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“Like glue. Until I get my memory back.”
It wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for. But he’d gotten part of what he wanted, and he knew how to be patient for the rest. He brushed her lips with his. “We have to get out of here.”
She sat up. “I lost more of my clothes than you did.”
He sent her a quick grin as she tugged her panties on. “We can always remedy that the next time.”
She met his eyes. “Count on it.”
19
“I GET THE FLORIST van, do all the scouting around and all you want me to do now is wait here for you?”
Chagrined. That was the best word Drew could come up with to describe the look on Luke Rossi’s face. Luke was tall, with brownish blond hair and he wore glasses. She might have described the man himself as a computer nerd, if it weren’t for the fact that he had the sleekly muscled body of a swimmer and the same kind of stillness about him that a jungle cat would have.
“Someone has to play lookout,” Kit explained.
The van that had chased them the night before was parked half a block up and around the corner, where it had a good view of both the front and the back of the apartment building.
“If the van moves, if you see anyone get out, call me on my cell,” Kit said. “And watch out for yourself. If they get suspicious about this delivery, they’ll try to get by you.”
Kit opened the door, Drew followed him out of the backseat and they circled to the rear of the florist van. After opening the door, he pulled out a potted palm and handed it to her. “Can you manage it?”
“Sure.” It was heavier than she’d expected, but it covered her face and the entrance to her apartment building was only a few yards away. Once Kit had retrieved his palm tree, she followed him to the front door, where he punched the manager’s button.
“Yeah?”
“Delivery for 1A. There’s no answer, but I got a signature says I can leave it outside her door.”
The buzzer sounded and Kit opened the door, waiting so she could precede him into the building. “The security here sucks,” he commented.
Her heart kicked up a little as she moved down the hall. According to Luke, there were six apartments in all at 2355 Chelsea, and hers, 1A, boasted a little patio and garden. Kit would have preferred to come in that way, but the position of the van prevented it. At the end of the short hall, Drew stopped, and sure enough, there it was—right where Luke had said. 1A. She stared at the number and the letter on the door.
“You can put the plant down,” Kit said, taking it from her. “We’re going to leave them here. Ready?”
At her nod, he pulled out a thin tool and inserted it into the lock. “Let’s hope that you don’t have a security system. An alarm could cut our visit very short. Not only will the manager be displeased, but the goons in that van will probably join us.”
She watched his hands, the long tapered fingers plying the pick with the concentration and precision of a surgeon. All the while, he was still rambling on about how she really ought to invest in a good security system and how Luke’s firm, Rossi Investigations, could help her. He was doing it to soothe her nerves, Drew realized. And it was working.
She wondered if she would ever meet another man who would understand her quite as well as Kit Angelis did. Maybe he was right, and she was like the heroine of The Terminator. Whatever was behind that door, whatever she remembered, she would rise to the occasion.
“We’re in.” Kit withdrew the tool, slipped it back into his pocket, then drew out a gun.
Her throat went dry as she stared at it. Had he been wearing it all day—even in the restroom?
“Remember the plan. I want you to stay to the right of the door until I scope the place out.”
She knew the plan. He’d recited it to her twice on the ride over. If, by some chance, there was someone in the apartment, Kit would take care of them. But if anything happened to him, she was to run to Luke.
When she nodded and pressed her back to the wall, he opened the door, crouched and aimed his gun. Then he was gone. Fear shot through her. What she’d experienced a few minutes ago, worrying about what she’d discover when she regained her memory, couldn’t hold a candle to what she was feeling now. Kit was risking his life, he was—
“It’s clear.”
Relief made her knees weak.
Kit reappeared in the doorway and took her hand. “It’s not pretty.”
It wasn’t. Drew swept her gaze over the room, taking in the destruction. A few larger pieces of furniture, she could identify—an overturned sofa, a sewing machine lying on its side, what looked to be an antique desk, its legs sticking up in a dead-dog position. A bolt of lace had been unrolled and tossed into a heap in one corner, and near the door to the little garden, a floor lamp with a fancy fringed shade tilted drunkenly against the wall.
