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The voice from the doorway was an intrusion he didn’t want to deal with. He ignored it, until it came again.
“Mr. Jordan,” the man said again, now sounding as though he had stepped into the bedroom. “I don’t want to bother you, but it’s time. We don’t want to jeopardize the case by delaying gathering evidence.”
Richard silenced him with a curt nod. “I know.” Slowly he drew away from Lexi and covered her with the sheet. He reached for the telephone on the nightstand and punched out the numbers. The phone at the other end was picked up on the first ring.
“We’re here,” he said, hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “Mel...I need you.”
Dr. Melissa Knapp arrived in only moments—her room was just two doors down the hallway—looking beautifully cool and competent in her tailored suit, with each perfect blond hair caught in the sophisticated coil she wore, and accompanied by a uniformed nurse. His sister-in-law drew her brows together, the only sign of her concern, as she looked at Lexi.
“Leave the room, Richard,” she said.
“No.”
Melissa managed to get between him and the bed. “Then at least step back,” she told him. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Please,” she said. “It will be easier. Leave the room.”
He compromised. He couldn’t leave the room, and he couldn’t bear to watch as the nurse produced a syringe. He walked to the window and looked down over the street as the blood samples were drawn, as impersonal hands and eyes examined Lexi. A few minutes later the nurse left and, almost simultaneously, the guard arrived with a photocopy of the hospital records. Then Richard and Melissa were alone with Lexi—the guards gone, the evidence gathered, their part of this day finished.
It seemed like hours later, and they were still alone.
The hotel bedroom was softly lit by the lamp Melissa used as she studied the photocopy of the hospital records. Her eyes had widened when she first began reading, but she made no comment, reading silently, with her entire concentration focused on the file in her hands. The sky outside the window was dark now, the building across the street a darker shadow against it.
And Lexi slept on, unaware of them, unmoving.
“Can’t you do anything?” Richard asked in frustration, breaking the silence.
Melissa looked up from the papers. “Not until we know what has already been done,” she said. Her voice softened. “It doesn’t look good, Richard. Drug treatment like she has apparently received was never proper psychiatric therapy, not in the past, certainly not today, and I want the lab report before I make any decision. I’m afraid, though, that we may be looking at addiction, that it’s not going to be a matter of just letting her sleep off the medication.”
Richard closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, swallowing once before he spoke. “What do the records say?”
“Too much,” Melissa said. “And not enough.”
He shrugged impatiently and lunged to his feet. “Damn it, Mel. Don’t play games with me.” He looked at the silent figure on the bed. “She’s my wife!” With visible control he lowered his voice, speaking insistently. “And it was my money that put her there.”
“Do you believe that?” Melissa asked. “Do you really believe that?”
Richard turned from her. “Hell, I don’t know.”
Sighing, he stuffed his bands into the pockets of his suit pants. “Yes, damn it. And because of an overdraft in an unknown account, I have the bank drafts to prove it.” He straightened his shoulders and turned to face the woman. “So tell me, Mel, just exactly what do those papers say.”
“Richard—”
“Tell me.”
“They say I was the referring psychiatrist.”
“But you were with Greg.”
“They say that Alexandra admitted herself to the clinic.”
“But why?” Richard asked. “She’d left me. She was free.”
“Richard. Please don’t do this to yourself.”
“Why, Mel? Why?”
Melissa stood, but after one hesitant step toward him, stopped. “Her medical records state a history of depression—”
“That’s nonsense—”
“Following a...following a self-induced abortion.”
He saw her. He heard her voice. But nothing made sense. Lexi. Pregnant? Letting him leave without telling him? That he could believe. Being desperate enough to run away in his absence. That he could believe. But to kill a child, any child, even his child. No. Not Alexandra. Please, God, not Alexandra.
The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted them. Gathering the copies close, Melissa hurried to the bedside table before the instrument could ring again. She spoke softly, asking few questions, and replaced the receiver. She turned slowly. “It isn’t good. Her med levels are much too high.”
