Redemption (3 page)

He straightened, not the same man who had rescued her. That man had been aloof. This man was primed, ready for battle. The transformation stunned her and scared her too. This was a man she didn’t want to anger. But apparently, she’d done just that.

“Tell me more. Tell me why I’m supposed to know this Suzanne Carmichael.” Something tickled the edge of her mind. Something about the woman’s name. Then it came to her. Last year, Suzanne Carmichael’s husband was running for president of the United States until allegations of oil price fixing surfaced. On the heels of that came the stunning news that Suzanne, while working for an anti-terrorist organization, had sold arms to a terrorist cell in South America.

“You believe in coincidences?” Callahan tilted his head and looked at her in curiosity.

“I guess. Sometimes.” She eyed him warily.

“I don’t. It’s not a coincidence Suzanne Carmichael broke out of prison three days before you show up at my front door with a convenient case of amnesia and the mysterious voice in your head telling you to find me.”

“You must have really ticked this woman off if you think she broke out of prison to find you. What’d you do to her?” She narrowed her eyes as another thought occurred to her. “Or maybe I should ask, what did she do to you?”

A muscle in his jaw flexed as his eyes turned flinty. “My past is not up for discussion.”

“At least you have a past.”

He shook his head. “You amaze me. You can quit the act.”

“It’s not an act.”

“When is she supposed to arrive?”

“How would I know?”

“What did she tell you?”

“
Nothing
. I’ve never met the woman.”

He pointed at her. “You’re lying.”

“Oh, yeah? How do I know you’re who you say you are?” Her voice rose until she was yelling and she didn’t care. He accused
her
of lying? You needed to know the truth in order to lie.

“
Me?
Who else would I be?”

“Maybe you’re the father of this baby. Maybe I was running from you and you didn’t like it.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Callahan stared at her, his expression incredulous. She didn’t need him to tell her how preposterous the idea was—it was written all over his face. Her cheeks heated in embarrassment and she shifted on the couch.

He turned on his heel and headed for the back door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” His voice was tight, controlled.

“You’re leaving?” Her voice rose to a squeak.

He didn’t even glance over his shoulder as he stormed through the kitchen and out the door, grabbing his coat along the way.

Her allegation hit him like a sucker punch to the stomach. It was ludicrous, of course. Absolutely ridiculous. He’d never seen her before in his life. She couldn’t really believe he’d get her pregnant.

Her tear-streaked face, the absolute fear in her eyes—it worked on him. He wanted to soothe her fears, erase her nightmares. But that was the old John Callahan talking. The new Callahan was stronger, had learned from past mistakes. His body may be free, but his mind would never be.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days,” Luke had said. “Heard about the blizzard.”

John had sensed the caution in his friend’s voice. That tone that said bad news was coming.

“Suzanne Carmichael escaped,” Luke said.

Once upon a time, John had known terror firsthand. In that instant, he’d lived it all over again. He and Suzanne Carmichael had a history. She’d betrayed him, and he hated her for it. Now she’d escaped the supposed tight security of the federal penitentiary that had become her new home.

He’d been expecting it. Yet he couldn’t figure out why Suzanne would want anything to do with him now, after all her dirty secrets had been revealed.

What was he supposed to do now?
If
Hope was linked to Suzanne—and all the evidence pointed to a connection regardless of his feelings—he couldn’t let her walk free. A perimeter sweep around the cabin assured him all was safe. The snowstorm would keep people away for at least another day. He stood in front of her car, a barely discernable hump in the wintry landscape. Why would a pregnant woman deliberately harm herself and put her baby in danger to get to him? That seemed a little over and above rational thought.

Hell, nothing made sense anymore.

***

Light from the fire picked up the blond hints in his hair, making them glow. Some of the strands were still wet from his trek through the snow. He leaned against the doorjamb into the kitchen, sipping from a steaming mug, staring at her with a pensive expression. His shoulders flexed beneath the navy and forest green plaid shirt. The muted colors suited him. And why the heck was she thinking of his shirt and hair?

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“None necessary.”

He shook his head, lips tilting in what she could have sworn was a smile. “Truth is…” He looked down at his hands and she stayed silent, watching him try to collect his thoughts. He seemed to struggle with it for some time. “I’m not very good with women.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. “No kidding,” seemed a little harsh. Besides, she was touched that he’d reached out in this way, showing her a part of himself she was sure he didn’t normally show people.

He cleared his throat. “So anyway, the bed is yours tonight. I think maybe we should both turn in.”

And that was that, no further explanation, even though she was dying to ask questions, to learn more about this man who had so many layers she was just beginning to unravel them. And also beginning to understand that she would never get to the heart of John Callahan.

