Kansas City Countdown

But there was a black void in place of where any memory of the assault should be. Bits and pieces of her life before whatever had happened to her tonight were coming together like an old film reel being spliced together. Yet Kenna was afraid some parts of the movie would never be recovered. Even the last few hours after the assault were filled with holes. According to the doctor, scrambled brains were a side effect of the head trauma she’d received. Plus, he’d said that the amnesia could be psychological, as well—that whatever she’d been through had been so awful that her mind might be protecting her from the shock of remembering.

That didn’t seem right, though. She wasn’t sure why, but Kenna got the feeling from her defensive injuries, and her inability to relax until she figured out at least some part of what had happened to her, that she had a strong will to survive—that Kenneth Parker or someone in her past had taught her to think and fight, not surrender to a weakness like hysterical amnesia.

A glimpse of something sharp and silver glinted in the corner of her eye and Kenna shrieked. “Stop it!” Throwing up her hands, she snatched the man’s wrist to stop the sharp object coming at her face.

“Nurse.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Small hands tugged at her shoulder and Kenna twisted away. “Easy, Ms. Parker. We’re trying to help you.”

“Get away from me!” Kenna evaded the hands and shoved the weapon away, fighting to sit up.

“Kenna.” A firmer hand clasped her shoulder, refusing to be shrugged off. “You’re safe. I’ve got your back.”

Kenna froze at the deeply articulate male voice. She tilted her gaze to the dark-haired man with the badge and gun on his belt. Blue eyes. She knew those blue eyes. He was Detective...? The name that went with the piercing gaze escaped her for the moment. Still, she appreciated the clip of authority in his tone. If he said so, she believed he would keep her safe.

“The last thing we need is for her to panic. Isn’t that right, Doc?”

The other man chuckled beside her. “It’s never a good thing in the ER.”

Kenna turned to the gentler voice and looked into the black man’s warm brown eyes.

“That’s where you are now. St. Luke’s Hospital emergency room. You have a concussion, several abrasions and some deep cuts I’m in the process of treating now that I know what medications I can use.”

Kenna drew in a deep breath to calm the pulse pounding in her ears and nodded. She dropped her gaze to the plastic ID badge the doctor in the white lab coat wore around his neck. “Dr. McBride.” She realized she still had his forearm clenched between her hands and quickly opened her grip. “I’m sorry. I thought you were... That someone was... I don’t know what I thought.”

“Did you remember something about the attack?” Detective Blue Eyes asked. “Is the syringe significant?”

“There was no evidence of drugs in her preliminary blood work,” the doctor offered.

Keir nodded. “But there are some drugs that leave the system quickly.”

“That’s true. And I estimate these injuries occurred eight to ten hours ago.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Kenna interrupted. “Something was coming at my face. I could see...” A black void filled the space where the memory should be. She shook her head. A syringe? She eyed the object in the doctor’s hand and frowned. She couldn’t have been cut with a syringe. Her focus narrowed to the tiny hash marks and numbers marking the syringe—3 ml. 2.5 ml. 2 ml. 1.5... A door slammed shut in her head and she wanted to scream.

So what did that mean? She tried to recall what it was that had triggered her panicked reaction. But when she closed her eyes to concentrate, she was greeted by the frightening abyss of her amnesia. Kenna quickly opened her eyes to focus on things she could recognize and shook her head. “Sorry. I’ve still got nothing.”

“Not to worry.” The detective pulled away, retreating to the doorway where he must have been waiting, out of the doctor’s and nurse’s way. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I hope you’re right.”

He winked. “I’m always right.”

His confidence surprised her for a moment before she felt a smile softening her bruised, swollen face. His roguish charm distracted her from her fears and gave her back some of her own confidence. “Then we’d better get to it. I’ll do my best not to freak out on anyone again.”

While the nurse tucked a warm blanket around her, Dr. McBride rolled his stool back to the examination table and pointed to the items on the stainless steel tray beside him as he explained the procedure. She watched him pick up the syringe again, and her chest grew tight. Kenna breathed in deeply to dispel the uneasiness quaking inside her. Maybe she just had a thing about needles. With the nurse’s help, she turned onto her side, looking away from the doctor as he went to work. “Go ahead, Doctor.”

“I need you to relax. This is the same localized numbing agent I used on your scalp when I stitched that up. You’ll feel three little pinches before I’m done.”

Kenna nodded her understanding. If she wasn’t going to have any useful kind of flashback, why bother trying to understand? Forcing her jumbled thoughts to organize themselves was only aggravating the headache throbbing against her skull. Maybe if she stopped fighting so hard to remember and didn’t focus on anything except her present surroundings, the answers would finally come to her.

