Unforgettable (6 page)

He ventured into his daughter’s room, taking extra care not to make any noise. If Molly woke up, they would pay hell getting her to sleep again. She was curled up, her plump little arm circling the one-eared stuffed elephant that she dragged everywhere. He bent low and brushed a kiss across her cheek. Her body was warm, her breathing too soft to hear, and she smelled of baby powder.

He tiptoed out of the room and went down the hall. Sarah was sitting up in bed reading a mystery, her thick black hair falling over her shoulders. She set the book on the nightstand, then put out her arms to hug him. His spirits lifted a little. Having her love almost made up for losing Greg’s.

“Rough day?” she asked after he’d bear-hugged her and kissed her twice.

“Yeah.” He pulled off his holster and opened the safe in the nightstand. Once the gun was inside, he spun the dial and locked it away from the children. “Greg’s going to get mixed up with that woman. I can feel it.”

Sarah’s dark eyes widened. “The one who stole the car?”

“Right. Greg’s calling her Lucky. The doctors say Lucky should remember her name, but she claims she can’t.” He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shoes.

“You know what the
Tattler's
saying, don’t you?”

He shook his head. The
Maui Tattler
was the island’s biweekly newspaper. It had an appalling similarity to mainland tabloids. Elvis sightings. Aliens with heads like lightbulbs zipping around the up-country in spaceships and hovering over the beaches, bent on abducting tourists.

“They’re calling her Pele’s ghost. She was found along the side of the road, and no one seems to know who she is. It’s romantic.”

“That’s
lolo.
The woman’s a car thief.”

When he’d called home to say he would be late, Cody had brought Sarah up-to-date on the case. He was surprised that she saw anything romantic in this, bu
t then, she could “talk story”
in the Hawaiian tradition, retelling island lore over and over and over. One of the most popular myths was that Pele, the volcano goddess who had given birth to the islands, often appeared at the side of the road as a young woman needing help. It was considered bad luck not to help her. No matter what you did, the ghost disappeared as unexpectedly as she had appeared.

“I don’t want Greg mixed up with that weird blonde.”

“She reminds you of Jessica, doesn’t she?” Sarah asked, more than a trace of bitterness in her voice.

Jessica. The word hung in the
air like a poisonous gas. Since Jessica’s funeral, neither of them had mentioned her name. He met Sarah’s steady gaze and saw how much she loved him. And how much he’d hurt her. Honest to God, he didn’t deserve her.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “This isn’t Pele’s ghost. It’s Jessica in another woman’s body.”

“The
Tattler's,
going to love that one. Invasion of the body snatchers.”

He knew Sarah was trying to joke, but there wasn’t anything humorous about Greg’s dead wife. Jessica had deliberately tried to wreck all their lives. And she’d almost succeeded.

“Yes, Greg has a way of spotting the walking wounded. Then he doesn’t know what to do with them.” Cody unbuttoned his shirt, wondering if there was any way he could help his brother.

“Nobody could have saved Jessica.”

So true. Jessica had been beyond redemption. Cody had been an idiot to have had an affair with his own brother’s wife. He could still see the shocked look on Greg’s face as he’d come down the embankment with the search and rescue team after the accident. The last thing Greg had expected to find that night, when Jessica had told him she had gone to the mainland, was Cody with his wife. It was the last thing Sarah had expected, too. If she hadn’t been pregnant, she might have left him. The baby—and the twins they already had—had earned him a second chance.

Of course, there had been no second chance with Greg. “No one could have saved Jessica,” Sarah repeated, bitterness underscoring every word. “She was a lost soul.”

“No one can help this woman, either,” Cody said, determined to change the subject. There was no way he could explain betraying both his wife and his brother. “Remember I said I was going to be late because I’d found something when I checked Lucky’s clothes?”

“You said her shoes didn’t match.”

He shrugged out of his shirt. “I thought the one with the curly red laces looked familiar. I took it to the evidence locker. It matched a shoe we had from another case.”

