Someone wants their perfect weapon back, only she’s not coming quietly.
Alexa Wells wants her life back. She’s just not sure what that life was. The memories inside her head—a stripper’s—aren’t hers, and before she humiliates herself onstage one more time, she sets out to collect the scattered pieces of her mind. The trail leads to Boston, charges of identity theft and murder, and the real bombshell: a forgotten werewolf lover who insists she’s a werewolf hybrid. Matt York doesn’t care that she looks at him like he’s been smoking crack between court cases. Now that he has her back he’s not about to let her go it alone, even if she can easily kick ass and take names all by herself. Amnesia only scratches the surface of her problems, and like it or not, she’s stuck with him. She’s also stuck with Robert Gamboldt, a venture capitalist who’s not above murdering his way to the top. He’s not about to lose his prize possession without playing dirty. It’s a simple enough offer. Be his personal assassin, or go to jail.
With options like that, it’s enough to make a hybrid go full-blood.
Warning: Delicious sexual tension with a werewolf who’ll wait as long as it takes for his hybrid werewolf mate to come around.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Stripped
Copyright © 2009 by Marcia Colette
ISBN: 978-1-60504-640-2
Edited by Anne Scott
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2009
www.samhainpublishing.com Stripped
Marcia Colette
Dedication
This book is for my growing list of fans and visitors to my blog whose encouragement has been amazing. Also, to the lovely women of Naked Scriptorium who are always there for me whether it’s in my writing life or celebrating the fabulous moments in my personal one—hint hint. To my newest supporters, the Clayton Pack, you guys are the best. Hugs on top of hugs to my incredible editor, Anne, for believing in my story and helping me to make it better. You rock! To the wonderful Magaly Guerrero, thank you for the info on the witch’s ladders. And last but not least, to my aunt for being a voracious reader. Thank goodness, Grandma passed that trait on to both of us. Fingers crossed that there are less “Sponge Bob” moments with this one.
Chapter One
Thick, hazy smoke and bright lights hid the faces of the drunken men as they cheered and hurled obscenities. As soon as empty beers mugs clapped on tabletops, hands raised to flag down X-rated waitresses for refills. The music thumped hard enough to break through my chest. Despite the painful noise, the degrading banter stayed with me. They didn’t have any right to yell and whistle at me like some nickel whore.
This must have been a nightmare. Like the kind you have when you’re dreaming you’re naked on stage and you wake up realizing it was only in your mind.
One problem: I was partially naked, on a stage, and even my mind wanted to hide under a rock. Not funny at all, considering I had no idea how I had gotten here. I dared to shift my eyes to the right. They landed on a gold pole stretching from the stage to the blackpainted ceiling. Just as I thought. No amount of pinching would wake me from this horror. Colored lights radiated overhead, heating the center stage. I knew how a hamburger under a heat lamp felt. I stood in the middle of the waxed hardwood floor while two more strippers danced at opposite ends of the stage. The music hit an ear-blasting crescendo and the dancers tore off the tops of their striped prisoner uniforms. Two pairs of boobs jutted out at the same time.
If there was a cue, I missed it. My behind wasn’t dropping a thing for these bums. Pain bit into the side of my big toe. Tight straps nearly strangled it to numbness. I glanced down, pulling my bent knee inward. A very naked knee at that. Someone had strapped a pair of five-inch, black stiletto heels around my bony ankles. It was a miracle I remained standing in these things. My hands clung to both edges of the tiny policeman’s jacket. A black thong rode up my butt crack like floss through teeth, no thicker than the straps on my heels. Something sat on my head, holding my wavy black hair down. Reaching up, I pulled off a policeman’s hat with a bright, shiny badge pinned in the center. Gee, why didn’t that surprise me?
“Come on, baby,” a man yelled at the edge of the stage. Between the missing teeth and the long stringy hair, I would rather kiss a donkey’s crap-filled ass than go near that creep. His hand thumped the small round table, sloshing beer from his mug. “Come on, sugar. Blast me with those cute little tits y’all got hidin’ under thar.”
How I had sunk to this level, I didn’t have a clue. In fact…I didn’t have much of a clue about anything. Not my name, where I had come from, or family. It was all…gone. Stripped
Men loitered in every nook and cranny of the seedy saloon. Some shoved shot glasses in their mouths while others gulped their beer from frosted mugs. A long bar stretched across the back wall where a halfdozen patrons waited for the bartenders to fill their orders. One of the barkeeps finished putting foam-dome touches on a beer before placing it on a tray covered with shot glasses and more mugs, and handing it off to a scantily dressed waitress. Then again, “scantily” was an understatement. She wore a V-neck outfit that covered up the areolas of her bulbous boobs and stretched down to barely cover her crotch. Another similarly dressed waitress made her way around a crowded table. I got a look at her fishnet pantyhose with the rest of the V riding up her ass and out to her shoulders. A man at the table slapped her on the bottom before smoothing his hand along her reddening butt cheek.
I didn’t know which was grosser—the outfits or the way these men degraded the women. An image in the mirror behind the bar caught my attention. From this distance, my reflection showed me standing on the stage with my one hand tucked under my jacket ready to flash the room. Only now, the other two strippers stared at me like I had lost my mind. The dark-haired one nodded for me to take it off. I shook my head. She’d need a crowbar to get me out of my last shred of dignity. My feet staggered backward. On the way, my elbow clipped the pole. Panic began chiseling away at my nerves. The men sitting closest to the stage pulled their heads back, faces twisting in bewilderment. That made two of us.
“Boooooo,” a man shouted. “What the hell’s wrong with this girl?”
“She’s probably on something.”
“Mr. Wiggly will straighten her out.”
“Fuckin’ whore!”
A scotch tumbler flew across the stage. Shattered glass and whiskey spilled everywhere. One stray piece sliced the top of my strangled toe.
Why that no good, son of a—! Stiletto heels or not, I marched to the end of the runway, fisted the man’s shirt in my hand and lifted him from his chair. His eyes went wide. His rapid heartbeat thumped loud enough to reach my ears and his pupils dilated. I’d have him crapping his pants in about…three…seconds…
I paused.
I had lifted him straight up out of his seat with his feet dangling about four feet off the floor. My bony arms hardly strained a muscle. Something in the back of my head screamed I should be accustomed to this kind of strength, but I wasn’t.
Nonetheless, someone needed to let this inebriated jerk know he couldn’t get away with things like that. I yanked his sour-smelling face within an inch of mine. “Next time you throw a glass on this stage, you had better damn well hope it kills me.”
Marcia Colette
I let him go before he stuttered through a pathetic response. The man dropped onto the rickety table, smashing it to pieces and startling a group of onlookers.
The blaring music stopped—finally—and everyone came to a standstill. All eyes were on me. If I didn’t feel comfortable a few minutes ago, I sure as hell wasn’t feeling it now. I zipped up my police jacket, turned on my stilettos and marched—slipped once—my thong-clad behind out of there. I threw open a pair of blood-red curtains, leaving collective “boos” at my back. Butt cheeks flapping or not, I didn’t care. Depending on how many times I had stripped without realizing it, these jerks probably had grown accustomed to seeing my ass to the breeze. Click, click, click.
I didn’t turn around. I knew the other girls had followed because my instincts said so. In fact, my instincts seemed more heightened than usual. But then again, I didn’t know what usual was nor did I remember.
The miniscule print in the corner of a movie poster was as clear as a message on a billboard. My ears captured conversations behind closed doors. The toxic smell of alcohol-laced perfume pinched my nose from trails left minutes—hours—ago. There were at least four different types on the air, meaning at least four different people had passed through this hall and brought a horrible stench of incense with them. My nose picked up a few more scents, making it nine fresh ones in the last few minutes and numerous ones in the last couple of hours. Stale dust settled on my tongue from the blowing air conditioner that hadn’t been cleaned since the owners had it installed.
I passed more than a half-dozen girls, giggling and wearing some sort of X-rated getup. There was a nurse, a scantily dressed princess and someone who looked like a dominatrix. What kind of striptease freak show did I belong to?
The rust orange hall tickled my mind with familiarity. I had a general idea of what lay behind each of the doors. None of them interested me except for the last one on the right. An announcer’s voice boomed through the walls, muffled but audible as he apologized for my slipup and introduced the next act. Tender hands warmed my shoulders. “Keisha, honey, what’s wrong? You can’t just leave the stage like that.”
Keisha? I didn’t know this woman, so she had no right putting her paws on me. I threw her off and whirled on my heels. “Don’t ever touch me again,” I snarled. Redness brightened her made-up cheeks. With her long curly hair, thick lips and high cheekbones, she was very pretty. If only she would sandblast some of that crap off her face, a decent guy might take notice. She stood an inch taller in her heels and had boobs that would keep a set of sextuplets happy for months. When I tried to pull her name out of my head, I drew a blank. Grabbing my shoulders, another woman shoved me into a rack of hanging clothes. “Get a grip, Keisha. Don’t make me get Paul to put your ass back on straight. You ruined our act.”
8
Stripped
I wanted to snatch each of her long blond hairs from her scalp. Who cared if she had a few inches over me? I’d be more than happy to blacken both of her baby-blue eyes. Better yet, I’d tear that prisoner’s hat off her head and shove it far enough down her throat to feel like a stomach staple. I dug myself out of the clothing rack just in time for “Drop It Like It’s Hot” to blare over the speakers. How apropos for what I planned to do.
Narrowing my eyes on the chick, I slugged her with a right cross. That pop to the chops registered up and down the hall. She staggered backward into the rust orange wall. Snagging her thin neck between my fingers, I yanked her to her feet. “If this Paul person has answers, then get him.” I shoved her hard enough to crack the back of her head against the wall. Now that our little alpha-female power display was over, I wanted answers. I stalked down the corridor and stopped in front of a burgundy door with a gold star glued to the front. The familiarity surrounding this place came through like a bright light from the heavens; only this place had more to do with hell. My mind traveled into the past where I recalled a beige locker with a Harley Davidson sticker on the front and someone else’s initials carved on the lower right corner. Although I couldn’t be sure, I’d bet anything it was mine. Perhaps some of those answers I wanted lay in there.
Slapping my hands on the door, I burst inside.
Chapter Two
A line of half-naked women either sat in front of mirrors painting their faces or stood around adjusting their bare-minimum costumes. Not one in the bunch seemed to care that they were about to strut their bony asses or jiggling boobs in front of a group of perverted drunks. This was their thing, and at some point, it had become mine.
None of this registered. Not my name, where I was born or my favorite color. I didn’t even know if I had a favorite food. Many questions like how I got here and where exactly was here continued to plague me. What had I done to deserve this?
I’d come looking for answers but began to doubt I’d find them here. These women were doing what they were told, and my missing history wasn’t a part of their program. I had to relax. Be cool, whoever you are.
Easing through the room, a tremor worked across my shoulders. If I had to go into an amnesic coma, why couldn’t I wake in a more dignified setting like a college campus? Knowing nothing about my circumstances and having my pride stripped away made me more livid and scared than being on that stage.
“Keisha,” a woman said, making her approach. She reminded me of a mid-nineteenth-century madam with her tight corset and boobs spilling over the front. “Darling, you look pale. Is something wrong?”
I stopped her advance with a talk-to-the-hand gesture. “Back off. I don’t know you from a real fairy or a fake one.”
As I stormed past her, I couldn’t help catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had almondshaped, dark eyes that were remarkably like my mother’s. How I knew that, I don’t know. Call it another feeling. Without the heels, I was of average height and slim. Heck, I had a rather nice figure, somewhat athletic. Unfortunately, I needed another cup size—or two—in the boob area if I wanted to be in the same league as the other strippers. What the heck made me stripper material? Then again, those drunkards couldn’t tell a tit from a bowl of ice cream with a cherry on top. My skin amazed me to the point that it dusted off a few cobwebs in my brain. I had an olive or mulatto complexion because of my Native American father and African American mother. That was what the voice in my head said and I was going with it. Most people referred to it as “high yellow”. I think. I looked more like cappuccino. More cobwebs began to clog up the memory passage until it fizzled away. I was a stranger to myself. That notion churned my stomach in such a way that I thought I’d lose my lunch right there. I just wanted this to make sense, like a person misplacing their keys and suddenly Stripped
remembering where they had put them. Why couldn’t it be that easy for me? Unsettling didn’t begin to describe the not-knowing of how or when I had gotten here.
The “madam” clapped her hands and shouted, “Everyone out! Now!”
Through the mumbles and scowls, the strippers gathered their things and made a line toward the door. She stopped one of them, mumbling something about getting this Paul person and my having a fit. That crazy woman had no idea.
Some things came back, a few disjointed images and weird feelings. But that was the problem. I didn’t know who or what to take as gospel. Dammit, I hated being confused like this. Pulling away from the mirror, I went to the row of beige lockers lining the wall. I noted each name before stopping at the masking tape that had Keisha written in black marker. That was what those women called me. In the corner was a small sticker of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
“Dear…” The madam kneaded her pudgy fingers and blinked with the innocence of a child up to no good. “Why don’t you sit? Paul’s usually good at calming you girls down before and after a show. He’ll—”
I tore off the door to my locker. Literally. My fingers remained wrapped around the knob while I stared with my jaw agape. Wow, was I strong. This might come in handy, other than tossing drunkards around a bar.
I let the bent metal clatter to the floor. Inside, I found a pair of jeans, an ivory shirt and an emerald green bra. I unzipped the police jacket and dressed in a hurry. Whoever this Paul guy was, I didn’t want to meet him like this.
Just as I had finished buckling my pants and grabbed my shirt, the door burst open. A man stood there with shaggy hair touching his shoulders, a light-brown goatee and hazel eyes. He looked rather average with the dirty jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled to three-quarters length.
“Hey, baby.” He sauntered into the room, his eyes fixed on me. “What’s shaking? Frankie says you’re having a bad time.”
“You’re Paul?” I kept a tight grip on my sweater. I needed my hands free for whatever came next, which meant forgoing pulling it on and losing sight of the enemy. The enemy? Talk about a survival-of-the-fittest attitude.
“I see.” He reached for his back pocket and pulled out a syringe. “Don’t worry about this. It’s just a something to calm you down. We’re worried about you. Aren’t we, Dottie?”
