Lover, Stranger Part 7

In the photograph, he was standing in front of a white, one-story building with a lush, tropical backdrop. An older, shorter man with a thin, black mustache was in the picture, too, and Ethan's arm was draped over the man's shoulder. They both wore khaki pants and white shirts, both were smiling for the camera, but there was something about Ethan's.e.xpression. Something about the other man's eyes. He was frightened, Ethan thought suddenly. In spite of the smile and the rea.s.suring arm Ethan had thrown over his shoulder, the mustached man looked scared half to death.

Shaken, Ethan forced himself to read the accompanying article concerning the reopening of the clinic in the Mexican jungle after a half dozen or so banditos had destroyed the place once they'd raided it for drugs. The other man in the picture was a Dr. Javier Salizar, a pediatrician who worked full-time at the clinic and who had been on duty the night the banditos attacked.

Fortunately, there had been no overnight patients at the hospital.

Dr. Salizar had been all alone, and he'd been forced to flee into the jungle and hide until the terrorists had gathered what they wanted and left, burning the clinic to the ground in their wake. According to the article, Ethan had provided his own personal funds to restore the clinic, and had used his own hands to help rebuild it. He'd spent months of his time getting the clinic operational once again, and the people in the surrounding villages revered him almost like a G.o.d. Ethan didn't understand why, but the article deeply disturbed him. He sensed something bad had happened at that clinic.

Something had made him flee, like Dr. Salizar, into the jungle, but not because he had been pursued by banditos.

In his dream, Ethan hadn't seen the men chasing him, but he had known just the same that they wore uniforms. They carried guns. He had almost been killed by the Mexican authorities, but Ethan had no idea why.

All he knew was that in some dark and dangerous way, he was tied to that clinic. To that jungle. And the killers that had pursued him in Mexico had followed him here to Houston. To his home. Hands trembling, Ethan put the picture away and rifled through the paperwork on top of the desk. He turned on the laptop computer and perused the directories, but the files meant nothing. The case studies, medical notations, and patient consultations may as well have been written in a foreign language. Nothing clicked for him.

Nothing at all.

Why didn't anything in this office trigger a memory? Why couldn't he remember being a doctor?

Almost frantically, Ethan searched through the desk. At the bottom of a drawer, a gold frame caught his eye. It had been stuffed face-down under a stack of folders. He pulled it out and stared down at a picture of a woman.

This was no snapshot or newspaper clipping, but an elegant studio shot with lighting that complimented the woman's ebony eyes and her full, ruby lips.

Thick, glossy black hair had been pulled back to reveal a face as beautiful as it was flawless.

Movie-star glamorous, the woman stood in front of a grand piano, wearing a strapless black evening gown and opera-length, black gloves. Her body was thin, but incredibly shapely. The word that came instantly to mind was statuesque.

She wasn't smiling for the camera, but her lips were parted seductively and her eyes were heavy-lidded and sensual. At the bottom of the picture, scrawled in red ink, were the words: To my husband, with much love and grat.i.tude, Pilar.

So this was Ethan's wife. He knew instinctively she'd had the picture made especially for him, and he'd put it away in a drawer face-down.

the acid. your car. Ethan stared at the photograph for a very long time, wondering how long they'd been married and what had gone wrong between them.

She was an exquisite woman on the surface, but somehow her utter perfection left him cold.

Did I do this to you? he wondered. Did I make you into this. work of art?

A work of art without a soul, something told him.

He thought of Grace suddenly, of the unevenness of her features, the short, red hair, the lips that were neither lush nor thin, but in his mind, just right. Her light blue eyes held more life, more mystery, than this woman's ever could.

Disturbed by his thoughts, Ethan put the picture. away and closed the drawer. It wasn't fair to give a woman he didn't remember unfavorable attributes in order to justify his attraction to Grace. And that was exactly what he'd been doing.

Had he also tried to justify his affair with Amy Cole? Had there been other women in his marriage?

What kind of husband would treat his wife in such a manner? What kind of doctor would be pursued through the Mexican jungle by the policia?