Sarah straightened, bringing her knees up to her chest and locking her
tanned arms around her legs. “
Really? What case?” He couldn’t help smiling. Sarah loved a mystery; she read them constantly. Well, this case was a real lulu. If Greg weren’t involved, he’d actually enjoy it. Most of the police work he did gave new meaning to the word
boring.

“About a year ago, a hiker fell off a trail not too far from the Iao Needle. By the time someone spotted her body, it was badly decomposed. She had only one shoe on. We figured the other was lost in the brush nearby. It wasn’t worth looking for.”

“You’re kidding!” Sarah’s eyes were wide. “Lucky was wearing the mate. How do you suppose she got the dead woman’s shoe?”

5

T
he sun stalked across the horizon, blasting the Gold Coast’s private beach with morning light and bouncing off the high- rise office buildings in the distance. The breeze barely ruffled the water now, but later the wind would rise and whitecaps would stud the sea. The perfect time of day he thought as he finished his morning jog. The only footprints in the sand were his, as if he owned the whole cove, not just the biggest estate on the beach.

Like a miser with a nugget of gold, he valued his privacy. So what if his neighbors didn’t know he was one of the wealthiest men in the world? It gave him a perverse sense of pleasure. Not only was he fabulously wealthy, he could find out anything about his neighbors—and secretly impact their lives in a thousand different ways without them ever being aware of his existence. Once someone had called him the Orchid King because one of his businesses involved exporting orchids. It was just a front, of course, a means of concealing his real business, but he adored its cache.

Orchid King.
The name rolled off his tongue like French
wine. The title suited his vision of the mode
rn
world. There were still kingdoms to rule, people to conquer. Only the methods had changed. Pomp and circumstance were out
. Computers had become the modern
weapons of war.

He slowed his pace, cooling down, and trotted barefoot through the iceplant bordering the sand onto the dichondra. He walked up the marble steps to the terrace, noting with approval the maid had already changed the flowers. He hated seeing the same floral arrangements two days in a row.

His partner was seated at the table on the open-air terrace facing the sea, intently studying the morning paper. “Check this.” The man pointed to a small article in the lower corner of one of the back pages. “Of all the fucking luck!”

The Orchid King reached for the pitcher of ice water the maid alwa
ys had waiting and poured himsel
f a glass before reading the article. “Luck is my middle name,” he said with a laugh. He’d been joking a lot more than usual lately, trying to lift his spirits.

His partner scowled. “Your luck just ran out.”

The king’s pulse kicked up a notch. Most of the
ti
me his partner—his closest friend, almost a brother—was usually easygoing and upbeat. Something really was wrong. The caption of the short article caught his eye. “Mystery Woman Survives Crash.” He sank into the chair and read it word for word.

“She’s alive,” his partner muttered, shaking his head incredulously.

The king stared at the picture, breathing like a marathon runner, but it wasn’t from jogging. He was so relieved that she was alive that he thought he might hyperventilate. Get a grip, he told himself.

Thank God. She is alive.
He should be even angrier than his partner, but a part of him was secretly thrilled that she had survived the crash. It was hard to imagine living the rest of his life without knowing she was somewhere on earth. Laughing. Smiling. Breathing.

“No doubt about it,” the king said with a laugh. “She has nine lives.”

“Do you have to joke about everything?”

He ignored his partner and studied the grainy photograph. No one would recognize her with that tangled mane of hair so heavily bleached that it looked white. She stared out from the newsprint with wild, unfocused eyes that reminded him of a rabid dog. Usually those eyes were a compelling, seductive green fringed with gloss-brown lashes.

And a body that wouldn’t quit. She’d captivated them both— especially his partner who was easy to manipulate.

“It says here that she has permanent amnesia,” he said softly.

“Pure shit!” His partner jumped up and walked to the edge of the terrace. “I’ve got to go to Chinatown for a meeting. While I’m gone, you do some checking. I’ll bet that bitch is up to her old tricks.”

