Undercover Memories (11 page)

John shook his head. “In a way it kind of does.”

“Really?”

“Don’t get too excited. It seems familiar the same way handling a gun and driving a car seem familiar. My place in this piece of the world isn’t clear at all, though. I don’t remember working here, I don’t remember friends or family, and worst of all, I don’t remember where I live....”

His voice trailed off when she hit her forehead with an open palm. “I’m an idiot,” she said under her breath. “I’ve just been too distracted to think clearly.”

She drove a little way farther before pulling to the curb in front of a motel. She switched off the engine and turned, searching the backseat for something.

“Why are you an idiot? Can I help you find something?”

“Where’s my laptop?” she insisted.

“Right there under that coat. I’ll get it for you.”

He retrieved the computer for her and waited while she opened the case, bringing it to life.

“Just as I hoped,” she said, typing quickly.

“What’s just as you hoped?”

“We’re picking up the motel’s internet connection. I’m going to look you up on Google.”

And as he watched, she did just that. The screen instantly filled with links to him and he looked away, not sure how to handle an onslaught of information that might reveal things about himself he didn’t want to share with her.

No way around it, though.

“Mostly updates on the police search and your supposed victims, although there’s mention here of another person being wanted for questioning. That’s probably me or Anatola Korenev. Anyway, here’s something about you personally. Want to know?”

“No,” he said.

“John?”

“Okay. Just leave out the bad stuff.”

“You’re divorced,” she informed him. “No children. Ex-police. John, you were a cop before you became a bodyguard. In fact, you were a hero. You pushed a congressman out of the way of an armed gunman last year. Hey, I remember reading about that. That was you?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Sorry.” She read for several seconds without speaking. John was beginning to get nervous when she said, “Well, anyway, you’re thirty-nine years old and adopted, but it says not much is known about your early life. You work in Lone Tree as a bodyguard and are currently missing. They quote a woman named Natalie Dexter, who’s identified as a friend of yours, as saying you left town three days ago on a job. And it gives your address.”

“We can punch it into the GPS,” John said.

She was typing again. “We don’t have to. I found it on here. Looks like we passed the area where you live about three miles ago. It’s on the other side of the bridge.” She folded the computer shut and handed it to John.

As she made a U-turn and headed back the other way, John thought back to what they’d passed before getting on the bridge. The area had looked industrial to him, not residential, with train tracks running alongside the river and big warehouses sharing space with fenced, paved lots.

“Ready to go home?” Paige chirped as they started back across the bridge.

He nodded, filled with dread. It wasn’t every day a man had to confront the unknown essence of his own life. He just hoped he hadn’t buried any skeletons in plain view....

* * *

P
AIGE COULDN’T GET THE
passage she’d read about John—and hadn’t related to him—out of her mind. As she drove the nearly vacant streets of what appeared to be the area of the city where shipping and receiving took place, she considered telling him the part she’d omitted.

But she couldn’t believe it. John guilty of accepting a drug bribe? Everything she knew about him went against such a thought, and she did her best to shove it out of her head.

It wouldn’t go far. She glanced at him now as he scanned the numbers on the buildings, not sure how he would take this kind of news about himself, because sooner or later she had to tell him. Keeping it to herself was the chicken’s way out, but it seemed cruel to ambush him with more vague questions about his character.

The truth was if she couldn’t reconcile this information with the man seated beside her, what was he supposed to make of it?

“How are we going to know Anatola Korenev isn’t at your place waiting for us?” she asked.

“We’re not. He could easily have been here by now.”

“Or he could be one step behind us. I still don’t understand why he went after me when he must have known how to get to you.”

“Maybe he figures I’m too smart to go home until he’s caught. Slow down. We’re passing 31002 River Road. My building is 31006. Do you see an apartment house or something?”

Paige slowed way down. The place where John’s house or condo or apartment should have perched was nothing more than a warehouse much like all the others, with a high metal fence surrounding it and an empty parking area in front. The gate was secured with a rusty-looking chain and a serious-looking lock about the size of a piece of sandwich bread. There was no sign announcing what the building held and there were no windows on the ground floor.

