Obsession (11 page)

No one paid her any heed. She joined about half a dozen people in front of the elevators just as the last one on the right went
ping.

Holding her breath, pulse racing, she slid—unobtrusively, she hoped—behind the tall orderly for cover as the elevator doors slid open. Peeking warily around him, she huffed out a sigh of relief as she saw that the sole occupant was a blond teenage girl carrying a big bunch of flowers. She stepped out without more than a cursory glance at the group waiting to replace her, and walked away.

Katharine got on with the rest, crowding toward the back to make room for the wheelchair, just one of the group wedged in there. Looking studiously at the floor in case anyone was monitoring the security cameras with which she was almost positive the elevators were equipped, she rode down five floors to the lobby without incident, and got out.

There her nerve failed her. The lobby was a huge space with tall, dark-tinted windows and polished terrazzo floors. Modern seating groups consisting of black-leather -and-chrome couches and chairs anchored by area rugs in a red, gray, and black abstract design were scattered about. Escalators ferried passengers up to a mezzanine that offered a gift shop and a McDonald’s, according to the signs. An information desk was located directly in front of the elevator bank. Fortunately, it faced the entry and it was busy, with each of the three women staffing it occupied with her own little line of the lost or the clueless.

A pair of uniformed security guards, or maybe cops—it was impossible to be sure, because they were some distance away with their backs to her—idled near the main entrance, drinking from foam cups and chatting as they watched the comings and goings of the hospital ’s visitors.

Coincidence? Yes, probably. She was 99.99 percent positive that their presence couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her.

Still, her heart picked up the pace again. No way was she going to chance it. Shrinking back into the shadows near the elevator bank, she took a quick, panicked look around.

And came up with plan B. It was pretty obvious, but still it was good to know that her shell-shocked brain hadn’t totally deserted her.

Instead of going with the flow of the crowd and walking on across the busy lobby and out the twin revolving doors, she was going out a side entrance: the one promised by the small black sign affixed to the wall that offered
restrooms
and
exit,
and included a helpful arrow pointing the way.

It might be pure paranoia, she thought as she headed in the direction indicated by the arrow, but she had a pulse-pounding fear that they might already be watching the exits. She hoped there were not enough of them yet to cover all the ways out. In that case, the front of the hospital would be the most obvious place to wait and watch.

The question that gnawed away at her brain was,
Who, exactly, were “they”?
Ed’s people? The men from last night? Someone else? And was there even really still a threat to her at all? She wasn’t sure—she didn’t know. She just had this overwhelming sense that she was in terrible peril.

That being the case, she was going to go with it.

The hospital wasn’t a building, it was a complex, she saw as she left it. Tall, gleaming towers of industrial gray steel and glass were linked by a pair of glassed-in sky-walks maybe eight stories up. Long, low buildings the size and general appearance of airplane hangars clustered at the base of the towers, and it was through the side of one of these that she exited. Emerging onto a sidewalk that ran alongside a small, nearly full parking lot, she stopped, momentarily blinded by the glare of the sun bouncing off dozens of windshields. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the worst of it, she tried to get her bearings. The steady sound of stop-and-go traffic told her that there was a busy road nearby. The sky was a beautiful cerulean blue dotted with a handful of white clouds that looked like fluffy sheep. The sun, round and yellow as a tennis ball, hung just above the scalloped tree line that marked where the parking lot ended. The heat was palpable, wrapping itself around her like a thick, moist blanket. Already, at what she guessed couldn’t be much past eight a.m., D.C. was sweating.

Oh, wait, it wasn’t her hair anymore. She was now the possessor of an up-to-the-minute blond bob, and she had no idea what it did when confronted with steamy summer heat.

At the realization, her stomach cramped.

Steady,
she ordered her rapidly unraveling nerves.
Don’t panic. It’s some kind of weird amnesia. It’ll go away.

If she lived long enough.

On that comforting note, she almost panicked again.

Like where? The question twisted like a snake through her already holey brain even as she walked as rapidly as she could manage away from the hospital. Balancing on the sides of her feet to save her scrunched-up toes, she tottered across the glistening black macadam of the parking lot toward the narrow, quiet, tree-lined street beyond it.
Home,
was her instinctive answer, but then it occurred to her with a renewed sensation of disorientation that she didn’t even know where “home” was.

A picture of the town house shimmered to life in her mind’s eye. That was home. She knew it. But it just didn’t feel right.

So what else is new?
she asked herself in despair.
Nothing feels right.

In any case, she couldn’t go back there. Last night Lisa had been murdered there. She had nearly died there herself. The memories would be overwhelming. The police might still be there, investigating. The place had been torn up. There would be blood. . . .

Sooner or later, Ed’s people would almost certainly come looking for her there. And for all she knew, they weren’t the only people interested in her whereabouts. But no matter who was looking, that would be the first place anybody would check.

Clothes: She needed clothes that were hers, clothes that fit, clothes that she could wear while going out and about without attracting undue attention. She needed underwear. She needed her purse, and her driver’s license and credit cards and money. . . .

In the middle of the narrow strip of tired grass that separated the blistering parking lot from the shady street, she stopped dead.

She wasn’t going home. She wasn’t going anywhere.

She couldn’t. She didn’t have any way to get there. She had no car, no money, and nobody she could trust to call for help.

As she faced that awful truth, her heart started to pound. Her fingers curled into fists. Her . . .

“Katharine?” a man’s voice called.

7

Katharine jumped what felt like a mile in the air, stumbling over her own cramping feet as she whirled to see a black Chevy Blazer pulling to a halt not ten feet away. It was leaving the parking lot, and had paused at the stop sign at the junction of the parking lot entrance and the street. The driver’s-side window was rolled down. The man behind the wheel was looking her over with a frown.