Ethan wondered if he really wanted to know the answer to any of those questions. grace closed and locked the door of her hotel room, then slung her jacket toward a chair. Flopping down on the bed, she kicked off her shoes, leaned back against the headboard, then removed her cell phone from her purse and punched in a number she knew by heart.

In spite of the late hour, a woman with a throaty voice answered on the first ring.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"It's Grace."

There was a brief pause before the woman asked, "Are you all right?"

"Amy's dead, Myra."

"Yes, I know."

"What the h.e.l.l happened tonight?" Grace exploded.

"What went wrong?"

"Everything. G.o.d, it's all a mess. Hunter wasn't supposed to come back to Houston for at least another two weeks. We would have had plenty of time to set up a sting, but now..." Myra Temple trailed off while she lit up a cigarette. Grace heard her exhale angrily.

"As it is, we've rushed the whole operation. We're down here without proper backup or support, and we screwed up. It happens."

"Yes, but this particular screw up cost a woman her life," Grace said angrily. Myra seemed more concerned about the potential damage to the operation than about Amy's death, but that should have come as no surprise.

The woman was coldly and consummately professional. Nothing got in her way, and until tonight, Grace had thought she was becoming exactly like her mentor. She'd thought she had the guts to do whatever had to be done to bring a killer to justice.

But after tonight. "Amy should have been under surveillance. Why wasn't she?"

"She was,"

Myra snapped.

"But somehow she managed to slip through. My guess is that after speaking with us yesterday, she panicked. She had second thoughts about what she'd done, and so she got in touch with Dr. Hunter, probably by cell phone, and warned him that the Feds would be waiting for him when he landed here in Houston. Then she devised a way to get out of her apartment without us knowing."

"How?" Grace demanded.

"Maybe she donned a wig and borrowed her neighbor's car. How the h.e.l.l should I know? It doesn't help matters that these idiots in the field office down here don't know their b.u.t.ts from a hole in the ground. We can't count on much help in that regard. In any case, Amy appears to have been a lot smarter than I gave her credit for." Myra's tone was a mixture of disgust and admiration.

"So how did Eth--Dr. Hunter manage to get away from us? You were watching the airport yourself."

A loud silence.

"He didn't land at Bush Intercontinental Airport,"

Myra finally said testily, clearly annoyed by Grace's veiled criticism.

"I guarantee you, I would have recognized him if he had.

We're checking all the private airfields in the area now, but he undoubtedly chartered a plane. Sometime during the flight, he contacted Amy again, and they made plans to meet at the clinic. "

Something in her tone made Grace's heart thud against her chest.

"Myra, you don't think" -- "What?"

Grace tensed. Her hand clutched the tiny cell phone.

"You don't think he killed Amy, do you? Because he found out she talked to us?"

Another pause.

"It's possible, but I don't think so. I think he was followed, probably all the way from Mexico, and ambushed at the clinic. I think you and I both know who killed Amy Cole, Grace."

Grace closed her eyes, dredging up a name from the past. A face from her nightmares. Trevor Reardon. A man who had changed Grace's life forever.

"By the way," Myra said softly.

"That was a brilliant stroke on your part--pretending to be Amy's sister."

More like an act of desperation, Grace thought. Aloud she said, "Actually, it was Amy's idea. She introduced me to one of her neighbors as her sister.

Then she later told me she didn't have any family, but no one in Houston knew that about her because she didn't like to talk about her past."

When Grace had arrived at the clinic earlier to learn that Amy was dead and Ethan Hunter had been severely beaten, she knew she had to come up with a reason that would put her in close contact with him.

And if everything Amy had told her about him was true. Grace was fairly certain Ethan would be wary of the authorities. She couldn't tell him the truth because he would never trust her, never agree to cooperate with her, and so she'd impulsively devised the cover of being Amy's grieving sister. A woman who wanted to find the killer just as badly as Ethan did.

Grace wondered if the ruse had worked, or if like her, he had suspicions.

She ran her fingers through her bangs.

"Look, there's another contingency we hadn't counted on. Dr. Hunter now claims he has amnesia."

