Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

"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 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 lip — the bottom one currently being worried by small white teeth which 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."

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.