Shadow Woman: A Novel (6 page)

Seven—some first grader had thrown up in the school lunchroom and set off a massive chain-reaction of vomiting that had even involved some of the teachers.

Year by year she went, sometimes remembering what her schoolmates had done, sometimes what she’d done, and sometimes the memory had been rooted in her parents. The year she was nine, her parents had taken her to her grandparents’ house in Colorado for Christmas, and the snow had been amazing.

There was something for every year, until five years ago.

She skirted around a wall in her memory, sensing that it was there but afraid to try tearing it down because whatever was behind those walls caused the headaches and nausea. Five years ago, there was nothing.

Four years ago, there was nothing.

Three years ago, suddenly she was living here, and working at Becker, going about her placid routine as if the two-year gap in her life didn’t exist.

Could a tumor cause such a clearly defined memory loss? Wouldn’t it be more spotty, and include more recent memories? Short-term memories were the hardest to retain—hence the “short term.” But moving to a new location and getting a new job were important things that would jump the short-term and go straight into the long-term memory bank. Some things just did.

Where had she moved from?

She remembered that. She’d been living in Chicago at the time, having moved there when she was twenty-three.

Except … maybe she hadn’t moved directly here from Chicago. She didn’t remember. What had happened during those two years that had wiped out her memory of them? And what the hell had happened to her face?

Suddenly she thought of a way she could verify that her face wasn’t hers, which was an incredibly weird concept. Grabbing the edge of the bathroom vanity, she hauled herself to her feet and stared at the face that wasn’t her. On the off-chance she might have had some horrific accident herself and had to have
reconstructive surgery, she pulled her hair back from her face and leaned close to the mirror, looking for scars.

There. Oh my God, there
.

In her hairline, faint but definitely there. She pulled her ears forward, trying to see behind them, which was kind of an exercise in futility. Frustrated, she grabbed a hand mirror and held it so it reflected behind her ears, and—yes. More scars.

Stunned, she put the hand mirror down. Then she picked it up again and rechecked behind her ears. Yep, the scars were still there. Very fine, and very faint. Whoever the cosmetic surgeon was, he or she had been very good.

So this face
was
hers, or at least what hers had been made to be. The real question now was, how in hell had this happened, and how could she find out?

I thought I might be having a stroke
.

The knotted tension in Xavier’s shoulders eased when he heard that, because it was the perfect explanation for that string of numbers she’d twice recited. Even better, she hadn’t asked her best friend how long she’d actually been working at Becker, hadn’t mentioned the conversation with Maryjo Winchell at all. Good. With luck, they’d skate by this without a shit storm blowing up in their faces.

It helped that she really was sick. Yet another episode of nausea came in loud and clear over the speakers.

But—luck? He’d never trusted that bitch.

He’d rather go with his own instincts, his own knowledge of
her
, that said the cell-phone bit was too coincidental to be a coincidence.

He wanted eyes on her, but as long as she stayed in the house he had to stay put so he could monitor the situation. Instead he sent a secure message to a friend who would make sure nothing unusual was going on in her vicinity: “Heads up. If she leaves
the house, or if you see any unusual activity—repairmen, poll takers, insurance salesmen, anything—let me know asap.”

An IM popped up on his screen within seconds: “Will do.”

If she did anything the least bit suspicious, he’d have to move fast, and having someone already there would give him an enormous advantage. Al Forge had a formidable network, but Xavier wasn’t without his own resources; he’d spent years cultivating a spider’s web of allies and assets, knowing that he was walking a tightrope between being too dangerous to kill and too dangerous
not
to kill. He still took assignments knowing that putting himself in harm’s way made it easier for him to be eliminated without it appearing to be anything more than part of the job, but he needed the extremely good money he made from those assignments. What he did wasn’t cheap, and neither were the safeguards he’d put in place. Moreover, his services were needed, and that meant something. He could probably make more money by selling his skills on the black market, but he hadn’t crossed over to the dark side yet.

The “yet” was always there, looming like a storm cloud that never quite reached him, but kept him checking its position. If push came to shove, would he go there?

Probably.

Six years ago, he’d have said “no.”

Five years ago, he’d faced a hard reality that sometimes doing the right thing was the wrong thing to do, and vice versa.

Four years ago, he’d been enraged at the trap they were caught in.

Three years ago, he’d become the trapper.

He had no idea how in hell this situation was going to play out, but none of them could quit the game. He was in it to the end, whatever that end happened to be. But,
damn
, he was so tired of the status quo he was almost ready to push some buttons just to make things
change
.

He needed to see her. There had been pictures, clips, audio,
but he hadn’t seen her in person in four years. As dangerous as it was, he needed to actually put eyes on her, hear her voice, make contact and see for himself if she had any reaction to him or if the block was still holding. The next time she left the house would be the perfect opportunity, a small gap in surveillance now that her cell phone was no longer operational. She’d get a new one, it would be duly cloned and bugged, but until then there wouldn’t be any ears listening unless she was in the house or in her car.

She’d probably be watched, of course, but if so he’d be able to spot that ahead of time. There was also the possibility that he himself would be followed, but the day he couldn’t lose a tail would be the day he quit the business. Actually, the day he couldn’t lose a tail would be the day he died, which equaled “quitting the business.”

There was nothing he could do now except wait.

Lizette dozed off again, and woke feeling as if she’d been beaten up and tossed into a ditch on the side of the road. The headache and nausea were gone, but they’d taken a lot out of her. Did she know what it felt like to be beaten up and tossed into a ditch? She could almost laugh, if she didn’t have an uneasy feeling that sometime during those missing two years she might actually have found that out.

Instead of actively searching her mind for memories, because she was afraid of what the result would be if she did, she took a deep breath, rolled from bed, and tried to think of something to do. This was Friday, so she was supposed to be at work, and doing something other than that wasn’t in her routine. She’d stayed home sick, so it felt vaguely like cheating to do anything other than
be
sick.

