Private Vows

In spite of the fact that he was exhausted, sleep was elusive. When it finally came, he slept hard and long, waking shortly after nine.

Immediately, even before he made coffee, he called the Newton Arms, but Mary Jackson had already checked out.

He tried to call Pete, at home first since it was Saturday, but got the answering machine. He wasn’t at work, either, so Cole left a message at both places then went downstairs, made a pot of coffee, drank it and had ample time to wonder why he wasn’t pleased that someone—her fiancé?—must have come to claim Mary.

Because he sensed that her fears were of much longer standing than the normal disorientation that amnesia would cause anyone? Because the situation brought back the awful sense of helplessness he’d gone through with Angela?

Because the additional element of sexual attraction had, against all reason and common sense, insinuated itself into the equation?

When the phone finally rang, he snatched it up, half expecting, half hoping it would be her calling to tell him where she was.

“What’s up, buddy?” Pete asked.

Cole was both disappointed and relieved. “The woman I hit—”

“Mary,” Pete interjected. “She asked us to call her Mary Jackson. Sounds better than Jane Doe since that’s what we call all the unidentified female bodies that come through here.”

Cole flinched at the image of Mary on a slab in the morgue. She’d come awfully close to that. If he’d been going a little faster—

“I’ve still got her ring, you know, and when I called her hotel, she’d checked out.”

“Yeah, I just got back from taking her to the Gramercy shelter for a few days. She freaked this morning when I called to tell her that we got the lab results back, and the blood on her dress is definitely human. She started babbling about how she had to get out of that hotel because he knew she was there. Of course, when I asked who he was, she didn’t know and admitted she wasn’t being logical. Seems somebody called her and hung up and she’s positive it wasn’t a wrong number or a bad connection. Pretty paranoid, but maybe that comes with the amnesia.”

“No accident victims in the local hospitals that might belong to that blood?”

“None that admit it. I told her if we got any unidentified bodies, we’d like her to come down and take a look.”

“I’m sure that thrilled her.”

“About as much as when I told her about Sam Maynard coming in yesterday and trying to claim her—”

“Sam the Sleaze?” Cole flinched at the thought of the disgusting pervert coming into contact with Mary’s confusion and vulnerability. “Is he out of jail again? When are you going to put that creep away for good?”

“When he does something we can get him on. He’s a sicko, but he’s smart enough to ride the line between annoying women enough to get his wrists slapped and annoying them enough to get himself a prison term.”

“You think he’d go after her? You think he called her?”

“Sam? Nah. That’s not his style. Too much trouble. He can find plenty of women to accost right on the city streets.”

“If he was hanging around the station, he might have heard somebody mention where she was staying.”

“Could be, but I doubt it. Anyway, when Sam reaches out to touch somebody, he likes it to be in person.”

“Pete, you’re about as funny as a bad case of the flu.”

“I’ll tell you what’s funny, this whole case. I thought it would be open and shut. If you got a bride, the groom can’t be far behind, right? Whole thing’s damn odd.”

“Yeah, it is. Well, I’m glad you got her installed at Gramercy. She ought to feel safe there.”

Cole knew the small shelter Pete was talking about. Next door to a church and staffed by the members, it catered to families and people temporarily down on their luck. A good choice, as shelters went. Nevertheless he had a hard time picturing her there. “I’m going to see her, take her ring back. I’ll reassure her that Sam’s harmless.”

“Good deal. We’re doing what we can on this end, but with no evidence that a crime’s been committed, we can’t dedicate a lot of manpower to it. Well, I got another call. Check you later, buddy.”

After talking to Pete, Cole went into the small room downstairs that he used for a home office. Other than sleeping in his bedroom and storing beer in the kitchen, this was the only room in the house that he used. He had an official office in a nearby business area, a place to meet clients, but this was where he kept his files and did most of his work. This was the room that justified his holding on to a house he didn’t like or want, a house that reminded him every day of his failure.

He opened the top drawer of the desk and took Mary’s ring from its hiding place at the back. In the palm of his hand, the gold shone and the diamond sparkled. It was a beautiful ring, and Mary hated it.

Kind of like the way he felt about this house.

In his own way, he was as helpless as she. He couldn’t rescue her, couldn’t locate her relatives or bring back her memory or even save her from her own fears. Any gallant impulses he had in that direction were pointless.

But he did know someone who would give her a fair appraisal of the ring and loan her money on it. He could contribute that much to easing the trauma of the situation he’d put her in, that much and nothing more.

No matter how much his libido might want him to get more involved.

MARY SAT on the curb in front of the Gramercy Home and tried to push down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to think, to figure out what to do next, and next after that, what to do with the rest of her life in case nobody showed up to tell her who she was, in case she never remembered.

The church that sponsored the shelter owned the entire block as well as the parsonage across the street. The surrounding neighborhood was quiet, an area of older homes, some well kept, some neglected. Overhead, the sun shone cheerfully from a cloudless blue sky and the smell of honeysuckle was sweet on the summer air. She could not have been in less threatening surroundings. Yet the nameless, faceless fear she’d known since the accident refused to leave her.

In her small hotel room on the fourth floor of the Newton Arms, she’d felt isolated, trapped and claustrophobic yet unable to force herself to venture outside. Though she’d let the doctor at the hospital convince her to find a room close to the place where she’d appeared in the hope that familiar surroundings would bring back memories, she was terrified of the area, terrified to leave the hotel.

The hang-up phone call she’d received last night had increased her anxiety. Moving to another area of town, to this shelter recommended by Officer Townley, should have solved those problems. But it hadn’t. Now she felt exposed and vulnerable.

It had nothing to do with the dozen or so other inhabitants of the small shelter. They were basically in the same circumstances as she…homeless, unemployed, no friends or loved ones to care for them. Though actually they were better off than she was. They had memories of homes and loved ones. They knew their own names.

Nor was her feeling of vulnerability directly related to Sam Maynard, the strange man whom Officer Townley said had claimed to be her fiancé. True, the panic had wrapped around her with suffocating intensity at that news and hadn’t completely dissipated with Townley’s assurances that the man was essentially harmless and had no way of knowing where she was staying. The hang-up call the previous evening could have been from him.

But her fear went beyond such specifics. It was free-floating, attached to nothing and everything, all-consuming and illogical.

After completely breaking down that morning when Officer Townley had hit her with the double blow of the pervert who’d wanted to take her home and then told her the blood on her dress was human, she’d resolved to take control, to refuse her fear the power it demanded. Even if she never regained her memory, if no one ever came to take her back to her home and family, she would conquer this unreasoning terror.

A nondescript dark blue sedan pulled over to the curb and her determination vanished as a black dread encompassed her. Her heart began to pound irregularly, perspiration beaded on her forehead and the muscles in her stomach knotted almost painfully. As she got to her feet, her movements seemed to be the slow motion of a nightmare.

Someone coming to the church, she told herself. Someone coming to offer a job to one of the people in the shelter. Someone harmless!

She clenched her fists even as her body involuntarily turned to run back to the shelter.

“Mary!”

She choked down a sob as she recognized the voice, one of the few she could recognize, the only one that didn’t frighten her. Cole Grayson.

He got out of the car and came around to where she stood. Both his blue jeans and the beer logo on his T-shirt were faded and comfortable-looking. He’d shaved but his hair was still shaggy. The sight of him was marvelously, wondrously familiar.

He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a sunburst pattern, a reflection of the sunburst that had spread through her breast at his appearance.

“You sure look different in those jeans than you did in that wedding dress,” he said.

The mention of the dress dimmed that sunburst and shot a painful spasm of unfocused dread through her.