The king couldn’t disagree. She’d come to them, literally out of cyberspace, a woman without a past—or so she claimed. There had always been a part of her, a secret self she had never shared with anyone. Who knew what she had been hiding? Who knew what secrets lurked in her past?

His partner threw the paper aside. “Amnesia, my ass. She’s lying.”

The king wasn’t certain when he’d fallen in love with her. It had probably started on-line when he’d read her intriguing posts on his computer screen. It had been a game then, but later, when she walked into their lives and became more than just an image from cyberspace, he’d truly fallen in love.

They had both fallen for her, but, the king prided himself on his ability to be objective.
To do what had to be done.
He didn’t trust her any more than his partner did. She’d already proved she couldn’t be trusted.

“They’re calling her Pele’s ghost,” the king said. “What a hoot.”

“You may think this is funny, but I’m telling you—”

“It’s the shoe I’m worried about,” the king interrupted, his tone deadly serious. “That screwup could lead the police back to us.”

G
reg eased his foot off the gas pedal and downshifted, turning into the police station parking lot. “What in hell’s going on?”

In the seat next to him, Dodger cocked his head. There were so many cars in the lot that Greg had to drive to the back to find a parking place. They’d been on the mainland for almost a week, and Dodger had passed the certification test. Greg had been tempted to call about Lucky but had resisted, thinking it was best to distance himself from the woman. Now that he was back, the urge to know what had happened to her had gotten the better of him.

He still remembered the look on Lucky’s face when the doctors told her she would never recall her past. The memory triggered a raw ache, and his gut twisted. Her expressive green eyes had darkened with disbelief, then fear. In spite of his doubts about her, he’d been shaken all right, more than shaken. He’d even volunteered to stay with her.

Christ! What had he been thinking? That weird syndrome had wiped out Lucky’s episodic memory, but she should be able to tell them her name. He had watched her carefully while the doctors explained her condition, remembering how her body had trembled. It would take a world-class actress to be so convincing, wouldn’t it?

Greg got out of the car and Dodger leaped out behind him. Cody would know what had happened to her. As much as he hated talking to his brother, it was better to see him than to face Lucky again, assuming she was still around. He had a weakness for her that disgusted him. He held the station’s door open and let Dodger in. A blast of arctic air greeted them.

“Is the chief in?”

“Nah,” the desk officer responded. “He’s in Honolulu. Comes back this afternoon.”

Great, he thought. He could get the information he wanted without facing Cody. “What happened to the woman whose car went off the cliff?”

“She’s over yonder”—he cocked his head to the side—“in jail.”

Greg stormed out the door and around to the side of the building, Dodger trotting at his heels. “That lying son of a bitch! He put her in jail.”

Evidently, no one had identified Lucky and posted her bail, or she wouldn’t still be here. It had been a week since the accident. Where was her family? Or her boyfriend? She was cheap-looking—definitely not his type—but he would bet anything there was at least one man in her life, probably more.

A line of people two-deep led into the small jail. Christ! The place had exactly four cells, two for men and two for women. And a drunk tank. This was a lifetime’s worth of visitors.

“
What’s going on?
”
he asked the last person in line, a plump woman in a fuchsia muumuu.

“We’re waiting to see Pele’s ghost,” she informed him.

“What?” he asked, then it dawned on him. The legend about young women being found along the side of the road. They must be waiting to see Lucky.

He barged through the door, ignoring the woman who was yelling for him to wait his turn. Inside, people were milling around, filling the reception area with a steady drone of noise and the rank odor of bodies that had been waiting too long in the tropical sun. He angled his shoulders sideways and strode through the crowd into the interrogation room.

“Where’s the jailer?” he demanded.

“On the other side of the door takin’ money,” a man answered.

“Shit!” The island had more legends and goddamned superstitions than any place on earth, but this sideshow was unbelievable. So what if seeing Pele’s ghost was supposed to bring you good luck? How could anyone treat another human being like this? Greg worked his way to the door, set to let the jailer have
it. He was a head taller than everyone else, so he could see over them into the cell block.

