In This Life (15 page)

“What gives?” he asked David. “Sounded like you were having a coronary when you called.”

“Check this out,” he said, handing Nat my phone. “This was sent to Lottie about thirty minutes ago.”

Nat read the text, whistled and looked at me. “You got a way with people, you know that?”

I left Paul’s reassuring presence and headed toward David.

“I need you to check out the Amrose parking lot,” David told Nat. “See if you can find traces of someone watching Lottie.”

I realized I couldn’t withhold what might be important information from them any longer. “I think I might have seen someone there.”

David stilled. “Who?”

“I’m not sure. It might have been Mrs. Reynolds.”

“What?” Paul asked.

“I didn’t see her for sure. It looked like a woman with blonde hair. But then I thought I saw a woman with dark hair.” I leaned against the sofa and rubbed my forehead. “I’m not sure who or what it was. It could have been a memory. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Calm down, Lottie,” Paul said. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Did you have another episode?” David asked.

“No. It wasn’t like that. I was sitting in my Jeep, thinking, and then I thought I saw someone walking in the woods. When I got out to check, no one was there.”

“It could have been a hypnagogic hallucination,” Paul said, handing over an open bottle of spring water.

I took a few sips. “I was thinking, Paul, not imagining things while falling asleep.” I glanced at Nat. “What about calling the police?”

Nat looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What about no?” He leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek. “Don’t you worry, little lady. We’ll get this figured out for you.”

I nodded, more with hope than agreement. At this point, I’d give anything to have one clue. Just one.

Nat took off just when David’s cell rang. It was Neil, and David once again asked him for help. As David explained the situation, I took a seat on the sofa. Halfway down, my legs gave out and I collapsed onto the cushion, battling a hefty and sudden dose of fatigue and dizziness.

Paul settled in beside me. “You feeling sick?”

I nodded.

David ended his call and sat on the armrest on my other side, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead. “She’s clammy again.”

“Tell me what Neil said,” I said, shutting my eyes, but the heavy blackness only made the dizziness worse. I refocused on David’s concerned features instead.

David hesitated and I knew what he was thinking.

“No. No hospital,” I argued, “and no doctor.”

“Lottie, you’re not being reasonable.”

“I can help her if she needs it,” Paul said. “She just needs to relax first.”

David gave Paul a long, confrontational look.

“Trust me,” Paul said.

David regarded Paul’s request but I could see the uncertainty still lurking inside. Then he turned to me and answered my question. “Neil said that whoever sent those texts to you sent them from a burn phone. I got a name and number of the person who bought it, for cash according to the records, but I’m not holding my breath that it’ll lead anywhere. People buy burn phones for only two reasons. Anonymity is one of them.”

“What was the name?” I asked.

“John Smith.”

“How original. Where did John Smith buy the phone?”

“Here’s the really bizarre part,” David said. “He bought it from the phone store in the Applewood Mall.”

“That’s fifteen minutes away from us.” I brushed the hair from my face and dizziness rolled back in.

“She’s losing color,” Paul said.

“Let’s get you upstairs and into bed.” David braced me with a steadying grip on my arm and helped me to my feet. He went on about how he’d call a doctor if I didn’t improve while Paul suggested that my disorder was more psychologically driven than physically, and that he intended to provide the therapy. I was vaguely aware of walking up the stairs when their voices turned more urgent and almost argumentative.

“There’s no reason to fight,” I told them.

“We’re not even talking,” David said.

But I’d heard the voices. I was studying and sitting beside a window, watching a group of young men in their military kilts conducting their drills near the army barracks in the distance, some sparring by hand and some becoming more familiar with the bow. None looked very agile or very skilled in the ways of war, and I guessed that they were in their first season of training, preparing much the way Bakari had done just after he turned thirteen and left for a career with the army.

“Shemei.” Haji, my tutor, was waving a hand to grab my attention.

I batted him away so I could keep looking outside.

“Where is your head these days?” Haji asked. “You sit on your reed mat next to me and yet, somehow, you are not here.”