Richard faced her silently. The news shouldn’t have surprised him. They had discussed addiction as a possibility. But only as a possibility. Now it was reality. A reality he had to confirm by looking at the figure in the bed.
Her eyes were open, watching him.
“Lexi?”
At his sharp intake of breath, Melissa turned, too, until she was standing beside him.
Lexi’s head twisted on the pillow, a pale blur against the pale linens. She looked from Richard, to Melissa, then back at Richard. Before he realized her intentions, she scrambled up against the headboard, taking the sheet with her. She felt beneath the cover. She was naked except for the ugly cotton underpants, but she seemed to take no notice of that. She bent her legs, reaching to feel her feet.
“My shoes,” she said in a little voice. “Where are my shoes?”
Her shoes, those cheap cotton slippers, had fallen from her feet as he carried her to the bed. They had lain in the middle of the floor until the nurse had picked them up and at Richard’s insistence had thrown them in the wastebasket, along with her dress.
Richard dropped to sit on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need them any longer. You’ll have new ones tomorrow. All you want.”
“I want them!” She shrank away from him, and Richard heard rising hysteria in her voice. “Please. Let me have them. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll be good.”
Richard clutched her shoulders, holding her in the bed. “For God’s sake, Mel, get the damned shoes.”
The moment Melissa thrust the shoes into Lexi’s groping hands, all the fight went out of her. She ran searching fingers along the insole of each one, then, clutching them to her, she curled around them and slid back down in the bed and into unconsciousness.
Richard sat dazed beside her, looking at the soiled and pitiful treasure she had fought for. The cotton was worn almost through on the soles, and ragged cardboard protruded from rips in the fabric. But Lexi had fought for them.
Why?
Even in sleep, her fingers clutched them, fighting his attempts to remove them. As gently as possible, though, he did.
He glanced at Melissa, but she shook her head, telling him silently that she understood no more than he did. It was almost as if Lexi had searched them. He ran his fingers over the insoles as she had. The change in texture was slight, so slight he almost didn’t notice—an area slightly stiffer than the rest of the backing. The tear in the lining was just one of many, but he found it.
Impatient with the tiny opening, he ripped the lining, exposing a folded piece of cardboard different from the faded gray backing. He unfolded it, and a moan broke from him.
The print was cracked and faded from the constant pressure of her foot. It wasn’t dated, but Richard needed no date. He and Lexi had renovated the conservatory of his house in Backwater Bay, Oklahoma, the preceding winter. Together they had selected the furniture and had taken delivery on it the week before he left. The picture he held was a snapshot, not a very good one, but good enough to show him and Mel seated on the floral-covered rattan love seat in the conservatory. His face was turned so that his unmarked profile faced the camera, and they were smiling at each other as they shared one of the few moments of the past months in which they had found any reason to smile.
He handed the picture to Melissa, and she studied it silently.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked.
“Yes.” She smiled grimly, the first time she had smiled since entering the room. “It means that Alexandra is very tenacious. It means that she has more spirit than either of us gave her credit for. It means that at least a part of her is still intact, still holding on, in spite of what she’s gone through.”
“And it means,” Richard said, not wanting yet to digest what Melissa had said, “it means that someone in the house, close enough to us to take that photo, made sure that she got a copy of it.”
“Richard.” Melissa put her hand on his chest. “She ought to be in a hospital.”
“No! She’s been hospitalized too long. I won’t send her back to one, and I won’t run the risk of exposing her to the press during the early court proceedings unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“Withdrawal will be painful for her.”
Richard closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I know.”
“And for you.”
“I know that, too.”
He opened his eyes and met Melissa’s clear, considering gaze. “How long?” he asked.
“Several days at a minimum.”
“And after that?”
Melissa refused to look away from him. “I can’t make any promises.”
He groped for her, like a blind man searching for shelter, and she went into his arms, holding him to her. “Oh, Richard,” she murmured. “My dear, dear Richard. I wish I could tell you, but I just don’t know.”