Now that she felt better—aside from the beaten-and-tossed-into-a-ditch thing—she could go to a doctor, but that seemed
stupid. What could she say? “I was sick this morning but I’m feeling better now, and, by the way, I appear to have had facial surgery during two years that I don’t remember at all. Am I crazy, or brain-damaged?” She didn’t want to be admitted to a hospital for observation, and that alarm buried deep inside recoiled at the idea that someone might make some inquiries into her medical history.

But her stomach was calm, and her head wasn’t hurting, so she felt as if she should be doing something. It made the most sense to do what she did on the weekends, just to get a jump on things. She liked everything around her to be very organized. She was good at that, keeping things orderly—her ducks marching in a row—and following a routine.

She eased upright in the bed, took stock. So far, so good. Gingerly she stood, feeling as if her system might go haywire if she moved too fast, and shuffled out of the bedroom. In the kitchen, she put her hand to the coffeepot; it had long ago turned off, and the coffee was stone cold, but she could reheat it in the microwave. A big cup of coffee would go a long way toward making her feel better.

Uh—maybe not yet
. She didn’t want anything in her stomach until she was certain it would stay there. She’d thrown up so much the muscles in her abdomen were sore from strain.

Instead she went into the small spare bedroom down the hall that she’d turned into a home office, not that she worked at home very often. Here was where she paid bills, balanced her checkbook, and occasionally played computer card games to pass the time. Now and then she browsed the Internet, and every year she filled out her taxes online.

Taxes
.

That was it. Though she didn’t have to keep more than three years of past taxes on file, she didn’t remember deleting any of the older ones. They were ducks, like the others; just old ducks.

Moving with purpose now, she sat down in front of the computer,
hesitated, then got up and disconnected her DSL modem. Could anything she did while she was disconnected from the Internet be detected? She had no idea, but at least she’d made the effort. She opened her files and clicked on “taxes.” In an effort to ward off a headache she silently told herself,
I’m cleaning out my files. That’s all. This is an ordinary activity, not an attempt to access an old memory
.

When she saw three years of tax returns in the folder, the beginnings of a headache teased her. She closed her eyes and thought about the show she’d watched on television last night, then about the next-door neighbor’s dog, the furry yapper. She liked dogs, but that one was a PITA, a pain in the ass. She deliberately thought about a song she’d heard on the radio yesterday, one that had turned into an earworm she’d been able to dislodge only by deliberately listening to something else just as repetitive; evidently the two had cancelled each other out. To her relief, the headache that teased her faded away.

She took a deep breath and resumed her research. All right, just three years of files in the “taxes” folder. Whether or not she remembered deleting the files, evidently she had. She couldn’t say that would be a noteworthy action, anyway, so not remembering doing so didn’t mean a thing.

Next she opened the right-hand drawer of her desk and pulled out her checkbook. She still paid bills the old-fashioned way, with a check in the mail rather than an electronic transfer, because it struck her as more orderly and safer, speed be damned. There was a neat, short stack of check registers, one for each of the past two years. Year three was with the checks in a neat, black cover. Lizette reached to the bottom of the stack and pulled out the oldest check register.

Was that her handwriting? Yes, definitely. Were there any payments that might indicate unusual activity?
No
, just as definitely. As she flipped all the way through that register, and then the next one, alarm began to grow. She paid her bills, but apparently that was it. She didn’t appear to have any outside interests,
hadn’t gone on any trips, or done much of anything. Had she always been this way? She felt a definite reluctance to think about the subject at all, but, no, she didn’t think so. This didn’t feel right. Hell, she knew this wasn’t
her
, any more than this face was hers!

Another idea struck: credit cards. She pulled out the file folder containing her paid credit card bills. She had two cards, an American Express and a Visa. Flipping through the statements, looking at what her charges had been, she could only shake her head. Her charges were few, seldom more than one or two a month, and for the most mundane things: gas, groceries, stuff like that. The oldest statement was from three years ago.

She got up and fetched her wallet, pulled out her American Express card. She’d been a “member” for three years.

Oh, shit
.

The realization that she didn’t remember applying for and receiving the American Express card was another piece of the monstrous puzzle.

She returned to the credit card statements, looking through them, noting what she’d purchased. As with her checkbook, none of the charges said anything about her as a person. Nothing here helped her reconcile what she saw, what she remembered, with the woman she knew herself to be.

She hadn’t bought a concert ticket, or any jewelry, or a special pair of shoes. That was kind of good, because she didn’t remember going to a concert and if she’d bought a ticket and not gone she’d have been pissed. Nothing stood out; her financial records were as blah as what she remembered. Why, there wasn’t even a single charge to a gun store—

The attack blindsided her, hitting brutally fast, and was so severe she was literally blinded by the pain. Her body lurched in response and she gripped the armrests of her chair to keep from falling to the floor. Her stomach rolled, but before the nausea could hit she wrenched her thoughts to the song she’d heard on the radio yesterday, the one that had stuck in her
mind for a while. She even sang a few bars—badly, because she couldn’t sing worth crap. But yes, that was her voice, the voice she’d always had: a little too deep, a little rough, and entirely off key. It was nice to know some things hadn’t changed.

As soon as she felt in control once again, and the headache faded to a manageable pang, she sat for a moment thinking over other avenues she could explore. Finally she plugged the computer back into the modem, let them connect, and clicked on the “history” tab. She didn’t expect to see anything that she didn’t remember from yesterday or the day before; she was simply looking back over a few days, that was all. She wasn’t looking for anything in the missing years; she was looking for herself.

Why did she never check out any of the news outlets? She didn’t care one bit about politics now, but once she had—