for the stranger at her feet.
“Your name…can you remember your name?”
There was something, hovering just out of reach, but when he tried to capture it, it broke apart into a thousand tiny pieces, like confetti blowing away in the wind.
“No.”
And then she remembered. He’d mentioned his name to her just after he’d said hers. He made a joke about not having the time to wait for a formal introduction. At the time it had struck her that he was incredibly friendly. She wasn’t accustomed to friendly, not off the campus. People generally kept to themselves in this part of the city, more concerned with where they were going and how fast they could get there.
She thought now. It was John something. No, wait, Jean-Luc, that was it.
She looked at him eagerly, hoping this was the trigger that would start the process rolling. She knew it could be as simple a thing as that, just a word, a look.
“Does the name Jean-Luc sound familiar?”
Though it hurt, he tried to fit the name to himself, waiting for a flash of recognition. Of another name that might attach itself to the first.
But there was nothing.
The only thing he recalled seemed strange and out of context. “Wasn’t there a science-fiction program on with—?”
It had been something she’d said to him when he’d told her his name. That he remembered. Alison banked down her impatience, knowing it was really directed at the situation, not the man.
“Yes. Star Trek, the Next Generation. Captain Jean-Luc Picard.” Repeating the information she’d originally given him verbatim, Alison waited for a sign of some sort of recognition in his eyes.
Nothing.
Either the man was an accomplished actor, or he really did have amnesia.
Amnesia. It was an ugly word.
He tried to resist the disorientation. Like quicksand, it only sucked him in deeper. Looking at her, he felt around his pockets. “Shouldn’t I have some sort of identification on me?”
He really didn’t remember the mugging, she thought. Otherwise he’d know. “They took it from you.” She’d seen the first mugger quickly go through Jean-Luc’s pockets after he went down.
“They?” With effort, struggling for at least an island of sense within this murky sea, he connected two of the myriad of dots floating through his head. “You mean the muggers?”
“Yes.” Alison looked over her shoulder toward the cab. Three of its doors were still hanging open, ponderous wings unable to lift something so heavy. “I think you’d probably be more comfortable in the cab.” She bit her lip, her eyes sweeping over him. “Do you think you can get up?”
“Let’s see.” It seemed like a simple enough question and an even more simple enough feat to execute under normal circumstances.
But when he attempted to do it, the world decided to remain just where it had been a second ago and not make the journey with him.
Instead, it spun around in a mad whirl, mixing colors and buildings all together. Trying desperately to hang on to stability, he still felt himself losing his grasp on his surroundings. Clutching at air, he wound up grabbing at Alison instead.
Oh, God, he was going to fall, Alison realized a second before he grabbed her shoulder. Quickly her arms surrounded him and she felt her knees buckling under the unexpected weight. Contact had her involuntarily stiffening. Remembering.
She forbid herself to go there. “Lean on me,” she ordered through clenched teeth.
It was a miracle they didn’t both fall over. At the last second, in an attempt to compensate for the shift in balance, she braced her legs, planting them farther apart, like a weight lifter going for a world-class record.
“Whoa, you’re more solid than you look,” she gasped. For a second, it was touch and go whether or not they would both land on the pavement.
He felt her breath against his face, felt the heat of her body as she struggled not to be thrown off balance. The sound of her heavy breathing penetrated the fog descending on his brain. With effort, he chased away the darkness encroaching on him.
“Sorry.” A line of perspiration formed along his brow and between his shoulder blades as he struggled to regain his equilibrium.
“Not your fault.” Still braced, testing the waters slowly, she began to release her hold on him. The stiffness within her was harder to release. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“For what?” She felt soft, enticingly soft. The thought pushed its way in through the clutter of pain that insisted on holding him prisoner. It was a tiny bit of sanctuary within a world engulfed in chaos.
“If you hadn’t come to my rescue, you wouldn’t have made intimate contact with the cement. Who knows what they could have done if you hadn’t come along.” Despite herself, she shivered. It took everything she had not to allow the memory to return, to hold her hostage. There was no time for that. She couldn’t let it get the upper hand on her. Not again. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
His hand on her shoulder to prevent another embarrassing dip, he walked slowly to the cab.
“No, I don’t.” He looked at her, his head pounding. “But if I came to your rescue, I’m glad, even if it did cause everything to disappear.” Concern entered his eyes. “Did they hurt you?”
He was asking about her. His memory had been reduced to that of an eggplant because of her and he was still asking if she was hurt. She couldn’t make up her mind if he was for real or a figment of her imagination.