My eyes widened. Was that how they kept the women under their control? They used drugs to soften us up before we went on stage? Damn them. Thank goodness I had missed my dose or I wouldn’t be standing here right now. But the question was, why hadn’t they given it to me before I went out on stage? Did they think it would sour my act?
The madam nodded and plastered a gentle smile on her face, lifting the mole above her cheek. “That’s right, sugar. We only want what’s best for you.”
Marcia Colette
Paul continued across the floor, uncorking the syringe and squirting an arch of clear fluid in the air.
“You’re feeling a little disoriented, huh? A slight headache?”
Well, now that he mentioned it, perhaps a little nauseous too. But I wasn’t talking. Instead, I backed into the wall behind me. A mental voice screamed to fake my fear and that was what I did. My eyes widened, head shaking while my hands felt for the cold wall. Perhaps I did this a little too well.
“I’m sorry,” Dottie said, coming from the other side. “I should’ve listened better when you said you weren’t feeling good.”
“Shit, Dot!” Paul glared. “You knew she was like this and you didn’t tell me?”
“She said it was a little headache is all and wanted to dance tonight. I even checked the incense by her dressing mirror to make sure it was full. How the hell was I supposed to know it would lead to this? She won’t remember anything, right?”
“Shut up.”
It was time to leave. I threw the sweater in Paul’s face and followed it up with a slug across the jaw. The syringe scraped my forearm when he went down. Dottie grabbed my other arm, but I jerked her forward and smirked.
“You don’t want to do that.” I slammed her with a left cross. Paul grabbed my ankle. Blood trailed from the side of his nose. He spat another clot onto the floor. Using my free leg, I kicked him across the bridge of the nose, knocking him out cold. I traipsed over to where Dottie had shrunk back and towered over her. “You’re going tell me what I want to know. There won’t be any of this what-if-I-don’t bullshit. You will talk to me.”
She nodded like a bobble-head doll.
12
Chapter Three
Dottie told me things, but unfortunately, there was this trust issue standing between us. The part that intrigued me the most was how the workers at Trixie’s Tricks had found me sitting in the back corner of the bar about eight months ago, looking confused and sick. They had taken me in because they found out I had
“certain skills” that came in handy. Dancing wasn’t one of them. Bouncing vagrants out the door was. Looked like my instincts were on the mark after all. The dancing came up because guys wanted to know if I stripped as well as I fought. This was only my third week on the stage as the main attraction. My doubts about Dottie had surfaced when she said it had never occurred to anyone to report me to the police or dig deeper to find out where I had come from. The saloon’s owner, Robert Gamboldt, only cared about what he got out of me while I was there. Helping me gather my senses would mean losing his cheap labor.
According to my fake license—Dottie had made me up when they couldn’t find my ID—I lived in an apartment on the east side of Battle Rose, Arizona. How I had ended up in a town with two thousand desert urchins, your guess was as good as mine. While driving down the road with the hopes of finding answers at my so-called home, everywhere I looked there was desert, tumbleweeds and cacti. A steer’s skull with the jaws clacking together wouldn’t have surprised me.
Going to the police sounded like the smart thing to do, but I didn’t know how to find them. Not only that, after seeing Paul with the hypodermic, Trixie’s staff probably dealt out drugs like candy. The cops would think I had come off a bad drug trip or something. The minute they called Trixie’s, Dottie and Paul would have me up on assault charges to cover their asses. Memories or not, I needed to get out of this town. It took some doing, but I found my two-story apartment building and parked just below my window. When I got out, I glanced at the second floor.
A niggling feeling told me someone else lived there. In the past hour, I had learned to pay close attention to my gut. Looking around the parking lot, I tried to jog memories of my roommate owning a car. Perhaps I’d know if she was still there. Nothing came to mind other than me driving this beat-up 1987 Honda Civic with a busted-out passenger window. Thank goodness for clear plastic. Rope held one of the rear doors on and the pungent exhaust fumes made me sick. The pay at Trixie’s must have sucked if this was what my cash bought me.
When I reached the second floor, I unlocked the door and pushed it open until it bumped against the wall. My eyes needed a second to adjust from the lighting on the open balcony to the darkness in the Marcia Colette
apartment, but when they did, turning on the lights was unnecessary. I made out colors and angles of furniture and objects around the room. Two rag magazines lay on the two-seater table near the window. A lava lamp sat on a small table in the corner. Stains marred the worn carpet and thickness saturated the air. I stepped inside.
Something covered my mouth.
My hand went out, stopping my assailant from stabbing me with an incoming syringe. Man, I hated needles.
My elbow jabbed a set of bony ribs. The woman grunted and her grip loosened. I moved forward to keep her off balance. I shoved my hip into her side, grabbed her arm and launched her over my shoulder. Still holding her wrist, I twisted it backward and plowed a right cross into the woman’s face. After leaping off her still body, I closed the door and flipped the light switch. The brightness burned my eyes the way the odor from a busted tailpipe rifles through your car’s vents. At first it bothered me that it took a few seconds for them to adjust. Thank goodness there wasn’t another person waiting or they would’ve had the jump on me.
That wasn’t right. I’d have to get my eyes checked when I got a chance. It hurt as much as the pungent scent coming from the vents. Speaking of which, the air tasted like a pack of cigarettes and rotten garbage.
My assailant had long black hair and a small scar just above her lip. She had dressed for bed wearing a black baby doll with a red-lips pattern throughout the silk material. She was probably the roommate, though she really could’ve been anyone. Attacking me certainly didn’t make her my friend. She moaned and her head rolled to the left. She’d come to soon. I ran around our small one-bedroom apartment and collected plenty of cord to use for bindings. Once I had her situated, I began going through the apartment looking for anything that might clue me in to my past.
Other than clothes, some money and a bunch of business magazines, I found nothing. My “roomie”
had a chest filled with adult toys and a collection of men’s underwear. I closed the trunk and washed my hands. Heaven only knew what kind of diseases that skank left sliming up the walls of that thing.
“Hey,” the woman shouted from the other room. “You in there, Keish?”
I backed away from the bathroom counter and stormed into the other room. “My name isn’t Keish or Keisha. Call me that again and you’ll swallow some teeth until you get it right.”
A smile splayed her face. “Relax, hon. We’re only trying to help. Dottie called and said you had one of your fits. That you needed your medicine. They’re real strict about—”
“Got any money?”
Her face contorted. “What for?”
“Money, bitch. You’re a stripper, so I know you got some.”
14
Stripped
“You do too.” She lifted her chin toward the bedroom. “You keep a lock box in the bedroom closet on the top shelf.”
I found it where she said. Unfortunately, none of the keys on my key ring opened the lock. Frustrated, I slammed the metal box against the bathroom counter until the top bent enough for me to get my finger around the raised edge. One good yank and I tore it off the hinges. Man, I loved this strength. Inside were a couple hundred dollars in cash, a credit card with the name Keisha M. Walker on it and a matching birth certificate. Great. I closed my eyes and repeated, “My name is not Keisha.”
I dumped everything from the box into a suitcase. A bunch of clothes went on top. Anything that might lend a clue to my past. I packed in record time. Items clanked and rattled inside, but I didn’t care. I wanted my real life back, no matter what it took to get me there. As I left the bedroom, I stopped by the woman on the floor. “What’s your name?”
“My what? Geesh, hon, you sure got whopped across the head pretty hard.”
“I asked you a question. Or did Dottie tell you what I did to her fingers when she wasn’t forthcoming?” I hadn’t done anything, really, but the fear in her eyes said she bought into the lie. Bully for me.
“Joy. Joy Rockwell. I’ve been here for the past two years.”
I started for the door.
“You’ll never get out of Battle Rose,” she said. “Paul’s on his way. He and Sammy are going to fix you up real nice.”
“Who fixed me up to begin with? Who was I when I arrived in this dusty little pit of hell?”
She shrugged despite her hands tied behind her back. “All I know is that I get a nice chunk of change for letting you stay with me. See if I ever do anything for Paul again, you little shit. We should’ve dumped your ass beside the road.”
“How long have I been here?” I wanted to make sure Dottie wasn’t lying. A deep throaty chuckle. “What diff—”
I narrowed my eyes, yearning to tear her throat out and use it as a patch. Unfortunately, that would defeat the purpose of getting any information. I could always beat her into the ground if I had to take it to that level, though I’d rather not. I needed my strength for getting out of this armpit town. Something on my face made Joy gulp. “Just after Valentine’s Day eight months ago. I know because your arrival ruined my vacation.”
“I’ll cry a bucket of tears for you.” I started for the door again. She said something more, but it went over my head. I’d been stripping in that bar, bouncing people out, and doing God only knows what else with those people. Did I have a boyfriend or boyfriends? Any STDs or abortions? Did I limit my sexcapades to men? The possibilities were endless. Unless I dunked
Marcia Colette
myself in a vat of scalding water, nothing would ever take away the feeling of knowing those mongrels had touched me.
Joy was right about one thing. Getting out of this town would be tough. Everybody knew everybody and with the strip joint being the biggest draw, there was no telling how well they knew me. I didn’t know where to go or how to get there. Everything prior to when I had “awakened” on stage was gone. All of it erased. Though I didn’t have any answers, I was damn well going to get them.
Within two hours of driving, I pulled my Honda off the road and into a trailer park. Cars were parked in front of the dilapidated trailers like a junkyard parking lot. One more wreck-on-wheels wouldn’t make a difference. Battle Rose was just a bad memory at this point.
With some time to breathe, I started going through the things I had collected from my apartment. Right away, I noticed I had a thing for collecting business cards. It was like I had kept every damn card known to mankind. Some had to do with various computer and maid services, while others were for accountants.
One of them belonged to a plastic surgeon in Phoenix. On the back, someone had penciled in an appointment for eight a.m. on Tuesday. Yeah right. I tossed that one out the window. After seeing those chicks with the grapefruit-sized boobs, horrific thoughts went through my mind of them stretching my A cups to D-sized volleyballs.
The second business card belonged to a real estate agent with a Boston address. Why in the world would I keep this? If I wanted to buy property here—hell to the no—then I’d go with someone local. But I owned property…somewhere. Boston perhaps? In a weird, disconnected way, it made sense. I pictured a large house, almost too big for one person. A red schoolhouse on the corner of a residential area. There was a sign out front, but no matter how hard I tried to hold on to the memory, the name never cleared.
That wasn’t the end of my reminiscence. A college wasn’t far from there. I pictured myself carrying a black backpack on my shoulder and going to class. I must have been a student in my past life. That was better than being a stripper in my present one.
The memory feed snapped off. At least it confirmed that I was more than a piece of stripper candy. 16
Chapter Four
My growling stomach woke me. It took a moment for the fog to clear from my brain and remember that I had driven about two hours last night before pulling into a trailer park to sleep off the early morning hours. Instead of heading to the local diner, I filled up at a gas station, bought a road map and started on the road again. Bottled water and two packs of Twinkies sustained me the rest of the day—I got lost—until I had reached the Cactus Bowl Motel.
“That’ll be forty dollars,” the desk clerk said with a deep southern drawl. Forty dollars for a two-story roach motel in the middle of a dust bowl? I fingered the credit card with my fake name on the front. “You take credit?”
“Ma’am, do we look like we just got in from the Dark Ages?”
Gee, I don’t know. I glanced around the lobby of the one-star motel. A rundown couch had patches of orange-colored foam poking through and duct tape keeping other spots together. The thirteen-inch blackand-white TV sat on the other side of the L-shaped counter with a piece of foil wrapped around the rabbit ears. Dust swept across the floor every time wind blew the door open. Let’s not forget the old-fashioned slide pad used to imprint the credit card. It sat next to the calculator that doubled for a register. Did he really want me to answer that question?
I slapped the card onto the counter and watched him imprint it. Then I asked the stupidest question of all time. “Is there a place where I can get computer access?”
His droopy eyes and scooped neck remained frozen. He pointed at the window facing the road. “See that sign in blue with the L symbol and pointing down the road? That stands for library. But today is Saturday. That means the library is closed all day today. And would you look at that? According to my watch, it’s close to dinner. They’re especially closed around this time even on the weekdays.”
A smirk slid across my face. This jackass had better be thankful I needed a room for the night. I fought the urge not to stab him in the throat with my credit card for being such a jerk.
“You got ID?” he asked. “I need it for ver-if-i-cation purposes.”
Time to see if this fake driver’s license stood up. Maybe I should rethink the stabbing part and aim for his eye instead.
Reaching inside the black kidney purse I had found in my locker last night, I pulled out my wallet again. I flipped through every section of the billfold. Pieces of paper, old receipts, coupons. What a mess. Marcia Colette
There was no way I was like this in my past life. I couldn’t be. I had become the complete opposite of everything I stood for. Memory loss or not, I knew it.
The clerk traded the license for the guest registry. Once I signed it, he checked the signature and handed everything back including the key to room eleven. Once I put everything away, I traipsed out of the office. With a little luck, I’d never see that little weasel again not even at check out. After parking next to the cess—er, uh—swimming pool, I left my car there instead of driving it around to the backside of the building where my room awaited. I hiked up the stairs and decided to break in to room twenty-four in case someone I didn’t want to see came looking for me in room eleven. Using my unnatural strength, I forced the window open. Other than mine, less than half of the rooms had occupants. Perhaps that meant there would be half the number of foul-mouthed morons too. The room needed some serious airing out. Before I put anything down, I scoped out every inch of my accommodations. Old cigarette smoke irritated the inside of my nose. I picked up the remote and noticed some thing or someone had chewed off part of the buttons. Grimacing, I tossed it on the sagging bed with the polyester comforter. Lord only knows who had touched that thing. When I went into the dressing area to wash my hands, I found brown mildew at the base of the faucet where it connected to the bowl. More mildew had taken up residence on the tiled floor next to the shower stall. Damn. I thought they would have at least provided a bathtub. Then again, what was I complaining for? I’d think twice before using it anyway.
Once I finished my sweep, I sat on the bed and searched through my suitcase. I had close to a thousand dollars in cash, some pictures of me having a good time with the other strippers—a few too embarrassing to mention—and more receipts.
