Guarding Jane Doe

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I can’t do that. My memory’s a blank!” She was shaking again, Jane noted with a detached part of her mind. But this time it was from anger.

“It’s a blank because you want it to be a blank.” Those pale eyes met hers emotionlessly. “I told you, true amnesia’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Besides, if you really wanted to find out who you were and why someone wants to harm you, you’d tell the police the truth and let them investigate you—and you haven’t, have you?”

“No.” She looked down at her hands. “No, you’re right. I haven’t told them the truth. I haven’t asked them if I match the descriptions of any missing women, and I don’t intend to.”

“Then your stalker will just bide his time until you’re unprotected again.” He shook his head. “The best advice I can give you is to disappear into yet another life, lady. I can help you get out of town without being followed, but that’s all I can do for you, since you’re so determined not to help yourself.”

He was turning her down. After everything she’d told him—and except for the amnesia, he hadn’t seemed to doubt her story—he was turning her down. She couldn’t believe it. She said the first foolish thing that came into her head.

“Is it the money? I don’t have much, but Serge gave me a couple of weeks termination pay so I’d keep quiet about what—”

“It’s not the money.”

“But you’re not on an assignment right now.” She heard a shrill edge to her voice, and attempted a more reasonable tone. “If you’re between jobs, why can’t you take this on?”

“I’m only between jobs because I took your phone call today, instead of making one of my own.” He shrugged. “If you’d called half an hour later, I doubt that we’d ever have met. If you call again tomorrow, I won’t be there to answer.”

“You’re going off to fight another war,” she said slowly. “I guess I should have known mine would be too insignificant to interest you. My little war doesn’t have the elements you’re looking for.”

“And just what the hell is that cryptic comment supposed to mean?” His gaze had been idly glancing around for the waitress. Now it sharpened.

“You seem to think I’m not willing to put up a fight, McGuire—that some part of me is willing to die. I think you’re putting your own motives onto me.” She felt for her purse, her movements jerky and awkward. “You’re the one who keeps letting yourself be led to the slaughter. Every time you walk away alive there’s a little twinge of disappointment in you, isn’t there?”

“I go into an assignment aiming to walk out alive. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare was flat, his posture rigidly tense. He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Dammit, I’m not the one who hated my life so much that I sealed it up in a box and buried it six feet under.”

“Even if your theory’s right, at least I want to hold onto some kind of existence. That’s the difference between us.” Getting out of her seat, she stood, looking down at the man she’d hoped would be her salvation. “You won’t admit it, but that’s the reason behind every choice you make. I want to live, but deep down, you want to die. Did she realize that, too—that sister of yours who won’t leave you alone?”

“You just crossed the line, darlin’. Back off.”

He’d half-risen, and with the difference in their heights, that brought his gaze on a level with hers. His face was inches from hers, and even at that moment Jane felt her focus slipping away. His eyes were like crystal, she thought, her breath catching in her throat. Everything else about the man was harshly masculine, but those mesmerizing eyes and those thick, sooty lashes belonged on the parfit gentil knight she’d wanted him to be.

It was one more reason not to believe in fairy tales. She drew back, suddenly uncomfortable at his nearness.

“Have a nice war, Mr. McGuire,” she said coldly. “I doubt that our paths will ever cross again.”

For one long last moment their gazes remained locked, his still brilliant with anger, and hers, she knew, showing nothing at all. She’d tried, Jane told herself tiredly. She’d tried, and failed. Now her Pandora’s box of troubles had lost its only saving grace. All of a sudden she knew that the tears that had been threatening all night were about to burst forth in a humiliating flood.

“Let me get you out of town, at least,” Quinn began. His anger had faded as completely as hers had, and there was a rough sympathy in his voice.

“I’ll arrange something myself.” She shook her head furiously, wanting only to get away before she dissolved right in front of this man and a whole roomful of strangers, most of whom were already casting interested glances her way. “You’re right, it probably is the best option. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—” She saw a tiny muscle tighten at the corner of his mouth, and changed what she’d been about to say. “Goodbye, Quinn.”

Even before his name had left her lips she’d turned abruptly on her heel. The next second she was blindly making her way through the crowded tables toward the back of the room where the washrooms were, both hands clenched around the strap of her shoulder bag, her face averted.

If she was lucky—and God knew she deserved some small scrap of luck tonight—there would be no one in the ladies’ room. She would lock herself in a cubicle and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she would get up, splash cold water on her face, and leave—preferably without running into Quinn McGuire.

She’d only known the man for an hour or so. For most of that time they’d been antagonists. If he was right, and she could wipe her memory at will, then it should be easy for her to forget that moment when his hand had touched her arm and his thumb had stroked her skin.

But Quinn’s theory was wrong. And she had a feeling she’d be proving it wrong for a long, long time to come.

Chapter Three

She’d been about to cry. No, Quinn corrected himself, she’d already started to cry by the time she’d spun around and taken off from him in that clumsy half-walk, half-run that had nearly cannoned her into a handful of bar patrons and at least one waitress before she’d disappeared into the washrooms. He’d seen the tears shimmering at the corners of those dark blue eyes, and they’d made him feel like a dog.

