Alice Sharpe - Cowboy Incognito

“I guess that explains the Mark Twain vibe,” the nurse said as the guard left.

“And how he was able to leave the hospital without being noticed,” Woods added.

The nurse, sporting a bandage on her forehead, insisted Zane climb back into bed. He met her gaze directly. “No,” he said.

“You’ve had a traumatic event. I know the doctor said you’ll be all right, but it’s time for another sleeping tablet and you need to be in bed to take it.”

“No more medicine,” Zane said. He knew he was drawing a line in the sand but he’d had it.

“Really, sir.”

“No, listen,” Zane said. “You undoubtedly saved my life tonight. I’m very grateful to you and I promise to be a good patient starting tomorrow, but for right now, I need time to sit and digest everything that’s happened and I don’t want to be bothered by anything or anyone. I’m fine, the doctor said so. Go coddle someone who needs it, okay? Please?”

She produced a reluctant smile. “I’ll check on you in a while.”

He just nodded.

Woods shook his head as the swishing door behind the nurse sent chills racing down Zane’s spine. His gaze dipped to Zane’s neck and back to his face. “How are you feeling?”

“A little sore, a little confused, a little scared, to tell you the truth,” Zane admitted. “And mad.”

“I’m going to arrange to have Security post someone on your door. You’ll be safe here.”

Zane had heard that before. He gave a vague nod and waited until Woods had left the room, deep in thought but with a growing sense of conviction.

He knew what he had to do.

The closet Woods indicated earlier did indeed hold what was left of his clothing: two black boots, size eleven. That was it. Zane didn’t know if his other clothes had been destroyed when he fell or confiscated by the police to search for fingerprints or some indication of the man who had attacked him on the street and stolen his identity, phone, what have you. He stuck the boots on right over the socks the hospital issued. After grabbing Woods’s card and his own keys off his tray table, he opened the outside door.

The hall was clear except for a nurse engrossed in entering data into a computer mounted against the wall. Her back was to him. As quietly as he could, he pushed his IV stand the opposite direction, ignoring stiff, aching muscles and a headache he suspected would fell an ox. He’d seen a break room on one of his loops around the hospital floor and he made for that now.

His luck held. The room sported a table and chairs, a coffeemaker, fridge and microwave, but no people. He easily removed the IV from his arm and abandoned the stand in a corner. He found a pair of scrubs hanging on a hook and hastily put them on, adding a white lab coat that someone had left draped over the back of a chair. His keys and Woods’s card went into the pocket. The hall was still empty. He knew the elevators were right across from the nurses’ station so he used the stairwell, undoubtedly following the same path the man who had tried to choke him had taken an hour or two earlier. When he opened the door on the lobby floor, he half expected to find a security guard waiting for him, but the cavernous space was almost empty. A second later, he said good-night to the guard on duty at the exit and walked purposefully away from the hospital as though he did so every night of his life.

Was he really leaving without telling a soul where he was going? Was this what an innocent man did after a murder attempt?

What else was he supposed to do? Docilely lay back in his bed until his room was surrounded with police and security guards and he might as well tuck himself away in a jail cell?

No way. Depending on other people didn’t sit well with him, not when the stakes were high and not when another gut feeling told him he knew how to take care of himself. It would be tricky defending himself against an unknown foe. Reason said that tonight was the culmination of something ongoing. He had no recollection of where he’d been or what he’d been doing. The killer would be back unless Zane managed to disappear until his memory returned, and that’s just what he planned to do.

But where does a man without a penny, without an identity, without a friend in the world, actually go?

The keys jingled in his pocket as he walked and he took them out as he passed beneath a streetlight. Red Hot. A tractor dealership in Utah. Apparently no one had recognized his photograph. But maybe seeing a living breathing human being would be different.

If he remembered his geography, Utah was about four states away from New Orleans. A couple of thousand miles or so. It would take days to hitchhike there.

Well, it wasn’t as though he had anything else to do, was it? He kept walking.

* * *

KINSEY STOOD ON the front porch of the house facing her mother, Frances. The abrupt door opening had caused her to stumble backward in her heels, and now she held on to a flaking post to steady her nerves.

What a day.

“Where have you been all night?” Frances demanded. “I called three times. Why are you all dressed up?”

Kinsey knew she and her mom shared certain similarities in appearance. Both were on the petite side, though Kinsey was a couple of inches taller, both curvy, both with deep brown eyes. Kinsey’s hair was her natural shade of dark brown while Frances had dyed her hair her entire life. Currently reddish-brown, silver roots showed in the center part. Over sixty now, the years had started to show in the lines on her face and the sag in her shoulders. Kinsey had never understood why her mother settled for backbreaking, low-paying employment as she was well read and intelligent. Frances had stressed that no job was more or less noble than another.

Where they differed was internal: Kinsey open and curious, Frances suspicious and very much a mind-your-own-business woman. Kinsey artistic, sketching her way through life, as proficient at mixing paints as her mother was at whipping up pancake batter.

“We had a show,” Kinsey said, deciding on the spot to skip the details about the bicycle and the cowboy. “Let’s go inside.”

“We better not,” Frances said, softly closing the door behind her. She and Kinsey were now almost lost in shadows. Just a sliver of moonlight and the light filtering through a nearby window helped them see each other. “Bill is finally asleep,” she added. “He’s had a tough day and I don’t want to chance waking him and get him coughing again.”

“Were you waiting for me? I almost had a heart attack when the door opened like that.”

“I was afraid you were him,” Frances said, glancing behind Kinsey as though expecting someone else to materialize. Kinsey actually looked over her shoulder, but there was no one there that she could see. On the other hand, she couldn’t see much.

“Him who?” she asked, her mind leaping straight to Ryan. Had he said or done something upsetting? What? What could he possibly say or do? “What’s going on?”

“It’s Bill’s nephew, Chad. Bill got a note from him saying that he was coming today or tomorrow. I’ve been on edge ever since reading it. Bill doesn’t want him here.”

“Oh, dear,” Kinsey commiserated. She knew her mom didn’t get along with Chad. “Can you call him and tell him that?”

“Neither Bill nor I know his phone number. I don’t think he wants anyone to know how to reach him. That way, he can call all the shots. The last time he came, he accused me of stealing Bill’s coin collection. He prowls around here making demands.”

“Like what?”

“He wants me to show him all the things he remembers his uncle used to have, things like those coins and stamps and heaven knows what. And when he isn’t taking inventory, he’s eating, and guess who he expects to do all the cooking?”