Kelsey Roberts - The Night in Question

Matt asked, “What exactly is the last thing you remember?”

“Waking up on the beach and seeing your face.”

She cried tears of frustration with a healthy dose of fear. The frustration stemmed from the obvious—why couldn’t she remember her own name? The fear was a little less pellucid. For some God-only-knew reason, she kept hearing a woman’s voice in her head saying, ‘Trust no one.’ She didn’t recognize the voice nor did her mind’s eye bring forth an image.

She was shaking, trying hard to remember something, hell, anything: an address, her name, her favorite color. Anything.

“I’m going to give you an injection,” Dr. Revell said, holding a syringe and squirting a quick stream of colorless liquid out of the hollow needle. “It will calm you down,” she explained.

“Dr. Revell, I—”

“Call me Kendall,” she insisted as she brought the needle closer. “This may hurt, I’m a little bit out of practice,” the woman said with a kind smile.

She felt a pinch, then almost instantly her nerves calmed. “Why would someone shoot me?” She heard her own words slur slightly. She tried to lift her wounded hand but it felt like it weighed about three hundred pounds, so she gave up. “Or cut me?” Next she tried to sit but couldn’t manage it. “I need to leave,” she said.

“Why?” Matt asked.

Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t know why, just that I can’t go to the authorities.”

Reaching into his back pocket, Matt flipped open a soggy wallet. “Too late,” he said. “I’m with the FBI.”

She felt a wave of terror crash down on her. “Am I a criminal or a fugitive?”

“Let’s roll your fingerprints and see,” he said almost conversationally.

Kendall then inked each of her fingers onto a card. She handed the card to Matt. “We can use the computer in my office,” Kendall said. Patting her charge on the shoulder, the doctor said, “You rest. Sometimes it takes a good long while for IAFIS.”

“I…A—”

Kendall gave her a reassuring smile. “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Put your head back and rest.”

Easy for her to say. The doctor wasn’t the one with the bullet hole and the knife wound. She bent her arm and covered her eyes from the harsh glare from the light. “Think,” she demanded of her foggy brain. A face blinked into focus for a nanosecond. A tall brunette, impeccably dressed, with short hair. Her sister? Her neighbor? Her victim? She felt hot tears in the corners of her eyes.

An FBI agent? What were the chances? If only I’d been found by an old lady out shelling or an old man sweeping the beach with headphones and a metal detector? Nope, I have to get an FBI agent. “Matt DeMarco,” she whispered.

As her hand went to her throat, an image came back with crystal clarity. Two boats, far enough away that their searchlights couldn’t reach her as she clung to the barnacle-encrusted buoy. She remembered the wide arc of the beams reflecting off the small swells. And strobing red. The latter part made no sense.

Neither did not remembering her own name. Or where she lived. Or if someone loved her or vice versa. What could have happened to erase her memory? It had to be big. Major. And based on her new terror of authority figures, bad.

“KRESLEY HAYES,” Matt said before they headed for his Jeep sometime later.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she concentrated on not swaying as she walked. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It’s your name.”

Matt was smiling. She stopped suddenly and looked up into his gray-blue eyes. They were rimmed with inky lashes that matched his black hair.

“Hungry?”

“I’m not exactly presentable,” she said, lifting the top edge of the surgical scrubs Kendall had been kind enough to supply. The doctor had also provided a sports bra and some Crocs. The only problem was Kendall was two inches taller and a size smaller. The pants, which were rolled up at the hem, and the top were like a second skin.

“What?” she demanded.

“You really don’t know who you are, do you?”

“I’ve been telling you that for hours and it’s only now sinking in? How did you find out my name so quickly?” she asked. And why doesn’t it sound at all familiar?

“I hit the national databases. Nothing. So I had a friend run your prints locally.”

Her heart skipped. “My prints are in the system? Am I a felon or something?”

He chuckled. “No, you’re a teacher. Or at least you were. Second grade. A police background check with fingerprints is standard procedure for everyone dealing with children. You would have undergone that before you were hired.”

“What did I do? Fail someone so they shot me and stabbed me?”

“You haven’t been a classroom teacher for a couple of years. So I think we can safely rule out an unhappy second grader. Currently, you’re working toward a graduate degree in child psychology.”

“You have no idea how maddening this is,” she said, her voice cracking. “You got all that information from my fingerprints?”

“And my secret decoder ring.”

“Very funny. Where do I live?” Kresley asked, waiting, praying for something that sounded familiar.

“You’ve got an apartment on Isle of Palms,” he said.

“Thank you for taking me home,” she said.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got to make a stop first.”

She did mind a little. Maybe if she walked into her own apartment her memory would break through the dam and come flooding back. Apparently patience wasn’t one of her virtues. “Where are we stopping?” she asked.

“The Rose Tattoo.” He hesitated for less than a second. “I’m tending bar there part-time.”

“FBI pay is that bad?”

He laughed as he turned on East Bay Street. “No. I know one of the owners. I needed a cover for a personal matter, so I tend bar. Here we are,” Matt said as he turned down an alley and parked between a large home and a smaller building.

“Where’s here?” she asked, uneasy when she counted four other cars in the crushed-oyster-shell lot.

“The Rose Tattoo.”

“It looks more like a private residence.”

He turned and offered a smile. Her eyes were drawn to his mouth and she experienced a strong, brief and inappropriate millisecond of desire.

“It hasn’t been a private residence since just after the Civil War,” he explained. “It sat empty for a while, then it was a speakeasy during prohibition. The previous owners renovated it as a bar and lived on the second floor. Then Rose Porter bought it and was on the verge of bankruptcy until Shelby Tanner bought in.”

Reaching across her to grab the door handle, his forearm brushed her belly and Kresley felt a quick zing of excitement spread through her body. His hair smelled like the ocean, but the woodsy scent of cologne still lingered on his skin.

“Hang on, I’ll come around and help you.”

When Kresley stepped out of the car, her knees buckled and if Matt hadn’t been there to catch her, she would have folded like an accordion.

His hands grabbed her waist. Leaning back against the Jeep, she took several deep breaths to fend off the rapid pounding of her heart. Not an easy task with Matt’s square-tipped fingers resting lazily on her skin.

“I’m good,” she said, placing her palms on his chest. Her intention was to gently push out of his grasp. But the feel of solid muscle and the thump of his heart beneath her touch only served as a greater enticement.

Am I always this aware of a man? she wondered. Or is it just this man? And could my timing be any worse? Not having a memory was inconvenient, to say the least.

“C’mon,” he said, wrapping one hand around her waist to lead her to the door marked Deliveries Only.