Look at her! Christ! Lucky must have flipped out or something. She was pacing the tiny cell. Three steps and turn, three steps and turn, three steps and turn. Her wild mop of platinum hair swished across her shoulders, a stark contrast to her baggy orange prison jumpsuit.

Her eyes stopped him cold. Even at this distance, they were astonishingly green. Striking. But her fixed stare chilled him. She looked exactly the way she had that night in the tent. Dozens of people were gazing at her as if she were a circus attraction, yet she apparently didn’t know they were there.

“Ain’t she something?” the woman beside him said.

Damn Cody. How could he let this happen? Everyone was making fun of Lucky, circling the cell and laughing like hyenas celebrating a fresh kill. To them she wasn’t a woman alone in the world with no one to help her. She was nothing more than a sideshow freak.

“You should see her at night,” commented someone behind Greg. “She sleeps under the bed.”

Under the cot? The thought of her huddled on the cold cement like an animal while people watched—for luck—did something to him. He shoved his way toward the man taking the money. He clenched his fists, then took a deep breath. It was all he could do not to take a swing at the jailer.

Silence fell over the crowd, like the eerie hush between a blinding bolt of lightning and the roar of thunder sure to follow. He looked toward the tiny cell and saw that Lucky had dropped to her knees. Her tormented expression had been replaced by a smile. For Dodger. Somehow the dog had slipped through the crowd and stuck his head between the bars. Had he ever seen a woman that happy, that thrilled to see someone?

Dodger’s tail was going a hundred miles an hour. Lucky reached out to pet him and he licked her hand. Amazing. Dodger had been bred to run and subjected to ruthless training. He simply had not been allowed to show affection. An electric
shock with a cattle prod would have been his punishment had he even tried. Greg encouraged him to show his emotions, but all he got was a cold nose on his hand, never a warm lick, the canine expression of love.

“Pele adored animals,” someone said, “especially sharks.”

Lucky was petting Dodger now, stroking his silky ears, but her smile had vanished, replaced by a tight frown. What was she thinking?

A long-buried memory returned with startling clarity. Suddenly, he was a heartsick seven-year-old again, standing at the Humane Society with tears in his eyes. His parents had been killed in a car crash. He and Cody were going to live with their aunt. Muffin couldn’t come. He was too old to survive the six-month quarantine in Hawaii, Aunt Sis claimed.

Some nice family would adopt Muffin, she insisted when Greg had refused to part with the dog his father had given him. He knew a lie when he heard one—especially from Aunt Sis. People wanted cute puppies, not stick-ugly mutts with gray muzzles.

At that moment, he’d needed his dog so much. Nothing could erase the pain of his parents’ sudden death, but holding Muffin, having his dog sleeping beside his bed eased his heartache. He didn’t want to leave him like this.

He stood in front of the cage and said a prayer, begging the Lord to have mercy, to send Muffin to some nice family, to give him another boy who would love him with all his heart.

Although dozens of years had passed, Muffin’s face still haunted him. Black nose between the bars. Tail wagging hopefully. Soulful eyes pleading:
Don’t leave me.
Muffin had been put to sleep, alone and forsaken, believing Greg had deserted him.

That’s what the woman was feeling. Abandoned. Hopeless. For one shining moment, Dodger had lifted her spirits.

Lucky abruptly stopped patting Dodger. She rose, regarding the silent crowd with a stare that seemed to go right through them, a look that made them all seem like the sleazy voyeurs
they were. She turned away, now regarding them with something that bordered on disdain. It was an imperious gesture, and it took everyone, including Greg, by surprise. Until he realized Lucky had lost everything on earth—except her pride.

The crowd watched as regally she sat on the bed, turning her back on them. Aloof, she put her head in the co
rn
er. Her riot of curls tumbled forward, shielding the sides of her face from the mob and revealing the small shaved patch on the back of her head.

Primal rage shot through him. He grabbed the jailer by the throat, yelling, “All of you—get the hell out of here.”