One Forgotten Night Page 18

  She could tell that he was bursting with curiosity, but he did it. She heard the rustle of paper as he ripped off the wrapping. Then there was a long silence.

  “Charley? Charley, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” His voice sounded odd and strained. “Nina, what’s going on?”

  “Just tell me, Charley, please,” she begged.

  “All right. It’s a green gem, a big one, in a plastic bag. I think it’s an emerald. Nina, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, stricken, and relayed the news to Mike.

  Nina went numb for the next few minutes, listening to Mike with one ear and Charley with the other. Charley told her that there were some papers in the package, too, on Z and D letterhead; on Mike’s instructions, she asked Charley to fax the papers to her at the nearby copy shop—a sign in its window said Fax Send And Receive, 1 Page. Nina gave Charley the number. She then asked him to describe the stone in detail. “Good thinking,” said Mike.

  “Big. Green. What else can I say?” complained Charley. “Nina, come on, what’s this all about?”

  “What shape is it?” she asked him. “How big across? How many facets does it have? Count carefully.” When she was convinced that she had as clear a picture of the emerald as she was going to get, she said, “Fax me those papers right away, Charley. It’s important. Then just hang on to them and the stone. And whatever you do, don’t tell anyone I called you. Please.”

  “I’m worried, Nina. I’m your brother and I love you. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I love you, too, Charley,” Nina said, voice breaking. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.” She hung up.

  Then she was in Mike’s arms. She didn’t know how she had ended up there; she had simply turned to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and as soon as they touched she started crying as though her heart would break. He held her and let her cry, patting her hair and murmuring to her as one would soothe a sobbing child. He knew that it wasn’t just the wrenching conversation with her brother that had broken her down—her tears were the culmination of nearly two weeks of stress and fear, topped off by the realization that she was a murder target in the company of a renegade cop. The final straw was learning that she’d mailed a valuable gem to her brother, and now she didn’t know why she’d done it. But she knew it looked suspicious as all get-out. No wonder she was crying.

  Suddenly Mike realized what he’d been thinking: She didn’t know why she’d done it. He couldn’t have been thinking that if he still suspected Nina of faking the amnesia. Somewhere along the way, without quite being aware of it, he had crossed another line—the line separating doubt from belief. He trusted her now. Sometime he’d have to tell her about it. But right now, his top priority was getting her out of the mess she was in. His arms tightened around her briefly, and then he let her go.

  Her face was wet with tears, her eyes were red and her nose was swollen. Mike thought she was gorgeous.

  “Do you have any tissues?” she asked. “I left my purse on the plane.”

  “There’s something in the car.” He burrowed in the glove compartment and offered her a crumpled napkin. She took it with a jaundiced look and blew her nose.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s go pick up our fax.” He held out his hand.

  Nina was about to take it when she stumbled; her eyes were blinded by a flash of white light. She knew at once what was happening. After a week of dormancy, she was finally having another of her visions.

  Like all the others, it lasted only a couple of seconds. But unlike the rest, this vision left her feeling sick and terrified.

  Mike was holding her arm; his blue eyes dark with concern. “What’s the matter? Another memory flashback?”

  She stared back, unable to speak. You have to tell him, she thought. He’s not going to believe you, but you’ve got to try. You’ve got to make him believe!

  “They’re not memories, Mike.” She spoke through dry lips. “I figured it out. I know it sounds crazy, but when I see those flashes of light, I’m seeing...visions of the future.”

  “Nina, for God’s sake, have you gone nuts? We’re in enough trouble as it is, honey. Please, don’t start jerking me around with some wild story!”

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her. “I’m not jerking you around. I’ve listened to you, and I’ve believed you, and now, damn it, you’ll listen to me.” His jaw tightened with impatience, but he listened while she tried to explain about the visions she’d had, and how several of them had come true. She even told him about the vision she’d had of him—the vision that was later fulfilled in every detail when she visited his loft. She could see that she wasn’t getting through. His expression remained incredulous.

  “I can’t buy it, Nina,” he said after she finally stammered to a halt. “It’s just too far-out. But we can worry about that later, it’s not important.” He started for the copy shop.

  “No,” she said, “we have to worry about it now.”

  Slowly he turned back to her.

  “You haven’t asked me about the vision I just had,” she said bleakly. “You were in it.” She ran to him. “Mike, I’m frightened. I saw you and another man. You were fighting, rolling around on a wooden floor. He was snarling. He looked desperate. And, Mike—he had a gun.”

  He took her hands and enclosed them gently in his. The fear in her face was inexpressibly touching; he wanted only to drive that fear away. So he said softly, “Sweetheart, don’t you see that doesn’t mean anything? You know I’m a cop. I’ve told you that I used to work undercover vice. It’s a dangerous job, and maybe you’ve been thinking about me, worrying about me. But it’s okay, I promise you. I’ve survived every fight I’ve ever been in.” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

  Nina remained somber. Her face was drawn, and her eyes were shadowed green pools. “Did you ever fight with a short man, muscular, with olive skin and heavy eyebrows and short black hair? And a bald spot on the top?”

