Unforgettable (23 page)

Lucky softly hummed “Amazing Grace” as they walked into the house, Dodger at their heels. He should have been happy that she believed things were working out. But he wasn’t. Some elusive thought niggled at the back of his mind but he couldn’t quite bring it into focus. He didn’t have a chance to concentrate on it. The second he came through the door, the twins barreled into him.

“Uncle Greg, Uncle Greg!”

Two years. Too damn long. Why had he been such a stubborn son of a bitch? Jason and Trevor were half grown. Without him. Greg hugged first one, then the other, cursing himself.

“
Come here.” Trevor grabbed his arm.
“
I have this awesome catcher’s mitt.”

Greg looked over his shoulder and saw Lucky disappearing into the kitchen, where he could hear Sarah and Cody talking. He followed the boys to their room, which was suspiciously clean. He bet that if he opened the closet, a mountain of junk would tumble out. He’d been their age once; he still remembered the tricks.

Greg marveled over the brand-new and obviously expensive baseball mitts the boys showed him, recalling when he and Cody had been this age. They had shared a mitt the coach had scrounged up somewhere because Aunt Sis wouldn’t buy them
a damn thing. Their mitt was so old and worn that his hand stung each time he’d caught a really hard hit.

“How are your grades?”

“Mostly B’s,” Trevor replied without hesitation. “Some C’s. Good enough to make the team.”

“Mine are real good,” Jason admitted.

Greg read between the lines. Jason had straight A’s just as Greg had had at the same age. Trevor was like Cody, more interested in sports. Greg had almost wasted a Godgiven talent—his intelligence—just to spite Aunt Sis. He’d gotten into so much trouble that he never would have gone to college if that judge hadn’t sent him to volunteer at the institute.

The twins insisted he come down to the corral t
o see the colt, who had been born
earlier that year. Greg leaned against the fence rail and watched the boys coax the shy colt into letting them put a halter on him. Yes siree. Cody had given his sons the life he and his brother had always wanted.

Greg reached down and petted Dodger, thinking about those nights when they would whisper back and forth, careful not to awaken Aunt Sis. They fantasized about how life would have been if their parents had lived. They’d have new baseball mitts and sneakers without holes. A dog for sure and maybe a cat. Definitely horses. Mom would bake them cookies and her special chicken pot pie. And Dad would attend every ball game, cursing the ref
’
s bad calls.

Cody had made their dreams come true for his boys. The Braxtons didn’t have much ext
ra cash. Greg could tell from
the state of the house and the ba
rn
that could stand a new roof. But the kids had everything they needed. Especially love.

“Take it easy. Let Max get used to you.” Cody had come
up behind Greg and Dodger and was calling instructions to the twins, who were still attempting to put a halter on the skittish

“They’re great kids,” Greg said as Cody joined him at the fence.

Cody put his foot on the bottom rail, his eyes still on the boys. “No o
ne could ask for better kids…
or a better family.”

Greg had told himself it didn’t matter that the past was just that—ancient history—but he had to know. “You have everything any man could want. Wonderful kids. A drop-dead gorgeous wife. How could you risk losing them?”

His brother turned to him, and Greg gazed into the blue eyes that were so like his own. Cody’s dark brows drew together, intensifying the agonized expression on his face. For a moment he said nothing, the air filled with the twins’ happy chatter.

“I wish
I
could give you a reason. Sarah deserves an explanation, too,” Cody answered, a faint tremor in his voice. “I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times or more. Close as
I
can come is that I
’ve been with Sarah ever since I
can remember. Maybe I should have dated more when I had the chance. Jessica was always coming on to me. One day I gave in to temptation.”

A flash of wild anger ripped through Greg. The old bitterness was back, startling in its intensity. He opened his mouth to lash out—

“Dad,” yelled Jason. “We did it, Dad.” The twins had the halter on the colt.

“Lead him to the far end of the pasture, then back to us,” Cody directed the boys, keeping them away.

Greg watched the twins, some of his anger evaporating when he re
membered all Cody had given his
sons. “Okay, okay, I can understand temptation. But your own brother’s wife. What did I ever do to you?”

“Absolutely nothing. You’d been the best brother in the world. I wish I could give you a reason, but I don’t have one.” Cody cleared his throat, looking away for a moment. “Would it help to know it only happened once. The night of the accident I told Jessica I had made a terrible mistake and had no intention of repeating it.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m sorry, Greg. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to
hurt
Sarah or you. I don’t know why I
did it, I honestly don’t.
I
can’t change the past.” Cody spoke with quiet but desperate honesty. “I can only say I’m truly sorry.”