Oh God! The idea of letting those mongrels have a touch for money made me push the suitcase away and hug myself. How many times had they caressed my skin? How long and how hard had I worked to get this money? Did I do favors on the side? Dammit, I wanted to know. I spent the next few minutes hunched over and holding my head. When I started rocking back and forth, I forced myself to stop. Going loopy was a luxury I couldn’t afford. After a very long, very hot shower and munching on a slice of cold pizza I had delivered from the only pizza joint in town, I sat on the edge of the bed wearing a scratchy towel tucked around my chest. The scent of old cigarettes and alcohol on the carpet made me nauseous again. Thank goodness for socks because I didn’t want to think about what might have stained the carpet. After putting on my same clothes, I lay on top of the slick polyester comforter and dozed off the second my head touched the pillow. Gravel crunched.
A car pulled up to the backside of the motel and woke me. I bolted out of bed like a soldier at attention. Brakes squealed to a stop. Car doors popped open and closed. I jumped from the bed and went to the window.
18
Stripped
A beige pickup had parked on the opposite side of the lot. My insides trembled as thoughts slowly returned to me. Unless the jerks from Trixie’s Tricks had a crystal ball for radar, there was no way in hell they should’ve found me.
A woman got out of the passenger’s side. She had to be in her fifties with her puffy cheeks and a worn look around her eyes. Gray dusted her curly blond hair. Her husband, I presumed, struggled getting out of the driver’s seat. I smiled to myself, thinking his plump belly might have had something to do with it. He tipped his straw cowboy hat up on his head and slid his arm around the woman’s shoulders. She adjusted her cotton sweater before smiling and kissing him.
Thank God. My tension released with a heavy sigh. They weren’t here for me. They were here to call it a night under the starry sky. I leaned forward and watched them disappear around the side of the building. They seemed like a nice-enough couple. What I wouldn’t give to be in their shoes. That was a reality check. I’d let myself fall asleep in a place I knew nothing about. That could’ve easily been Paul and his goons parking down there and blocking off my escape. It was time to go.
I packed the one suitcase I had and headed down to the seventies lobby to check out. This place was a trap waiting to happen and I didn’t want to get blocked in.
I slammed my palm down on the metal bell. The door behind the counter opened, and the same smarmy dude swayed toward the desk. His silk shirt was half-undone with thick curly hairs matted across his chest, coarse enough to scrape the grease out of a pan. Ick. A whiff of the marijuana reeking from the back office had wrinkled my nose. Great. This guy had probably spent the last few hours getting high.
“I’m checking out.” I slapped the room key on the counter. “Where’s the registry?”
The man ran a finger down his jungle-haired chest. “Why ya want to leave, sugar? I might have something for ya?”
I was too through with this man. I smacked my hand down on the counter to keep from reaching across and snagging him by the collar of his cheesy disco shirt. Glaring, I snarled, “Get me the damn registry.”
He snorted and shook his head before handing me the registry. I signed it and tossed the pen over the counter.
The fax machine on the far counter came to life.
Wow. This guy had a fax machine. Obviously, his technology priorities were a bit skewed. The rollers began spitting out a picture of someone. It got as far as the eyes and bridge of the nose when I recognized it as me. My fingers began tapping, hoping it would signal him to hurry up before he noticed the blown-up photo from my driver’s license. If my drumming annoyed the hell out of him, even
Marcia Colette
better. At least he would be glaring at me and not the fax. The slimy attendant busied himself with getting his calculator to print out a receipt. Unfortunately, his fat-finger-itis forced him to start over twice. He tore off the receipt and handed it to me. “H-h-here you go.”
“Thanks.” I snatched it from him and walked out the door. My legs itched to run to the car as fast as possible, but I didn’t want to give him any clues that something had me on the run.
I made it all the way to the airport in Lubbock where I parked my car in the garage and pretty much kissed it goodbye. Halfway across the parking lot it dawned on me that I had no idea where I was going. I just knew I needed to get far away from here.
“You can go anywhere you want to in the great state of Texas,” the clerk said. “There’s Dallas, Houston, Austin, Fort Worth—”
“Stop!” My fingers gripped the counter while I forced myself to dig through my thoughts. The clerk mentioned Austin. I didn’t want to go to Austin exactly, but there was something about that name that threw up a red flag with fireworks. Austin. Dammit, what was so special about that place? My subconscious stomped around like a petulant child, yelling, No! No! No! The city wasn’t special, but rather the name.
I met her eyes. “Austin is familiar, but it’s not right exactly.”
Her eyebrow arched. “How exactly?”
“Not sure. It sounds almost like another city I’ve heard of. A place that is familiar to me. But…”
The clerk tipped her head. “Ma’am? Are you okay? Maybe you shouldn’t fly.”
A rounder woman approached the other woman from behind. She had a more authoritative look about her. Her confidence came through with her lifted head and penetrating eyes. “Can I be of assistance?”
I shook my head. Her eyes said “challenge”. I don’t know why that word popped in my head, but it did. Something about this woman made me lift my chin in an effort to be the “bigger” woman. To meet her confrontation eye for eye, demand respect without voicing it. The woman’s demeanor softened. “Ma’am, if you’re sick, we can’t allow you to fly. We have rules against that.”
“I’m not sick,” I replied.
“There’s a first-aid station—”
“I’m fine.”
My clamped jaws weren’t fast enough to catch the words blurting from my mouth. My gut said someone had spent years’ worth of brainwashing on me to discourage the use of police, doctors and even first-aid stations. But that couldn’t have been at Trixie’s because I wasn’t there that long. It was another one of those illogical instinct things that willed me to follow along. 20
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Images flooded my brain of a horrible wolf attack. Lips peeled back from a set of drooling, serrated teeth. A growl as loud as a lawnmower blocked out my screams. I was practically a baby when that monster attacked me. He grabbed hold of my…baby brother? I remembered the fear, the horror of the hellish nightmare. The rabid, oversized dog had torn my baby brother from my grasp. I got mad and went after the monster. That was when he dropped my brother and snapped his jaws at me. Somehow—the images moved in a blur, too fast for me to comprehend—he locked his jaw on my foot. Wolves packed enough of a bite force to break through the leg of an elk. That allowed them to become skilled hunters whenever it came to taking down their prey permanently. I didn’t know if the monster had applied that much force, but it was enough to break skin and possibly my flimsy foot. I screamed. As a helpless five-year-old, that was about all I had in my power to do.
“Ma’am?” The authoritative woman closed her hand on the back of mine. Worry filled her eyes. “Are you okay?”
A tear trickled down my cheek. When had I started crying? I wiped it away and cleared my throat. My breathing came fast and swift like someone had untied a plastic bag from around my head. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one in the ticket line saw. These people would think I was a basket case.
“No,” I whispered. “I’m fine. I just need to get somewhere safe. Austin’s too close. I need to go farther.”
The other attendant handed me a tissue. I thanked her with a nod. The authoritative woman leaned close. “Is it a boyfriend, honey? Because God knows we’ve all had our share of knuckleheads.”
Wish I had thought of that. I stifled the smile about to bubble to life on my face. The woman had offered me an out and I took it. “Yes. He’s been…forcing me to do stuff. I finally got away and now I want to leave. For good.”
“What about the police? Do you want us to—?”
I shook my head. “No. I think he pretty much owns the police in Battle Rose. I don’t know how far his hands reach and I don’t want to take any chances. I want to go home. I even took his money and stuff to pay my way. That’s why I don’t want the police, if I can help it. Look.” I dug into my pants pocket and pulled out that lousy Keisha M. Walker ID and her credit cards. “I’m not a complete thief. Some of my money is in here too. I can pay. Honest.”
The woman studied me a few seconds longer before waving me down to a closed section at the end of the counter. Her long fingernails began clicking across the keyboard with spot-on precision. “If you’re not interested in where you’re going, there are a bunch of flights leaving the airport. I can put you on any one of them.”
If it weren’t for the counter standing between us, I would have hugged this woman. “My memory is a little shot. My ex kept me drugged most of the time.”
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“What?” Her face turned to rage, though not aimed at me. “Girl, are you sure you don’t want to call the police on this fool?”
I shook my head. “No. I just want to leave. Slip out of town unnoticed, if I can help it.”
She muttered something under her breath while her fingernails went on their tapping crusade again.
“Well, since you’re not inclined to Austin, how about Atlanta? A same-day flight is a little cheaper than anything else I’m seeing. Plus, it’s big enough for you to get lost in.”
Boston. I couldn’t explain why it popped in my head, but it made sense. My gut screamed to be there even though the rest of me didn’t know why. So far, it was the only thing on my side. I lifted my head high. “I’d like a ticket to Boston.”
My brain chose that moment to flood me with more images. There was a Giant Dig there—or was it Big—and the Salem Witch Trials weren’t far from the city either. Contrary to popular belief, you’ll find more witches living in New York or L.A. than you would there. Their subway system was the oldest in the country even though you had New York’s system, which was more expansive. Good Lord, I recalled the fishy smell hovering in the air around Chinatown. I had walked those narrow streets many times with my friends after work. After seeing plays or shows in the Theater District, my friends and I had camped out at Legal Seafoods to dissect what we had seen. We’d spend an easy three hours there if we weren’t careful, forgetting that I had to get back to…to…?
The images disappeared.
The woman smiled. “Okay, then. Let me bring up the prices.”
I waited like a child dancing with glee on Christmas Eve.
The woman stopped typing. “It’ll cost almost twice to Boston.”
I slapped Keisha’s credit card on the counter. “I’ll take it.”
“The only thing is you’ll have to sit for a couple of hours. The earliest flight out that isn’t full won’t leave until six in the morning. It makes a stop in Dallas where you’ll change flights, but that’s it.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll take it.”
Happiness filled me from head to toe. I was on my way. The only problem was…what would I do when I got there?
After going through security, fatigue rotted my senses and left me with one hell of a headache. I wandered over to the wall and found a chair a few gates down from mine. I had completely lost track of time. The only thing I knew was at least two nights had passed since my awakening at Trixie’s. A quick search of my bag, and I found a watch. I fixed it to sound off an hour before my flight left. If I missed it, then I’d get a rental car and drive my butt there. No way in hell was I spending another day away from the only place that held some sense of familiarity to me. I chanced a nap without worrying who might get the jump on me and drag me back to Trixie’s. After spreading my jacket over my front, I drifted off. A hand touched my arm. I bolted awake.
22
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Paul shushed me to silence.
Chapter Five
Paul sat so close that onlookers must have thought we were lovers about to make out in the middle of the airport. My heart thumped so hard the vibrations clogged my throat. His nose appeared red and swollen, but he cleaned up nicely. Well, nicely was still a matter of opinion. Another man sat on the other side. With the way he stared and the smile brightening his face, he must have known me too. Dark brown hair brushed just above his massive shoulders. Though I wasn’t one for cowboy hats, the deer-hide color did him justice. Light blue eyes matched the blue plaid of his button-front shirt. He looked like an honest-to-goodness cowboy cover model.
“Hi, darlin’.” Tenderness came over in the cowboy’s low voice. “We’re here to take you home.”
Unbelievable. “How did you…?”
“Robert gave us the go-ahead to purchase some tickets to get through security. He’s not at all pleased about it.”
“Robert, the bar owner?” I shook my head. “Where the heck would he get that kind of money and who the hell are you?”
“Aw, sugar.”
He reached for my cheek, but I pulled away. If that man tried to touch me again, he’d find my teeth embedded in his knuckles. My face must have said as much because he dropped his hand to his lap.
“It’s Sammy. You and I were gettin’ really close right before you left and all.”
“Oh, really.” My pissy mood kept me from being afraid. Given I didn’t trust these two, I should’ve run screaming. Instead, I crossed my arms and slumped in the chair. “How did you people find me? No. Let me guess. It was that nasty little weasel of a clerk and Keisha’s credit card, wasn’t it?”
Either I had witnessed something in my previous life and Gamboldt wanted to keep me quiet, or I had done something to make me invaluable. Whichever it was, Gamboldt had authorized two tickets that probably cost him a couple thousand dollars to bring me quietly back through the security gates. This guy must want me something bad. Far be it for me to please the king pimp when he was probably the one who gave Paul the drugs to keep me sedate.
A smirk splayed Paul’s face. “Yes and no. Yes for the clerk, but no for the credit card. We had a hunch that obviously paid off. There’s no use hiding from us, honey. We know you too well.”
“We need you to come quietly.” Sammy stood while pulling me up by my arm. I slit my eyes at him. “You need to take your hands off me.”
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“We’re not doing this, Keisha. Not here. Now you need to come home where you belong.”
I yanked my arm away from him. Paul seized me from behind.
“Hey! Hey!” A security guard sauntered down the hall. He held the walkie-talkie up to his mouth and mumbled something about backup at Gate Six. “Is there a problem here?”
Paul released me and held his hands up in defense. “No problem, Officer. Just helping my little lady up out of her chair.”
“Mm hm.” The security guard waved me over to his side. I grabbed the handle on my suitcase and did as he said. “You okay, ma’am? I got a report that you were being harassed by someone.”
A report? From who? There was hardly anyone in the airport. “Uh. Yeah. Those two right there.” I pointed them out to be sure.
Paul’s shoulders tensed and his fingers curled into fists. He took a step toward me, but Sammy captured his arm. They knew an airport was the last place in the world anyone would want to start a fight. Sammy reached in his back pocket and pulled out his ticket. “Sir, we’re trying to get to Boston. That’s all.”
Boston? Damn. But at least it proved that town meant something to me. I could’ve gone anywhere, and somehow, they knew I’d go there.
The security guard waved his finger between us, but he addressed Sammy. “You three are traveling together?”
“Yessir.”
“Are not,” I grumbled. “Yes, I know them, but there’s a reason why I was trying to get away from them.” Lying had occurred to me, but if they had any pictures to prove me a liar, say a photo with all of us being best of friends, then I’d look like a fool.
Two more security guards made their way down the hall like they meant business. Although one had more paunch than the other, neither seemed to be in the mood to deal with problem flyers.
“What’s going on, Chuck?” the bigger belly of the two said.
“We’ve got a little trouble,” he replied. “I think we need to have a talk with these gentlemen about airport etiquette.”
Lord have mercy, I had to look away and tightened my lips to keep my grin to a minimum. From the corner of my eye, I spotted the nice lady at the ticket counter who had sold me my airline ticket. Smiling, she nodded her head while purchasing a coffee and a bagel at one of the various cafes scattered throughout the airport. I mouthed a thank-you to her.
“But what about our tickets,” Paul shouted. “Now, look here, man! We’ve paid for these here tickets and we’re gonna use ’em.”
