With the Material Witness in the Safehouse. Carla Cassidy
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hallway led to a bathroom and one small bedroom with a double bed and a dresser. The walls were a cool summer green, complemented by the green-and-white spread on the bed.
“You can have this room and I’ll bunk on the sofa,” Ryan said from behind her.
She turned to face him. “Who owns this place?”
“A young couple who comes here for a month in the summer and rents it out the rest of the year. For the next three months the FBI has rented it.”
“Three months? Surely we won’t be here that long.” She felt as if she’d already lost so much of her life. She didn’t want to lose another three months. But when this was all over, where would she begin her new life? She raised a hand to her head once again where her headache had intensified.
“Headache?” he asked. She gave him a small nod and thought she saw a flash of sympathy darken his eyes. “Why don’t you lie down for a little while? I’ve got phone calls to make, and once you feel better, we’ll talk about how things are going to go here.”
At the moment lying down sounded like a wonderful idea. She hadn’t realized how weak she still was until this moment. The bed looked inviting, and at least if she took a little nap, she wouldn’t have to worry about the fact that she couldn’t remember her immediate past and had no idea what her future held.
As Ryan left the bedroom, Britta stretched out on the bed. She lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to process everything she knew, but finding it impossible not to dwell on all the things she didn’t know.
She wasn’t even wearing her own clothes. Ryan had arrived at the clinic that morning with a bag of clothing from a nearby discount store. Although the underclothes had been the right size, the sweatpants and sweatshirt were far too big and an ugly color, not quite yellow and not quite green.
With a sigh she closed her eyes. The dream began before she realized she’d fallen asleep. She saw herself in a long white gown. An intricate necklace of seashells lay heavy around her neck.
The sand was warm beneath her feet as she walked the shore. The moon overhead was full, illuminating the tumultuous waves with a ghostly light.
The sea called to her, wanting her to come home. She walked toward the water, unable to fight the siren song that sang in her head, urging her forward.
She barely felt the salty water that embraced first her feet, then her legs, although she gasped slightly as it reached her waist and then her chest. She continued to walk until the water was up to her neck, then her chin, then finally over her head.
There was no panic, nothing except a strange calm acceptance that this was where she was supposed to be. The sea was her destiny.
It wasn’t until she was deep beneath the surface where the moon no longer shone that panic first stirred in her. Her heart pounded as she realized she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs began to burn and she tried to swim up, but anemones in various shapes and colors wrapped around her and held her in place. She fought, thrashing her arms and legs in an attempt to escape.
“Britta!”
The deep voice pulled her from the dream, and her eyes snapped open to see Ryan sitting on the edge of the bed. For just a moment it seemed completely natural for him to be on the bed with her, and that only added to her confusion.
He stood, every muscle in his body rigid as he shoved his hands into his pocket. “You must have been having a nightmare. You were crying out.”
She sat up and tried to remember her dream, but it slipped away as full consciousness returned. “I’m sorry.” She worried a hand through her hair. “How long was I asleep?”
“About an hour. How’s the headache?”
“Better.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood.
“I fixed lunch. Are you hungry?” he asked as they left the bedroom.
She nodded, surprised to discover that she was hungry. The catered clinic food had been abysmal, so she didn’t know when the last time was that she’d had a good meal.
He pointed her to a chair at the table where he’d already set plates and silverware, then went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of pasta salad. He set it in the middle of the table, then returned to the fridge for a platter of cold cuts. “It’s nothing elaborate.”
“It looks good.”
He handed her a bottle of diet soda, then poured himself a glass of milk. It was disconcerting that he knew her well enough to know what she’d want to drink, and yet she couldn’t remember a darn thing about him.
“We need to go by the inn and get my things,” she said once he was settled in the chair opposite her. “I’m assuming I arrived here in town with at least a suitcase.”
“I don’t want to do that,” he replied. “I bought you some extra clothes and I’ll get you whatever else you need.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand. Why can’t I just get my own things?” Maybe the familiarity of her own clothes would jog something in her memory.
“Right now the only person who knows that you’ve been found is the doctor and a nurse or two. I don’t want anyone else to know because I intend to ask questions about you, questions that will hopefully make somebody nervous enough to show themselves.”
“And then what?”
“Then we find out just what in the hell happened to you over those four days.”
An unexpected chill walked up her spine. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know what had happened to her.
RYAN SHOULD NEVER HAVE gone into the bedroom when he’d heard her crying out. Seeing Britta lying on the bed had brought back a rush of memories he’d tried hard to forget. Even now, as he sat across the table from her, those memories of making love with her lit a simmering flame in the pit of his stomach.
She’d been a wildly passionate lover, a woman comfortable with her own body and equally comfortable with his. They’d been holed up in a duplex for months and there had been few places in that tiny space that they hadn’t made love.
He cast her a surreptitious glance. She picked at the pasta salad as if finding it nearly unpalatable. “You know, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it,” he said. “I’m not exactly a master chef.”
She looked up at him and smiled. It was the first smile she’d offered him, and the power of that gesture kicked him right in the stomach. “It’s very good. I’m just not as hungry as I thought I was.” She set down her fork, obviously deciding not even to pretend to eat.
“I’m overwhelmed at the moment by everything that’s happened since I woke up in the clinic,” she said softly. “I guess I’d feel more comfortable if I at least remembered you.”
He’d feel more comfortable if she never remembered him. “We just need to take this one day at a time,” he replied. “Hopefully in the next couple of days I can find out what happened to you, and in the meantime maybe your memory will start to come back.”
“I hope so,” she said fervently. She tilted her head slightly to one side and gazed at him for a long moment. “I feel as if I’m at such a disadvantage here. You know me well enough to know what I’d want to drink with my lunch and yet I don’t know anything about you.”
“I know what you like to drink because while you were in my custody we ate meals together, but we didn’t share a lot of personal information.” He looked down at his plate so she wouldn’t see the lie in his eyes.
If and when she regained her memories there would probably be hell to pay for the lies he was telling, but he’d worry about that when the time came.
“So, we weren’t really friends?” There was a faint wistfulness in her tone.
He