Undercover Memories Read online

  “Is there anything up ahead?” John asked. “A town or something?”

  She scanned the GPS screen. “It looks like there’s a place called Soda Valley about ten miles from here.”

  “Hopefully it’s big enough to warrant plowing the road if it gets too snowy,” he said as the car seemed to sink to its bumper in a pothole. “Sorry.”

  Paige tried to wedge herself into the seat to avoid the bouncing and jarring, but just as the adrenaline had left her body, the aches and pains caused by all the throwing, shoving and thumps she’d endured had arrived with a vengeance.

  Her kingdom for an aspirin.

  Even if she had one, there was no water with which to take it or with which to wash off some of the blood and grime. And suddenly she was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast. A year, maybe. Perhaps two....

  “I want to stop in Soda Valley,” she said. “I’m starving, aren’t you?”

  “Now that you mention it,” he said.

  * * *

  SODA VALLEY TURNED OUT to be nestled in a small basin. The snow was deeper here but the roads had been plowed and sanded. John kept his concerns to himself, but he did comfort himself that Paige’s car had both all-wheel drive and chains in the trunk. He had a feeling they would need both before they cleared the mountains.

  The town itself was larger than he’d expected but was still a one-street town about six blocks long. He kept his eyes peeled for an old black truck as he pulled into a gas station. Paige used her credit card, and once the tank was full they continued into the heart of the “city,” where John parked against the curb.

  Turning to Paige, he asked if she could loan him some money.

  “How much?”

  “Ten or twenty bucks? I assume I can repay you eventually.”

  She opened her wallet. “All I have is two fifties. You take one, I’ll take the other. I’m going to go find food and water and aspirin. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find something warmer and less conspicuous to wear.”

  “Okay. Meet me back here in twenty minutes?”

  “Deal. But Paige,” he added, catching her arm. “Keep your eyes open for you know who.”

  She went off one direction and he took the other, doing his best to blend in, but the curious glances thrown his way suggested it was a lost cause. He felt as if he was wearing a sign that announced he was a wanted man.

  At the end of the third block he found a thrift shop. There wasn’t a lot to choose from, but he quickly settled on cowboy boots that were just a little tight but still had most of their soles, a pair of faded, worn denim jeans, a blue flannel shirt and a vest to cover the gun and holster. The only coat he could find was heavy and woolly, but that was fine. It promised warmth and anonymity, and that’s what he was after. The real bargain came at the cash register, where he spied a battered knockoff Stetson. The minute he settled it on his head, he felt invisible.

  The suit and ruined shoes got rolled into a ball. Detouring off the main street, he found a Dumpster and deposited his old clothes, stuffed inside the thrift-store bag, in among the rest of the refuse.

  Paige was already back in the car when he got there, fiddling with her necklace. She’d managed to find somewhere to clean up and had apparently dug through her luggage for a high-collared sweater that covered her neck.

  Even after the morning she’d endured, even though her cut cheek was edging toward a black eye, she looked so pretty he had to smile at her. His smile seemed to catch her off guard, and then she looked closer and he realized she hadn’t recognized him at first.

  “Do I fit in better?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” she said as she fastened the mended clasp around her neck and tucked the owl beneath her sweater.

  They got back into the shelter of the car, and she extracted the biggest sandwich he’d ever seen from a white deli bag. At least he thought it was the biggest he’d seen. How did he know?

  She cut the sandwich in half with a little plastic knife, and they sat in the car sharing it. By silent agreement they seemed to have split the chore of looking out for trouble, with Paige staring at the pedestrians on the sidewalk and John keeping an eye on the street.

  At the top of the hour, Paige switched on the radio, and with the local news report all semblance of peace flew out the window.

  “A retired couple was found murdered in their home late this morning,” a woman’s voice reported. “Authorities revealed an employee of Haskins Satellite came across the bodies of a man and woman at their Woodside Street home when he kept a prearranged appointment to install equipment. Police have not yet released the identity of the couple or the exact circumstances of the killings except to say robbery may have been the motive.

  “There is speculation that the murders may be linked to yesterday’s ruthless attack of an unidentified man who is still in a coma. Wanted for questioning in that situation is Lone Tree bodyguard John Cinca, who remains at large. The public is encouraged to contact authorities if they have any information and to consider Cinca armed and dangerous.”

  They had both stopped eating as they listened and now looked at each other. John tried to read Paige’s expression but he couldn’t. Once again, he was amazed she’d stuck with him this long. Why had she? What could be her motive?

  Was it possible she was part of this? Was it possible he’d come to these mountains to meet her, that she was in cahoots with Anatola Korenev and that she was playing him?

  He stared at the high collar of her sweater....

  “John?”

  Startled by her voice, he jerked, met her gaze and looked away.

  “Please don’t worry about that report,” she said. “I know for sure you didn’t kill Jack and Carolyn, and I know for sure Anatola Korenev did. This will all work out, trust me.”

  Trust her. That’s what it was all about, and if anyone in that car was walking the line of sanity when it came to extending trust, it wasn’t him—it was her.