Marcia Colette
“You’ll use them,” Chuck said. “Just not on this flight. I’m sure the airline can accommodate you on another one. But if you really want to be difficult…” He unsnapped his gun and rested his hand on top of the handle. “We can make this as hard as you want to. It’s all about cooperation.”
Paul’s eyes hooded with such a fierce scowl that it would send a dog whimpering in the opposite direction. That man hated me with every ounce of his being and then some. Too bad I remained unfazed by his grandstanding. Judging from Chuck’s deadpan expression, he remained unmoved too. The security guard signaled for both of his colleagues to lead Sammy and Paul away. Paul yanked his arm loose when the security guard went to grab it. “Get your hands off me!”
Chuck’s fingers curled around his gun, still leaving it in the holster. “We’re just going to sit and have a long talk in the security station about airport protocol and how to handle the situation when a lady isn’t into you.”
I gnawed my bottom lip to fight off a smile.
26
Chapter Six
The trip was smoother than I thought, but it didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder. When we landed in Dallas, I ran to find my connecting flight and sat in the waiting area with my back against the wall to deter any surprises. With my eyes on my surroundings and twitchy nerves about to break me out of my skin, I refused to use the bathroom, thinking that Sammy or Paul might catch up with my flight and try to corner me in there. So, I pinched my bladder and waited until the plane took off and the pilot killed the Fasten Seatbelt sign. Who would’ve thought the skies were friendlier than the ground? With the afternoon sun burning bright, we touched down in Boston before one. The people shuffled down the aisle like the walking dead headed for the next meal. I could’ve jumped out the emergency exit and kissed the tarmac. When I opened the door of the cab in the taxi line, I couldn’t help remarking on the hundreds of different scents that infiltrated my nose. Some of them smelled hours old while others had been there for days. One particular scent—cheap cologne—must have come from a regular because there were more than a dozen spots stretching from one end of the seat to the other. Either that or a bunch of people walked around wearing the same crappy toilet water.
On the other hand, perhaps the driver was entertaining some chicks on his off-duty time. Hmmm? That curled my lips into a tiny grin.
“Ya getting in, lady, or what?” He motioned with his hand while his arm lay across the back of the front seat. “’Cause I ain’t got all day.”
After coming from a small town where a drawl reigned supreme, my ears struggled to comprehend his tough-guy accent. I tossed my bag in the backseat and watched where my foot landed on the dirty floor. There were less filthy areas than others. My toes had some space between the gum wrappers and food containers squashed under the seat.
Once inside, he sped away from the curb.
We jerked to a stop. Horns blared on my left-hand side. I threw myself against the door on the right, clutching the handle. The action didn’t scare me. It was the sound. Man, was my hearing sensitive.
“Fuck you!” my cabby yelled. He flashed his middle finger out the window. “I’m tryin’ to drive heah, you moron!”
The horn blew from behind again.
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The cabby jerked the car forward again. “Screw you.” He peeled off fast enough for me to grab my suitcase and plaster my back to the leather seat. His finger flipped the switch on the meter. “Where ya goin’, lady?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but given his frame of mind I dug through my bean purse and tossed a fifty over the seat. I didn’t want any hassles from him. “How about you drive me around the Boston area until my fifty runs out? I’ll decide after that whether or not you’re worth another fifty-dollar tour.”
He shrugged. “Good enough for me.”
It wasn’t long before my money ran out and I had to cough up another twenty to get me out of the rougher areas. I think he planned it that way, the jerk. Still, all of that driving around didn’t do anything for my memory. Nothing looked familiar. I wanted to extend the search out a little farther, but I had already paid twice the price of a rental car for a cab ride.
“Let me out at that hotel on the corner.” I had a little over six bucks and some change left on my seventy-dollar investment.
“Here?” the driver asked. “You sure this is where you wanna stay? Don’t get me wrong or nothin’, but not all of Fenway Park is a good area. Let me take you back up to Copley. The hotels there are much better.”
My eyebrow arched. “At the rate you drive and all this afternoon traffic, it’ll cost me another ten bucks. As it is, you’ve already got your tip by me not asking for change.”
He stopped at the light, one block from the Lansdowne Hotel. He lifted his eyes to me via the rearview mirror. “You sure you’re a tourist or something? I only ask because you seem to know how to handle yourself. Most folks don’t.”
I had a snide remark in mind, but I traded it in for picking the man’s brain instead. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’ is all. Although, you don’t sound like you’re from around here either.”
“Then where do you think I’m from?”
“I don’t know. Northeast, maybe? I’ve never traveled far from Boston, ya know? But you certainly ain’t no New Yorker either.”
I don’t know about that, my brain threw out like a quick reflex. Perhaps I had lived in Boston, but something said I wasn’t originally from here. Until my gut steered me wrong, I had to believe I was a Boston implant and not a native.
The cabby dropped me off at the corner like I had asked. One look at the Lansdowne Hotel and I understood why he had reservations about this place. The gray stone face needed a good scrubbing to clean the slimy mold from the cracks and crevices. Paint peeled from the red shutters. Looking at the rusted hinges hardly holding some of them in place, I’d say nobody had cleaned them in years. My trepidation didn’t stop at the building. People walking up and down the sidewalk kept their heads hung low. A few 28
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blocks down the prostitutes had come out a little early to play with some of the cars stopped at the light. Short skirts, four-inch heels and low-cut blouses were the garments of choice. Next to the hotel, a homeless guy sat in front of another brick building with bruises dotting the crook in his arm. He lifted his gnarled fingers up to passersby, begging from money. Half his teeth looked like miniature tree stumps after a termite infestation.
I lowered my gaze and blinked. How could I see with that kind of clarity? I lifted my head and made note of the same features, only this time I picked up a mole just above his shaggy mustache. Again, I lowered my gaze. My eyes were capable of zeroing in on objects that went beyond the normal 20/20 vision. But…that was impossible.
I shook my head and went inside the hotel.
At least the owner had kept up this place better than the last hotel where I stayed. The furniture came up about two decades and there was a computer sitting behind the barred check-in desk. I prayed those brass bars were part of the décor and not meant to keep the occasional robbers out. Other than a faux terra cotta tiling and large windows, there wasn’t much to see.
A sign pointed to an elevator at the end of the hall. The closet-sized door opened and metal accordion bars slid into the wall. Two people stepped out dressed normally except for the Buddha symbol on the woman’s brown T-shirt and the guy’s overgrown hair reminiscent of the hippie era. Both of them wore flipflops on a chilly day and the bottoms of the overly bell-bottom pants had shredded to mop consistency. The people who stayed here were unusual to say the least.
The guy stopped and stared at me. A smile bowed his lips. “You here for a room?”
I nodded. “You own this place?”
He slipped his arm around his lady friend. “No. We’re just managing it.”
“Good enough. I’ll need two nights and I’m paying with cash.”
The girlfriend tipped her head as if to look around me before making her way to the desk. “Where’s Leonard? He’s supposed to be manning the desk.”
Her boyfriend ran a hand through his brown messy hair. “Your guess is as good as mine, babe. That’s Sonya, by the way, and my name’s Frank.” He offered his hand. I didn’t know how to respond to that other than to meet his handshake.
“Okay.” He finished pumping my hand then he walked around me and through the door marked Manager Only. While Sonya disappeared out a back door, he began tapping across a computer screen. “I hope you’re not looking for a fancy room or anything because they’re all pretty much the same. This computer is about the fanciest thing we have and it’s about four years old.”
My gaze traced the metal bars again. “How’s the crime around here?”
Laughter burst from the upper level and echoed down to the first floor. A well-dressed man wearing a slick gray suit descended the staircase with a blond woman on his arm. A turquoise, wraparound dress
Marcia Colette
swayed at her knees, brightening her blue irises. Neither one of them looked like they belonged here. Since they didn’t have any luggage, I failed to understand what had attracted them here. They stepped off the staircase, expensive shoes clacking across the floor as they made their way to the front desk. A weird scent touched my nose. It was almost the same for both of them. Despite her putrid perfume and his vulgar cologne, there was an underlying scent of…pheromones? Oh. Well. That answered the question about why a well-to-do couple would come here. They had just finished having sex. With a platinum ring on his finger and a gold band with a shiny, one-karat diamond on hers, they were married all right. Just not to each other.
I stepped aside to let them go ahead of me. Strangers at my back left me vulnerable to possible attacks. The man smiled and thanked me before signing the receipt Frank had slipped under the bars. The front door slammed open. The junkie from next door stormed into the hotel. He curved his lips in a hideous smile that made his rotted mouth look like a dark, haunted forest with jagged limbs jutting in different directions. His yellow eyes bulged like a wild animal about to lock his jaws on some succulent meat.
“I came for my soup, Sonya. You said…” He tightened his eyes before swaggering across the floor and pointing a grimy finger at me. “I saw you. You were looking at me. You want a piece of this fine body?” He ran his filthy hands up and down his chest, sliding them toward his crotch where he grabbed hold.
“My God.” The woman turned her head into her companion’s shoulder. The door to the front desk/manager’s office opened. Sonya put on a huge smile as she approached the junkie. “Billy, what did we say about bothering the patrons? You can’t be in here when we’re conducting business.” She cupped his elbow. “Come on. I’ll bring you around back. And if you’re good, maybe I’ll make you some of my miso soup.”
“Get off me!” He shoved her hard. Sonya landed on the floor against the back of a chair sitting in the lobby.
“Hey!” Frank burst out of the office and went straight to his girlfriend to make sure she was okay.
“What’s wrong with you, man? She’s pregnant for God’s sake!”
Pregnant?
Billy shoved Frank before he could finish helping Sonya to her feet and she dropped to the floor. Billy’s eyes turned wild and dangerous. Before the hotel manager reacted, the junkie pulled a knife and began waving it in the air.
“You want a piece of this?” When he jabbed the knife at the two adulterers, the woman screamed and ducked behind her so-called knight in shiny armor. Spittle dripped from his slimy lips. “Give me your money, playboy.”
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“All right. All right.” The guy reached inside his jacket for his wallet and began counting the money like he only intended to part ways with some of it.
Billy snatched it from his hands. The junkie jabbed the knife toward the woman and got another shriek out of her. “What about you, bitch? Give me the purse! Now!”
Hands shaking, she extended the purse in his direction. He snatched it and pulled it up his arm. I couldn’t help the smile that lifted my cheeks. He looked ridiculous with an expensive bag hooked around his shabby shoulder.
He turned to me. That was his first mistake.
“Billy, stop it!” Sonya started to pick herself up again, seeing as her husband didn’t get the chance to help her last time. “You’ve taken this game of yours too far this time.”
This time? This was normal for him? Wow. The hippie couple really went out of the way with the humanitarianism if they’d let him get away with it before.
The junkie didn’t listen. He started straight for me, his wild eyes thirsting for more. I had not come this far to let some junkie rob me. When he waved the knife toward my face, I jerked my head back to keep him from slicing my nose. A urinated breeze billowed from his filthy coat. From his rotted smile, I guess he’d expected a scream out of me. This just wasn’t his day, only he hadn’t realized it yet.
Billy slashed the knife at me again, his momentum carried him through. I threw up my arms to defend myself. The knife sliced across my wrist. Pain came through sharp and quick like a giant-sized paper cut. When he tried to straighten up, I wrapped my arm around his neck in a headlock. I ran backward, slamming his head into the counter. When I pushed him away, blood leaked from the top of his forehead above the hairline. He touched his scalp and pulled away, blood coating his fingers.
“You bitch!”
He ran straight for me again. You would’ve thought this fool had learned his lesson. I threw my forearm up to block him, and my fist caught him in the throat. Billy staggered backward, coughing.
It was time to go on the offensive. I drew my fists up to protect my face and hunched my shoulder. I threw a right cross to his cheek, followed by a left hook. My legs dropped me to a crouch position. My foot swept out, knocking his knees from underneath him. I spun into an upright position with my fist drawn and ready for another counterattack.
Billy remained on the ground, dazed and hardly able to hold his head up. I dropped my fists, grabbed his ankle and dragged him out onto the sidewalk on his back. Nasty as he was, I’d need some serious hand sanitizer to get rid of that smell.
When I returned, Mr. Adulterer stood there with his hands on his hips, scowling. “He still has my wallet.”
Marcia Colette
I glanced over my shoulder, watching Billy the bum roll over on his stomach and struggle to get to his knees. “Guess you had better go get it, huh? At least before your wife finds out you’ve been entertaining company.” Lifting my chin, I walked right past him and his lady-of-the-afternoon and picked up my purse.
“Now. I needed a room for two nights. Preferably one that comes with soap so I can clean that junkie’s scent off me.”
“Are you kidding?” Frank started across the room with Sonya in tow, but had to stop before the adulterers ran him over as they traipsed out the door. “Those two days are on the house.”
This wasn’t exactly what I had planned, but I’d take it. Far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Sorry about Billy too,” Frank said. “He gets a little outrageous, but never anything like that. He must be tripping on something. We do our best to help some of the homeless around here, but there’s only so much we can do. The rest is up to them.”
Funny he should mention homeless. Looks like I had come to the right place.
“You didn’t tell us your name.” Sonya leaned against the counter while her boyfriend went around back and pulled a pair of keys from a small box against the back wall. Again, with the name thing. Couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? “I have one, but it’s not mine.”
She blinked. “Not yours? Then whose is it?”
“Someone else’s. I don’t know who I am.”
Sonya’s jaw hung. She closed her mouth, but opened it again as if to say something but not quite sure what. She finally settled on one word. “Oh.”
32
Chapter Seven
Frank and Sonya practically glued themselves to me. He insisted on bringing my one suitcase to what he claimed was the best room in the house. It was…adequate. Nothing special. It had a full-size bed, a dresser that almost stretched the length of one wall, and a small table in the corner with two chairs. The room wasn’t very big, but it was clean. Well…as clean as it could be anyway. My sensitive nose picked up every scent that had ever walked into the room. There was a heavy stench of bleach on the air, implying someone had recently picked up a bit. Perhaps a bit more than usual. What they were trying to hide, I didn’t want to know.
An hour after sitting in my room, Sonya came up with a bowl of miso soup and some homemade breadsticks on a tray, thinking it might help me feel more at home. When Frank arrived with a large knit blanket, I knew they had lost their minds. All I wanted was to sit down and watch the twenty-four-hour news channel for anything that might jog my memories.