Someone knocked on the inner wall to our room and both Haji and I turned. I sprang to my feet once I recognized the familiar face.

“Bakari!” My sandals slapped on the bright blue tile floor as I ran to greet him.

Bakari swept me off my feet and squeezed me, as happy to see me as I was to see him. His arms were strong, his chest wide and his legs and stomach were solid muscle. He had filled out a lot since I last saw him.

Haji pushed the papyrus studies off to the side and stood, but kept his distance. For some reason, he never liked Bakari and he never tried to hide the way he felt.

“I believe your lessons are over for the day,” Bakari said to me, draping an arm around my shoulder and looking at Haji. “I have it on good authority.”

“Whose?” Haji demanded.

Bakari grinned. “Mine.”

“I do not think so. I am under instruction to care for her studies until Last Meal, and — ”

“And her day ends now.”

Bakari grasped my hand and tugged me through the doorway and into the spacious hall just outside, with limestone walls painted with yellow birds and floor tiles the color of green grass and a ceiling nearly as bright as the sun. Haji followed, but only far enough so that his voice could be heard.

“Do not expect that this behavior will be ignored!” he yelled.

“Like I care,” Bakari muttered, and he squeezed my hand all the harder as he pulled me down granite stairs and then out into the brilliant afternoon light that reflected off the limestone-pillared courtyard.

We laughed as we ran down to the river, and when we fell onto the sand and wrapped ourselves around one another, I thought only one thing.

I belonged with this man.

And then I was no longer making love near a river but walking down the hallway toward the open doors of my bedroom. David directed me to our bed and helped me into it, and when my head hit the pillow, he kissed my cheek, felt my forehead again, and sighed.

Paul moved in just behind him.

“Want to get into something more comfortable?” David asked.

“No.” I fluffed up the pillow, rolled onto my side and looked up at him. “I’m fine just like this.”

David excused himself to get me some juice and a damp washcloth for my head, and once he disappeared from the room Paul stepped into his place.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said to him.

Paul sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. “I think we should put off your therapy until tomorrow.” He reached for the nightstand and handed me a small paper cup filled with water. I had no recollection of him going to the bathroom and getting it. “But it would be a good idea if you took this in the meantime.”

He held out a small pill that I immediately recognized because I’d seen Paul prescribe them before. It was a sedative, and a strong one.

“I don’t take those,” I said.

Paul pushed the pill closer to my mouth, urging me to change my mind. “It’ll help you relax.”

“Knock me out, is more like it. And since when do you carry these things on you, anyway?”

Paul ignored the question. “Take it.”

I hesitated.

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked.

“Of course I do.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I hesitated but finally gave in and took the pill because I was just too tired to fight it.

“Where is your head these days anyway?” Paul asked.

He brushed a strand of hair from my face. It was a soothing gesture but I tensed at his words. They seemed familiar somehow. I had heard them before but they had been spoken with authority and a measure of impatience.

“You’re here next to me,” he said, “and yet somehow you aren’t here.”

I grappled with the memory as I let my eyelids close with the first effects of the sedative, the rational part of me telling me that taking it had been a mistake.

A wisp of an image of reed mats and papyrus scrolls and a window overlooking army barracks settled over me.

“Are you Haji?” I asked Paul, my voice sounding young and unsure.

“Go to sleep, Lottie,” Paul said. “You need the rest more than you realize.”

I dreamt about Bakari, and a warm, balmy night in the Great Hall.

He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “There is no need to pretend with me, Shemei. I know what you want because I know you as well as I know myself.”

Three seasons had passed since I last saw Bakari when he left for another war, and in that time he had become one of Pharaoh’s most successful and influential soldiers. He wore a military kilt and a jeweled sword at his side and everything around us — the blue-tiled floor littered with hibiscus, the honeyed lamb and roasted gazelle, and the nude dancers who moved in time to the music — faded into the background.

“Want to leave?” Bakari asked with a conspiratorial look I had seen hundreds of times before.

