Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

"There's no reason to be sorry, not about this. I don't remember him hurting me, I've told you that. I don't remember anything about him."

She thought she sounded indifferent, and she even managed to smile, but apparently something betrayed the misery she felt, because Kane's fingers tightened on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry there's been so much pain in your life. If I could do anything to..."

"To make it better?" This time, her smile felt more natural. "You can't. But my amnesia might turn out to be a blessing when all's said and done. I don't remember the pain or the grief. Honestly, it's like it all happened to somebody else. But at least the facts are coming together. With a little luck, if I finally do remember, at least I'll be prepared."

Kane nodded. "Still, it's a hell of a way to find out about yourself and your past."

"I don't seem to have a choice." She fought a sudden and almost overpowering urge to throw herself into his arms and cling with all her strength. Afraid that showed as well, she went on hastily. "So we add my ex to the list of things we need to investigate further. And go on. Where to now?"

He didn't answer immediately; his eyes searched her face as though looking for something, but in the end he didn't voice whatever it was that disturbed him. He released her and put the car into gear.

"The emergency room where you were first brought after the crash."

That made sense; he was still looking for something to connect her accident with what had happened to Dinah weeks afterward.

"You said Dinah visited me the day she disappeared?"

"She did. And since the police traced her movements of that day very carefully, we know she spent in little more than half an hour with you in the morning."

"And then?"

"She went to her office and was in and out several times until early afternoon. Doing routine things, according to her editor. Sometime between noon and one P M., she left her office — and hasn't been seen since. Except by her captors, of course."

Faith didn't want to think about Dinah's captors, about what was taking place in that cellar. She was agonizingly aware of the minutes ticking away. Of Dinah's life energy fading away.

There's so little time left ... Her realization? Or Dinah's?

She forced herself to think. "Between noon and one. But it was night when that dog attacked her, I'm sure of it. So if what I saw actually took place, and took place that day, where was Dinah during the hours before dark?"

"So far, nobody's come forward to admit having been with her. She walked out of her office building and might as well have been swallowed up by a black hole."

Faith thought of that hallway in her dream, and of the shadowy, lonely parking garage. Had that been Dinah's office building?

"Can we go by Dinah's office later?"

"Of course." He shot her a quick glance. "But why?"

"Hallways. I'm looking for one I can recognize from my dream. It probably wasn't in Dinah's office building — why would I have been creeping around a place she had to have been far more familiar with?

"but it's something else to check, just to be sure."

"We also need to go to the building where you worked. Talk to your supervisor again, co-workers."

"Yes."

Kane patted the inner pocket of his jacket, where he carried his cell phone — a restless gesture he had repeated several times that morning.

"With a little luck Noah will call later today to tell us what he found out about that restricted file."

More appalling and mystifying facts about her past) Faith tried not to shiver. Despite her brave words to Kane, she wasn't sure she could take many more such revelations.

Not many at all.

Faith pretty much stayed out of the way admiring the way Kane pursued the answers he to wanted. He appeared to have a knack for getting people to talk to him despite the rules and issues of legality, and as she watched him patiently work his way through the tangle of red tape, she could only admire both his persistence and his self-control.

It had to be hell for him, this endless, tedious piecing together of one tiny fact or bit of information after another, and yet he had been at it now for weeks. The strain of the search showed in his face and haunted his eyes, but despite the exhaustion he had to feel, he showed no sign of willingness to slow down or give up. He was utterly determined to find his Dinah.

I can't tell him. I can't tell him she's dying.

He wouldn't believe her anyway , that's what she told herself.

Wouldn't believe such a horrible truth unless or until the proof was undeniable.

Like a body.

Faith shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts, rubbing her hands up and down in an effort to find warmth. Or comfort. But there was little of either in the cold desolation of her thoughts. Dinah was dying, and Faith was desperately afraid they wouldn't be able to find her in time.

"Excuse me — are you a patient?"

She jumped when a hand touched her arm, then gazed up at a harried young doctor. "No. No, I'm not."

He frowned at her, mild blue eyes puzzled behind the lenses of his glasses. "You look familiar."

Faith got a grip on herself. "A few weeks ago, I was a patient here. They brought me in after a traffic accident."

"That probably explains it then. I never forget a face." He smiled at her. "Well, you look fine now. Was there some reason why you..."

"Faith." Kane was suddenly there, and she was a little surprised when he put an arm around her and drew her toward him — and away from the young doctor — in a gesture that was curiously protective. "I see you found Dr. Blake."

Faith blinked at the name tag on the doctor's green scrubs. "I guess so," she murmured, feeling oddly out-of-sync.

Kane said, "Doctor, if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions about the day Miss Parker was brought in here..."

Sound seemed to be fading in and out. She'd hear a few words of what Kane or Dr. Blake said, then the words would fade and she could hear only a distant rushing sound, like ... water? Maybe. Like water from a fall, or gushing out of a pipe under great pressure ... It was the strangest experience, not frightening but unsettling. She looked around her, seeing people talking, seeing noises she should have heard and yet didn't, like the crash of several boxes falling from a shelf, and the despairing wail of a woman bent over the still body of an injured child.

All she could hear was the rushing water. It went on and on, filling her ears, all her other senses, her mind. She looked at Kane, watching his lips move, saw Dr. Blake respond, his face serious and a bit perplexed.

She realized she was barely aware of Kane's physical nearness; she stood in the shelter of his arm, yet felt as if she were somewhere else, where water rushed and the musty smell of cold earth surrounded her. Where she felt a smothering sense of claustrophobia, the panic of being trapped and helpless. She was alone. And she didn't know which was worse, the awful musty smell and cold or the devastating knowledge that she couldn't ... that she'd never ... Faith groped for knowledge just out of her reach, and found only blackness. She could hear the water, smell the moldy earth all around her, but the emotions had faded once more into silence. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and concentrate, but remembering the abrupt unconsciousness of another such attempt stopped her.

That wasn't all that stopped her. She was afraid and she knew it. Afraid of what she might see if she closed her eyes and really looked at that place she could hear and smell. Afraid of what awaited her there. It was fear of the unknown, of a nightmare, of the darkness that lay just beyond what the mind understood.

She didn't want to look, didn't want to go there.