Rapture

Chapter Eight

“What happened to your eye?”

As Mels entered her mother’s kitchen, she didn’t answer the question, but went straight for the coffeepot. The fact that the thing was in the far corner, and she could drink her mug with her back to her mom, was just an added bonus to the caffeine.

Damn CoverGirl foundation. It was supposed to cover up things you wanted to hide. Like blemishes, blotches…bruises from car accidents you’d prefer concerned family members didn’t know about.

“Mels?”

She didn’t need to turn around to see what was behind her: Her mom, trim and small, younger looking than her age, would be sitting at the table across the way, the Caldwell Courier Journal open-faced next to a bowl of high-fiber bird food and a cup of coffee. Dark hair, streaked with gray, would be combed down into a neat, freshly trimmed cap, and the clothes would be casual, yet seem perfectly ironed.

Her mother was one of those tiny little women who always looked made up even without makeup. Like she had been born with a can of spray starch and a hairbrush under each arm.

But she was fragile. Like a kind, compassionate figurine.

The china shop to the bull Mels’s father had been.

Very aware that the question was still out there, Mels poured. Sipped. Made busy work snagging a paper towel and wiping a counter that was clean and dry. “Oh, nothing—I slipped and fell. Knocked into the shower dial. It was so stupid.”

There was a moment of quiet. “You got in late last night.”

“I ended up at a friend’s house.”

“I thought you said it was a bar.”

“I went over there after the bar.”

“Oh. All right.”

Mels stared out the window over the sink. With luck, her aunt would call at any moment, as the woman usually did, and there wouldn’t be a need to lie about why she had to take a taxi into work.

The sounds of sipping and quiet crunching filled the kitchen, and Mels tried to think of something halfway regular to say. Weather. Sports—no, her mother wasn’t into organized activities that centered around fields, balls or pucks of any kind. Books would do it—although, Mels didn’t read anything other than crime statistics, and her mother was still on the Oprah’s Book Club train even though the locomotive didn’t have an engine or any tracks anymore.

God…times like this made her miss her father to the point where it hurt. The two of them had never had any awkwardness. Ever. They’d talked about the city, or his work as a cop, or school…or they’d not said a word—and it was cool either way. Her mother, on the other hand?

“So.” Mels took another draw on her mug. “Any big plans for the day?”

Some kind of answer came back, but she didn’t hear it because the urge to leave was too loud.

Finishing off the last of her black coffee—her mother took hers with cream and sugar—Mels put the mug in the dishwasher and braced herself.

“So I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “I won’t be late. Promise.”

Her mother’s eyes rose to meet her own. That bowl full of wholesome goodness had little pink flowers on it, and the tablecloth had tiny yellow ones, and the wallpaper had larger blue ones.

Flowers everywhere.

“Are you all right?” her mom asked. “Do you need to go to the doctor?”

“It’s just a bruise. Nothing special.” She glanced out through the dining room. On the far side of the doily-laden table, past the milky white privacy curtain, a bright yellow Chevrolet pulled up. “Taxi’s here. I left my car at the bar because I’d had two and a half glasses of wine.”

“Oh, you could have taken mine into work.”

“You’ll need it.” She looked to the horticultural calendar hanging on the wall, praying there was something there. “Today you have bridge at four.”

“I could have gotten a ride. I still can, if you want to—”

“No, it’s better this way. I can pick up my car and drive it home.”

Crap. She’d just boxed herself in. The only way Fi-Fi was going anywhere was if she were on the back of a flatbed—the poor thing had been auto-evac’d to a local service station.

“Oh. All right.”

As her mother fell silent, Mels wanted to apologize, but it was too hard to put the complicated sorry into words. Hell, maybe she just needed to move out. Constant exposure to all that self-sacrifice and kindness was a burden to bear, instead of a joy to be relished—because it never ended. There was always a suggestion, an offering, a how-about-this-way, a—

“I have to go. Thanks, though.”

“All right.”

“See you tonight.”

Mels kissed the soft cheek that was presented, and left through the front door in a hurry. Outside, the air was fresh and lovely, the sun bright enough to promise a warm lunch hour.

Getting in the back of the cab, she said, “CCJ offices on Trade.”

“You got it.”

Heading into town, the taxi had shock absorbers to rival cement blocks, and all the seat padding of a hardwood floor, but she didn’t care about the rough ride. Too much chaos in her brain to worry about her butt or her molars.