“I do not know if we should. This celebration is for Egypt as much as it is for you. You were appointed General tonight, Bakari. You were instrumental in defeating another enemy, and I do not think Pharaoh would appreciate your disappearing on him.”

“But I have a special jug of wine, just for us.”

“Stolen wine?” I asked, pretending to be surprised.

Bakari grinned and moved in close enough for me to feel his body heat and a lot more. “Of course.”

We slipped out from the celebration and made our way through the trees and bushes that encircled the village, then over the hill to the special place by the Nile that Bakari found for us when we were children. We sat in quiet stillness for some time and while I admired the gleaming, starlit sky, Bakari seemed focused only on me.

His fingertips swept over my cheek and down to my chin, and his eyes caught mine and held. For a moment, I saw something in them that I had not seen before. Something that seemed softer. More tender.

Everything fell silent. It was only the two of us, eye to eye, heart to heart.

Bakari loosened the gold belt at my waist and slid the linen sheath from my shoulder. He kissed me once, then once again, and pulled me on top of him.

The wine was left in the soft grass nearby, unopened and forgotten.

The alarm went off and I jolted awake to see David in bed next to me. He was resting on his side with his head propped in a hand, watching me with the same hunger I’d seen in Bakari.

“That must have been one hell of a dream you were having.” David pulled me to him and kissed me. His body burned and molded into mine, and what I saw in the depths of his eyes hinted at the sinful things he had in mind, too.

He kissed me again, dipping his head once to nip at my ear and whisper that, by the time he was done with me, I wouldn’t be able to remember my name. I trembled in anticipation and, for a moment, I was back in Bakari’s arms. He traced fingertips over my cheek, down my neck and toward my blouse. With a deft hand, he unbuttoned the top two buttons and slid inside. A moan escaped my lips as he did away with the blouse and followed with the bra.

“Clothes,” I begged. “Get rid of all of them.”

He shook his head and his mouth curved into a grin, and the evil lurking behind it sent a jolt of pleasure through my body. He rolled me on top of him, half-naked and insane with desire, and hiked up my skirt.

“I can’t stand the arguing anymore,” David murmured, snapping off my lace panties and flinging them to the floor, leaving nothing between me and every hard inch of him. “And I want things the way they were before. The way we used to be.”

“Me, too,” I breathed.

I straddled his body, amazed that even after all these years I never grew tired of looking at him, of feeling him, but in a moment of reason, my body reminded me of other needs almost as important. “But I could use a few minutes to freshen up first,” I said, and the words got mixed in with another moan as David’s hand traveled downward and in between.

“After. We can take a shower together.” He found the right spot and the first tremors of climax hung on the fringes. “Then we can do this all over again.”

This was feeling way too good. Which wasn’t a problem until my stomach growled.

David’s mouth claimed mine once more, this time refusing to let go.

“I need to eat, David,” I mumbled into his lips.

“So do I.”

“I meant food.”

Just as my head started spinning and I was getting into rhythm with David’s hand, my stomach grumbled a second time. Loudly.

David brushed my hair off to the side and bit my neck. I gasped, caught between pain and pleasure. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, my internal clock clamored for attention.

“What time is it anyway?” I asked, enjoying the feel of David’s tongue as it played over the sensitive skin he’d just tortured.

“Who cares?”

“
David
.”

David stopped what he was doing, blew out a breath, and stared up at me, flushed and frustrated. He fumbled for the clock on his nightstand and said, “It’s just before six.” Then his teeth grazed over the other side of my neck before inflicting delicious pain there, too.

I moved a little to the side, wanting more and thinking about how I was going to torture him in return. “What about that new Thai place?” I kissed David’s chest. Felt his heart beating with mine. “We could order for delivery.”

David froze. “It’s just before six in the
morning
.”

It took a few seconds for the message to sink in. I shoved off and grabbed the clock, needing to see for myself. “I’ve been out for
sixteen
hours? This is why I hate those pills.” I sat up, irritated that I’d lost so much time and angry that I let Paul convince me to take one in the first place. “They knock me out in the worst way.”