***

The dampness seeped into his weary bones. He would have been in pain if he felt pain anymore. Lately there’d been nothing but numbness. At first he’d embraced it. Now he feared it.

Reality returned a little at a time. That scared him too sometimes. When he’d first arrived, he’d managed to keep alert, barely dozing, taking ten-minute power naps here and there. Now it seemed he was asleep more than awake and that wasn’t safe. Not here.

It was daylight. He could tell from the chinks in the cinderblock and the weak light filtering through the grates above him. Idly he wondered if it would rain today. He could use a washing off and a cool drink of fresh water. The thought floated through his brain, then disappeared like a puff of smoke. That happened often, the inability to concentrate on one thing for long.

Something sticky covered his hands. It was too dark to see and only a detached curiosity had him sniffing his fingers. He drew back at the coppery scent and frowned. Blood?

He tried to remember what had happened the day before but nothing came to him. All his days ran together. If it weren’t for the grate in the ceiling, days and nights would be the same. That, and the beatings. The beatings always set his days apart.

But there hadn’t been any beatings for a few days, so why did he have blood on his hands?

The sun began to slant through the grate, so bright he had to squint. He lifted his hands and stared at them as they dripped blood onto his pants and shirt. It was everywhere, not only on him, but splattered all over the walls and pooling on the floor.

Listlessly, his gaze followed the puddle to the river of red that flowed into it, until it landed on the crumpled, bloody form of a woman.

***

John lurched off the couch with a strangled gasp and kicked the afghan that had fallen on the floor. He stared at his hands in the dying light of the fire, turning them over, seeing in his mind the blood dripping on his pant leg.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

Breathing fast, he wiped them on his pants legs, knowing in a deep part of his subconscious he was dreaming again. No, not dreaming. Reliving. And that was worse.

He stumbled to the kitchen, where he ran his hands under scalding water, watching his skin turn pink then fiery red in the same detached way he had in his dream.

Eventually his mind cleared. He yanked his burning hands back and wrapped them in a dishtowel as the nightmare began to fade. Reality slowly returned. The howling wind. The creak of his house as it stood against the elements. The hum of the refrigerator. His ragged breaths as he tried to regain control.

He fell into a kitchen chair, pressing his throbbing hands to his face, waiting for his mind to turn outward instead of inward. In the next room, his captive moaned, and like the caged animal he’d once been, his head snapped up, ears attuned. When he heard nothing more, he pushed away from the table and made his way to his bedroom where he stood in the doorway and watched her sleep.

A slim foot peeked out of the blanket, toes twitching. Her eyes rolled beneath her lids as her breath came in deep pants and her body tensed.

Shame hit him again. Shame at what he’d become. What he’d been. What he had done. Sickened with himself, he turned away.

***

While she waited for the water to heat, she rinsed out her underwear, then leaned over the marble counter, staring at herself in the mirror. Blue eyes stared back, somewhat familiar. An oval face. Pointed chin. Pale skin.

She turned away and paused at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. She ran a hand over her belly, then turned to the side. A smile pulled at her lips as excitement bubbled inside her. A baby. It almost seemed surreal that in a few months she’d be a mother. A mother with no name. No past.

She stared at her left hand. No ring. Not even an indentation suggesting she’d worn one. When she looked back at the mirror, haunted, frightened eyes met hers. Who was the father? Was he looking for her? Desperate? Scared out of his mind as she sometimes was?

Steam fogged the mirror, distorting her reflection until she could no longer see herself. She shivered at the symbolism and stepped into the hot shower.

Callahan used the store brand of shampoo and soap, but it got her clean and it smelled better than she’d probably smelled before. Even though it hurt the bump on her head and to raise her elbow, she washed her hair twice and stood under the hot spray for a long time, head tipped back, water pounding over her, easing the tension and aches and pains. But she couldn’t ease the thoughts from her mind and eventually shut the water off and stepped out.

Callahan had big fluffy towels that wrapped around her twice. A quick search of his medicine cabinet revealed a brush. She ran it through her hair and used her finger to brush her teeth with his toothpaste.

She emerged from the bathroom feeling better than she had the day before and in clean sweats that Callahan had provided. The aroma of toast and coffee drifted through the closed door, making her stomach grumble. What she really craved was a tall glass of orange juice.

One was waiting for her when she entered the kitchen. Callahan was standing at the counter, pouring another mug of coffee and waved a hand toward the orange juice and a stack of toasted bread. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

“It’s okay.” She sat and reached for the juice. “If you knew the storm was brewing, why didn’t you stock up?”

He paused from lowering himself into the chair in front of her and cast her a quick look. “Didn’t have time. You remember anything?”

“No.”