And over it all, like a blanket of newly fallen snow, lay unwound spools of thread in a myriad of colors—and beads, pearls, rhinestones and millions of sequins. She had an urge to laugh—or to cry—she wasn’t certain which. She could even make out broken picture frames and pieces of torn photographs. Whatever had been here that might have triggered a flicker of memory was gone.
Kit drew her forward. “There are only two rooms.” They circled the sofa and he led her through an archway into a kitchen. Sunshine streamed through the window, shining a harsh spotlight on the rubble strewn counters and floors. Food mixed with dirt and the remnants of dying plants.
“Anything?” Kit asked.
“It makes me feel sad, but I don’t feel a personal connection to any of it.”
“You will, soon enough.” He turned to her then, and she saw that hint of steel in his eyes again. “And I’m going to get the bastards who did this. You can count on it.”
Kit felt the tingle at the back of his neck at the same moment that he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Digging it out, he urged Drew toward the garden door.
“One’s going around back,” Luke said. “I’ll handle the one at the front door.”
Luke hadn’t even finished his sentence when Kit spotted a man the size of a tank vaulting over the decorative picket fence enclosing the garden area. “Dammit. They’ve boxed us in.”
Whirling, he pushed Drew back into the kitchen. “Climb out through the window.” It was big enough, and with both men occupied, she could get away. If there were only two of them. “Don’t think. Just run like hell.” He handed her his cell phone. “Once you’re clear of the place, dial 9-1-1.”
The sound of splintering wood and glass had him racing back into the living room. He raised the gun, but not in time to stop the 300-pound tank who dove into his midsection.
The gun flew from his hand, discharging and skidding over debris as he and his opponent tumbled backward. Pain sang through every muscle, bone, and sinew in his body, but he rolled away as his opponent leapt onto the spot he’d just vacated and struck his head against the floor.
Okay, Kit thought, scrambling to his feet, brawn but not too many brains. He should be able to take him. Regaining his balance, he waited for the man to charge and managed to land a two-footed kick to his stomach. It barely slowed him down. Kit dodged a fist and grabbed a table leg off the floor before the tank charged again and slammed them both against the wall.
Hands the size of hams gripped Kit’s neck. His vision blurred, then grayed. But he caught a motion. Someone was standing in the archway to the kitchen.
Drew?
Fear fueled the adrenaline already streaming through him, and he brought his knee up hard into the tank’s crotch. The instant the fingers around his throat loosened, he shoved with all his might. His opponent stumbled backward but didn’t go down. Kit cocked the table leg he’d picked up and swung. He heard the satisfying crunch of bone and the tank finally toppled.
He turned then and blinked. His eyes had to be deceiving him. Drew was standing in the archway, both hands gripping the gun—and she was aiming it at him.
“I won’t shoot,” she said in a shaky voice. “I just can’t seem to move my arms.” During those endless moments when Kit and the other man had been locked in that deadly battle, she could have fired the gun. She would have if she could have been sure what she was seeing.
Memory hurt. She thought she’d feel relief, but it had been pain she’d experienced when the door to her past had suddenly opened. It had happened when she’d picked the gun up from the floor and brought her other hand to it just the way that Paulo had shown her in that dark room in the choir loft.
Paulo had put the gun in her hand that night and told her how to hold it, how to pull the trigger. Because he couldn’t. He’d been shot in the arm.
That one memory had opened the floodgates, and the images in her mind had shifted from one to the other so swiftly that she couldn’t distinguish between what had happened that night in the storeroom and what was happening right in front of her eyes.
Kit limped toward her, and it was only then that she believed he was all right. When he reached her, he covered her hands. “Just relax. That’s it. That’s it.”
Drew felt the weapon slip from her hands into his, and then she sagged against him. His arms encircled her and a moment later she was sitting on the floor cradled in his lap. “I remember,” she said. “I think I remember everything.”
