White Lies (22 page)

           
 
She looked up at him, her face soft and
shining as his hands began moving tenderly on her body. "I love you,"
she said, and her heart echoed,
Lucas.
It was different the next morning, as if the world had altered during the
night, but he couldn't quite put his finger on the difference. It was an oddly
familiar feeling, as if he were more at home with himself. Jay was in his arms,
her sleek, golden-brown hair lying tangled on his shoulder. If they had been in
the cabin he would have got up to rebuild the fire, then returned to bed for
some early-morning loving. Instead he had to go to his own room to shave and
dress. That damn Frank. He'd booked separate rooms knowing they needed only
one. But Jay wasn't like all the other women; Jay was special, and maybe this
was Frank's tribute to her specialness.

           
 
Other women. The thought nagged at him after
he left Jay and returned to his own room in the biting cold of dawn. His memory
was returning, not in one big, melodramatic rush, like a light switch being
turned on, but in unconnected bits and pieces. Faces and names were surfacing.
Instead of feeling elated, however, he was aware of a growing sense of caution.
He hadn't told Frank his memory was coming back; he'd wait until it had truly
returned and he'd had time to consider the situation. Wariness was second
nature to him, just as he automatically checked his room to make certain no one
had entered it in his absence.

           
 
He showered and shaved, but as he shaved he
found himself staring at his face in the mirror, trying to find his past in the
reflection. How could he recognize himself when his face had been changed? What
had he looked like before? He wondered if Jay had a picture of him; it would be
an old one, if she'd kept any at all. But women tended to keep mementos and
their divorce hadn't been a bitter one, so maybe she hadn't destroyed whatever
pictures she'd had. Maybe seeing one would give him a link to the past.

           
 
Hell, why should it? He stared at himself in
disgust. He hadn't recognized Jay or Frank; why should he recognize his old
face? The face he knew was the face he could see now, and it wouldn't win any
prizes. He looked as if he'd played too many football games without a helmet.

           
 
Still, the sensation lingered that he was on
the brink of... something. It was there, just beyond his reach.

           
 
It nagged at him in little ways, like the ease
with which he slipped his shoulder holster on, and the familiarity of the gun
in his hand as he checked it, then slid it into place. The ease and familiarity
had been there before, but now they were somehow different, as if the link
between past and present were returning. Soon. It would happen soon.

           
 
The day was uneventful, but the feeling of
anticipation didn't leave him. They all met to eat breakfast; then he and Frank
drove to the optical lab and picked up his glasses. On the way back he asked,
"Have you found this Piggot guy yet?"

           
 
"Not yet. He surfaced a month ago, but he
went underground again before we could get to him."

           
 
"Is he good?"

           
 
Frank hesitated. "Damn good. One of the
best. His psychological profile says he's a psychopath, but very controlled,
very professional. His jobs are a matter of pride to him. That's why he wants
you. You screwed him up the way no one else ever had. You spoiled his job,
killed his 'employees' and managed to hit him hard enough that he had to go
underground for months to recover."

           
 
"I may have hit him hard, but it wasn't
hard enough," Steve said remotely.

           
 
"Do you have a picture of him?"

           
 
"Not with me. There's only one. We got
him with a telescopic lens, and it's grainy. He's about five-ten, a hundred and
forty-five pounds, blond, forty-two years old. His left earlobe is missing,
also courtesy of you. His reputation suffered." "Yeah, well, some
days I'm a little cranky." That was vintage Lucas Stone. Frank felt the
shock of it like a slap, but he kept his hands steady on the wheel. "Is
your memory coming back?"

           
 
"Not yet," Steve lied. He could see
Geoffrey Pig-got, whiplash thin, malignant, cold. Another face to go with a
name.

           
 
He was very quiet on the drive back to the
cabin. Jay glanced at him, but sunglasses hid his eyes, and she could read
nothing in his expression. She still sensed the tension in him, just as she had
the night before, during dinner. "Do you have another headache?" she
finally asked.

           
 
"No." Then he softened the bluntness
of his answer by reaching over to rub the backs of his fingers against her jaw.
"I feel okay."

           
 
"Did Frank say anything that's bothering
you?"

           
 
Briefly he considered the disadvantages of
letting someone get so close to you that they could read your moods, but then
he counted that battle well lost in Jay's case, because as far as he was
concerned, she couldn't get close enough to suit him. And he hadn't
let
her get close; it had simply
happened.

           
 
"No. He told me a few things about the
guy who tried to make me into beef stew—"

           
 
"Oh, gross!" she said, slapping his
hand away, and he laughed at her.

           
 
' I was just thinking about him, that's
all."

           
 
After a moment she curled up in the seat and
rested her head against the back. "I'll be glad to get home."

           
 
He was in total agreement with that. They had
been alone together for so long that this trip had almost brought on culture
shock. Neon lights and traffic were a definite jolt to a system that was used
to fir trees, snow and a deep, deep silence. Right now he would welcome a trip
to civilization only if he and Jay were getting blood tests and a marriage
license.

           
 
Blood
tests.