He’d done the right thing, there was no doubt about that. “No doubt at all, McGuire,” he murmured under his breath. “Someone had to make her face facts.” He downed the last of the whiskey in his glass, and wondered if he was drinking out of the same side as she had. She hadn’t been wearing lipstick—as far as a mere male could tell, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup at all on that poreless, creamy-pale skin—so there was no way of knowing what part of the rim her lips had touched. But he thought he could taste her.

He drew himself up sharply. He’d been heading for drunk tonight. Obviously he’d achieved his goal, if he was sitting here trying to persuade himself that under the smoky, peaty flavor of Bushmills he could discern a hint of crushed strawberries. But that would be what she’d taste like, he thought unwillingly. Like the wild strawberries he could just barely remember picking when he’d been a boy—the small, sweet ones that had looked like tiny jewels against the green, green grass.

The woman had stirred up far too many memories, he thought abruptly. He needed another drink.

Like magic, his waitress appeared, her smile a little harried as she set down a new glass, but then turning to a puzzled frown as Quinn stopped her from taking the empty one away.

“Humor me, Molly. Leave the glass here, and take this.” He dropped a thick wad of bills on the round cork-topped tray she carried. “That should cover the tab I’ve been running. The rest is for you.”

This time her smile was real. He’d made one woman happy tonight, he thought ruefully, as he lifted his glass and stared into the golden liquid. He’d made one happy, and he’d torn another one’s world apart.

Actually, if he were honest with himself, the odds were more like two to one. He was forgetting the nun.

…you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.

He’d welshed on his debt. He could call it whatever the hell he wanted, but what it came right down to was that Quinn McGuire had weaseled out of an old debt. He closed his eyes, and there she was in front of him, the way he always remembered her….

In the antiquated conditions of the jungle hospital, she’d worked miracles. Of course, she hadn’t taken credit for them. There’d been a gleaming brass crucifix above her packing-crate desk. It had been the only thing in the place, besides the few surgical tools, that hadn’t been allowed to tarnish in the tropical humidity.

She’d been changing his dressing. Whenever he thought of her, that was how she appeared in his mind’s eye, but she looked like no one’s idea of an angel of mercy. If truth be told, Quinn had often thought, she’d always seemed forbiddingly unapproachable in the heavy black habit that she persisted in wearing. She had a slight limp, the legacy from a bout of polio when she’d been a child, he’d learned, and besides her bat-like attire, she’d been as blind as one. Her speech was sharp, and her English, though good, was heavily accented.

“You want to die. I want you to live. We’ll see who wins, Mr. McGuire,” she’d said grimly the first time he’d drifted up out of unconsciousness. One look at those angry brown eyes, ludicrously magnified behind the thick lenses she wore, had been enough to send him spiraling down into oblivion again. But she’d dragged him back, again and again, pitting her faith and her steely strength of will against the shadowy figure with the scythe. Only once had she even come close to losing hope, and that had been the day that his fever had climbed to its highest. He had been delirious, and whatever he’d been babbling, it had shaken her badly. All he could remember of that delusional day and night were two things.

He’d had wings, and he’d known if he only let himself go he would find himself soaring straight up from the sweat-soaked sheets he was lying on into a colder, lighter sky than the blazingly blue one that hung over the hospital. He’d heard them calling him, and he’d felt himself rising to meet them—

—and the second thing he remembered was Sister Bertille’s angular face, her mouth working soundlessly, huge tears standing out behind her crooked glasses, pressing a heavy, chilling weight against his forehead and bringing him crashing back down to earth. Just before dawn the fever had broken. He’d opened his eyes and she’d been sitting beside his bed in a golden pool of light from the gas lantern above her, her rosary in her hands and her mouth slightly open in exhausted sleep. He could still feel the heavy weight on his forehead, and with returning lucidity, he’d reached up and removed it. It had been the cross she usually wore around her neck.

You will know when the right case presents itself…

She’d been right. He had known. And still he’d done his level best to get out of it. Hell.

“You’re a stupid man entirely, Quinn McGuire,” he said out loud. “A stupid, bad man. A debt’s a debt, and you must have been crazy to think that you could get out of paying it with a clear conscience.”

He’d catch her on her way out and tell her he’d changed his mind. She didn’t have to know why, and although the nun was part of it, Quinn wasn’t sure he knew the whole reason either. If anyone needed someone to protect her, though, Jane Doe did.

Even if only half of what she’d told him was the truth.

“…know who you are. It was creepy!”

“It had to be some crackpot. I kept expecting some jerk to look over the stall partition, for God’s sake.”

The two young women passing his table had taken a couple more steps before what he’d overheard them say registered. Before they’d taken a third, Quinn was up and out of his seat and somehow blocking their way. One of them was a blonde, and she gave a little jump.

“Hey, you scared me!” Her gaze took him in, and she relaxed visibly. “I think he should buy us a drink to make up for it, right, Kathy?”