Hiding in the Shadows (7 page)

“Well, until the banks open on Monday, we can’t pursue that lead anyway. Which leaves us with Faith Parker. The hospital is on our way. Do you think—?”

Bishop did.

But at the hospital, they encountered an unexpected obstacle.

“She was released two days ago.” Dr. Burnett, hunted down for them by a somewhat startled nurse, had an air of weariness about him. But he brightened when he talked about Faith, clearly feeling a proprietary pride in his former patient.

“Released?” Kane stared at him. “When I was here a month or so ago, she was in a coma.”

“Yes, she was. But she woke up a little more than three weeks ago.”

“Isn’t that … unusual?” Bishop asked.

“Very. I’m writing a paper for the medical journals. It’s also unusual that she awakened with minimal aftereffects. No brain damage, good response to physical therapy—she was on her feet and walking within days, and in better emotional shape than most. Even if she did lose her memory—”

“Her memory?” Kane felt a crushing disappointment. “She can’t remember anything?”

“No, poor thing. Her life before the accident might as well have been wiped clean. All her language skills are intact, she reads and writes, recalls historical events and even current events right up to the time of the accident—but she has no personal memories. She didn’t know her name, didn’t even know what she looked like.”

“Will her memory come back?” Bishop asked.

“Probably. Though it could take years. She suffered a blow to the head, but we’re not sure if the amnesia was caused by the physical trauma or something psychological.”

“Meaning the loss of memory could be a defense
mechanism, a way of protecting herself from memories too distressing to recall?”

The doctor frowned at Bishop. “Perhaps.”

After exchanging a quick look with his friend, Kane said to the doctor, “I talked to you when I was here before, about Dinah Leighton. Do you remember?”

“Certainly. A very nice lady, Miss Leighton. As I told you before, she and I talked several times—but only about Miss Parker’s condition and prognosis. Miss Leighton was most concerned about her.” His face changed, and his brilliant eyes narrowed as they fixed on Kane. “I assume there’s been no word?”

Kane shook his head. “Agent Bishop and I are gathering information on our own, trying to piece together what Dinah was doing in the weeks before her disappearance.” By now, the spiel was automatic.

Burnett frowned. “I wasn’t aware the FBI had been called in.”

Smoothly, Bishop said, “We don’t always alert the media, Doctor. Working quietly behind the scenes often garners faster results.”

“I see. Well then, I assume you’ll want to talk to the nursing staff again about Miss Leighton’s visits?”

“If you could arrange that, we would be most grateful,” Bishop said, all but bowing.

“Of course. If you’ll wait here, I’ll go speak to the floor supervisor and get things started.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Kane watched him stride down the hallway, then looked at Bishop. “You were very polite. Do you dislike him as much as I do?”

“Yes, I believe I do. And I wonder why.”

“You shook hands with him—pick up any bad vibes?”

Bishop gave him a look. “None to speak of.”

“Then,” Kane offered, “it’s probably just our natural dislike of human godhood.”

“That’s an oxymoron.”

“No, that’s a doctor. I don’t like hospitals or doctors as a rule,” Kane said, “so maybe that explains my reaction. I couldn’t find even a whisper of a reason he might have been involved in Dinah’s disappearance. And he appears to have witnesses to his movements that entire last day.”

“I didn’t seriously suspect him,” Bishop said.

Kane sighed and decided not to tell his friend that he had, over these last weeks, suspected virtually everyone he met.

It took them a couple of hours to talk to the staff members who had seen or talked to Dinah. They heard about her friendliness, her quiet charm, her concern for her friend. What they did not hear was any awareness that Dinah had been pursuing a story or any explanation for her excessive guilt over Faith Parker’s accident. No one remembered the name of the lawyer who had come to see Faith, and by then Burnett had finished his shift, so they hadn’t been able to ask him.

It was late afternoon when they headed to Kane’s apartment. “Since we didn’t get any information,” Bishop said reflectively, “we have good reason to go talk to Faith. Amnesia or no amnesia, she can tell us who the lawyer is.”

“You sound doubtful of the amnesia,” Kane noted.

“I think it’s very convenient, that’s all.”