  He began stuffing leftovers into the bag. The small town of Soda Valley suddenly seemed full of prying eyes, the interior of the car far too intimate. Paige shook an aspirin into her hand and took a drink from a water bottle.

  “I could use a couple of those, too,” he said and held out his hand.

  * * *

  THEY SOON CLIMBED OUT of the meadow and wound around a tall hill, the snow on each side of the plowed road growing so deep in places it felt as though they were driving through a tunnel of ice.

  “Tell me about Brian,” John said after a half hour of silence. It had just begun to snow again and there was no other traffic on the road. Paige, sitting in the passenger seat, had settled into a kind of numb trance, staying awake just because the images when she closed her eyes were so jarring.

  Not that hearing Brian’s name wasn’t unsettling in its own way. “What about him?”

  “What does he do? What does he look like? How did you meet?”

  As she spoke, she stared at the windshield wipers knocking off the snow.

  “He’s blond with blue eyes,” she began. “Tall, athletic, handsome. He’s in advertising. We met when I was asked to design a cover for a pamphlet his company was promoting.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  “Attraction, but not love. He was still married. I didn’t agree to date him until the final decree came through.”

  “Did he want the divorce?”

  “He was actually really broken up about it.”

  “Why?”

  Paige shrugged. “She’d cheated on him with a good friend and he felt totally abandoned by everyone. He would have stayed with her if she’d let him despite her infidelity. She called all the shots.”

  John cast her a wry smile. “Sound familiar?”

  She stared at his profile. He wasn’t as classically good-looking as Brian, nor as smooth, and she liked that. He appeared to be genuine in a way that defied the fact he wasn’t sure who or what he was. And the few seconds where the
ir lips had touched had produced an alluring sizzle she was curious to investigate.

  “No,” she said. “You are not like Brian. He was looking for someone to fill a sudden void—”

  John cleared his throat. “Please, forget I asked, okay?”

  “He made the first move,” she continued. “He pursued me right up until the moment when his ex-wife crooked her finger and invited him back. That is not you. You are not interested in me that way. In fact, you are constantly trying to get rid of me.”

  He cast her a swift look and a crooked smile. “That’s not entirely true.”

  Radio reception had disappeared the minute they left the valley, so they couldn’t keep abreast of the manhunt that was apparently afoot for John. They fell into silence again until the snow got so thick the wipers had a hard time keeping up with it.

  “It’s going to be dark soon,” John said, slowing the car and pulling as far to the side of the road as he dared. “I think we should get the chains on before it’s too late.”

  “I don’t know how to put the chains on,” Paige said. “I was counting on a brand-spanking-new husband to do it for me when and if we needed them.”

  “I’ll play husband and put them on. You stay in here. Won’t take me long.”

  But she got out of the car with him, partly because he might need help, partly because it was her car and she felt responsible for it, and partly because she was afraid she’d fall asleep if she didn’t. As he struggled with the chains, she stood by, snuggled deep in her coat and cold despite it. John must be miserable down on the ground like that.

  Invariably, her thoughts turned to the Pollocks. Somehow she felt better knowing their bodies had been found and any relatives notified of their terrible fates. It had felt categorically wrong to leave them like that.

  How many laws had she broken today? Aiding a suspected criminal? Not reporting violent deaths? Probably something to do with knocking out the taillight in that old wreck…

  How many crimes had she committed up to this point in her life? She’d walked on the grass a few times when signs warned her not to, and let’s face it, sometimes she drove too fast and was late getting a library book back on time. But that was the extent of her criminal activity.

  Until now.

  Eventually, John got the chains on and they scooted back into the relative warmth of the car. As John started the engine, Paige turned the heater on full blast. He checked the GPS. “You should be home by early morning,” he said as he pulled back onto the road. The world outside the car was white and gray and nothing else.

  “Home,” she said softly.

  “Don’t you want to go home?”

  “It’ll be the first time I’ve seen everyone since I had to tell them there wasn’t going to be a wedding,” she said. “So, no, I’m not really looking forward to it.”

  “Your friends and family will shower you with concern,” he said in an obvious attempt at comforting her.

  “I know. They’ll smother me with kindness. Kindness. Who am I trying to kid. It’s pity they’ll shower me with, and who could blame them? But honestly, who wants to be pitied?”

  “Not you,” he said.

  “No, not me. I share an apartment with my younger sister, Katy. She may have already rented out my room. I packed all my stuff in preparation for moving in with Brian. Most of it’s at his place, or at least it was. I wonder what he did with it. I may be going home to nothing.”

  “But your sister was at your wedding, right? She knows what happened.”

  “For all I know, she may have rented my room out before the wedding,” Paige said. “Katy is pretty adept at looking out for Katy. No way can she afford the rent all by herself.”

  “Wouldn’t she tell you if she’d done that?”

  “I was so busy with wedding details that I barely saw her for weeks before the wedding. And I might as well be honest. We don’t always get on so great. She’s a tad on the headstrong side.”

  “Must run in your family,” he said, grinning.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “How about your parents?”

  “Mother lives locally, Father is a retired fireman who currently resides in Alaska.”