"Yes, I know," Myra said.

"According to his chart, he's suffering some short-term memory loss due to a rather mild concussion." Grace should have known Myra would have done her homework thoroughly. She'd probably been over Ethan's hospital room with a vacuum. "I'm afraid it's a little more severe than that," Grace said.

"He claims he doesn't remember Amy. Or even his own name, for that matter."

She heard Myra suck in her breath sharply.

"You mean he doesn't remember anything?"

"That's what he says."

Grace could almost hear the wheels turning in Myra's brain. After a few moments, she said, "Do you think he's faking?" Grace thought about the darkness and confusion in Ethan's eyes earlier, the desperation that had flashed across his features. Had that been a reaction to what had happened to him in the clinic? Or because he genuinely couldn't remember?

Grace found herself wanting to believe him and that scared her. It was imperative she remain objective. Dispa.s.sionate. A consummate professional.

She wondered suddenly what Myra would think if she knew how attracted Grace was to Dr. Ethan Hunter. Would she pull her off the case?

"Well, so what do you think?" Myra's impatient e realized she'd lapsed into silence for a few seconds too long.

She took a deep breath, willing her tone to remain even.

"I thought he might be faking at first. I mean, it seemed a little too coincidental, if Amy did tip him off that we'd be waiting for him.

But after spending some time with him tonight, I'm inclined to believe him.

He seems genuinely distressed. "

Myra's tone was pensive.

"So maybe this doesn't have to change anything. Let's think about it for a minute. Whether he's faking or not, your cover should hold up. If Amy told you the truth and she really had no family, there won't be anyone coming out of the woodwork to dispute your claim. And if he does have amnesia, it could even work to our advantage. Make him easier to control." An image of Ethan's bruised and battered face materialized in Grace's mind, and something fluttered in her stomach. Was it pity? Guilt? Maybe it was just plain old fear, she thought, although for her, that could be the most dangerous emotion of all.

"You aren't having second thoughts about using him, are you?" Myra asked casually, but Grace was immediately on her guard. Was she being tested?

She gripped the phone with grim determination.

"Not at all. Ethan Hunter is a means to an end, nothing more."

"Good," Myra said, satisfied.

"Because we're getting close. Grace. Can you feel it?"

Grace's stomach knotted with excitement. Or was it dread?

"Yes." ' "This amnesia thing could be a blessing in disguise, exactly what we need to gain Hunter's cooperation. But we still have to be careful,"

Myra warned.

"Don't do or say anything that will tip him off. I don't have to remind you that one false move and this whole thing could still blow up in our faces."

"Don't worry." Cradling the phone against her shoulder. Grace removed the SIG-Sauer from her purse and released the magazine, pulling back the slide to make sure the gun was unloaded. Then methodically she reloaded the weapon and looked through the sights, relieved to see that her hand was steady, her nerves steeled.

"I've waited a long time for this."

"I know you have," Myra said.

"But just remember, this can't become a personal vendetta. Once you allow your emotions to get in the way, you become a walking dead woman."

"I understand. You don't have to worry about me. You taught me well."

"I hope so," Myra said softly.

"I hope so..."

After they ended the call, Grace poured herself a whiskey over ice and walked out to the tiny balcony of her room. It was still hot. At Ethan's house, the lush tropical foliage, both inside and out, had at least given the illusion of coolness, but here, the heat clung to the concrete and mortar like a desperate lover.

Grace lifted the gla.s.s to the back of her neck, letting the cool condensation slide against her skin as the events of the night and remnants of her former life played themselves out in her mind. Funny how one tragic moment, one careless decision could change a person's life forever, could mold you into someone you didn't even recognize anymore.

But tonight she'd glimpsed a bit of the old Grace. Tonight she'd remembered what it was like to be attracted to a man. She'd felt something, standing outside with Ethan. Downing half the contents of her gla.s.s, Grace shuddered as the liquid caught fire in her throat and stomach. Myra's warning seemed to reach out from the darkness and taunt her.

Once you allow your emotions to get in the way, you become a walking dead woman.