A Hard Man to Forget (4 page)

At least she’d managed to knock him out of his cool facade.
Suddenly she would have given anything to have it back.

Half-hidden in the shadows, his expression looked even more fearsome
than it was. She knew his features were contorted with rage. More
forbidding were his eyes, gleaming at her in the darkness, seeming to
see straight through her. If he noticed how scared she was right now,
he certainly didn’t care. Or maybe he thought she was faking.
He’d certainly imagined greater crimes for her.

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Laura tried affect a calm she
wasn’t feeling. Was it possible to rationalize with a crazy
person? She was about to find out.

“I don’t understand. Who is it you think I am?”

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his countenance
darkened further. She almost recoiled from it. When he spoke, his
voice was dangerously calm.

“Our vows may not have meant anything to you, Meredith, but
until we have them severed, I am still your husband.

“And you are my wife.”

Laura blinked up at him stupidly. The words were so absurd she almost
laughed. She’d never met this man, let alone married him.

Only the faint uncertainty in the back of her mind kept her from
disputing the claim. She knew nothing of her life before the last two
years. Could this be it? Could she be this man’s wife?

The initial flash of excitement was almost immediately replaced by a
trace of nervousness. She didn’t know whether the idea was
comforting or terrifying. Recalling the way she’d been found
and the powerful anger she read in this man’s eyes, Laura
couldn’t help thinking she still would have been better off if
he hadn’t found her.

He was staring at her, this stranger—her husband?—waiting
for a response. And she had absolutely no idea how to respond to the
bombshell he’d dropped.

She settled for honesty. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

His eyes narrowed to slits and it was all Laura could do not to
retreat further. Not that there was anywhere to go. The bedpost was
digging into her spine.

Without a word, he reached over to a table she hadn’t seen at
the side of the bed. Sliding open a drawer, he pulled out a picture
frame. He handed it to her without looking at it.

The hand that accepted it trembled. Laura took the picture with some
reluctance, leaning just close enough to take it. She was sure if she
got too close his hand would lock over her wrist and pull her to him.
He didn’t. She snatched the frame away from him and fell back
into her corner.

Reluctant to take her eyes off him, Laura stared at him for a long
moment, then slowly lowered her gaze to the photograph. She tilted it
toward the light to illuminate the image.

It was a wedding portrait. The man was the same one who stood
towering over her. Not that she realized it right away. The face was
almost unrecognizable, and not because there was anything physically
different. There was a softness there, a special kind of joy. The
look of a man in love. It was so far removed from the expression he
bestowed upon her now that she wouldn’t have believed him
capable of it. The groom’s smile could have outshone a thousand
suns. She couldn’t imagine the man in front of her cracking a
grin in a thousand years.

As if to reassure herself that it was him, she blinked up at the man
standing over her. His eyes, his expression, hadn’t shifted. He
looked the same as he did in the picture, and so very different. He
was older, of course; the photograph had to have been taken at least
five years ago. But it was more than that. There was a grimness to
him that went deeper than the cast of his features, that forbidding
aura he exuded like a dark cloud. In spite of herself, Laura felt a
twinge of sympathy for this man who didn’t seem to have an
ounce of that joy she’d seen in the picture left in him. She
wondered what had happened to change him, what role his wife had
played that had filled him with so much anger that there wasn’t
room for anything else.

“Now can you deny that you’re her?”

His words shook her out of her thoughts, and Laura realized she had
been putting off looking at the woman in the picture. His bride. A
shudder skipped down her spine. She didn’t want to look, didn’t
want to know if what he said could be true. Under the force of his
stare, she didn’t seem to have a choice.

Laura slowly lowered her gaze back to the photograph, forced herself
to look at this man’s bride.

The woman had her face.

She knew he was waiting for her response. All of a sudden she
couldn’t breathe, let alone form a coherent sentence. She could
only stare stupidly at this woman with her face.

There were subtle differences. This woman’s nose hadn’t
been broken; hers had. This woman’s cheekbones were flawless,
high and elegantly sculpted. Hers had been restructured after the
attack. The resemblance was still uncanny. It was like looking at a
before picture, what she might have looked like before the attack.

Which might just be exactly what it was.

“Well?”

There was a thread of impatience in his tone. Whatever answer he was
looking for, she couldn’t give it to him.

“I don’t know anything about this.”

The flash of anger appeared so quickly she didn’t recoil
immediately. By the time her reflexes responded, he’d spun away
from her, throwing his hands up in disgust.

“Damn it, Meredith. Can’t you see that lying isn’t
going to work? You’re caught.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” She jabbed a finger at
the picture frame. “I don’t remember this. I don’t
remember anything before they found me two years ago.”

He came to an abrupt halt and glanced back at her, keeping his
expression hidden from her. “Who?”

“The police. They found me outside the bus station in
Harrisville two years ago. I was attacked. Someone worked me over
pretty bad. I almost died.” Even now she couldn’t say it
without a lump forming in her throat. “But I was lucky. The
doctors were able to put me back together again. The only thing they
couldn’t help me with was my memory.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

Laura shook her head. “Nothing. Not who I was or where I came
from. I didn’t have any ID on me. The police thought whoever
attacked me must have stolen my wallet or my purse. I’ve been
trying to figure out who I am for two years now.”

She waited for his response. He had none. The silence dragged on. His
eyes gleamed in the darkness, stripping her bare one layer at a time.
Laura shivered. It was almost like she could feel his scrutiny down
to her bones. She’d never felt more exposed. And yet she didn’t
look away.

He folded his arms over his chest, his stance combative. “I
don’t believe you.”

A flash of temper rushed through her. “You’re assuming I
give a damn.”