“They didn’t have time. You were too quick.”
He lowered himself into the back seat, his legs giving out at the last minute. What had that guy hit him with, anyway?
“I don’t feel very quick now,” he confessed. He stopped, considering. “Jean-Luc, huh?”
“That’s what you said.” She remembered something else. “But you added that everyone calls you Luc.”
“Luke.” He rolled the name over in his mind, waiting for a familiar ring. And then something seemed to gel. “Luc,” he said suddenly. “It’s not Luke, it’s Luc.”
She heard no difference, but as long as it made one to him, that was all that mattered. She looked at him eagerly, not wanting this man’s condition on her conscience. She had just attained her life’s dream of becoming a nurse. That meant helping people, not putting them in harm’s way. “Do you remember?”
He knew she meant more. But there was only that. “Just that Luc is my name.”
She wasn’t about to give up easily. “Luc what?” she prodded.
He tried, he really tried, but nothing came. Trying to move his head from side to side, he instantly aborted the effort, regretting it. “I haven’t got the vaguest clue.”
Chapter Two
Detective John Donnelley stared at his notepad. Twenty-five minutes of questioning had resulted in less than half a page of writing. It was hot and muggy and he was struggling to keep his irritability from showing. Passing his hand over a near-bald pate that had once sported more than its share of hair, he shook his head.
“Not much to go on.” He looked at the man he’d been questioning as he flipped the book closed.
Alison resisted the urge to place herself between the two men. It was her natural mothering instinct coming to the fore, an instinct she’d acquired ever since her own mother had passed away over sixteen years ago.
“It all happened very fast,” she interjected. Luc had been through enough, and in her estimation, he wasn’t looking all that good right now. He didn’t need to be grilled any longer. “Five minutes, tops. Probably more like three.”
The bald head moved up and down slowly, thoughtfully. “Usually the way.” Donnelley eyed Luc. The impression that Luc might be a suspect didn’t appear to be entirely out of the detective’s range of thought. “And there’s nothing you can add?”
Luc tried to think, to summon a memory. Something. It was like trying to find angel food cake in a snowdrift. “’Fraid not.”
Still, Donnelley pressed one more time. “Height, weight, coloring—?” Dark eyebrows rose high on an even higher forehead, waiting. Moderately hopeful.
There was no point in pretending. “I wouldn’t know them if they were part of that crowd,” Luc admitted honestly, gesturing toward the people who had gathered behind the sawhorses that defined the crime scene, separating it from the rest of the alley.
Why was the man going over the same thing again? Luc needed a doctor, not a badgering police detective who looked as if he was ten years past weary. “We’ve been through all that,” Alison pointed out.
The protectiveness welled up within her. It would have been funny if she’d stopped to analyze it. She was slight, almost petite in comparison to Luc, yet she felt as if he needed her to run interference. At least until he was himself again. Whoever that was.
“He told you, Detective, he can’t remember anything that happened. Why do you keep asking him the same questions?”
The slight shrug wasn’t a hundred percent convincing. “All I’m saying is that it seems awfully convenient, this loss of memory.” His eyes met Luc’s. Something within him relented. He could feel the girl’s eyes boring into him. She seemed convinced enough for both of them, he thought. “Hey, listen, I’m just trying to do my job here. You don’t push, you don’t get answers, right?”
“Sometimes you don’t get answers even when you do push,” she replied quietly. But he was right, she supposed. The man had probably seen it all. Certainly far more than she ever had. That made everyone suspect in his eyes. Even her. She shrugged. “Sorry, it’s just that he needs to see a doctor.”
Donnelley looked at Luc’s face. His pallor was almost ghostly. No point in beating a dead horse, at least for now.
“Okay, you can go,” he told Luc. His voice was almost casual as he asked what sounded like an afterthought, “Where can we reach you, in case there’s something else?”
Luc slipped his hands into his pockets. If there’d been money there originally, there was none now. His pockets were empty. All he had, as far as he knew, were the clothes on his back.
“I don’t know.”
Luc frowned. He was getting very sick of the sound of that. Perforce, it was his reply to almost everything. Because he didn’t know. Didn’t know his name, didn’t know where he’d been or where he was going. Didn’t even know how old he was or if there was someone waiting for him. Someone getting increasingly worried as the minutes slipped away.
Frustration ate away at him, filling up all the empty spaces.
The detective paused, considering. And then he reached back into his pocket for his notepad. Writing something down quickly, he tore off the page and held the single sheet out to Luc.