           
 
Suddenly he felt alert, just as he'd felt a
thousand times before when his life hung in the balance. Adrenaline spurted
into his veins, and his heart began racing, but not as fast as his brain. A
blood test. Damn it, it didn't fit. Why had they needed Jay to identify him
when they had all the means at hand? He was their agent. Granted, his
fingerprints were gone, he'd been unconscious and his voice damaged, but they
still had his blood type and dental records. It should have been easy enough to
establish his identity. It followed, then, that they hadn't needed Jay at all,
but had definitely wanted her for some reason.

           
 
He went over what Jay had told him. They had
wanted her to identity him because they couldn't make a positive ID, and they'd
needed to know if their agent had bought the farm, because Steve and this other
guy had been caught in the explosion and one of them was dead. That meant there
must have been two agents on location, but it wouldn't have changed the fact
that Frank had the means at hand to identify both of them. Supposedly he and
this other agent had physically resembled each other, about the same height and
weight, and with the same coloring. There still wasn't any problem with
identification, even if he stretched coincidence and allowed that they both
might have had the same blood type. That still left dental records.

           
 
Damn, he felt like a fool. Why hadn't he seen
this before? They had wanted Jay in this for some reason, but identification
hadn't been it. What kind of scheme was Frank running?

           
 
Think. He had to think. He felt as if he were
trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces, so no matter how he
moved things around they still didn't fit. If he could just remember, damn it!

           
 
Why would Frank lie to Jay? Why concoct the
story that he and the other agent so closely resembled each other? Why insist
that he needed her at all?

           
 
Why did they need Jay?

           
 
Voices tumbled in on him.
"Congratulations, Mr. Stone"... "I'm glad you're
back, son"... "Unca Luke! Unca
Luke!"
 
Stone... son... Unca
Luke... son... Luke... Stone...

           
 
Luke Stone.

           
 
His hands jerked on the steering wheel. He
felt as if he'd been hit in the chest. Luke Stone. Lucas Stone.
Damn Frank Payne to hell! His name was Lucas
Stone!

           
 
As soon as he'd turned that mental corner, all
the memories came rushing at him in a confusing flood, filling his mind with so
much clatter that he could barely drive. He didn't dare stop, didn't dare let
Jay know what he was feeling. He felt... God, he didn't know how he felt.
Battered. His head hurt, but at the same time he was aware of an enormous sense
of relief. He had his identity back, his sense of self. Finally he knew
himself.

           
 
He was Lucas Stone. He had a family and
friends, a past.

           
 
But he wasn't Jay's ex-husband. He wasn't
Steve Crossfield. He wasn't the man she thought she was in love with.

           
 
So that was why she'd been brought in. There
had been only one agent at the explosion, and he was that man. Steve Crossfield
must have been there for some reason, and he had died there. Lucas tried to
form his memories of the meeting, but they were blurred, fragmented. They would
probably never come back. But he did remember seeing a tall, lean man walking
up the street, his outline reflected on the wet pavement under the streetlight.
That could have been Steve Crossfield. He didn't remember anything after that,
though now he was remembering making contact, setting up the meeting with
Minyard, going to the meeting site. He'd looked up, seen the man...then nothing.
Everything after that was a blank, until Jay's voice had pulled him out of the
darkness.

           
 
His cover had been blown, obviously. Piggot
was after him; that was the reason for the charade. Pulling Jay in, duping her
into thinking he was her exhusband, having him positively identified as Steve
Crossfield, was the best cover the Man could concoct for him until they could
neutralize Piggot. The Man never underestimated his enemies, and Piggot was, as
Frank had said, very good. The extent of the Man's deception also told Lucas
that the Man suspected there was a mole in his ranks and hadn't trusted regular
channels.

           
 
So they'd "buried" him, and he'd
awakened to another name, another face, another life, even another man's wife.

           
 
No, damn it! Savagery filled him, and his
knuckles turned white as he automatically negotiated the icy patches on the
road. Maybe he wasn't Steve Crossfield, but Jay was his.
His
. Lucas Stone's woman.

           
 
Silently and at length, he cursed the Man and
Frank for everything he could think of, ranging back over several generations
of their ancestors. Not Frank so much, because he could see the Man's fine hand
in this. Nobody had a mind as intricate as Kell Sabin's; that was how he'd
gotten to be the
Man.
They had probably—no, almost certainly—saved his life, assuming there
was a mole passing information to Pig-got, but they weren't the ones who had to
tell Jay he wasn't her ex-husband. They didn't have to tell her that the man
she loved was dead and she'd been sleeping with a stranger.

           
 
What would she say? More important, what would
she do?

           
 
He couldn't lose her. He could stand anything
except that. He expected, and could handle, shock, anger, even fear, but he
couldn't stand it if she looked at him with hate in those deep blue eyes. He
couldn't let her walk away from him. Immediately he began examining the
situation from all angles, looking for a solution, but even as he looked, he
knew there wasn't one. He couldn't marry her using Crossfield's name, because such
a marriage wouldn't be legal, and besides, he'd be damned if he'd let her carry
another man's name. He would have to tell her.