  “Not that I remember,” joked Mike—and then he was brought up with a jolt. He did know somebody who fit that description. “Did you say he was bald on top?” Mike asked carefully. He drew a little circle above the crown of his own head. “Right about there?”

  Nina nodded.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mike said half under his breath. “Irons.” As far as he knew, Nina and Irons had never met. So how come she had just given a description of him that was good enough to have come off one of the FBI’s own reports? Either Nina was lying for some reason, trying to turn him against Irons, or she was telling the truth about this psychic business. And if she was telling the truth, that meant that Irons was really going to try to kill him.

  “Do you know who it is?” Nina was asking. She slipped her hand into his. It was cold, and he tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. She smiled tentatively. “So you believe me?”

  “That’s asking a lot.... The guy you described sounds like David Irons, the FBI special agent who’s heading the investigation I told you about.” Mike grinned a hard, wolflike grin. “He doesn’t like me much, but I didn’t think he’d go as far as shooting me.”

  “There’s more. Remember that first vision I had? The one of two men in a little room somewhere? One of the men turned out to be Julien. The other was the same man I just saw—this man Irons.”

  “That would make sense,” Mike said, “since Irons and Julien are working together—”

  He stopped short as the implication sank home. Could Irons be dirty? Mike had been assuming that Julien was scamming the feds, pretending to work with them while running some operation of his own on the side—some operation that necessitated the attempt on Nina’s life. But what if Irons and Duchesne were in it together? Maybe Irons was behind the attacks on Nina. Why? And could Mike really take Nina’s word for anything—the word of a self-confessed psychic amnesiac who, judging from the package she had mailed to her brother, might also have s
omething to hide?

  The whole situation was crazy, and it kept getting crazier. Not only that, but Mike was getting anxious. Time was passing, and for all he knew Hecht could be putting out an APB on him this very minute.

  “I need to think all this over,” he said abruptly. “Let’s get that fax and get moving.”

  * * *

  Nina studied the fax while Mike drove west through the Philadelphia suburbs. The fax consisted of three pages of gem valuations on Zakroff and Duchesne letterhead. Nina’s signature was on all of them. She scanned them quickly. Each of the fifteen gems described was an emerald. Not one of the descriptions fit the large stone she had sent to Charley. Each sheet, she noticed, bore the same date; it was a date in June, corresponding to the last quarterly gem auction in Colombia.

  “I think,” she suggested to Mike, “these must be the stones I bought for Z and D the last time Julien and I went to Colombia. But the emerald I mailed to Charley isn’t described here.”

  Silence hung heavy, threatening to overwhelm the fragile truce that had sprung up between them, a connection compounded of growing trust and kindling desire. Mike reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “We’ll get through this, I swear it,” he said simply.

  And, feeling the comforting pressure of his strong hand, Nina allowed herself to believe him.

  They talked about the package she had sent to Charley and what it might mean. Nina was appalled by some of Mike’s suggestions, but she saw that he wasn’t accusing her of anything. He was simply exploring the possibilities. The emerald was clearly valuable. Nina might simply have stolen it—but then why would she have sent it to Charley, and why would she have included a wad of paperwork?

  Nina suggested that she might have sent the emerald to Chicago for safekeeping, as a way of getting it out of the way in case someone came looking for it. That made sense to Mike; after all, someone had searched Nina’s apartment. In that case, was the emerald her share of the loot from a smuggling operation? Or was it her insurance against a double-cross, something she could use to blackmail her partners in crime if they tried to cut her out?

  “There’s another possibility,” he said. “Maybe you’re completely innocent, and you just stumbled across something underhanded at Z and D. The emerald and the papers could be evidence that you discovered. If you were suspicious about something, you might have sent them to your brother to hold for you until you found out what was going on.”

  “I like that idea,” Nina said, brightening. “But I can’t imagine Armand as a crook.”

  “Maybe he’s not, any more than you are.” Mike didn’t add that there was no proof that Nina was in the clear. Something was going on at Z and D, the federal investigation was proof of that. At this point, though, it was just his intuition telling him that Nina Dennison was arrow straight and squeaky clean. And that, he acknowledged, could be wishful thinking. He wanted her to be clean. Face it—he just plain wanted her.

  A curious peacefulness settled over them, as though they’d lived through a storm and were now simply glad to be alive and together. Mike glanced at Nina. There she sat in the same clothes she’d been wearing in the hospital: jeans and a black turtleneck. Her hair was mussed and her face was shiny. Any other woman, Mike thought admiringly, would have been bemoaning the loss of her luggage and her handbag. But Nina was quiet, gazing out the window as the car glided along a secondary highway headed northwest.

  “There’s something I’ve got to ask you,” he said. “It’s been bugging me all day. Where were you going last night when you had the accident?”

  She smiled, and for the first time he noticed the way her mouth curled up on one side when she was being mischievous. “Figure it out,” she said.

  “There’s nothing down there but—” Then it hit him, right between the eyes, and he couldn’t keep from laughing at his own foolish blindness.

  “You were coming to see me.“

  “Yep.”

  “And I shot my mouth off at you after the crash. God, Nina, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve said some mean things to you since this whole business started.”

  “But that’s over now.”