No chance this piss-poor explanation satisfied Greg, but he reminded himself that they had once been more than brothers. They’d been best friends, each supplying for the other what had been stolen from them when their parents had died—love. Mistakes were mistakes. Shit happened. He wanted to be happy, to be family again.

Greg put his hand on Cody’s shoulder. “Let’s forget it, okay?”

Cody hesitated a moment, watching his boys, who were
coming closer. “
About the accident. Jessica was driving, you know.”

Christ! How could he forget? Even now he could see her beautiful, mangled body. Cody had been thrown clear, which
saved his life.

“She deliberately drove the car over the embankment. Just before she hit the accelerator, she said life wasn’t worth living.”

A suffocating sensation tightened Greg’s throat as he struggled to comprehend what Cody had just said. He stood there, staring at the fence post. He’d thought the accident had been just that—an accident. Until this second he’d never known that Jessica had deliberately tried to kill them both.

My God, he’d almost lost Cody. And he hadn’t known it. Losing Jessica had been bad enough, but if Cody had died
…
Christ, what would he have done?

“Jessica was really screwed up.” Cody’s tone was gentle, his voice low. “You couldn’t have helped her.”

A strange heaviness centered in Greg’s chest and it took him several seconds to
control himself. “
I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”

Cody bear-hugged him and Greg clutched his brother, holding him as tight as he could. As they embraced, Greg let go of his anger and of the past he could never change. Think of the future, he told himself.

“Are we okay now?” Cody asked.

“Yeah, we’re okay.” He wanted to tell Cody about Lucky’s scarred feet and what he’d felt that day when she’d freed the shark, but Greg was afraid he would break down if he talked too much. “Thanks for being there. You know, when we were kids
…
and now.”

“Take Max around again,” Cody called to the twins, who were approaching. Then he turned to Greg, his expressio
n even more concerned. “Look…
about Lucky. I’m afraid she’s like Jessica—”

“She’s confused because she doesn’t know who she is. Hell, she has a special medical condition—”

“True, but I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility that she’s committed a crime
…
maybe even something very serious. I don’t want her to come between us.”

22

C
ody looked across the crowded dining room table at Lucky, wh
o was spoon-feeding Molly apple
sauce. He prayed he was right:
Lucky wasn’t going to come between them.

Lucky and Sarah had prepared a feast, and it was clear the two were becoming fast friends. Sure enough, the woman was worming her way into the family’s heart. If she turned out to be Traylor’s girlfriend—or worse—he’d have to be the one to lock her up. Then break the news to Greg and Sarah.

“
Wednesday night while we’re at choir practice, you guys should take the kids for pizza, don’t you think?” Sarah asked Cody.

“Sure.” He darted a quick look at his brother. Greg had been quiet during dinner. Cody suspected he was still a little shaken after learning the whole truth about the accident that had very nearly killed him.

“Greg taught me how to drive his car,” Lucky said. “Now I can get to choir practice on my own.”

“
He taught you to drive in one lesson
…
amazing!” Cody’s suspicious tone drew a sharp look from Sarah. What did she
expect? Lucky was a bald-faced liar. It took more than one quick lesson to learn to drive.

“I never said I couldn’t drive. I just couldn’t use a gear shift,” Lucky explained, her tone level.

Cody gave her credit for looking him right in the eye. She didn’t like him any more than he liked her. Greg vaulted to his feet, knocking his chair backward. He looked at Lucky as if she’d just bitten him.

“What’s the matter?” Cody picked up Greg’s chair.

“Come on.” Greg motioned for Cody to follow him. “We’ll meet you all at the game.”

“What about dessert?” Sarah protested. “I made
haupia.
Coconut pudding is Greg’s favorite.”

“Thanks. We’ll eat ours later,” Greg called over his shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” Cody asked as Greg rushed him through the front door.

Greg didn’t respond. Instead, he headed for his car, and Cody was forced to follow. Dodger loped along beside them. They jumped into the car, and Greg was almost out of the driveway before Cody could close his door.

“What’s going on?” Cody asked as the car barreled down the country lane.

“With Hoyt-Mellenberger syndrome, whatever you make a conscious effort to learn stays with you. Like a foreign language. What you’ve done over and over stays with you. Like—”

“Knowing the words to ‘Amazing Grace,’ right?”