“Convenient for whom, dammit? Faith could have answered a lot of my questions, but now …”

“Let’s wait until we talk to her before we rule her out as a possibly helpful source.”

“And we can talk to the rest of the hospital staff on Monday,” Kane said, “and see if they have anything helpful to add. I just have an awful feeling we’re going to hear more of the same—lovely opinions of Dinah that don’t help us one bit.”

“That awful feeling is probably an empty stomach,” Bishop said prosaically. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast. And there’s probably nothing in your apartment.”

Kane recognized the attempt to take his mind off things, and smiled. They settled on take-out Chinese food, and by seven o’clock, were in the process of putting away the leftovers. When the doorbell rang, Kane assumed it was a delivery boy from the grocery store he’d called. But when he went to the door, he found a woman he didn’t recognize standing there.

She was just a bit over five feet tall and too slender by at least a dozen pounds, but she was a knockout. Gleaming dark red hair with golden highlights, luminous pale skin as smooth and without flaw as polished porcelain, full lips—the bottom one currently being worried by small white teeth—rich with natural color, a straight nose, and big eyes the most unusual shade of green he’d ever seen.

After he silently acknowledged her beauty, he realized she was frightened, and that made him speak more gently than usual.

“Can I help you?”

She was staring up at him, an odd series of emotions crossing her face. Disappointment, bewilderment, pain, speculation, frustration, helplessness. She took a step backward.

“No. No, I—I think I have the wrong apartment. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

Before she could turn away, he reached out and grasped her arm. It felt very fragile. “Wait. Are you—Do you have any information about Dinah?”

She looked at his hand on her, then up at his face, her own frozen in indecision. “I don’t think so,” she whispered.

Kane didn’t release her. A sudden memory surfaced in his mind, a memory of a still, slight figure in a hospital bed glimpsed briefly as he’d stood in the doorway. Her thin face was so colorless and immobile that it had appeared to him masklike, an inanimate thing holding no life. Eerie and ghostly, especially with the nearby machines audibly counting off the beats of her heart to insist, with a machine’s irrefutable logic, that she was, in fact, a living creature.

It was almost impossible to recognize that comatose patient in this woman, whose rioting emotions were the very definition of chaotic life. But suddenly he was sure. “You’re Faith, aren’t you? Dinah’s friend.”

Her eyes searched his face, but whatever she was looking for she apparently didn’t find. A little sigh escaped her, and she said, “Yes. I’m Faith.”

TWO

He didn’t know her.

There hadn’t been a flicker of recognition in those first seconds.

They hadn’t been lovers.

And since they hadn’t been lovers, her dreams could not be memories of a relationship.

As Kane MacGregor led her into his apartment, that realization swirled in Faith’s mind, baffling, frightening. What could it possibly mean?

He didn’t know her, yet her response to him had been immediate and intense. She knew he could feel her shaking, and she was afraid the heat in her skin would also betray her. His voice, his touch, his face, all were utterly, painfully familiar, a small pool of bright, clear certainty in the ocean of blackness all around her, and she feared it would kill her if she had to turn away from that, from him, and plunge alone into the dark unknown.

But she would have to. There was only one explanation she could think of to account for the dreams, one thing that made a certain kind of sense to her, and if what she suspected was true, then those dreams, that connection she felt so vividly between her and Kane MacGregor, were yet another thing someone else had given her. Not hers at all.

She had no sense of herself, and it was terrifying.

He introduced Noah Bishop as his friend, and she vaguely recognized him as the man who had been with Kane on television. The angry scar down his left cheek didn’t bother her, but his pale, watchful eyes made her uneasy; they were more silver than gray, and peculiarly reflective. She had the disturbing notion that he could see all the way to her soul.

“Some security building you’ve got here,” Bishop said dryly to Kane.

“It’s just electronic security on the front door at night,” Kane replied. “Easy enough to get into the building if one of the neighbors is buzzing in a visitor.”

“That’s how I came in,” Faith confessed, not needing to explain that she’d been unsure of her welcome.

Bishop sighed. “An armed guard or two would probably be a good idea.”