That man from the night before remained with her, sure as if he were sitting beside her.

It had been like that all night long.

Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes and replayed the accident, double-checking, triple-checking that there was nothing she could have done to avoid hitting him. And then she got tied up in other things, like the way he had lain so still and watchful in that hospital bed.

Even injured, gravely so in some places, he’d still come across like…a predator.

A powerful male animal, wounded—

Okay, now she was really losing it. And maybe she needed to look closer at her dating life—which was nonexistent….

Too bad she couldn’t shake the conviction that he’d been strangely hypnotic, and wasn’t that tacky. What she should be concerned with was his health and well-being, and how likely he was to try to sue her for what little she had.

Instead, she lingered on the raspy sound of his voice, and the way he’d stared at her, as if every small thing about her had been a source of fascination and importance…

He’d been hurt a while ago, she thought. The scars at the side of his eye had healed up over time.

What had happened to him? What was his name…?

As she got mired in the land of Questions With No Answers, the taxi driver did his job with no muss, no fuss. Sixteen dollars, eighteen minutes, and a sore tailbone later, she was walking into the newsroom.

The place was already noisy, with people talking and rushing around, and the chaos calmed her nerves—in the same way that taking a yoga class made her jumpy.

Sitting down at her desk, she checked her voicemail, signed into her e-mail, and grabbed the mug she had been using since she’d inherited the desk a little over a year and half ago. Heading over to the communal kitchen, she had one of six coffeepots to choose from: None of them were decaf; three of them were just plain old Maxwell House; and the others were that stinky hazelnut crap or that femme-y macchiato-whatever-the-hell it was called.

Big whatever on the latter. If she wanted a damn caramel sundae, she’d get one for lunch. That stuff did not belong in a coffee mug.

As she poured her basic black, she thought about the mug’s true owner, Beth Randall, the reporter who’d sat in that cubicle for…well, it must have been just over two years. One afternoon, the woman had left and never come back. Mels had been sorry about the disappearance—not that she’d known her colleague all that well—and felt badly to finally get a dedicated spot to sit in under those circumstances.

She’d kept the mug for no particular reason. But now, as she took a sip from it, she realized it was in the hopes that the woman returned. Or at the very least, was okay.

Looked like she was surrounded by missing people.

Or at least it felt that way this morning. Especially when she thought of the man from the night before—the one who she was never going to see again, and couldn’t seem to forget.

This was not his house.

As the taxi pulled over in front of a ranch in a modest neighborhood, Matthias knew he didn’t live under its roof. Hadn’t. Wouldn’t.

“You gettin’ out or not?”

Matthias met the driver’s eyes in the rearview. “Gimme a minute.”

“Meter’s running.”

Nodding, he got out and relied on his cane as he went up the front walk, swinging his bad leg in a wide circle so he didn’t have to bend his knee. Things were hardly Home Sweet Home: There was a branch down in the scrubby hedge that ran under the bay window. The lawn was scruffy. Weeds had sprouted in the gutters, reaching for the sun so high above.

The front door was locked, so he cupped his hands and looked into the windows on either side. Dust bunnies. Mismatched furniture. Sagging drapes.

There was a cheapo tin mailbox screwed into the bricks, and he opened the top. Circulars. A coupon book addressed to “Occupant.” No bills, credit card applications, letters. The only other piece of mail was an AARP magazine that had the same name as that of the driver’s license he’d been given.

Matthias rolled the mag up, shoved it into his windbreaker, and headed back to the cab. Not only was this not his residence, nobody lived here. Best guess was that the person had died within, say, four to six weeks—long enough so that the family had cleaned up the accounts payable issues, but before they emptied the place out to put it on the market.

Getting into the cab, he stared straight ahead.

“Where to now?”

With a groan, Matthias shifted over and got out his wallet. Sliding Mels Carmichael’s business card free, he was struck by an overriding conviction that he shouldn’t involve the woman.

Too dangerous.

“What’ll it be, pal?”

But shit, he had to start somewhere. And his brain was like an Internet connection gone bad.

“Trade Street,” he gritted out.

As they headed for the downtown area and got caught in a net of traffic, he stared into the other cars and saw people drinking coffee, talking to passengers, stopping at red lights, going on green. Totally foreign to him, he thought. The kind of life where you nine-to-five’d your way into a grave at the age of seventy-two was not how he’d lived.