Two
Her first clear thought was that it was snowing.
The only light came from the windows across the room, and in the gray light of early morning, through the partially opened draperies, she saw great white flakes falling straight down.
Her next thought was that she ached—all over—and the weight of the blankets intensified that ache. Her left arm lay on top of the blankets, held immobile by some sort of brace. She grimaced when she saw the needle, but traced a wary glance up the tube leading from it to an IV bottle suspended from a metal rack.
Was this a hospital?
She doubted it The blankets were too soft and the room was too large for a hospital. And it was too finely furnished.
She glanced around the room, quietly absorbing impressions of her surroundings. There were two chairs near the windows, and across one of them lay a dark mass. As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she realized that the mass was a man, sprawled in the chair. His long legs stretched out in jeans straining at his thighs, and he’d thrown his dark head back while he slept, making vulnerable a strong throat above a black turtleneck sweater.
“Hello.”
Her voice cracked, and it was little more than a hoarse whisper, but he heard her. He awoke immediately—she could tell by the way his body tensed—but he lifted his head slowly, looking toward her, before he rose with an agile grace she thought must be unusual for someone of his size and walked to stand beside her.
For a moment his size intimidated her as he loomed over her. He was tall, well over six feet, or so it looked to her from her position of weakness, with a lean strength that reminded her of danger and darkness.
He switched on the lamp on the bedside table, and soft light pooled over that corner of the room, illuminating her. Illuminating him.
He had an aggressive jaw—that was the only word she could find to describe it—shadowed by a night’s growth of beard, or more, a straight nose, slightly longish, and a mouth that just missed being generous and was now fixed in a grim frown. His hair was dark, probably black, but it was difficult for her to be sure in the subdued light. His skin should have been swarthy, she thought, to go with the image he presented. But while it was probably naturally dark, now it was unhealthily pale. Deep grooves ran from each side of his nose to the corners of his mouth, emphasizing the frown. His eyes were dark, too, but now they were red rimmed and shadowed.
Do I know him? She felt that she ought to.
She realized that he studied her as intently as she had studied him, and now he seemed to be searching for something in the depths of her eyes.
“You’re awake.”
“Yes.” She felt trapped in his gaze, caught by questions she couldn’t answer. “Have you been here...all night?”
His lips twisted at what could have been a not-too-funny joke that he didn’t share with her. “Yes.”
His voice was deep...and comforting, or she thought it would be if he ever spoke more than a few syllables.
She broke the mesmerizing spell of his eyes and glanced at her arm. “I don’t like needles.”
“I know.”
Careful of her arm, he seated himself on the edge of the bed. “Now that you’re back with us, we’ll see about getting that removed.”
She had been right about his voice. It caressed her.
“Thank you.”
Was it safe to look at him? Surely she could do so now without being captured. She glanced up. He still watched her—intent, cautious, questioning.
“I hate to ask this,” she said, “but where am I?”
“We’re in a hotel. In Boston.”
He didn’t sound like a Bostonian. His accent was softer. Southern? Perhaps.
She saw the slight softening of his frown and the gentle inquiry in his eyes. “How do you feel?”
She examined her feelings, wondering for the first time how she came to be here. “Like I’ve been beaten,” she admitted. The thought stunned her. “Have I been?”
His eyes shuttered. “No. Don’t you remember?”
Remember? Remember what? Her first clear thought had been that it was snowing.
“Who are you?” she whispered, but even as she asked, she knew there was a more important question. “Who am I?”
His face could have been chiseled from marble—pale, gray marble. His mouth tightened in a thin line. His eyes lost their warmth.
“Your name is Alexandra Jordan,” he told her. “I call you Lexi. You are my wife.”
She had a name now, Alexandra Jordan, and an age, twenty-six, a husband and a family. Melissa, Dr. Melissa Knapp, was part of that family, married to Richard’s brother, Greg, also a doctor. But these were things Lexi had been told in the long, slow weeks of recuperation since she’d awakened to find Richard keeping vigil by her bed, not things she remembered.