  “Yes,” Nina said, and a shiver ran through her, as if he’d touched her in some tender place. “That’s over now.”

  A few moments later Nina said, “By the way, where the heck are we going?”

  “I’ve got a place in mind where we can lie low. It’s a cabin up in the Poconos where I go fishing sometimes. We can spend the night there while we figure out what to do.” He swallowed. The idea of spending the night alone with Nina in a cabin in the woods was starting to look a little too good to him. He’d thought of the cabin because he knew they needed to get off the road. As a senior FBI agent, Irons had the power to command every law-enforcement officer for miles around. The whole area was probably being combed for Mike and Nina right now; he’d be lucky to stay one step ahead of the dragnet.

  “What about Sig?” Nina asked suddenly, and Mike’s heart warmed. She was on the run from an international smuggling ring and from the law, and she was worried about his dog.

  “Don’t worry about that big boy,” he told her. “I’ve got a neighbor, an artist who uses the next loft as a studio. He comes over every day and takes Sig for a walk. He’ll look after the mutt.”

  Nina shifted to a more comfortable position and drew her coat closely around her. The past hour had been one long roller-coaster ride: everything that had happened since Mike’s dramatic appearance at the airport had kept her emotions keyed up to fever pitch. Now she felt drained, and as confused as she’d ever been. That’s not saying much. Your whole memory is only about a week and a half long.

  “Mike,” she asked in a tired voice, “do you really think Julien would have killed me? I mean, he was my fiancé.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t.” Mike had been thinking hard, and now he laid out his ideas for Nina. If her guess—Mike couldn’t bring himself to call it a vision—was right, and Irons was bent, that only strengthened the case against Duchesne. Mike knew that Irons and Duchesne were pretty close. Irons had said that they were working together on the side of the good guys, but they could just as easily be partners on the other side.

  It wasn’t too hard for Mike to see Irons in the role of villain. He wouldn’t be the first overworked, underpaid lawman to be tempted off the straight and narrow path by the lure of enormous payoffs. As a Bureau insider, Irons would know a lot about the drug underground. He might even have brought Duchesne and the Colombians together in the first place. Z and D would have provided a nice little cover for someone who wanted to launder Colombian drug money by converting it into gems and smuggling them into the States. A courier for a respected firm like Z and D could travel to Colombia frequently, each time bringing in a legitimate cargo of emeralds purchased at auction—and also an illegal stash of undeclared stones. The courier could be paid off with a cut of each shipment.

  Mike knew that the FBI investigation had started with Interpol and the DEA trying to track down a money trail that originated in Colombia. Once that trail led to emeralds and gem importers, Irons could have used his position at the FBI to get himself put in charge of the case. That way he could make sure that the investigators didn’t find out what was really going on.

  As for Nina, perhaps she had accidentally come across something that made her suspicious. Before she could act on it, Irons or Duchesne, or someone working for them, had tried to kill her by shooting her. When that failed and they learned of her amnesia, Duchesne pretended to be her fiancé in order to get close to her and find out what she knew. The rigged car crash was the second attempt to wipe her out, and the second failure. The trip to Colombia offered the perfect opportunity for a third try.

  “So we weren’t really engaged,” Nina mused.

  “I don’t think so. None of your friends, not even people outside Z and D, knew anything about you dating him. You didn’t have his number written down anywhere, yo
u didn’t have a trace of him in your apartment.... I think he lied about being engaged to you, either to test your amnesia or to put himself into a position to take you out. And I don’t mean on a date.”

  “It fits,” said Nina, thinking of the discrepancies she’d noticed: Armand’s surprise at Julien’s announcement of their engagement, the absence of references to Julien in her diary. “I hope it’s true. I didn’t really like him, you know, even before I knew he was trying to kill me.”

  Mike didn’t mention it, but he knew that any cop would spot another possibility. Nina might have been working with Irons and Duchesne. The shooting could have been a falling-out among thieves. Even if she had told him nothing but the truth about her amnesia, she could still have been in on the smuggling. But he couldn’t let himself believe it. He’d thrown his career away for this woman, and he’d do it again in a minute; he had to have faith that she was worth it.

  Darkness was falling as they turned off the two-lane highway and passed through a small town. Mike stopped at the local supermarket, saying, “We’d better pick up something to eat. There won’t be anything at the cabin.”

  “Good idea. I’m getting hungry. And,” Nina added, spotting a drugstore next to the supermarket, “I can pick up a toothbrush and a comb and a few other things. I feel pretty grubby.”

  Mike gave her the once-over and couldn’t agree. If he looked as good to her as she looked to him, they’d have a hard time keeping their hands off each other tonight.

  He handed her some bills. “I’ll get the groceries, you get what you need. And pick up a toothbrush for me while you’re at it.”

  Shopping didn’t take long. They met at the car in less than fifteen minutes, stowed their bags and got back on the road. “Not too much longer now,” Mike told her as the lights of town dropped out of sight behind them. He turned onto a narrow dirt road that wound up and up. Hills rose steep and dark all around; every summit and ridgeline bristled with the pointed silhouettes of pines and firs, black against a sky that still held the last of the pale evening light.