Julie Miller - Kansas City Countdown

“I think we’re finally done.” The doctor rolled his stool away from the table and stood.

The left side of Kenna’s face was still numb, her eyelid droopy from the anesthetic, when she finally let go of Keir’s hand. He and the nurse helped her sit up and swing her legs over the edge of the table while Dr. McBride rattled off wound-care instructions and washed his hands. He shone a light into her eyes one more time, checking her pupil reaction, before smiling and giving her permission to leave on the proviso that she contact her personal physician Monday morning.

The nurse rolled aside the stainless steel tray piled with bloodied gauze and various tubes of antibiotics and skin glue. After depositing the sharps on the tray in the disposal bin, the nurse handed her several sheets of printed instructions and a package of sterile gauze pads and tape. Meanwhile the doctor reminded her of the symptoms to watch out for that might indicate the injury to her brain was getting worse.

“Thank you, Dr. McBride.” Kenna spoke slowly to articulate around the numbness beside her mouth. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“You’re lucky you can’t remember what happened to you, Ms. Parker.” He reached out and shook her hand, holding on for a few compassionate seconds. “If the amnesia turns out to be permanent, perhaps that’s a good thing. I can’t imagine how frightening an attack like that would be. You take care.”

After Dr. McBride and the nurse had gone, Kenna tilted her gaze to the detective still standing beside the examination table. “So why don’t I feel lucky?”

“Because you don’t know who did this to you. And you’re afraid he or she might come back to finish the job.”

Exactly. “I think I liked you better when you held my hand and didn’t say anything.”

Keir slid his hands into the pockets of his charcoal slacks and grinned. “And here I thought you didn’t like me at all, Counselor.”

Kenna couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t have found this man charming. True, he seemed to be a few years younger than she was, but not enough to make any awkward difference. She had a feeling his sarcastic sense of humor was very much like her own, and she owed him more than she could repay for rescuing her and standing by her through this whole, tortuous ordeal. She tried to match his smile. “Tell me again why we’re supposed to be enemies? I hurt you, didn’t I? Hurt someone you care about. Oh, God, I didn’t sue you, did I?”

“No. You didn’t sue me.” He reached over to pluck the surgical cap off her head and let her hair fall around her face. “According to the doctor, I’d better not fill in the blanks. He said that in order for your memory to recover you need to figure out the missing details in your brain for yourself.”

That wasn’t all Dr. McBride had cautioned her about. “If it comes back at all.”

“You want to try again?”

“Try what?”

The detective pulled out his phone to show her a picture of a man wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie and blue jeans. “Do you recognize this man?”

Kenna studied the image for a few seconds. “Did he do this to me?”

“I can’t say.”

“Because you don’t know? Or because you want me to tell you who he is.”

Keir’s firm mouth eased into a grin. “Can you identify this guy?”

She looked again. Even if she could remember the attack, there was little to identify in the picture. The man stood in the shadows behind a parked car, beneath a harsh circle of light from a street lamp creating shadows that rendered his face a black void that reminded her of the Grim Reaper.

“No. I don’t know him.” Not even the clothes looked familiar. She tucked the loose hair behind her ears. “What if I never remember what happened to me? How good a detective are you? Can KCPD solve a crime like that? I may not remember clients and faces, but I remember my books and law school and what it takes to make a good case. I can’t imagine getting a conviction if the victim herself isn’t a reliable witness. Any decent defense attorney would fry me in court.”

Keir’s eyes darkened to an unreadable midnight blue, and the grin disappeared. She’d struck a nerve there. Something to do with shredding his case again, she imagined. A fist squeezed around Kenna’s heart. She didn’t want whatever had happened between them in the past to ruin this...what? Friendship? Attraction? Maybe she was the only one imagining a connection between them. What if he was just a good cop following through on an investigation and she could have been any citizen he’d taken an oath to protect? Maybe she was more addled in the head than she knew and she couldn’t tell the difference between being kind and caring.

Kenna dropped her feet to the floor and stood, reaching for Keir when he turned away. “What did I just say? I reminded you of something. What did I do to you?”

His cell phone vibrated, creating an audible buzz in the silence of the room while she waited for him to answer.

“Keir?”

But an explanation wasn’t coming. Keir read the summons on the screen as it buzzed again. “The doc said I couldn’t use my phone in here, but I need to take this.”

An instinctive response to ask a different question—to get him to open up about something else before she steered the conversation back to what she really wanted to know—kicked in. “Who’s calling you before dawn?”

“My partner. I asked him to do a wider search grid around the alley where I found you, see if he could find a primary crime scene or at least where you parked your car. He’s searching to find the guy I showed you, too.”

“He’s a person of interest, isn’t he?”

“I spotted him in the general vicinity where I found you. Don’t know if he was sizing up a mark, if he was watching the alley to see if anyone noticed you or if he just had nothing better to do on a Friday night. I’d sure like to talk to him.” The phone buzzed impatiently, and Keir backed toward the door. “I’ll be out in the lobby.”

Manipulating the conversation to get to the answer she needed was starting to feel like second nature to her. Had she possessed this stubborn streak before the attack? “Tell me why you called me the Terminator earlier. It didn’t sound like a compliment.”

“I’ll ask up front about getting you some clothes, too, since the CSI took your suit and shoe to the lab.”

This conversation wasn’t done. Kenna walked right up to him and fingered the lapel of his gray tweed jacket. She rubbed her thumb over the crimson smear staining the nubby material. “You’d better ask about a change of clothes for you, too. You’ve got blood on your jacket. My blood.”

“I’m coming back.” The gap—both literal and figurative—widened between them as he pulled the material from her fingers. Then he put the phone to his ear and turned away. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

Kenna hugged her arms around her weary body and watched the door close behind him. Keir had managed to be supportive and evasive at the same time. “Run, you clever boy.”

Clever boy. Where had that phrase come from? While she’d seen glimpses of a boyish charm, there was certainly nothing immature about Keir Watson. Not in his stature, his tone or his demeanor.

“Clever boy,” she muttered the words again, mentally chasing the blip of a memory that floated through her head. “It’s from a TV show.” She watched TV. She had a hobby. “Blue box. British accents.” One lightbulb, however dim, finally turned on inside her head. “Dr. Who.”

She seemed to be in pretty good shape, so she wasn’t a full-blown couch potato. Who did she watch it with? Family? Friends? A significant other? Why hadn’t whoever she watched that show with come to see her at the hospital? Okay, sure, there was that whole thing with the missing phone and purse and relying on the police to track down where she lived and worked—but wasn’t someone missing her? Alarmed that it was five in the morning and she hadn’t come home?