Moon - New Moon Part 45

"I told you, we don't know anything about it, besides the fact that I bought those batteries. I didn't go back. And my wife was never there."

"Mind if I come in and talk to you?"

"This isn't a good time. Now if you'll excuse us." He climbed out of the car and came around to Rinna's door. "Come on honey, I'll get you inside so you can lie down."

When she fumbled with the seat belt, he opened it for her, and she stood on shaky legs. Leaving the luggage in the car, he took her arm and led her to the front door, which he unlocked before leading her inside.

Turning to cast a brief glance over his shoulder, he saw that the detective was still looking at them.

He wanted to tell the guy to get off his property. Instead, he pressed his lips together.

JAKE Cooper watched Mr. and Mrs. Marshall disappear into the house. Actually, he'd overstated the case a bit. The clerk had thought the man in the back of the store was the one who had come in a few days earlier. She wasn't sure. And unfortunately, the security camera had not been functioning.

The clerk, a Mrs. Dormaster, had told a pretty wild story. Not just about the robbery-but about men appearing out of nowhere in the back of the store. n.o.body else had seen them, and Jake had put it down to a case of raw nerves, brought on by the robbery.

But she'd also kept insisting that the man and the woman in the back hadn't come in the front door. They'd appeared in the back, just the way the other guys had.

Mrs. Dormaster's story had sounded like the ravings of a woman with mental health issues. But the more the woman talked, the more convincing she sounded. Of course, there was no way to verify trie story. Jake had gone back and examined the wall at the back of the store, and it had seemed perfectly solid.

Once he'd been the kind of cop who only believed in things that he could verify through his own senses, but then he'd worked with a psychic to find a kidnapped kid.

He'd started off thinking the whole psychic thing was a bunch of c.r.a.p. Then the woman had found the kid, just minutes before the b.a.s.t.a.r.d would have slit his throat. And Jake had changed his att.i.tude.

He was open to the possibility that not everything in the universe was exactly as it seemed. So maybe something had happened in that convenience store that couldn't be explained in conventional terms.

Too bad the video camera had been on the fritz. Or maybe that was part of the whole phenomenon.

At any rate, he did know one thing for sure. After their brief conversation, he was certain that Marshall and his wife had something to hide. Although it might not be connected with the store at all.

When they were out of sight, he walked around to the door handle of the SUV. Keeping his body between the car and the house, he pressed a piece of fingerprint tape to the handle. It was an excellent surface from which to get prints. As was the can of pork and beans someone had used to conk the would-be robber. When they'd run the prints, there had been no match in the FBI database.

The man who'd saved Mrs. Dormaster wasn't a criminal. And he had never served in the military or held a government job. But now it would interesting to see if the prints from the door handle matched the ones on the can. If they did, Jake would come back and ask some more questions.

He stroked his chin. If something weird had happened in that store, the man and woman who had just given him the brush-off were witnesses. At the very least, they were witnesses to the attempted robbery.

So now he'd wait to see if the fingerprints matched. And meanwhile he was keeping an eye on the store to find out if anything else strange happened there.

CLOSING the door firmly behind them, Logan felt Rinna sag against him.

"You did fine," he murmured, turning her in his arms and folding her close. He felt her shaking.

"You said I was your wife," she breathed.

"That's the best cover for you."

"The policeman..."

"That was d.a.m.n bad luck." His hand tightened on her shoulder. "I thought he was going to ask you for an ID. That's why I rushed you into the house."

"ID?".

He sighed. "In this society, you need identification. A driver's license. A credit card. A card with your name and picture."

"Like the tattoo on my arm?"

"No! Not like that." He gave her a searching look, then lowered his voice. "Not because people belong to other people. But because you need to prove who you are." Before she could ask for more details, he added, "I never asked... do you have a last name?"

"A what?"

He struggled not to let his feelings of frustration bleed into his voice. All he'd been thinking about was getting Rinna home and keeping her safe. He was starting to find out just how complicated that was going to be. Taking a step back so he could look at her, he said, "I'm Logan Marshall. Logan is my first name and Marshall is my last name. Do you have something similar?"

"Slaves have a name and a number," she said in a barely audible voice. "I'm Rinna thirty-eight. But that won't work here, right?"

"No. But we'll get you a last name."

"How?"

"I believe I can buy one." He stopped, thinking about the logistics. "Well, maybe we'll need to use some other name."

She looked down at her hands. "Jandar changed my mother's name from Hester to Lana because he liked it better."

"I would never do that! But I might have to get you an ID for someone who was born in this country."

"How?"

"There are ways to do it. Sometimes people who are switching their ident.i.ties take a name off the gravestone of a child who died young. Someone around their age." He thought for a moment. "But I need to think about the social security number problem."

"You said you didn't use numbers," she answered.

"Well, not when you give your name. But everybody has a number, for tax purposes. And for a retirement account."

She looked like her head was spinning, and he tried to imagine how overwhelmed she must feel.

"I got into trouble in your world because I didn't know the right thing to do. It's natural," he said.

She remained silent, taking her lower lip between her teeth.

"We'll talk about it later."

He found her hand and led her down the hall to the family room, where she stopped short and dragged in a shaky breath.

"What?"

"You live like this, like a... a... n.o.ble?"

"No. A lot of people live like this."

"Your house...'"