“Right. Lucky’s better on the Internet than Bill Gates. She must have logged on hundreds, if not thousands, of times.” Greg braked for a mongoose, who darted across the road and disappeared into a bank of ferns.
“
Lucky can drive a car. She’s not terribly good at it, but she can drive.”

Cody couldn’t understand where this was going or why Greg was driving hell-bent for leather toward Kihei, when they could be eating
haupia,
but he let his brother talk. Personally, he wondered about just how real Lucky’s memory loss was.

Totally infatuated with her, Greg believed every word, buying into a condition so rare that even the experts couldn’t agree on the diagnosis.

“Is the police impound lot still behind Hoho’s Gas and Tow?” Greg asked.

“Yeah. Why? Is that where we’re going?”

“The car Lucky was driving had a stick shift. I remember distinctly because her shirt caught on it when I pulled her out. She couldn’t have been driving that car because she doesn’t know how.”

Now that depended on whether you believed Lucky couldn’t remember the past, but Cody kept his mouth shut. It was obvious Greg had gone for the blonde’s story. Just see how this plays out, Cody told himself.
He didn’t want to have another f
ight with his brother.

“If she wasn’t driving the car, who was? And why do you want to see it?”

Greg shrugged his shoulders, bringing his car to a stop behind a busful of Japanese tourists. They were standing along the side of the road, garlands of cameras around their necks, snapping pictures of the sugarcane stalks.

“Lucky was behind the wheel—at least that’s where I found her—but someone else must have been driving. Where was he? Unless a person was a mountain climber, no one could have made it up that
pali.
The cliff was just too steep.”

“Do you think someone pushed that car off the cliff? That’s impossible. You would have seen or heard something.”

“Not necessarily. It was an unusual storm. When was the last time we had thunder and lightning on the islands? The crash might not have made enough noise to be heard above the storm.” Greg pulled into Hoho’s Gas and Tow, driving past the garage to the impound lot behind the shop.
“There’s another possibility. The car could already have been there when Dodger and I arrived. We couldn’t see the ravine from where we were. If Dodger hadn’t found Lucky, it might have been days before anyone came along.”

The lunch Cody had devoured—so happy to have his brother at his side again—became a load of cement in his stomach. This case was getting worse by the minute. And he had the terrible feeling he’d screwed up again.

“I never actually saw the stolen car,” Cody confessed. “My guys showed me the license number, so I knew the Toyota had been stolen from one of Traylor’s agencies. There was no reason to look at it. They’d checked it and found nothing.”

Greg shot him a withering glance but didn’t say a word. Cody climbed out of the car, mumbling something about getting the key. Tendrils of moist heat rose from the blacktop as he headed to the office. He was drenched in sweat, but it wasn’t from the searing sun. He could only imagine what Scott Helmer would say. Why hadn’t he at least looked at the car instead of trusting his men to report to him?

“Two men had to be involved,” Greg said when Cody returned with the keys.

Two men, Cody thought. That’s exactly the way Scott Helmer had analyzed the case. Christ! Greg was smart. He unlocked the gate and they went into the lot, with Dodger strutting along beside them. They picked their way around dozens of junked cars and several tour buses.

“One man drove Lucky to that
pali.
Together they pushed the stolen car off the cliff, then drove away in the other car.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,
”
Cody agreed.
“
There was a storm warning. No one would have tried to hike out of such a remote spot, knowing a killer storm was on the way.” Cody opened the door to the white compact, his hand protected by a paper towel from Hoho’s restroom. “We might want to dust the car for prints.”

Greg had been right; it was a stick shift. Cody was looking under the front seat, praying his men hadn’t missed anything important, when he heard Dodger whining frantically. He jerked upright, bumping his head against the door frame. The dog was behind the car, pointing like a retriever at the trunk.

“Open the trunk,” Greg directed, grimacing.

The sickening feeling in Cody’s gut became real pain.
He
walked to the back of the car and inserted the key in the lock. The trunk popped open with a whoosh, and Cody forced himself to look.

“Oh, shit!” Greg reached forward.

“Don’t touch a thing,” Cody warned.

T
he Orchid King stared at the computer screen, not really seeing the myriad lines of numbers and codes. Gateways and ports and secret passwords were changed constantly for security, but he didn’t have much trouble figuring out the bank’s new codes. Once he had been proud of his ability to breach even the tightest security. Nothing much seemed to make him happy these days, however.

“Did you see the latest report from our source?” his partner asked.

“Yeah,” the king replied. How could he forget it?

“What do you think?”