Elbows on the table, he stared at her over the rim of his mug. She noted the lines fanning from his eyes and the exhaustion just under the surface. She had slept well but apparently he had not.

“Francis, Frankie, Fiona.”

Weary of the game, yet knowing it might be the only way to remember, she thought about those names then shook her head and took a bite of toast.

“Gina, Ginny, Georgette.”

“Georgette?”

He shrugged. “Watched a lot of Mary Tyler Moore in my day.”

She laughed. It felt good in the face of all her fear. But it also shocked her. The Mary Tyler Moore comment indicated he had a sense of humor under the hard mask and that went a long way in easing her jumbled mix of emotions. It let her see the good guy beneath the gruff exterior.

He gave her a funny look. “I take it none of those ring a bell?”

“No.” More at ease with him now than she had been before, she felt her shoulder muscles relax and the tension headache that had been near the surface recede.

He set down his mug and leaned back in the chair, tilting the front legs off the ground.

“You’ll fall. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”

“All the time.” But he didn’t lower his chair and she grinned.

She liked John Callahan.

“I believe you can’t remember anything,” he said.

“Last night you were sure I was lying.”

“I’ve seen fear before. Your kind of fear can’t be faked.”

She tilted her head. He’d seen fear before? What an odd thing to say. “So what now?”

“Now we wait out the storm. It should blow over sometime this afternoon, early evening at the latest. Then we call in the tags on your car, find out who owns it and go from there.”

“You still think Suzanne Carmichael sent me?”

“Nope.” His chair came down with a plop. “I know it.”

She shook her head and sighed. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would she break out of prison, find me and send me all the way out here? Why wouldn’t she come here herself?”

He turned his mug around in circles as he stared at it. “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

She touched his fingers. Immediately he jerked his hand away. Maybe it was good she didn’t have a memory because she sensed something in John Callahan’s memory was bad. Really bad. Where had the scars come from? Why did he live way out here, secluded and alone? And why hadn’t he stocked up on food before the blizzard of the century?

Maybe the weather had taken him off guard—after all, she’d been caught in the storm as well—but she didn’t believe it. There was more to the story. And it wasn’t good. She remembered other things, like the way he never handed her anything, but set it down for her to pick up. How, every time she’d reached for him, he’d sidestep her.

When she looked up, he was staring at her, those blue eyes shuttered. But she knew that behind the mask lurked real pain.

John had lived with emptiness for so long that these new emotions nearly overwhelmed him. They came at him from all directions—fear, anger, grief, surprise. It was like coming up from anesthesia. Awakening from a long, complicated surgery to realize you were alive, you’d made it through, but it hurt like hell.

He’d come close to blurting out what had happened to him and it scared the hell out of him because he didn’t know why. He’d never told anyone other than the doctors and even then he didn’t tell the whole story. If the little lady was scared now, she would be terrified to learn of the monster that didn’t live in her nightmare but was sitting next to her.

“I need to get some air,” he said, the urge to flee so strong he almost tripped over her chair in his haste to rip open the kitchen door. He snagged his coat on his way and took a deep lungful of crisp, cold air. Hell, even that hurt. But it felt good.

The cold air dried the sweat that had beaded on his brow. The doctors had always said when the time was right, he’d talk about it. He’d been adamant the time would never be right and had vowed to take his memories to his grave. And two days ago he would have done just that if
she
hadn’t shown up and wrecked his plans.

Breathing easier now, he watched a pair of deer emerge from the line of trees. The buck lifted his head and sniffed the air, muscles tensed to flee. The doe eyed John in curiosity. Behind him, the door opened and his guest stepped out, a blanket wrapped around her. He placed a finger to his lips, then pointed to the deer.

“Oh,” she breathed. Together they watched as the doe snuffled through the snowdrifts and the buck stood guard, keeping a watchful eye on the two of them. John felt her hand slide into his and instinctively tried to pull away, but she held tight, curling her fingers around his. He glanced at their twined hands.

Her skin was soft, smooth, so pale next to his big, scarred hands. His heart beat fast as the panic closed in, but he pushed it away. Nothing would happen if he touched her. She was different. This wasn’t Peru.

Closing his mind to the awful pictures in his head, he touched. He reveled. And for a long time they stood that way, hands held. But the memories refused to be ignored and the panic refused to be overlooked. Soon, old habits took over and he broke contact.

But for a moment in time, he’d felt normal. Almost…whole.

***

Their relationship seemed to change after the peaceful moment on the back porch watching the deer. She wouldn’t say John was at ease with her, but…less on edge. He seemed to relax as much as she supposed he relaxed around anyone. And it didn’t escape her notice that instead of thinking of him as just “Callahan”, a man who could possibly help her, he had become “John”, a man with a past and emotions like any other.