A knock came to the door during the evening. I rolled my eyes. Based on the hoodlums who frequented this place, the only people who knocked were Frank and Sonya. Everyone else settled for screaming and slamming doors.
I crawled off the bed and answered it.
Just as I thought, Sonya stood there with a saucer of cookies and a glass of milk. She must have mistaken me for a kid—not that I had a problem with that. I stepped away from the door to let her inside.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said. “You asked about cookies for dessert. I found some mix stuffed in the back of the cabinet. This pregnancy thing has given me a crazy cookie-dough craving.”
I pointed at her flat belly. “Your first?”
She nodded. “We weren’t planning to have any kids until Frank finished his doctorate in chemical engineering and we moved out of here. Managing this hellhole makes it easier to save money.”
I took the cookies and the milk from her, and set them on the nightstand, but I couldn’t peel my eyes off them. Something told me chocolate-chip cookies were my favorite. The only difference was Sonya’s cookies were smaller than my normal ones. I didn’t have cookies every night. Only on the most challenging ones, although I wasn’t sure why my brain thought this. Someone brought a tall glass of ice-cold milk with three large cookies on a plate. I never finished all of them and it didn’t bother the person who made them. No, I take that back. She made them for the entire house and stashed a few away for later. Marcia Colette
For the life of me, I dug through the vision trying to get a face and maybe a name. Come on. Let me see more. The only thing I made out was a white apron, thick forearms and wrists, and a slight limp with each step, barely noticeable unless you watched her for a while. She was an African American woman, but not once did my vision pan to her face. Her name was as empty as Billy’s morals.
“You okay?” Sonya’s voice came through, tearing me from my thoughts. I took a breath I had no idea I was holding. “The cookies.”
“Oh.” Her large smile forced her eyes closed. “Yeah. They’re one of the few luxuries Frank won’t fight me on. We’re trying to lessen our dairy, egg and red-meat intake.”
“I’m not talking about the cookies.” I sat on the bed, pulling my legs off the floor. “They reminded me of someone, but I don’t know what she looks like.”
Sonya sat on the bed next to me. “You know…Frank and I have a friend, Manish. He’s a hypnotherapist. Maybe he can help.”
I shook my head. “Nobody’s picking around in my brain. Sorry.”
“But if—”
“No. I have a feeling it’s too dangerous in there.” Dangerous because Gamboldt’s people preferred to keep me drugged out of my mind. Not like I’d tell her that.
Sonya slouched. “How much of the visions do you remember?”
“Hardly enough to get me anywhere.”
Today’s events had worn me out. Between flying half the day from one part of the country to the other, driving aimlessly around town to get a feel for the layout and getting into a fistfight with a junkie, this day had pretty much gone to the entire dog kennel. Although my dreams hadn’t yielded much, perhaps tonight I might get lucky and find myself with names and places from my past. Anything had to be better than this damn not-knowing.
The best thing that had happened was Frank and Sonya giving me a free room and not asking to see ID. The more I followed what little clues I had and the closer I got to the truth—fingers crossed—the more cautious I grew. Though I had heard a couple of police cars scream by just outside my window, hiding in a lowlife place like this where nobody cared made it easier to get lost. Sonya fidgeted with her fingers. Her gaze pressed at my back, following me as I got up to pace by the window like a caged animal. “What about going to the hospital or the police?” She shifted on the bed, tucking one ankle underneath her long, wrinkled skirt, a nice change from her jeans. “They might be able to help you, you know.”
My fingers pushed the curtains aside and allowed me to stare three stories below. Cars traveled up and down the street while the number of whores had doubled in size. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
34
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“Suppose I’m wanted for murder?” Her silence suggested she hadn’t thought about that. I certainly had. All those hours spent in the air left me with plenty of ponder time. I turned away from the window and leaned against the sill. “I’m not about to pretend like you and your boyfriend didn’t witness what happened in the lobby. I could’ve killed Billy with my bare hands, if I wanted to.”
“Okay…?”
“You’re okay with that? Killing your junkie friend?”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying that you could have killed him. Could have. You didn’t. You protected us. That says a lot about a person.”
Believe me that wasn’t my intent. I did it to protect myself. If Billy had gone after me first, then Sonya would’ve never found herself on the floor. If he had gone after the adulterers first, same outcome. In the end, it was about me. That was a good reason to be naïve about my skills and how I used them when provoked. Someone should paint a big J on my forehead for jerk. Sonya lifted off the bed, the hemline on her skirt falling around her ankles. She stood clutching her fingers. “If you’re looking for a job, we could use some help around here. Frank had to fire the last guy because he left his post one too many times for a drink.”
That was sweet of her to think of me. “Thanks for the offer, but this is temporary. I’m getting my real life back, one way or another.”
She nodded. “I understand. But if you change your mind, you know where to find us. The door’s always open for you.” With that, she left the room.
Fatigue gnawed my bones to the point that I wanted to collapse on the floor. After a hot shower, I did. Only on the bed.
A quick leap, and I tucked and rolled into a standing position. Behind me a set of bushes rustled from where I had sprung.
Wow. That was pretty cool. A grin lifted my cheeks right before I darted into the woods. I continued through the brush, ducking under tree limbs and hopping over large rocks. Stray twigs scraped my bare legs. The coppery smell of blood reached my nose. Someone was hunting without any regards to what their carnage might bring, opening up our existence to the human race. At least that mongrel didn’t belong to our group. After all, we were paid to hunt the hunters.
A black timber wolf the size of an Irish Wolfhound, Dane, led the way while the rest of us followed. No one dared to push ahead of him or challenge his leadership. Another black wolf hurried to his side, staying close enough to make sure his beta position remained intact. More bodies moved in. Blond, brown, red wolves. An entire sea of fur running wild and free. I ran in human form at the rear of the pack, holding
Marcia Colette
the second most important position. I watched our backs with my fingers clutching a crossbow and ready to fire at a second’s notice.
Other sets of feet trampled the thicket floor, and not a human voice to go with them, which added to the creepiness stalking the woods. Stopping to see who else was out there other than us would be stupid. Instead, I picked up the pace in record time. Twigs and dead leaves crackled somewhere on my left, followed by heavy breathing on my right.
Dark fur swooped in front of me, sprinting in time to my strides. Enemy wolves had gotten the jump on us. They knew I was the weakest in rank, which was why I ran at the rear. It made sense to come after me first. Their plan was to herd us just like a group of deer. I’d have to show these bastards not to underestimate a human hybrid. When I darted to the left, another wolf swooped in, blocking me from the front. I turned right. I ran alone, my pack gone. Uh-oh. Not good, Lex. Not good at all. A black wolf caught up to my side. I turned to sniff the air. A set of jaws with a large canine head came straight for my face like a fist. I pulled the crossbow between us and fired.
A knock woke me from my adrenaline-filled nightmare. I lifted my head from the mangled pillows and sheets, wavy hair falling around my shoulders. I leveled off the last of my hammering heartbeats and wiped the sweat from my face.
“Who is it?” At first I thought perhaps the knocking had come from my dreams or was the last of my pulse throbbing in my ears.
“It’s Sonya.” Her voice was low and muffled. “Can you come downstairs? That jerk Mr. Cramer filed a police report about someone stealing his wallet. The cops want to question everyone involved.”
I glanced at the clock on the nightstand and noticed the golden sunlight ready to burst through pulled shade. “Huh? What for? We didn’t take it.”
“I know. But he’s raising a big-enough stink and even threatening to sue.”
Son of a bitch. I slammed my fist in the foam pillow before throwing the covers back. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
I threw my legs over the edge of the creaky bed. My elbows rested on my knees while I smooth my hair back with my fingers. I knotted them behind my head.
What was the dream about? Think, girl, think. I clawed through my thoughts, pulling everything out of them. There were woods, animals, and…something…
I called myself Lex, or at least I think I did. But what did it mean? It might have been one of those stupid metaphorical dreams where water or fish meant pregnancy. Nonetheless, that was one scary nightmare I didn’t want to revisit. I was running in the woods with wolves and I called myself something 36
Stripped
like…a human hybrid? Or did I? None of it made sense. If it were real, I wouldn’t be sitting on this bed and sweating like I had run a three-legged race in the Boston Marathon. I hauled myself off the bed, took a quick shower, dressed and made my way downstairs. Two cops stood in the lobby, one taking notes on a pad while the other stared toward the building next door, probably looking out for Billy. He must have been absent from his post or they’d have had him handcuffed and asking us to ID him.
The cop with the notepad looked up and pointed his pen at me. “Are you Ms. Keisha Walker?”
My heart pounded. Their presence scared me. Not in the sense they looked intimidating or anything, but there was something about their uniforms and badges that bothered me. I wanted nothing to do with them or their authority.
I nodded. “To the best of my knowledge.”
“Look, ma’am, either you are or you aren’t.”
“And that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I…” Screw it. I turned toward the staircase about to leave.
“How about I get my ID and just show it to you?”
“Stop right there!”
I froze. I didn’t know if anyone else had heard that. It was the same click in the Lubbock Airport when the security guard had unclipped his sidearm.
Lifting my hands, I turned, hoping my ears weren’t that good. The cop who stood by the window wasn’t there anymore. He had started to make his way toward me.
“Look.” I tamped down the fear in my voice. “I’m just going upstairs to get some ID.”
“You signed the registry as Keisha M. Walker,” the cop with the notepad said. “Kind of weird that you used your middle initial, don’t you think?”
“No. So?”
The closest cop rested his hand on his unclipped sidearm. “Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to turn around and put your hands on the back of your head.”
“Noooo,” Sonya whined. She rushed to my side, worry filling her wide, innocent eyes. “She hasn’t done anything. You guys said you were here because Mr. Cramer wanted to file a police report.”
“We are.”
“Then what are you arresting me for?” I asked.
“There was a report filed about eight months ago for a missing woman. Her name was also Keisha M. Walker.”
“So?”
“She was found dead in the middle of the street with an arrow through her chest.”
Ohmygod. I was a killer after all.
Chapter Eight
Something screamed for me to run as they handcuffed and loaded me in the back of the police car. Although my stolid face and limp demeanor may not have shown otherwise, I wanted to fight, to run, to hide. Instead, I did as I was told.
It was like my mind had broken into two different voices where one said to get the hell away while the other said remain calm. For some reason the calming voice sounded male and a lot more human than the other grittier one. In fact, it gave me instructions the whole time while ignoring the frightened one that said I should make a break for it. I thought it was some guy from my past, but a name never came through. Even weirder? He called me Angel.
Perhaps my name was Angel Lex or Lex Angel.
Oh hell, no! Both of those sounded so stupid they almost cracked my stoic persona with a smile. I was in the back of a police car, for heaven’s sake. What was there to smile about?
I sat cuffed at the desk of Detective Roy Konoval. He left me there while he went to check something out.
People yelled over each other with their Beantown accents while papers and folders waved in their hands. The phones rang every few minutes with an average of one ring before someone picked up and shouted into the mouthpiece. Very few of the cops seemed to believe in manners and they didn’t say goodbye before hanging up. The criminals they brought in weren’t any better. Each one wanted a phone call, their public defender or something from the snack machine. Who would’ve thought a pack of powdered donuts would make someone want to lose control? It did when a guy went ballistic with his cursing and tried to run his head into the vending machine instead. I minded my own business, although I had a hard time not looking over my shoulder with my back turned about sixty degrees to the rest of the room. Call me crazy, but I had this thing about being on my guard in unfamiliar surroundings.
The smell of thick coffee corroded my nose, but it was nothing compared to how many detectives walked by with a cigarette stench fanning off their clothes. The combo fed my nausea. My coughing fit convinced one of the detectives at a neighboring desk to get me a cup of water. It didn’t help that he smelled like tobacco too.
“Two packs a day will kill you.” I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. Stripped
The detective stared. He was your average white guy with light brown hair, a chin that stuck out a little too far and crow’s feet at the corners of his cornflower blue eyes. “Excuse me? How did you know I smoked two packs a day?”
Good question. It was as if I had smelled it from a massive repertoire of scents lying dormant in my brain. When an odor touched my nose, it pulled out a scent and matched whatever was closest to it. I played stupid and shrugged. “I don’t know. A guess.”
His mouth turned downward as if to silently spite me. “Anyway, do you need a tissue or something?”
“No. But it would be nice to get these handcuffs off.”
He pointed over my head. “You’ll have to ask him.”
Detective Konoval was a large man. I suspected he’d been a football player long before his hair had turned salt and pepper. He had a soft-spoken voice whenever he talked to me, but didn’t hesitate to raise his voice to match those in the office. A ketchup stain dotted his brown-and-maroon-striped tie, although he wore a pair of smoke-gray slacks with a blue shirt. The faded wedding band implied that after years of marriage his wife probably didn’t care enough to examine his wardrobe before he left the house. Though I couldn’t tell, I bet he was a happily married man.
“This is an interesting case.” He slapped a folder down on the desk. After reaching in his pants pocket, he pulled out the keys to the cuffs and released me.
“What makes you say that?” I rubbed my sore wrists.
“Because your fingerprints aren’t anywhere on the weapon. In fact, there aren’t any fingerprints at all. That means the killer probably wore gloves.”
I relaxed in the chair. “Are you charging me with a crime? If so, I’d like to have a lawyer present.”
“Let me guess. You’d like to hire that lawyer friend of yours.”
Shrugging, I shook my head. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Konoval leaned forward and opened the folder. He lifted the papers at an angle, which kept me from reading them. “Matthieu York of Lesher, MacMillan, and Goldstein. He was in the running for partner the last time I checked.”
“And…?”
“Why don’t you tell me about the Crescent Inn?”
I stared at him. “You mind telling me where you’re going with this?”
“Your parents called, Ms. Phillips. They wanted to know how you were doing. They’re really excited about seeing you again.”
“Great. Where are they?” I twisted in my chair to see them in case someone pointed at me. Seeing them might jog a few memories. Unfortunately, nobody skirted around desks in the busy office with their gazes pinned on me and their faces beaming. Everyone remained engrossed in their own issues like tracking down leads and processing criminals like me.
Marcia Colette
Konoval shook his head. Sighing, he leaned forward and folded his fingers together on the desk. “Ms. Foster, I’d like you to take a lie detector test.”