The king swung his chair sideways to face his partn
er at the adjacent terminal. “
She’s making herself a new life. Attending church. Can you believe it?”

“Unfuckingbelievable! She wouldn’t be caught dead in church.”

The king managed a chuckle.
“
Maybe with that weird syndrome, you’re born again and find religion.”

“It’s not funny.” His partner sprang to his feet and paced the small office. “It’s hard to be patient.”

“We have only one week until
Missing!
airs. If that doesn’t turn up something, we’ll make our move.”

“The bug in the police ch
iefs office recorded some info
about Lucky’s story appearing on TV, but that’s all.” His partner dropped into the chair beside him. “Don’t you think
that’s suspicious? The police are s
upposed to be working on
this case.”

From a grunt beat officer to the head of the FBI’s Violent
Criminals Apprehension Program, there was no one in law enforcement whom the king respected. How could they catch him? They hadn’t even figured out that a crime had been committed. “They’re too lazy to really work on this case. You’ve seen the transcripts of the office conversations. Drunk and disorderly conduct cases. Some jerk accuses another fisherman of stealing his marlin. Petty criminals. Petty crime. Petty minds.”

“
S
omething’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is,” Lucky confided to Nomo the day following the lunch at Sarah’s house.

They were in the nursery and she was giving Abbie a bottle while Dodger lay at her feet. Nomo sat beside her listening with the patience and understanding that she’d come to expect from the older man.

“Just as we were finishing lunch, Greg jumped up and dragged Cody off somewhere. So Sarah and I took the boys to their game. Greg showed u
p halfway through and said Cody
had to fly to Honolulu.” Lucky pulled the empty bottle from Abbie’s mouth. “Greg took everyone for ice cream after the game but he wa
s so quiet, as if he was sad…
or something.”

Nomo nodded thoughtfully. “He was like that a lot when he was having problems with Jessica. Greg doesn’t communicate as well as he should. Sometimes he just needs time to think.”

Lucky leaned down and placed the sleeping seal pup beside Dodger. The dog nuzzled Abbie, then curled protectively around her. Lucky petted Dodger, thinking this was the sweetest sight she’d ever seen. The huge chocolate-colored dog and the tiny seal pup with ivory fur.

“Nani
—beautiful,” Nomo said, tilting his head toward Dodger and Abbie, He touched Lucky’s arm and smiled the toothy grin
that had become so familiar. “
You did a good thing getting Cody and Greg together again.”

“Sarah did it. I just—”

Nomo shook his head.
“
Greg did it to please you. I’ve known him since he was a kid. Next to Cody, no one knows Greg better than I do. He’s falling in love with you—in spite of himself.”

“Then why does he keep a picture of his wife on his desk? After what she did to him, I just can’t understand it.”

Nome’s tanned face became even more animated. “I asked him that about a year ago. Greg said he kept the picture out to remind himself not to get involved with women. They weren’t worth the trouble. Looks like he’s changed his mind, though.”

Lucky would give anything if this were true. Yes, Greg was helping her, meaning he was involved in a way. But she wanted more from him. She couldn’t voice her feelings out loud, yet she suspected both Sarah and Nomo knew: Lucky wanted Greg to love her, and she wanted to be worthy of his love.

“Nomo!” One of the volunteers rushed into the nursery, out of breath. “We just caught a creep with his camera hiding behind the oleanders.”

“Fenton Bewley. What a sleazeball. I’ll bet he’s trying to get more pictures for another column in the
Tattler.”

“We ran him off,” the volunteer said with a proud smile.

“Good work,” Lucky told him, and she meant it. The group at the institute had rallied around her, as protective of her as Dodger was of Abbie. In a way they were her extended family, and their caring attitude brought tears to her eyes. She reached in her pocket and touched Rudy’s tooth.

T
hat night when they were at home, Greg remained silent. Sometimes Lucky thought he was gazing at her oddly, seeming to be studying her, but then he would quickly look away.

“Let’s take Dodger for a walk along the shore,” she suggested after dinner.

“You go,” he said. “I’m expecting Cody to call.”

“Is Cody still in Honolulu?” Lucky had spoken with Sarah
that afternoon. Cody had called but hadn’t told Sarah why he’d left so suddenly or when he planned to return.

“He’s still there.”

Greg didn’t offer any further information, and something about his expression warned her not to pry. Lucky was halfway down the hall when the telephone rang. She waited, hoping it was Cody. Maybe after he’d spoken with his brother, Greg would change his mind about going for a walk.