John whistled. “I live in a warehouse?”

“Next to Brown’s Storage and Transfer and across the street from Lone Tree Moving,” Paige said. “Your building is smaller than theirs.”

“Maybe I rent a space here for my bodyguard business.”

“Do bodyguards have offices?”

“Why are you asking me?” he snapped, and then shook his head and smiled. “Sorry. I guess my nerves are getting to me. Well, I don’t see an old black truck or a police car.” He looked around again. “See that alley over there? It must wind around to the back of this place. I don’t like sitting out here in plain view.”

Paige drove down the dirt-and-rock-strewn alley, skirting receiving gates and Dumpsters. The back of John’s place was as barren as the front, but there was an indentation and a door near the right corner of the building. Sliding metal doors large enough to drive a big truck through occupied space to their right. A row of dark windows appeared on what must be a second floor.

“There’s no break in the fence,” John said, “except the gate out front and this one. The front one had that cartoon-looking lock. I don’t see any lock on this gate.” He turned to face Paige. “This was as far as you signed on to go,” he said.

“You want me to leave you three miles from town in back of a building you can’t get into? No way.”

“I’m going over, through or around that fence,” he said.

“But the building will be locked.”

“Probably. And I might trigger a silent alarm. Who knows? Anatola could be there already, waiting for me. But there’s only one direction I can go at this point, and that’s forward. So, you leave and I’ll call you when I—”

“I’ll wait here until you go reconnoiter,” she said.

Much to her relief, he nodded. “At the first sign of trouble, please, look out for yourself. It’s bad enough all these other people have suffered because of me. I couldn’t stand it if you…”

There was one good way to shut him up, and Paige took it. She closed the distance between them and kissed him. The way his body stiffened announced he was stunned by her action, which amused her for a second, and then the fireworks started and she forgot to be amused.

They drew apart after a few seconds and stared at each other. He ran two fingers along her unhurt cheek in an incredibly longing manner. She took a shuddering breath as she gazed into his eyes.

Who was he? The kind, interesting, challenging John Cinca sitting so close right this moment, or a cohort of Anatola Korenev and a man who left the police department under a cloud of doubt about his honesty? And why was it so important to her to know the answer?

At the very least, this kiss had inched them away from the weirdness of the morning. This kiss was just a kiss—and yet a hint of so much more.

What about the way your heart leaped when Brian called you darling? You threw away everything he’d ever done to you in that one moment of bliss.

She was all over the map.

“Be careful,” she finally murmured.

He kissed her one more time then let himself out of the car, leaving his bulky jacket and cowboy hat behind. He looked tall and powerful as he approached the fence. He stood there for a moment, then reached out and grabbed it and pulled on it as though testing it. With a sudden leap, he attached himself to the fence and began the laborious task of finding footholds and pulling himself to the top, where, crouching, he hovered a second before letting himself down by holding on to the top bar, extending his body on the other side and letting go. He landed six feet later, solidly, but it must have jarred him up to his teeth.

Half cat burglar, half cat.

Glancing back, he gave her a thumbs-up and then raced toward the building as though a gunman on the top floor had him in his sights. His condensed breath created a cloud around his head.

* * *

J
OHN TOOK A DEEP BREATH
as he hovered in the shallow doorway of the warehouse. The panel was metal, without windows, but there was a security camera mounted above it. A metal lever-type handle was connected to a tubular latch. There was no keyhole and no way to break inside.

He studied the apparatus for a few seconds. This was his door. Somewhere in his head he had to know how to open it.

Reaching out, he slid up the top part of the cover, revealing a bright blue sensor pad underneath. Without thinking, he touched the pad with his right pointer finger. The door beeped and clicked. He pushed down on the lever and it opened. The interior lights immediately flashed on, and what John saw left him speechless.

He glanced back at Paige’s car before closing the door. The lights stayed on as though connected to a motion sensor.