In no mood to play his entrapment games, I turned back to the lying bastard. “Is my name Foster or Phillips? Where do I live? When can I go home?”
“As soon as you tell me who murdered Keisha Walker and stole her body from the morgue before the autopsy.”
Holy shit. Regardless of what I remembered and what I didn’t, there was no way I’d do something like that. I just couldn’t. Could I?
This man confused me more than ever. I wanted to lean across the desk and slap some sense into him, but went for a pointed stare instead. “I told you everything. I don’t know who Keisha Walker is, let alone how bodies walk on their own. Someone gave me that ID and the credit cards. They said that’s who I was.”
“And these people work at a strip bar called Trixie’s Tricks in Battle Rose, Arizona.”
“Yes.”
Konoval sat back in his seat. His folded fingers transferred from his desk to his belly. “There’s a Battle Rose, but there no Trixie’s Tricks. I’ve had it checked out.”
“That’s impossible.” I didn’t know what to say or do despite hysterics creeping up my back like a granddaddy longlegs. I gulped. “I was working as a stripper there. There has to be a name on record for the utility bills and stuff. They took everything from me that was a clue to my past, stuck me with some stripper persona and made me do things I don’t remember doing.”
“Like what? How can you say they did anything if you don’t remember?”
“How the hell should I know? This is secondhand information. I woke up while on stage during a Snoop Dogg song.”
“And yet, you remember the name of the bar.”
“Yes.”
“And the name of the owners.”
“Yes.”
“The name of the dancers.”
“Not all of them.”
“And yet you don’t remember your own.”
Why that no-good son-of-a-smooth-bitch. He deliberately riled me up to sound like a fool. My story was filled with more crap than a horse’s shit bag. I knew what had happened to me and there was no damn way he could shake up my mind about that. Foolish as it might sound, that was my story and I was sticking to it.
I folded my arms and slouched in my chair. “Fine. If you want to pin a murder on me and say that my story isn’t worth the air I used to spill it, then get me a lawyer. I’m not talking to anyone else until then.”
40
Stripped
Frank and Sonya wanted to help, so I used my one phone call to ask them to find me an attorney. I thought about calling up the lawyer Detective Konoval had mentioned, but something about having a string of names in the company title meant more dollar signs than I had to my name. Correction: I had no money whatsoever because the cops had confiscated my credit cards and cash. I’d be lucky if I got anything back. Monica Hardcourt agreed to take my case, which had me at a loss since I had no money. It took the woman a couple of hours to get her behind down to the police station to figure out this mess. If I’d had more money to offer, perhaps it would’ve moved her faster.
Still, I couldn’t knock the woman on her expertise. Once she heard my story and read the police reports Detective Konoval had on file, she went into action with getting me off. For now. The hook the cops had in me was more like a bent paperclip at best. We got a hearing where the bail was set and Monica signed for it, which shocked the hell out of me. I was racking up one heck of a bill from her. Monica pushed her black-trimmed glasses up her pert nose. When we stepped out of the police station, a heavy wind whipped around her blond, wispy hair. “It was a bad arrest. The police asked to see the registry without a warrant. Mr. Cramer and Mrs. Kimsey lied to the cops about what had happened when Billy Weisman stole the wallet.” Not once did she look at me. She went to the corner and lifted her hand to hail a cab.
I stepped in front of her. “What does this have to do with Keisha Walker being dead? I didn’t kill her. Don’t you think I’d remember something like that?”
“No fingerprints on the weapon or at the crime scene. No witnesses either. The only evidence the cops have is your missing person’s report filed after the murder, and you having Ms. Walker’s fake ID and credit cards. Had it not been enough to convince the judge, we’d be having a very different conversation and your bail would be a lot higher.” She cursed as a cab zoomed past us. Frustrated, she tried hailing again.
“Which brings me to another question. Why set the bail so low for something like murder? Shouldn’t I have—”
She shook her head. “They haven’t charged you with murder. Yet. They don’t have enough for a conviction, but they’re going in that direction. These charges are just for having a stolen ID, credit cards, and assault and battery.”
“Assault and battery? On who?”
“Billy.”
“For crying out—” I threw my hands in the air before folding them over my chest and shaking my head. “That freakin’ junkie threatened everyone with a knife and I get charged for kicking his sorry ass. Un-fucking-believable.”
Monica held her hands up in defense. “Calm down, okay? The next step is to push the amnesia issue to get the charges completely dismissed and destroy any chance of the DA connecting you to Ms. Walker’s
Marcia Colette
death. We can consult a psychologist to provide expert witness testimony. Not only that, we need to hire a private investigator to find this Trixie’s Tricks place. Also, a background check to make sure you’re not—”
“I’m telling you I didn’t kill anyone. If I need to take a lie detector test to prove it, then I will.”
“All in good time. First, I’d like to have both a physician and a psychologist examine you. Then, we conduct our own lie detector test and see what happens.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I know. I heard you.”
“But do you believe me?”
Monica lowered her hand long enough to give me a few seconds of her attention. “I do. Look, if you have amnesia and we can trace the forged license back to that bar, then you might stand a good chance at being cleared of all the charges. Better yet, if we got someone like Mr. and Mrs. Hill to vouch for your whereabouts at the time, it would—”
“Mr. and Mrs. Hill? Who are they?” I wish the name had brightened a bulb in my head, but it didn’t.
“Charles and Flora Hill. You mean the police didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” I shouted. Several passersby cringed at the sound of my voice. Some of them gave me a scathing stare. Ask me how much I cared when Monica and the police knew something about my past that I didn’t.
“Ohmygod.” She stormed past me and stepped off the curb as if to throw her body on the hood of the next cab. With it being this late in the evening, most people were either on their way home or having dinner. “We can talk on the way.”
“No, dammit.” I stepped into the street and yanked her around to face me. “I want to know now.”
She paused. “Charles and Flora Hill are your employees. They’re the ones who filed the missing person’s report on you.”
“My employees?”
“You own the Crescent Inn. It’s a nice-sized bed and breakfast just a short drive from Boston University.” A taxi slowed. Monica nudged me backward to give her some room to step back on the curb.
“That’s why Detective Konoval was questioning you earlier. He didn’t buy your amnesia story, although your answers were enough to make him tread more carefully with this case. The real Keisha Walker’s murder is still unsolved.”
The murder charges didn’t come as a surprise. Unfortunately, the rest of it was a letdown heading straight for disaster. “I take it my name isn’t really Foster or Phillips.”
“He was fishing. If you answered to both names, then he would’ve assumed you were trying too hard at the amnesia thing. It’s Alexa Simone Wells. Look, just get inside and we’ll talk on the way.”
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Monica opened the door and shoved me toward the pleather backseat of the cab. After my last cab ride, I didn’t want another one. Hell, I could hardly afford it with the bill this chick would soon drop in my lap. “Where are we going?”
“To meet the Hills. Nobody’s told them, yet, so I’m sure they’ll be dying to see you again.”
I hope she meant that metaphorically.
Just as the cab was about to pull away from the curb, another one blocked its path. The cowboy hat stunned me to silence. Monica continued to talk at my side, but I never heard a word. I watched Paul and Sammy exit the car and start up the stairs of the police station. Dear God, I had missed them by a few minutes. Even worse, they knew exactly where to find me. Perhaps that joke I had made about them having crystal-ball radar wasn’t too far off the mark.
Chapter Nine
I breathed a little easier when we arrived at the Crescent Inn, though I wasn’t ready to drop my guard just yet. For all I knew, Sammy and Paul were waiting inside. Still…
The inn was like something out of a long-lost memory or dream. It reminded me of a little red schoolhouse. Instead of vinyl siding, real wood adorned the beautiful tertiary-level home with white shutters on each of the windows. During the daylight hours, those two large trees must have provided plenty of shade in the front yard. A chilly autumn breeze nudged the porch swing sitting at the far end. Between the bushes and the flowers wilting in the flowerbed, I bet this place was gorgeous in the spring and summer. Even on a semibusy street like this, it had more quaintness than the other surrounding homes combined. If anything, it accented the charming neighborhood. Monica accompanied me to the front door. In a way, I didn’t want her to follow me because this was something I had to do myself. However, she was there. Depending on how this turned out, I might need her to vouch for me.
“Let me ask you something.” I opened the whining storm door. “Is this why you decided to take my case more seriously? Because you knew I owned this place and I didn’t?”
Monica adjusted her glasses. “I won’t lie to you, Ms. Wells. I’m a lawyer, which means I have fees. I took on your case because I thought it was interesting. Whether or not you could afford my services was a close second. Like you, I have to eat.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. Honesty is a good thing these days.”
I couldn’t knock the woman for that. She offered up a service I needed. If she thought my pockets weren’t ripe enough to foot her bill, then my case would’ve been in the hands of the public defender. For both our sakes, I hoped this place had some cash reserves stashed away. I raised my hand to knock on the door, but muffled laughter stopped me. Good old-fashioned fun lurked beyond those walls, my instincts said. Easing to my left, I peeked through the window and a set of ivory-laced curtains on the inside.
A dozen people sat around a spread fit for King Henry VIII. An enormous brown-sugar glazed ham sat in the center with a charred crisscross pattern scored into the skin and pineapple slices stuck in place with toothpicks. To one side was a large pasta dish decorated with olives, cherry tomatoes, celery and other colorful vegetables I couldn’t identify. Another leafy green salad sat near the end of the table while corn on Stripped
the cob and a mound of mashed potatoes sat at the other. Someone left their seat for a small table at the far wall. They came back with a roll and a small bowl of soup. Who knew what else they had in there that I couldn’t see?
A tall African American woman entered the room through a swinging door. She looked to be in her late fifties, if not early sixties. She carried a third tray with finger-food desserts like cheesecake and chocolate covered…something or rather. As she set the tray down, a tuft of her silver mane slipped into her face. Her flower-print dress fit a little snug around her stacked midsection. She cleaned her pudgy fingers on her white apron and spoke to the crowd. They lifted their heads in a reverent manner, nodded and chowed down on their food. For a woman who stood a couple inches taller than me, she carried her weight pretty well. Before she strolled away, she said something to her guests that left them hunched over in laughter and a few spitting up food.
The milk-and-cookies image filled my brain again. She was the one who had brought them to me. Her name was Flora Hill.
“Excuse me,” a voice said, starting my heart. “You lost or something?”
I yanked away from the window, thrusting my back against the cold, red siding. A young couple, around my age, strolled up the last few steps. The way they held hands and the smiles on their faces made me envy what they had. It would’ve been nice to have a companion to go through this horror show with me.
Another man bounded onto the porch behind them, carrying a camera case in hand. “You guys gonna stand there all day? Flora’s going to have our asses for being late for dinner.” He bypassed the couple, yanked the door open and went inside.
“You ladies coming too?” the man asked.
“Sure am.” Monica started ahead of me.
My stomach knotted. Flora hadn’t seen me since I walked away from this place, leaving her and her husband, Charles, to run it alone. Granted, they looked like they hadn’t done half-bad, but it still wasn’t right in my book. Suppose they held it against me? If I were in their shoes, I would be pissed. For once, I wished my instincts or feelings would just shut up.
“Close that door!” someone shouted from the dining room. “You guys are gonna let all the heat out. What do you think this is? Summer?”
A smile penetrated my lips. Flora’s tone tugged at old memories and feelings, warring to be brought to the forefront of my brain. Unfortunately, all I had of her were milk-and-cookie memories. The inside of the B&B left me in awe. Hardwood floors with a Persian rug led to an angled staircase. On the first floor, there were two rooms on my right and one on the left. All of them had French doors with lights shining behind the curtained glass and into the hallway. Through a window, I noticed a large backyard and a house with a porch light. Textured waves coated the pale blue wallpaper. While the room
Marcia Colette
closest to my right took on a Victorian theme with the darker shades of red and cream, the dining room on the left had cream walls with a blue and gold country flair.
The people in front of us had hurried into the dining room. I wanted to slip in unnoticed and explore some more with the hopes of jogging a few memories, but I knew Flora would prefer to see me. After all, she had a right to.
I turned to Monica. “Can you wait here? Please? I need to do this, but I’d rather do it alone.”
She shrugged. “Sure. I’ll wait in the lounge.”
I’d rather she go home, but unfortunately, she was my insurance in case this meeting went farther south than geese. “That’s fine. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
The clatter of silverware, dishes, and voices filled the air. This may have been a B&B, but Flora ran it like Big Momma’s house. Just as I thought, more food sat on a long serving table off to the side making it easy for people to fill up their plates. Dessert trays and baskets of rolls and cornbread took up most of the surface while glass pitchers of ice tea and juice took up the other end. The kitchen door burst open on a spring hinge. Flora carried a large porcelain kettle of steamy hot soup. Vegetable beef, by the smell of the carrots, celery and potatoes. Damn, I loved my heightened senses. My watering taste buds and growling stomach did too.
“Coming through.” She waited while a guest moved a chair from her path. “Watch your feet if you don’t want a pot of…hot…” Staring at me, her words trailed off. Her hands trembled, sloshing the soup against the sides. The kettle slipped from her grip. I raced across the room and dove with my hands outstretched to keep it from crashing onto the floor. I landed on my stomach, knocking the wind from my lungs. Blazing stew sloshed out of the bowl and landed on the backs of my hands. All in all, it was a good save, thanks to my quick reflexes. With my fingers burning from the hot porcelain, I let out a screech. I pushed the kettle onto the floor and flapped my scorched hands.
“Oh my God,” Flora breathed. Her gaze stayed on me as I got to my feet. I picked up the kettle by the handles and placed it on the side table. Once I was clear, Flora yanked the towel off her shoulder and wrapped my burned hands in it. Her wide eyes remained square on my face. “Is it really you? I’m not having a reaction to my high-blood-pressure medication, am I?”
A timid smile pursed my lips. “Not that I know of. But if you mean—”
She yanked me forward in a hug that threatened to squeeze the air out of my lungs. Her large boobs left me with enough tunnel vision to get a close-up view of her floral print dress.
“Charles! Our baby girl has come home.” Sobs rocked her chest. She tore me away to get a good look at my face then jerked me back into her arms with another suffocating embrace. Smacking kisses pressed into the top of my head. “Girl, I could shake the mess out of you for what you put us through! Why in the world did you run off like that?”