Recognizing him, she felt a wave of relief.

“Dan!” Waving, she stumbled toward the car. He was the answer to a prayer. Her neighbor, the doctor. They might have issues about his garbage or her cat—okay, so she couldn’t remember—but at least he didn’t want to kill her.
That
she was sure about. Well, fairly sure. “Can you possibly give me a lift?”

“Sure.” His eyes slid over her once more, and his frown deepened. But if that meant he was harboring reservations about doing as she asked, too bad, because she was already on her way around the car. Whatever the frown was about, it didn’t stop him from leaning over to open the passenger door for her from the inside. Slipping into the black-leather seat, which was hot from the sun and which felt wonderful because of it, she closed the door and pressed the automatic lock button, which with an audible
click
locked the car up tight.

Just in case.

“Thanks.” Giving him a quick, grateful smile, she cast a—she hoped—furtive glance back over her shoulder. A woman was walking out the same exit she had just used, and several people were now scattered throughout the parking lot, going their different ways, but none of them seemed to be in any way looking for or connected to her. They for sure weren’t Starkey or Bennett, which was a major plus.

“Not a problem.” If he was curious about what was going on with her, he didn’t show it. His voice and expression remained untroubled. “Fasten your seat belt.”

The Blazer started moving again, turning left onto the shady street with its tidy row of older, two-story brick houses across from the hospital as Katharine obediently fastened her seat belt. A slim young woman with a shiny dark ponytail and jeans pushed a stroller with a toddler in it along the sidewalk in front of the houses. A white minivan with a ladder on the top and some kind of lettering on the side rumbled past. Two prepubescent boys careened down the street on bicycles, heading straight toward them, and Dan swerved around them without comment.

With her seat belt secure, Katharine let her head drop back onto the warm, cushiony headrest with a silent sigh of relief. Against all odds, it looked like she had escaped.

From what?
The question ate at her. She felt like she should know.

But she didn’t. The harder she tried to remember, the more elusive anything beyond the present became.

“Where to?” Dan asked after a moment, which she spent working on remaining calm. Among other things, this involved doing her best to get her breathing and heart rate under control, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and letting her feet slide unobtrusively out of those torturous shoes.

Her head rolled toward him, and their eyes met as he stopped at the first intersection. He gave her a small, encouraging smile, and it registered once again that he was a really hot-looking guy. His glasses, which were perched firmly on his nose, added an air of abstracted intelligence, à la the absentminded professor, to a face that was all lean planes and hard angles. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that reminded her that he had been up all night—on
her
behalf, which was certainly (probably) a plus in the can-I-trust-him department. His hair was really beautiful; grown out, she judged, those thick, dark gold waves would be the envy of many a woman. Since she had seen him last, he had lost the lab coat, and his limp blue button-down—it was short-sleeved in deference to the heat—revealed bronzed arms that were muscular enough that she felt safe in assuming that, his leanness notwithstanding, the good doctor regularly worked out. His hands, which were curled around the steering wheel, were large, tanned, broad-palmed, and capable-looking. The worn-out shirt was tucked into equally ancient-looking black dress pants that were belted around narrow hips. On his feet, she saw as she glanced down, he wore nondescript black wing tips, probably size twelve.

His work clothes, she presumed. Then another, really random, thought popped into her head:
Dr. McDreamy, look out.

Dr. McDreamy?
For a moment she was puzzled. Then,
Oh, yeah,
Grey’s Anatomy. Her favorite TV show.
Yes.
She mentally pumped her fist as she realized that she remembered that, too.
That’s a good sign, right?

“Well?” he prodded patiently.

She made a face.

“I . . .”
I don’t know
was what she had started to say. But it hit her then that she did know. Even with all the objections she could muster to it, there was only one logical, possible answer. “Home. The town house.”

She added that last because referring to the town house as “home” felt strange. But if he thought her response was odd, he didn’t show it. He merely nodded agreement.

The light changed to green, and his attention shifted back to the road as they turned right and the hospital receded into the distance. The tires swished, the air conditioner cranked out air that grew increasingly cold, and the mixed residential-industrial neighborhood in which the hospital was located was left behind as the Blazer pulled onto the Beltway, heading south.

Katharine didn’t realize that she had been sitting in tense silence until he broke it, because she was busy making a mental list of everything she needed to grab from her apartment. The key was to get in and out as quickly as possible, before any of Ed’s people—or anyone else—thought to look for her there. Presumably she had a car in the garage out back—yes, she did. She remembered it, she realized with another thrill of triumph: a champagne-colored Lexus that she had purchased with some of the same inheritance that had bought the ring and earrings. She would throw her things in the car and peel rubber out of there, then drive far, far away. . . .

On the run. But from what, exactly?

She didn’t know. God help her, she just did not know.

“Nice outfit,” Dan observed in a mild tone, glancing at her as he slowed to a stop at a red light. Blinking in surprise, Katharine realized that they had left the expressway and were now almost to Old Town. “Kind of a new look for you, though, isn’t it?”

Startled by the interruption to her thoughts, she cast him a wary look. “Is it?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t seem to notice anything amiss in her manner, thank goodness. The light changed to green, and he accelerated, driving past an upscale new strip mall that had sprung up right on the outskirts of the carefully preserved historic district. Even so early, the morning traffic pulling in and out was steady, and she saw that the strip mall boasted a Starbucks. At the sight, her brain sat up and begged like a hungry puppy. She needed caffeine, she realized. Badly.