The warehouse floor was occupied by a half dozen old fire trucks. There was also space for a vehicle of some kind, he assumed the one that had been abandoned in the park. There were two other vehicles already in their spaces, one a brand-new convertible and the other an SUV.

It was an unheated space and in the current conditions, freezing. He opened the brass door of a panel located directly to the right of the door and found several switches, many of which seemed to control outside lights and one that was marked Ground Floor Doors and another marked Gate.

Directly in front of him, a metal staircase led up to an encapsulated loft that occupied about half of the upper area. The area above where he stood disappeared into shadows high overhead.

He started up the stairs, mentally preparing himself for—well, for whatever. Who knew
what
was up here?

The stairs ended on a narrow landing. The door up here had been hacked to pieces. As John drew his gun and stepped inside, interior lights snapped on.

It looked to be more or less one large area, mostly open with a modest amount of decent furniture. The most impressive thing about the place was a baby grand piano near the windows. It also seemed to be about the only item that hadn’t been tossed, dumped or overturned.

Papers and books and a million little things littered the floor. Furniture had been slashed. Obviously, someone had come looking for something while John was away. Had they found it?

How had they gotten past the door downstairs and the gate, for that matter?

He bypassed the curved bar that defined the kitchen, which was also a mess, then opened a door near the bedroom. That turned out to be a bathroom. The place was obviously deserted, so he put his gun away. Time to go get Paige.

He went back downstairs, shivering in the cold air, and pushed buttons, resulting in the soft hum of motors. He walked outside to the gate as it rolled open, and Paige met him.

“I think we should leave your car out here on this side of the fence,” he said.

“But someone could see it,” she said, shivering, her gaze traveling up and down the alley. “Someone like Korenev.”

“Still, if we lock it inside the gates with us and something goes wrong—”

“Your call,” she said.

“Someone has already been here looking for something,” he said. “The place is torn apart.”

She covered her mouth with two fingers. “Korenev was here. I completely forgot about it. He told me there was no trace of me at your place in Lone Tree.”

“Well, from the look of things, he’s worked his usual magic.”

“Is there a dead body—”

“No, I didn’t mean that. He just trashed the place.”

She locked the car and they hurried across the yard together toward the warehouse. Through the open doors, John could see the glimmer of red paint and polished brass.

“How did you get inside without a key?” she asked him. “Wait, are those fire engines?”

“Yes. Neat, huh? And I got inside because it’s a sensor lock that I obviously programmed. It reacted to my fingerprint. I wonder how Korenev got in.”

As she walked into the warehouse, a low whistle escaped her lips. “Holy cow! Is this all yours?”

“I guess so,” he said as he pushed the switch that closed the outside gate as well as the sliding doors and reactivated the interior lights. The place seemed to dazzle with all that machinery kept in pristine condition.

“It’s cold in here,” she said, looking around. The tremor was gone from her voice and he thought she was no doubt reacting to the sense of safety being behind closed, locked doors afforded. But it could be a false sense of security, and he was anxious to try to find something that made sense of this mess and then get out of here.

“It’s a little warmer upstairs,” he said.

“Wait a second,” she said as he put a foot on the first metal stair. She walked between the engines, running her hand along their gleaming cherry surfaces, little
oohs
and
aahs
following her like a wake of ducklings trying to keep up with their mom. It pleased the hell out of him to hear her excited cries and see the gleam in her eyes as she scanned each vehicle. He wasn’t sure why it pleased him. It just did.

“I’ve always loved fire engines,” she said. She grinned. “I wonder if you have a dalmatian.”

“I haven’t seen one,” he said. “What’s your fascination with engines?”

“I told you, my father was a fireman. He used to let me sit in the engine and pretend to drive. I always thought I would be a fireman when I grew up, then I got interested in design and art. Still, there’s just something about a fire truck. These look as though they belong in a museum. John, do you think the fact you collect fire engines and have obviously been in a fire sometime in your past are connected?”