“Like what?”
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Heavy footsteps walked down the hall behind another spring-loaded door. It opened with a long outstretched arm holding it in place.
“What are you fussin’ about woman?” the man said. “I can’t even work on the furnace on the count of you…yellin’…”
His jaw bobbled and eyes widened. He was just over six feet. Fuzzy gray hairs on his head and a thick mustache placed him in his mid fifties to early sixties. Underneath his blue plaid shirt and sagging jeans, I bet anything that he had the body of a weightlifter back in the day, but age had caught up to him. He was darker than Flora’s golden brown hue.
“Good Lord.” The color had drained from his face. His fingers brushed his mouth in disbelief, eyes unable to look away. “Don’t take this the wrong way, honey, but is it…is it really you?”
I half-smiled. “We’ve already been through that, but yes. I’m as real as it gets.”
“Charles Emerson Hill,” Flora chided. “Now you stop acting like you don’t know our baby girl. Come give her a hug.”
He let go of the door and stepped closer. Color began coming back to his shocked face. “It’s just that…she’s been gone forever. All those flyers and stuff. The police. Why didn’t they call us? They brought you here, right?”
I shook my head. “A cab brought me. There’s a lawyer in the other room. I’ve uh…gotten into a little trouble.” I winced, hoping that went over more smoothly than the criminal way it sounded. Charles leaned his fist on an oak armoire. “Does it have to do with the money you stole and the drugs?”
“Say what?”
Flora undid the apron from her waist and handed it to Charles. “Would you mind finishing up here, dear? I’d like to talk to Alexa before you scare her off.”
I started past Charles when he reached his hand for mine and stopped me. His fingers tightened around my seared hand and he lowered his gaze. Something warred inside him. He didn’t know what to think of my being here. That made two of us. To offer a little bit of reassurance, I cupped the back of his hand and offered up a friendly smile. He lifted his eyes to me with a tentative grin. I didn’t know if he had bought it, but if it was enough to get that much of reaction out of him, I’d take it.
With Flora holding the door, I followed her into the hall. Right now, I had too many questions stirring my mind. The main one being, what did stolen money and drugs have to do with this?
Chapter Ten
Stepping into the lounge through the French doors was like stepping back in time to one of those English periods where they wore to frou-frou gowns. The couch didn’t have the bulk of a modern-day couch. Instead, it had a heart-shaped back trimmed in dark rosewood. The same went for the curved legs with the clawed feet. A fire dancing beneath the rosewood mantle kept the room at an even temperature. Across the way, books ranging from the classics by Jane Austen to darker ones written by L.A. Banks stood with the spines out in the built-in wall shelves. A huge Persian-style rug covered the floor from one end to the other.
The only thing that looked out of place was a string of feathers hanging from the top of the bookcase. Weird. It made me feel uneasy, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. Perhaps the ugliness of it bothered me.
Monica sat on a chaise lounge enjoying a plate of sugar cookies from the small table next to her. She placed a hardcover book in her lap and lowered her glasses. I thought she was going to sit on the couch and twiddle her thumbs while waiting on us. Instead, she had made herself at home. Monica shoved the cookie in her mouth before dusting off her hands and hurrying across the room to introduce herself to Flora.
Just like any perfect, humble hostess, Flora laughed and waved her away. Flora took the wingback chair while Monica and I went for the couch next to it.
I told them everything I remembered, minus the part about the weird dreams and my strange heightened senses and uncanny strength. Monica took notes to keep us from having this same conversation again in her office tomorrow. That was a nice weight off my shoulders because given the choice, I didn’t want to repeat it.
When we got to the part about my working at the strip bar, Flora shook her head in disappointment, refusing to believe it. Thank goodness someone thought what I had been thinking all this time. There was no way I’d choose a life like that.
When Monica left, a veil had peeled back and allowed me to breathe again, to soak up my surroundings. I didn’t know this place as home, but I sensed something oddly familiar about it. Charles brought me downstairs to the finished part of the basement where I had a large studio apartment. It didn’t jog my locked memories. All the extra furniture and boxes piled up didn’t help either. Stripped
I blew a coat of a dust from a picture on my chest of drawers. When that hardly made a clearing, I used my fingers to clean it. There was an older man with bushy eyebrows who had his hand around an African American woman. The guy looked white, but there was something different about him. I held up the picture to Flora. “Who are they? More friends of mine?”
Chuckling, she unfolded her arms and sauntered farther into the room. “No, baby. Those are your parents. Avery and Selena Wells. Speaking of which, don’t you think you should call them? They spent weeks over here. Months, in fact, looking for you. They even called that sweet friend of theirs, Wesley Dane, to help.”
“Wesley?” I placed the picture back on the dresser.
“He prefers Dane. Not sure why, but from what I understand, he’s a close friend of the family. He helped you guys out of a jam once. Now what about those parents? You callin’ them or should I?”
“Not yet, Flora. Please. There are…things I need to do before they know I’m here.”
“But I don’t understand. Don’t you want to see them?”
“I can’t miss what I never knew I had.” I picked up another picture. At least five women and one guy in a photo taken in front of a large picnic area with children playing in the background. Flora shook her head. “You must’ve fallen and bumped your head pretty hard. I’m making a doctor’s appointment for you tomorrow morning.”
“But—”
She lifted her hands and shook her head like she didn’t want to hear it. Might as well quit while I was ahead. “It’s either that or you call your parents. Putting them through another day of heartache isn’t fair and you know it. I don’t care what kind of amnesia you have. Either you go get yourself checked out or I have them make you.”
She had me on that, the devious old…innkeeper. Sure, I wanted to meet them, but I also wanted to wait. Until I got a grip on all this and made sure there weren’t any repercussions from Paul and Sammy, I wanted my loved ones as far removed from this mess as possible. Like any fiercely protective daughter, I took it upon my shoulders to keep them safe.
I placed the second picture on the dresser. “Fine. But you could at least tell me about the drugs and stolen money. What did I do that has Charles so skeptical about me?”
Flora sat on the creaking full-size bed, sighing as the weight came off her feet. “There were signs that led up to your disappearance. Twenty thousand dollars was stolen from the cash reserves. Not only that, you started acting weird. Like you walked around in a daze most of the time. With the missing money and the changed behavior, the police assumed it was drugs. They asked us if we wanted to press charges on the money laundering, but we refused. We knew there had to be more to it.”
There was. However, it had more to do with what she wasn’t telling. I folded my arms and leaned against the chest of drawers. “What else? Something’s bothering you and you know it.”
Marcia Colette
Flora paused. “This didn’t happen in just one day. It happened over a few weeks. If Charles and I had confronted you earlier—I mean really confronted you—we might have stopped this. We didn’t—” A tear leaked down her cheek.
My heart cracked. Sadness sliced into my gut and heaviness knotted the pieces together. I rushed to her side and dropped down on the bed beside her. My arm went around her large shoulders. It was a little awkward with her height, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want her to be upset for no reason. “Please don’t tell me you and Charles sat here all this time blaming yourselves. What you did or didn’t do might not have changed anything.”
Flora wiped away the tear and patted my hand. “I know, baby. But it’s not just that. It’s been such a strain on us for the last few months. I was scared we might lose the place.”
“Lose it? How?”
“Well, maybe not lose it. But let’s just say our luck was headed in that direction. That money could’ve fixed a lot of things around here. And let me tell you, Murphy’s Law has been alive and well. The washer and dryer stopped working within a month of each other. We had to buy a new air conditioner and hotwater heater. The plumbing—”
“But I’m here now.”
Half-smiling, Flora took my hand off her shoulder and smoothed it on her lap. “I know you are. I also know it’s going to take time to get back into the swing of things. I still think you should call your parents. Maybe your sister and your friends. Well…some of your friends.”
I chuckled. “Not all of them?”
“Not that Ramona woman. She’s a little wild, if you know what I mean. I swear that woman must buy her clothes at Prostitute & Company.”
I laughed. Hearing her frankness had warmed me enough to forget about her sadness. She must be a champion people watcher.
Flora stood and placed her hand on her hip. “And while you’re at it, you should think about contacting that lawyer friend of yours. I’m sure he’d love to see you safe and sound.”
Confusion tightened my face. “You mean Monica?”
“No, honey. It was something like Matt. Anyway, the police had named him as a suspect in your disappearance. He was cleared of the charges though.”
“A friend, huh?”
“Yup. From what I understand, you two had a thing going on. Since you kept him from us, Charles and I thought maybe you two…got together and all. You know. Eight months gone. Plenty of time to…I don’t know…have a baby and—”
“Whoa!” I jumped off the bed waving my hands. “Hold on, Flora. If you’re suggesting I did this to hide a pregnancy—”
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“I’m not suggesting anything. But the thought had crossed our minds and the police’s. Stolen money, strange behavior and a well-dressed man coming up to the house who we’d never met. What would you think?”
Unfortunately, she had a point. Since I couldn’t recall any of this, all I had to go on was her word. Flora started for the door. “It was better than thinking you had gotten mixed up with drugs. That’s why Charles and I didn’t want to press charges on you. If you had run off to have a baby, then we can understand why you did what you did.”
“But I didn’t.”
She stopped at the threshold and lifted her head over her shoulder. “Maybe. Until you get yourself checked out by a doctor, I’m willing to believe just about anything.”
That made two of us.
After the exam, nervousness gnawed at my insides while I waited for the doctor who said he wanted a second opinion on something. I sat on the exam table with the paper crinkling under my every move. Even if I breathed, I swore the stupid tissue paper had a crackle fit. A draft had slipped down my back from the opening in my white gown with the pale blue diamonds, freezing my nipples to points. That doctor had had his hands all over me and I’d hated it. Every time he touched, images of those perverts at the bar flashed through my mind. When he went to do a breast exam, I slapped his hand away twice before I finally sat up and declared he had gotten enough of a feel. When he asked me for a stool sample, I suggested he skip that part of the test. At that point, he asked a nurse to come in and assist him with the rest of the exam. I don’t know if that was done for my benefit or his. In fact, the old fart should’ve had her in there in the first place. My blood and urine had made it to the lab, so what more did he want from me?
I pinched my nose for the umpteenth time to keep the antiseptic from corroding my nasal lining. It hurt like sandpaper on a burn. Talk about a drawback to heightened senses. It made me queasy and fed the throbbing between my temples. I just wanted out of here.
I hopped off the table, pulled on my clothes and headed out the door. If anything turned up disturbing enough for him to call me, I’d handle it from there. In the meantime, I couldn’t deal with this anymore. The back of my mind said this was a mistake. The only reason why I hadn’t questioned it until now was that I had done it to ease Flora’s mind. Good for her, but bad for me. When I left the hospital, I got off on the wrong floor and ended up in the garage. Thank goodness, I spotted the main street. My shoes clicked on the pavement of the parking garage. Among the sea of cars with every other row separated by a concrete half wall, there was silence. Traffic echoed from the streets surrounding the underground lot, horns blowing and brakes squealing in the distance.
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Gray skies greeted me as I emerged from the concrete dungeon. Moisture scented the air. The wet, tart taste touched my tongue. It wasn’t exactly sea mist as much as smog. I started down the street.
A block away and my shoulders tensed. With all of these people on the street, I couldn’t help feeling like someone was stalking me. Somewhere my subconscious knew what it felt like. If this had anything to do with my dream about those wolves, then stalking was second nature to me. I glanced over my shoulder. The same pedestrian heads bobbed, but none of them made eye contact. I continued to the next block before stopping at the corner for another look-see. Nobody made eye contact. If they did, they didn’t maintain it.
However…there was one person. A few of the people on the street wore scrubs because we weren’t that far from the hospital. But a woman with a red curly bob and chipmunk cheeks flashed her hazel eyes at me. Not once, but five times while I waited for the light to change. Either she was gay or wanted something.
The light changed. The pack that had formed at the corner started to cross. I went with them because I wanted to give this woman the benefit of the doubt.
A half a block later, I descended into the subway, paid with my pass card and hurried down a second flight of stairs. Instead of heading for the subway platform to wait with the rest of the commuters, I ducked behind the staircase into the shadows.
Ms. Redhead had followed. She lifted her head, glancing around like a frantic woman who had lost her child. Or in her case, lost her target.
It was my turn to do the stalking.
52
Chapter Eleven
She clutched a vial of blood in her hand. “Reveal.”
I lunged for her. My feet moved faster than I commanded, startling me a bit. Nonetheless, I went with the flow and snatched her from behind. My hand covered her mouth and I locked her free hand behind her back.
Two people saw me, but from their unconcerned gazes, I bet they thought we were in some sort of weird lover’s hold. Instead of indulging their fantasies, I ushered the redhead behind the staircase and into the shadows.
Grabbing her neck, I pinned her against the wall with one hand. I made sure nobody followed after a quick glance over my shoulder. Unfortunately, the platform started getting crowded with more people flooding the stairs and escalator. Talk about a time crunch.
“What do you want?” I seethed.
With her pinned a few inches above me, the muscles in my arm strained and grew tired. Her toes hung a few inches off the ground. Blood filled her face while she sputtered to breathe. Her hands grasped mine, struggling against my hold. The blood vial with my first initial and last name slipped from her curled fingers as she clutched my sleeve. I let go of her and caught the vial before it hit the platform and shattered. The woman slid down the wall and coughed.
I turned the vial repeatedly, examining it and making sure it was my name. “You got a sample fetish or something?”
The woman coughed. “No. But I know you shouldn’t have gone to the hospital.”
“What business is it of yours?”
Her long fingers rubbed her throat. “I work there. In the lab. Anything coming through that looks questionable I try to steal a peek.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a lab technician with a specialty in microbiology.” She coughed again. Using her hands, she crawled up the wall until she stood eye to eye with me. “I’m also a witch.”
“A witch, huh.”
“Yes. I was headed to your room to get you out of there when I saw you leaving on your own.”
“And you followed me.”
Marcia Colette
“I was wondering why you showed up at the hospital. If you had a problem you would’ve been better off going to the black market for answers.”
“There’s a black market?”
She nodded. Her hand fell away from her reddened throat. “Almost every major city has one. Trying to find it can be a bitch though.”
“What does this have—”
“You’re a supernatural. Perhaps a shapeshifter of some sort—I don’t know. But I saw the results of your blood tests and it wasn’t exactly human.”