  “You could move back with your mother—”

  “Oh, no, please, you don’t know what you’re saying. Mom is in the process of wooing husband candidate number four. I do not want to get anywhere near that train wreck.”

  “How about your father? If you’re a graphic artist, you can work almost anywhere at least for a while, can’t you?”

  “Technically, but I have a lot of local clients.” She sighed. “I’ve always been closer to my father than my mother. I guess I could fly up to Alaska and stay with him for a couple of weeks, but what does that get me? Sooner or later, I have to reclaim my disaster of a life. Might as well get it over with.”

  She flashed John a smile she didn’t feel. The truth she would never admit out loud was she would rather stay with him. She didn’t know why, but his journey seemed a lot more important than anything she had planned for the next few days, weeks, months....

  And she wanted to make sure Anatola Korenev paid for what he’d done to the Pollocks. He could not be allowed to wreck more lives.

  Paige Graham, seeker of justice for the dead.

  Cripes, she thought. I am totally delusional.

  She must have said it aloud, because John laughed.

  Chapter Seven

  A glance at the dashboard clock revealed the reason John kept finding his eyes drifting shut. It was three in the morning, and he was so tired he was a hazard on the road. Two or three times he startled awake after a few seconds of nodding off to find the car had wandered into the wrong lane. Good thing there was no one else out tonight.

  The plowed roads had stopped at a small town they drove through an hour before, and now his were the only tracks on the newly fallen snow. Thankfully it wasn’t deep as they had steadily been losing elevation, but it was tricky driving and dangerous in his condition as the road wove its way through the trees.

  He finally found what appeared to be a grove of some kind of fir trees where the snow wasn’t too deep and he pulled in, telling himself even an hour of sleep would recharge his battery. Paige had been out for the count since midnight, and he hoped the stop wouldn’t wake her.

  They were both bundled up, but he knew the car would get cold and figured that cold would act as an alarm clock. Not that he really cared. He had to sleep.

  The dream started pleasantly enough. He strolled by a stream in the sunlight. Someone was with him but he wasn’t sure who it was. And then black shadows stole across the sky, turning day into night. He was sitting in a dark room next. All around him he could hear the rustle of wings. Birds. Dozens of them, just vague shadows and deep noises—owls! The bird sounds were suddenly joined by screams and not just any screams, children’s screams of terror. They were terrified of the owls, too. He tried to sink into the earth to get away from the wings and the cries. His hands were covered with blood and his body was on fire....

  “John!”

  He opened his eyes. Paige leaned over him, eyes wide with alarm.

  He swallowed heavily and tried to sit up but he’d slipped down in the seat in his twilight attempt to escape the owls, pinning his hip under the steering wheel. He maneuvered himself upright and took another gulp of cold air.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, her hand landing on his arm.

  “Yeah,” he said. The truth was more complicated as the dream continued to unwind in the back of his head.

  “You were screaming,” she said. He suddenly realized it was daylight. Condensation on the inside of the windows made the outside world a blur.

  “I was? Sorry.”

  “Were you having a nightmare?”

  “Yes,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. The beating of wings grated against every nerve ending. He met her gaze and looked away. If it was possible to feel like a raw sore, he did.

  “You loo
k funny, John. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” he said. He didn’t know what to make of the crying children.

  He opened the driver’s door and stumbled from the seat into a foot of snow. Judging from the light filtering through the treetops, it was early morning.

  Paige came up behind him and circled him with her arms. At first, the gesture made him uneasy. Why was she hugging him? Why was she with him? He turned around to face her.

  “You look so lost,” she said.

  “And you’re a sucker for wounded guys, right?” The owl pendant was beneath her sweater. He couldn’t see it, but he could sense it there. The metal wings beating against her skin, the yellow eyes burning through the wool.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Is that so wrong?”

  “It can be,” he said, raising his gaze to her eyes.

  “Why?”

  “If it impairs your judgment,” he said. “If it puts you in danger.”

  “Not this again,” she said, her voice frustrated. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you, Paige?”

  “You’re not dangerous,” she said.

  “I’m not? Are you sure?” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close to him. Staring into her eyes, fueled by the residue of the nightmare amped up by unbearable uncertainty, he touched her lips with his, then drew back, startled by the almost audible clap of thunder that resonated in his head.

  Thunder that drove away the beating wings and the cries…

  He claimed her lips again. As chaste as the kiss in the tavern parking lot had been, this one was wanton, bordering on licentious. His hands slid up her neck, his fingers splayed through her hair as he pried her lips open with the tip of his tongue. His mind was blessedly free of sounds other than the rushing of his own blood, the pumping of his own heart.

  It was Paige. She was the reason he was free.... And as inappropriate and impossible the situation, all he wanted was to pull her to the snowy ground and lose himself in her.

  His hand slid down her back, cupped her butt, tucked her tight against his groin—

  For a second, his head cleared and he stood back from himself. Then he pushed her away, appalled by his behavior. Her swollen lips and dazed eyes bore testimony to the way he’d transferred his angst to her. That was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.