Missing You

One-3

“What?”

“It’s—” he stopped, then said, his voice as grim as his face. “It’s a bullet graze. I can still smell the gun powder.” He handed her the coat.

Eyes wide, Goldie took it and sniffed. Someone shot at her. Close range, if she could smell residue. In her head she could see the words, but they didn’t make sense. Nothing did. What kind of person got shot at? How did she know about residue? No wonder she didn’t want to remember.

“What do we…do?”

Luke looked toward the window. “Tonight? Nothing we can do. We’re completely shut off until the storm clears. When it does, my truck’s a four-wheel. I have a few contacts with the Estes Park cops.”

“But I don’t remember anything! What will I tell them?” Panic slipped its leash again. She could hear it in her voice but was too weary to do anything about controlling it.

Once again, Luke rescued her. He grabbed her uninjured hand and caught her gaze with his.

“We’ll figure it out in the morning. Your memory can come back at any time. At least, that’s what the TV doctors say.” He smiled. It was a nice smile. A safe smile, a confident smile, but also a sexy smile.

“Well, they must know.” She found herself smiling back as her body relaxed again. Something intimate and unsettling entered the space between them. She looked away, in the direction of her wound. Right now it was less scary than looking at Luke, so she studied it. “Looks like it plowed along the top of the epidermis. Shouldn’t need stitches. It should heal quickly if infection doesn’t set in.”

There was a moment of silence. She looked at Luke.

He grinned. “Maybe you’re a TV doc?”

Or a real one. She strained against the gray mist inside her head, but it resisted her with painful firmness.

“If I am, my brain isn’t giving it up. It’s like…” she stopped.

“Like what?” Luke’s attention was focused on wrapping the white bandage around her arm, but his voice invited her to go on.

Goldie had a feeling he was always the good cop. The urge to confide was almost irresistible. But what if she was confiding herself into jail? Was she a good guy? And if she was, what was she afraid to remember?

“It’s like…” she hesitated again, but the need to put it out there, see if what she felt could sustain itself in the light of examination, overcame her qualms, “there’s two separate…issues.” That wasn’t the right word, but nothing better presented itself. “On the one side is this relief. An incredible lightness of being.” She smiled, wondering who she’d just plagiarized. “I’m new and the world is full of possibilities.”

“And on the other?” Luke finished his work and sat back, his gaze—sober and encouraging—fixed on her face.

“On the other is…dread. Confusion.” She closed her eyes and out of the mist heard angry voices—Who am I? And why did it feel like a question she’d asked before? She groped toward the voices, but they faded into the gray. She shook her head in frustration. “It’s gone.”

“Don’t try so hard. Memories like to be coaxed.”

“What if—” she clasped her hands together, “what if I’m mixed up in something illegal?”

“Do you think you’re that kind of person?” Luke asked, putting his hands over her clasped ones. His grip was warm and light. It gave comfort without confining.

“No!” The word burst out of her without a second’s thought. She probed deeper. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it felt like the dread came from the outside in, not that it emanated from inside her.

“I don’t know much about amnesia, but I do know about people. I see all kinds. The ones with character and the ones without. You’re all right, Goldie.”

She stared at him for a long moment as relief flooded through her, but felt compelled to ask, “What if you’re wrong?”

For just a moment, his eyes showed he’d asked himself that question. He seemed satisfied with his own answer, though, because he grinned. “I’m never wrong, though my brothers might disagree.” His gaze studied her face, then he added, “Relax. While this storm is controlling the board, trouble can’t find either of us.”

It was a happy thought. The knot in her stomach eased.

He stood up. “I’m going to see if I can find you something to change into. We need to check you for any other injuries.” He caught her chin and looked at her eyes again. Not like a man looking at a woman. “Headache?”

“It’s hard to isolate my aches to any single area.” She touched the sore area at the base of her neck. It felt bigger than the last time she’d touched it. “I think I will try some of that ice, though.”

He nodded, then made a beeline for the stairs. She watched him because she couldn’t help it and because it was a distraction. She had the weird sense that a guy in tight jeans was a rarity in her life. Maybe she was a nun? Her brain produced, “We are troubled on every side, but not in despair.”

Appropriate, but not exactly significant. And didn’t nuns have to cut their hair? Luke was almost out of sight, which seemed a pity.

“Luke?”

He paused, one foot on a stair and turned. “Yeah?”

That was better. “Where am I?”

“I told you. Our cabin—”

“No, where in the world am I?”

“Oh. Colorado. Not far from Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Ring any bells?”

“North American continent. Between forty-one and thirty-seven degrees north latitude and one hundred and two and one hundred and nine degrees west longitude. Thirty-eighth state—” She stopped the flood of words, though more minutiae hovered on the tip of her tongue. More about Colorado, plus the fact that Rocky Mountain National Park was founded in 1915 and was part of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. She also, apparently, knew that Estes Park was located at the east entrance to the park.

Despite the mini-flood of information, none of it gave her a sense of place, of where she was in the larger tapestry of life. Outside the storm raged against their beachhead of warmth. So far the cabin held its own against a wind that howled at the door and rattled windows that had frost building from the corners out of its panes. Away from civilization and city lights, the darkness was deep and impenetrable. She could be anywhere. Even on the moon, she realized, and she wouldn’t know it.

Goldie smiled weakly. “At least I know what continent I’m on.”

“I’ll say,” Luke said. He looked amused and bemused. “Maybe later we can play Trivial Pursuit, see what else you know.”

A name floated into the front of her brain. “Oh. I remember something else! Carmen Sandiego!”

Luke laughed. “It’s a game, Goldie. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I’ll bet you kick ass at it, too.”

He left her alone, feeling silly and frustrated. Why could she remember skin layers, streams of facts and games, but not her own name? And why the peculiar sense that she’d never known who she really was?

Unsettled, she padded over to the window and peered out. All she could see was the unfamiliar reflection staring back at her. She smiled, watching it appear on the stranger’s face in the window. Visibility was zero. Outside the window and inside her own head. She turned and looked at the stairs where Luke had vanished. Unbidden, against her wishes, a thought worked its way to the front of her head. What was he doing out here away from everyone?

All she knew was what he told her. The wind rose in a howl outside. A howl that sounded too much like mocking laughter.