My thoughts began to swirl, not one of them coming together to form a cohesive question. Could my visions with the wolves in the woods be…? It sure would explain my heightened senses and strength. But how was it possible? There was no way I was a werewolf. No freakin’ way. If so, then why would my dreams portray me as a human running with wolves? It didn’t make any sense and neither did she. The witch reached in her pocket and fished out a pack of cigarettes. “I had to change the results on your blood tests, you know. I could lose my job.” Her timidity had faded, strength returning to her voice. She lifted her chin to me, challenge in her eyes.
Unbelievable. How dare this woman think she could beat me? A grin bowed my lips. If nothing else, I had to give her credit for being bold. However, I was the alpha bitch in these tunnels and the sooner she realized that, the less of a chance I’d throw her onto the train tracks. Although I was ready to assert my authority, there were larger things at stake. “Forget about your job being on the line right now.”
“I can’t.”
“Well try.” I glared at her, daring her to spite me again. “You followed me when you could’ve stopped after I left the hospital. Why?”
Her face relaxed. She took out a lighter and lit the end of her cigarette.
“There’s no smoking in here,” I said.
“Bite me.” She blew out a puff of smoke. “No one can see us back here and I doubt they’d really care other than to bum one from me.”
We were off on another tangent. I dragged us back to the question at hand. “You were saying? About witches and black markets and stuff?”
“Members of the supernatural community have formed a tight-knit group around here. We have sentinels—so to speak—placed in certain parts of the city. The hospitals, the police stations, libraries. You name it. That’s how we cover for each other. That’s how we stay hidden in plain sight among the humans.
“Supernaturals are small in number, because we don’t have access to things like druid doctors or vampire nurses. For that reason, most of us die due to infections or sickness. So, to help combat that problem, we started stationing our kind at hospitals in case a supernatural got scared enough to go to one. 54
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We monitor their treatment with the hopes of finding an opening to sneak them out of the hospital before anyone is the wiser. Just don’t let it happen again, okay?”
I folded my arms. “You’re one of these sentinels, huh. You got a name?”
“Pippa.” She took another drag of her cigarette, igniting the burnt ambers at the end. “I like working in the lab and acting as a sentinel. When I’m not doing that, I teach at our coven house.”
I closed the distance, stopping my face inches from her smoky breath. “And just what do you plan to do with me?” I raised a finger as she took a drag of her cigarette. Her cheeks puffed out, holding her smoky breath. “If you even think about blowing that crap in my face, the next cigarette will be smoked out of a hole in your throat.”
Although Pippa met my eyes, she lowered them and turned her head to the side. This was a bold witch. She didn’t back away, and yet, she knew her place in our invisible hierarchy. Good. She might leave with just a few bruises on her neck.
“I’m not planning to do anything with you.” With one hand shoved in her coat pockets, she rested her back against the wall under the staircase. “You’re a stray, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“A stray. A shapeshifter without a group. You must be a rare one. A mermaid, perhaps? No. If that were the case, then you’d have a lot more mercury in your system. You’re something else.”
“Suppose I told you I was a werewolf?” I took the plunge with that because I didn’t want to believe it myself. She didn’t laugh me down, so I was screwed. Damn.
“Not buying it.” She puffed her cigarette again. “Parry Casabianca would’ve found you by now.”
“Who’s he?”
“The leader of the Boston Pack. A group of psychos if you ask me. You can ask any supernatural around town. He doesn’t take kindly to other wolves intruding on his territory. His people roam the city all of the time looking for trouble. You’re lucky you haven’t been here long enough for them to find you or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Pippa sucked down another eighth of an inch of her cigarette. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you go to the hospital to begin with?”
“I was blackmailed into going.” That wasn’t far from the truth. When Pippa’s eyes bulged, I threw up a hand and smiled. “Relax. It was for a good cause by good people.”
“In case you’re wondering, your CAT scan turned out normal.”
“How did you—”
She laughed. “I took a look at your chart. You bumped your head it says. Something about amnesia.”
It was now or never. Either confide in this woman or take my chances on my own. If I was a werewolf, it made sense to trust her more than anyone else, including the doctors. Perhaps there were answers to my past at this supernatural black market.
Marcia Colette
“It’s true.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and kicked a crumpled cup. “I can’t remember anything beyond the last few days.”
Pippa stared at me. She flicked her cigarette onto the track. Rolling metal against metal in the distance caught my attention. It was then I realized I stood closest to the tracks with no way to prevent her from pushing me off the platform. I shifted, putting her on my left and the tracks on my right.
My ears opened up to the train charging down the tunnels. I stepped out a little farther and scanned the crowd. None of them noticed the train headed this way. They continued standing there like a bunch of zombies looking at the people across the way on the other side of the tracks. Some read books while others flipped through magazines and newspapers. Everyone seemed impatient, huffing and checking their watches.
“What are you looking at?” Pippa asked.
“The train’s coming. Can’t you hear it?”
She shook her head. “No. But are you serious about the amnesia? Like it’s not a lie to get out of something?”
“No.”
“That would explain why you went to the hospital.”
“There’s a lot more about me you don’t know.” And I wasn’t sure if I was ready to get into all that. If what she said about the supernatural community wanting to keep their existence from the humans was true, then I was poised to start a witch hunt if Detective Konoval slapped me with a murder charge. Stepping out of the darkness, Pippa turned her head toward the tunnel entrance. A line of travelers formed on the subway platform, each taking a position where they thought the doors might open. “That’s the train.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t hear it the first time.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m like you said. A supernatural.”
Pippa turned her face to mine, not giving up an inch. She beamed like a child ready to break open a treasure chest to get to the goodies inside. “Cool. You really are a werewolf. Oh man. What else can you do? You gotta place to stay? Between me and my coven sisters, I’m sure—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “I’ve got a place. In fact, I own it. What I really need right now are my memories back. Unless you know how to pull them out of me, I’ve got nothing to talk about.”
Pippa paced around me nibbling on her knuckle. “I’m not sure what I can do, but know of people who can help. Is there a way I can reach you?”
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I hesitated to give her the address to the Crescent Inn because I didn’t trust people I just met. However, since she had seen my chart with the inn’s address on it, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her from finding me.
I smiled. “I’m sure if you dig deep enough, you’ll get it without my help. But do yourself a favor. Don’t mess with me. Either you can help or you can’t. I’ve had enough people screw with my mind over the past few days. Trust me when I say today is not your day.”
The train slowed as it approached the station. The roaring engine made it impossible to tell if Pippa told me to go screw myself or not. I wasn’t about to stick around and find out. I turned…
…and found myself staring down the narrow shaft of an arrow with a red bull’s eye in the distance. A leather guard curled with the inside of my fingers, protecting my hand against the taut bow. My shoulders strained, building up the pressure for a high-impact release. I had stepped into another vision.
Chapter Twelve
“I’ll whack you with a silver spoon if you don’t pull tighter on the bow.” Wesley Dane leaned close to my back.
He was a tall man with long toned arms and legs that filled out his clothes. He had a large smile that stretched across his too-tanned face. His eyes were dark like the back of a beetle and his black, wavy hair had a few flecks of gray. You had to be close to see them. His large fingers slipped over my hand closest to the tip of the arrow. Heated breath steamed up my ear while he checked my aim. Annoyance seeped inside me. I didn’t need him to show me that. I knew I had the target in my sights long before he confirmed it. Even better, if he had let me use my crossbow instead of a long bow, I would’ve shot the target before he opened his mouth.
I couldn’t understand why Dane and my father treated me like such a baby. They were so freakin’
overprotective. They needed to chill out. Better yet, teach me something like knife throwing or hand-tohand combat. Perhaps they never thought I’d get that close to werewolves. Being a hybrid, they had better get over it and fast. My scent was like delicious pot roast slamming you in the face when you walk through the front door. That was what Dane and the rest of his werewolf friends said.
“You and Dad are always trying to get me to do boring stuff.” I huffed with my eye still on the target.
“When do I get to do other stuff like go out hunting with you guys? I’m old enough. I’m sixteen.”
“And still a pup whose head is probably on her junior prom and not on her prey.”
I grinned. “What’s the difference?”
“Jail time, if it’s not self defense.” He let go of my hand, but remained close to my shoulder. “Now keep your eye down the length of the arrow. Picture it—”
Snap. The arrow impaled the bull’s eye less than an inch from dead center. Not bad for a first try. Dane’s jaw hung. It turned into a smile when he stepped back to stare. “Okay. That means practice is over. Want to try a moving target now?”
A hand yanked me back. The train roared by, missing me by inches. My heart became rabid like a wild animal pounding to get out of its cage. The car sped down the tracks, gaining speed by the second to the point I couldn’t make out the blurred faces on the other side of the windows. Pippa’s hand rested on my shoulder.
Stripped
“What the hell are you doing?” She shouted just as the last car sped by. “Kill yourself on someone else’s time.”
I yanked my arm away from her. “I’m not into suicide, thank you. I had another vision.”
Her visage remained incensed, but instead of pitching another verbal fit, she cooled her face. “You’re weird, you know that?”
“Look, I’m trying to get my memory back before whoever kidnapped me decides to do it again. For all I know they might be trying to kill me to keep me quiet. So, if that makes me a little crazy, too bad. I never asked you to follow me.” I turned to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“Use your snooping skills to figure it out. I’ve got another lead to follow.” I pushed through the remaining travelers and headed up the staircase.
Back at the inn, I used the computer in the office to look up Matthieu York’s office number and address. If this guy and I had a past that the police and the Hills knew about, then perhaps he’d clue me in to it.
“He’s with a client now,” the secretary said. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“His girlfriend.” I don’t know why I said that, but perhaps it would go further than being a regular client who only had business ties to him. I wasn’t ready to give up my name yet because first I wanted to make sure he wasn’t pissed at me. Eight months is a long time to go AWOL. I got lucky with the Hills, in that they were happy to see me. The last thing I wanted to do was to fool around with my luck. Click. Lousy chamber music came on the line. Now that I had his attention, I prayed the right words would come out of my mouth.
“Hello. Matthieu York speaking.”
I went blank. Damn. I’d been waiting for this moment for the past twenty-four hours and here it was. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Shit.
“Hello?”
“Uh…” A gulp slipped past the tightness in my throat. “Hi. It’s…it’s a friend. Look, after everything I’ve been through, I’d rather not say. Hell, I don’t even know if I can trust you.”
He paused. “Oooookay. Can you at least give me part of a name? Some initials, maybe?”
Think, dammit, think. “A friend of yours disappeared a few months back. I have information on how to find her.”
He paused. Springs creaked as though he had sat up in an expensive chair. His ass must be as wide as a truck for that to happen. I bet he weighed about three hundred pounds with a hundred of that being gut and he had a receding hairline as far back as it would go. Whether or not that was a true memory, I couldn’t say.
Marcia Colette
“Who is this?”
“It doesn’t matter. Finding your friend does. Or did I make a mistake?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Do you have any room in your schedule?”
Again, the chair squeaked from his end. “How about I leave it up to you? You come whenever you have room in yours and I’ll make sure you’re accommodated.”
I hung up. My heart thumped hard enough to register from my ears to my shaky knees. Nervous didn’t begin to describe what this guy did to me. Other than listening to what others had said about him I had nothing to go on. Flora spoke well of him, but she also said it wasn’t until after meeting him that I had disappeared. As much as I hated to say this, I had to see this guy. If he was the reason for my memory loss or had even an inkling about my stripper days at Trixie’s, then he wouldn’t just pay. I’d kick the change out of his ass.
With a population this big, midafternoon was just as busy as rush hour. People walked at a hurried pace, some carrying briefcases while others had satchels. A herd of students strolled down the sidewalk, their voices carrying until a squealing cop car drowned them out. More cars zoomed back and forth down the street, a horn blaring at a group of people bunching into the street at the corner, waiting eagerly for the light to change.
Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I knew I used to be one of these people. Flora said I had split my time between doing contract work at a local company who specialized in bioinformatic software and teaching some college classes at night and on the weekends. The bed and breakfast was a part-time venture. Every morning, I got up at 6:30 to grab breakfast before the guests, then hurried to catch the subway up to Sullivan Square. Flora hated that I worked an average of twelve hours a day, but it was about to pay off right before my disappearance. We had enough cash in the bank that one more year of my workhorse determination would have had us sitting pretty. The plan had been for me to quit my jobs, and help Flora and Charles take care of the inn full-time. My departure, the missing cash and needed repairs had set us back by about three years.
Yeah, someone was going to pay for this all right. If Matthieu wasn’t that “someone”, then I’d find who was.
The size of his law firm left me stunned. The office was located in a corner spot of the Quincy-Kale building on Berkley Street, taking up half the entire floor. From the elevator, I couldn’t take my eyes off the glass entryway into the office with the gold lettering hanging just above the receptionist’s black granite desk. York’s name wasn’t listed there. However, when I stepped into the office, I noticed his name on the wall among several others. A leather sofa and chairs sat by the window with a great view of the city from 60
Stripped
ten floors up. The semicircular shape of the lobby allowed only one entrance to the back where office doors lined the walls.
The receptionist was a nice-looking African American woman wearing an earbud attached to her lobe. While she spoke into the mouthpiece, I approached the counter. At least I had her for a witness in case Mr. York tried anything.
The receptionist hung up and folded her fingers into a steeple. “May I help you?”
“Yes. My name is Leslie Austin. A friend of mine recommended that I come here. I don’t have an appointment, but I’d like to see Mr. York. We spoke on the phone earlier.”
“He has an appointment right now. And he’s pretty full for the rest of the day. May I ask what sort of business you have with him?”
Thank goodness I had rehearsed a story on my way here. I had even dressed the part by wearing a snazzy gray pantsuit. “I’m having a lot of trouble with a contractor I hired to finish remodeling my restaurant. The guy made a horrible mess of everything and I’m worried I’ll have to put off the opening by at least six months. I need a lawyer to help me figure out my options.”
Smiling, she lowered her head again, fingers flying across keyboard. “Mr. Goldstein is also available. He’s very good with small-business lawsuits.”
“No, thank you. I’d rather speak to Mr. York. I trust my friend’s judgment.”
Gesturing me toward the black couch, she said, “Have a seat. I’ll check on Mr. York’s availability. But it could be a while. As I said, he has a pretty full schedule this afternoon.”
“I’ll wait.”