She saw the flare of surprise in his eyes, felt the surge of
satisfaction inside of her. The longer the conversation went on, the
less fear and more anger she felt. She was fairly certain he wasn’t
going to hurt her. He’d had every opportunity to do so while
she was unconscious. Laura reflexively ran her hands over her body.
She was wearing the same clothes, and it didn’t feel like
he’d...touched her. She shuddered at the thought.

At the same time, for him to have the audacity to accuse her of lying
after he’d kidnapped her and brought her who-knew-where was
unbelievable. She’d long since run out of patience with this
whole bizarre situation.

“Believe what you want,” she snapped. “It doesn’t
surprise me that you can’t handle the truth. You seem to have a
big problem dealing with reality.”

His tone was anything but conciliatory. “You have to admit your
story is a little hard to believe. I catch up with you and threaten
you with jail and you suddenly come down with amnesia? Awfully
convenient, don’t you think?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No, I don’t think it was
convenient having someone bash in my head with a metal pipe. Nor was
it convenient going through more than a year of physical therapy
trying to get my body back in some kind of working order. I spent two
years trying to pull my life back together, and frankly having some
nutcase claim that I made the whole thing up really pisses me off.”

He stared at her like she’d lost her mind. Well, then that made
two of them.

Some of her anger spent, Laura heaved a massive sigh. “This
can’t be a surprise to you. You had to know. You saw the
stories in the news after all these years, right? Isn’t that
how you found me?”

“No.” He shook his head, subdued. “I was in L.A.
for a business meeting. I was driving back when I saw Harrisville on
the map, and something about it seemed familiar. It took me a while,
but I remembered where I’d heard of it before: from you. You’d
mentioned it once, though I couldn’t remember the context. I
decided to drive through to see if I could remember, and then I saw
you on the street. Couldn’t believe my eyes. There you were,
after these years.”

It seemed too much of a coincidence to be believed. It was pretty
clear which of them was the liar. At the moment she thought it best
not to raise the point. “What kind of business meeting?”

“Movie people. They’re interested in the rights to our
latest game, to make a movie out of it.”

“Game?” she echoed, not understanding.

He finally looked at her again, his eyes boring into her. “Video
game.”

“Is that what you do? Make video games?”

“Yes, I make video games. Design them.”

He ground out the words through clenched teeth, irritation heavy in
his tone. She imagined he scowled at her. Not that she could tell the
difference from the expression he’d been giving her the last
ten minutes.

“What’s your name?” she asked softly.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. His eyes searched her
face, and for the life of her, she couldn’t discern what he was
thinking.

“Simon,” he said finally. “Simon Randall.”

The name meant nothing to her. “And I’m supposed to be?”

He hesitated again. “My wife. Meredith.”

Meredith Randall. The name didn’t strike a chord any more than
his did. The lack of a response made her uneasy. She should have some
internal reaction when confronted with her own name, shouldn’t
she? Some part deep inside of her should recognize that she’d
found the truth at last, shouldn’t it?

Yet she felt nothing. It bothered her more than she could have
expected.

“I don’t understand. The authorities in Harrisville
searched missing persons reports throughout the country for a clue to
my identity. Why didn’t they connect me with your wife?”

“Because no one here believes you’re missing.”

“They don’t?”

“No. They think you’re dead.”

Dead. Icy fingers of fear danced along her skin. He’d said
something about that, hadn’t he? About her faking her death? At
the time it hadn’t made sense.

This man’s wife was supposed to be dead. She struggled not to
react to his declaration. It was hard. This put a whole new slant on
everything. Perhaps she wasn’t this Meredith Randall after all.
Perhaps his wife really was dead. He could be delusional, and more
dangerous than she’d believed.

“What happened?” Laura asked, her voice steady. Barely.

His stare, dark and intense, never wavered. It only made her more
nervous. “When you disappeared, the police searched the house
and the woods. Then they went to the lake. They found signs that
you—"

“Please.” She held up a hand, his chilly calmness
shattering her resolve. “Could you stop saying it like these
things happened to me? We don’t know that I’m your wife.
Not for sure.”

His jaw tightened. He nodded tightly. “Fine. They found signs
that
Meredith
took a boat out. The boat was found drifting in
the middle of the lake, empty. They ultimately decided she had gotten
caught in the storm we had that day. Everyone believed she had
drowned in the lake.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it didn’t make sense. You hated—
she
hated—the rain. Thunder, lightning, all of it. She never would
have gone sailing in it, certainly not in those conditions.”

Laura tried not to shudder. She had her own phobia of thunderstorms.
She’d always believed it was because that night she was
attacked it had stormed badly. “Then why did everyone believe
it?”

He exhaled sharply. “Meredith had been acting strangely for a
while at that point. Moody, depressed. Terrible mood swings. She had
three miscarriages over the previous two years and had started seeing
a psychiatrist. But she only seemed to get worse. The police believed
she might have suicidal when she went out that day.”

“That seems to make sense,” Laura said quietly.

“Not to me. She was terrified of storms. If she wanted to kill
herself, why did she choose a method that would scare her so badly?”

Laura didn’t have an answer to that.

“There was one other thing. Meredith had a memory box, a small
wooden chest where she kept keepsakes and mementos. Some of her most
cherished belongings were in it. Pictures, a medal she won in school.
It disappeared the same time she did. I never found it anywhere in
the house.”

“How did they explain that?”

“They decided she wanted to take those things with her when she
killed herself. Of course, it makes more sense that she took them
with her when she left.”

Laura ignored the needling tone in his voice. “And they never
found her body?”

“The lake is deep. No one knows how far down it goes. Short of
draining it completely, there was no way to be sure of finding her
body. The police decided she must have sunk to the bottom. That’s
why they couldn’t find her.”

“But you took that to mean she was still alive.”

“It made more sense than suicide.”