So what was, he asked his dumb-ass gray matter. What the fuck was?

All he got back was a headache while he strained for an answer.

As the Caldwell Courier Journal facility came into view, he took out one of the ten twenties in the wallet. “Keep the change.”

The cabdriver seemed more than happy to get rid of him.

Taking up res on the periphery of the front doors, Matthias loitered in the sunshine, being careful not to meet any stares—and there were a lot of them: For some reason, he tended to attract attention, usually from women—then again, the Florence Nightingale stuff was something the fairer sex was known for, and he did have scars on his face.

Ooooooh, romantic.

Eventually, he took cover across the street at the bus stop, parking it on the hard plastic bench and breathing in the secondhand smoke from people impatient for their public trans to arrive. The waiting didn’t bother him. It was as if he were used to lurking, and to pass the time he played a game, memorizing the faces of the people who came and went out of the CCJ offices.

He was extremely good at it. One look was all it took, and he had the person in his database.

At least his short-term memory was working—

The double doors pushed wide, and there she was.

Matthias sat up straighter as the sunlight hit her hair and all kinds of copper showed. Mels Carmichael, associate reporter, was with a heavyset guy who had to hitch his khakis up higher around his hips before they hit the steps. The two appeared to be arguing back and forth about something in the way friends did, and when Mels smiled, it appeared as if she had won whatever debate—

Like she knew he was watching, she glanced across the street, and stopped dead. Touching her buddy on the sleeve, she said something, and then parted ways with the man, cutting through the traffic, coming over.

Matthias plugged his cane into the pavement, and tugged his rags into place as he stood. He had no idea why he wanted to look better for her, but he did—then again, hard to look worse. His clothes weren’t his, his cologne was Eau d’Hospital Soap, and he’d washed his hair with the antibacterial stuff, because that was all he’d had.

Naturally, his bad eye, that ugly, ruined thing, was what she looked at first. How could she not?

“Hi,” she said.

Man, she looked great in her normal everyday clothes, those slacks and that wool jacket and the cream scarf she wore loose around her neck looking runway fine, as far as he was concerned.

Still no wedding ring.

Good, he thought for no apparent reason.

Shifting his gaze to the right, so maybe his defect wouldn’t be so obvious, he returned the “Hi.”

Well, shit, now what. “I’m not stalking you, I swear.” Liar. “And I would have called, but I’ve got no phone.”

“It’s okay. Do you need something? The police called me this morning with a follow-up, and I think they were still planning on speaking with you?”

“Yeah.” He let that one stand where it was. “Listen, I…”

The fact that he was leaving a sentence hanging seemed very unnatural, but his brain just wasn’t producing.

“Let’s sit down,” she said, gesturing to the seat. “I can’t believe they let you out.”

At that moment, a bus showed up, rumbling to a halt and blocking the sun, its hot diesel breath making him cough. As the pair of them settled on the bench, they kept quiet while the kibitzers filed on their ride.

When the bus kept going, the sunlight reappeared, bathing her in a yellow light.

For some stupid reason, his eyes started blinking hard.

“What can I do for you?” she asked softly. “Are you in pain?”

Yes. But it wasn’t physical. And it got worse whenever he looked at her. “How do you know I need help?”

“I’m guessing your memory didn’t magically come back.”

“No, it hasn’t. But that’s not your fault.”

“Well, I hit you. So I owe you.”

He made a motion to his lower body. “I was like this before.”

“Can you remember anything? Prior to the accident, I mean.” As he shook his head, she murmured, “A lot of servicemen have come back in your condition.”

Ah…as in Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, he thought. And part of that fit. The government…yes, he’d had something to do with the Department of Defense, or national security…or…

But he wasn’t a Wounded Warrior. Because he hadn’t been a hero.

“They found my wallet,” he blurted.

“Oh, that’s great.”

For some reason he gave it to her.

As she opened the thing and looked at the driver’s license, she nodded. “That’s you.”

Focusing on the Caldwell Courier Journal emblem that hung over the door she’d walked out of, he said, “Look, all this is off the record, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I wish I had another option. I wish…I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You haven’t asked me to do anything yet.” She stared at him. “What do you have in mind?”

“Can you find out who that is?” He pointed to the driver’s license. “Because it’s not me.”