“I’ll add that to my list of things to do,” Kane said. “Sit down, Faith.”

She did, at one end of the couch, grateful to be off her feet. She still tired easily, and just getting up the nerve to come here had been exhausting.

Kane frowned down at her. “You’re frozen. How do you take your coffee?”

She had no idea, and tried to choke back the bubble of hysterical laughter trying to escape her throat. “I—
just any way. It doesn’t matter.” At least he’d misread her shaking and her flushed cheeks, assuming both to be due to the chilly evening.

“I’ll get it,” Bishop said, and went around the corner into the kitchen.

Kane joined her on the couch, no more than a foot away and half-turning so he could watch her. “I’m glad you came, Faith.” He added almost apologetically, “Do you mind my using your first name? It’s the way Dinah spoke of you, and—”

Faith shook her head. “No, I don’t mind.”
Maybe it’ll start to sound familiar
.

“Good. Thank you. I’m Kane. As for my friend, most people call him Bishop.”

“Everybody but you,” Bishop called from the kitchen, proving that either he had very good ears or the walls were thin.

Kane smiled slightly, then repeated to Faith, “I am glad you came. We wanted to talk to you, even though Dr. Burnett said you couldn’t remember anything.” There was the faintest questioning lift to the statement.

“Nothing of my life,” she confessed. “Nothing … personal. Not who I am or where I came from. I’m still not used to the name, the face I see in the mirror. It’s … disconcerting.”

“I’d think it would be scary as hell,” he said bluntly.

“That too.”

Bishop returned to the room with coffee and handed her a cup. Their hands touched as she accepted it, and she was suddenly conscious of a moment of intense stillness. His eyes seemed to bore
into hers, and she was acutely aware of his warm fingers touching hers. The connection was so powerful, it was as if he held her physically in an inescapable grip.

Then, even as she became aware of it, the moment passed. His fingers drew away and he straightened, his gaze calm and cool once more. Shaken, Faith sipped the coffee and tried to think only of the drink. He had fixed it with plenty of cream and sugar, and since it tasted pleasant she assumed this was indeed how she took her coffee. “Thank you.”

He nodded and chose a chair across from the couch. Very conscious that he was watching her closely, she turned to Kane.

“I was obviously Dinah’s friend,” she said to him. “I didn’t know you?”

“We never met. I—went to the hospital after Dinah disappeared, to talk to the staff about her visits, and saw you briefly, but that was all.”

She was afraid her hands would shake and betray her growing weariness and fear, so she set her cup on the coffee table and laced the fingers together in her lap. “Do you have any idea how long I’d known Dinah, or where we’d met? Anything like that?”

He shook his head. “Dinah and I didn’t meet until about seven months ago. I know a lot about her, but certainly not everything. And if you were in any way connected with her work, I’d be even less likely to know about you.”

Bishop said quietly, “Were you connected with her work?”

“From what I gathered from news reports, she’s a journalist?”

“Right.”

“Then I don’t see how. According to the pay stubs I found in my apartment,” she said wryly, “I worked for the city. I called and spoke to my supervisor. Apparently, I was a small cog in a very big wheel. I did routine office work.”

“Which office?” Kane asked.

“Building Inspections and Zoning.” She grimaced. “About which I know nothing. Or at least nothing I remember. My job involved typing and filing.” She considered for a moment. “I think I know how to type.”

There was something forlorn in her voice, and Kane acted instinctively. He reached over and covered her tightly clasped hands with one of his own. “The doctor said your memory will eventually come back to you, Faith. You have to believe that.”

She looked down at his hand, her eyes wide; and Bishop, watching her, was reminded of a deer frozen in a car’s headlights, paralyzed and unable to save itself from certain death.

In a constricted voice, she said, “Something has been coming to me, but—not my memories. I thought they were at first, but now I see they weren’t mine at all.”

Kane released her hands and leaned back, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“They started when I was still in the hospital. Just dreams, but maybe memories too, I thought. Dreams like … like little vignettes, brief scenes of someone’s life.”

“Whose life?” Kane asked slowly.

She drew a breath. “Yours. And—and Dinah’s.”

Out of the coma
.