Dr. McBride seemed blessedly patient with her and competent in his treatment of her wounds. The nurse buzzed around the ER room, setting equipment and medicines on the tray beside the doctor and taking away discarded items. Detective Blue Eyes—no, wait...Keir Watson. His name fell into place and she smiled inside. Finally. A memory that seemed to stick. Detective Watson was either standing guard at the door or waiting to get the full report on her injuries from the doctor. Kenna wasn’t sure why the younger man with the take-charge voice would still be here if it wasn’t for some official reason. He’d explained more than once that they didn’t have a personal connection. Instead, he’d described them as adversaries from work.

It was a shame to have forgotten a compelling face like Keir’s. Chiseled bone structure that was perhaps a bit too sharp to be traditionally handsome was softened by a dusting of tobacco-brown beard stubble and a sexy half-grin. Those impossibly blue eyes narrowed with a question when he caught her studying him and she held his gaze until he folded his arms over his chest. The movement drew her attention lower. He’d put his jacket back on and she acknowledged another memory. Seeing how the dark gray wool hugged his shoulders and biceps, Kenna recalled Keir’s body heat, and how quickly she’d warmed up with his jacket draped over her in his car. She remembered the faint scents of something oakish and bitter that had clung to the material, too, making her think he’d enjoyed some kind of drink before they’d met.

Or met again.

Or something like that.

Oh, how she hated being at such a disadvantage. Why was Keir her enemy? She’d done something to him. Shredded a case of his in court? Just what kind of attorney was she? Not one who worked for the good guys, apparently.

Now, didn’t that conjure up all kinds of possibilities as to who might want to hurt her? A client unsatisfied with her representation? The family member of a criminal who’d been sent to prison despite her best efforts? A victim upset because she’d kept someone out of prison? Was she trying a controversial case? Had she learned a dangerous secret from one of her clients that someone else was anxious to keep silent?

She didn’t think this kind of violence could be random. Maybe the attack had nothing to do with her job. Did she have a jealous ex? A rival at work? It was impossible to evaluate her choices when she couldn’t yet recall all the details of her life.

Kenna winced as the needle pricked the skin near her temple and closed her eyes when she felt a second pinch in her hairline. She gritted her teeth when she felt the third shot sting her jaw, and her breathing grew a little more rapid. How much more would she have to endure tonight?

She’d kept herself as calm and focused as she could, under the extreme circumstances. But the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital in downtown Kansas City was a noisy, overwhelming place, especially for a woman who couldn’t answer many of the questions the admitting clerk, attending nurse, emergency room physician or KCPD criminologist who’d left earlier had asked her over the last several hours.

Keir Watson’s badge had gotten her through the red tape of checking in, but without an insurance card or a driver’s license, the staff couldn’t check her medical records. Dr. McBride had refused to give her anything for the pain or even antibiotics until he’d received a fax to back up her shaky assertion that she didn’t think she was allergic to any medications. She was worn out. There wasn’t any part of her that didn’t hurt. And the wound to her memory wasn’t something that Dr. McBride and his nurse could treat.

Were those tears chafing her eyelids? She wasn’t a crier, was she? She’d hate that if she was. Exhaustion and frustration were finally winning the battle against the sheer will to keep it all together.

“Need something to hold on to?”

Kenna’s eyes popped open when she felt a warm hand sliding over hers.

Keir Watson’s grasp was as sure as the hug of his arms around her body had been when he carried her to his car. It was just as warm and reassuring, too, reminding her she wasn’t alone and that someone strong and capable truly did have her back—even if it was only for tonight.

Kenna nodded her thanks and squeezed her fingers around the detective’s solid grip. “Thank you. Again.”

“Don’t worry, Counselor. I’m keeping tabs on what you owe me.”

Kenna hoped that his teasing tone was genuine, because she felt like smiling. Only, the shots had deadened the left side of her face and she couldn’t tell if she’d smiled or not. The stiffness from the swelling and the raw ache of the open wounds finally disappeared with a numbing relief.

She squeezed her eyes shut and held on while the doctor worked on the long, deep cuts. He’d already pulled her hair off her forehead and cheek and anchored it off her face with one of those caps she’d seen doctors wear into surgery. Although she couldn’t actually see what the doctor was doing, she felt the warmth of the sterile solution he squirted over her cuts and tasted miniscule grit and the coppery tang of her own blood at the corner of her lips before someone wiped it away. She felt the tugs on her skin and heard a couple of concerned sighs and quick orders to the nurse while he glued and sutured and applied tiny butterfly bandages to the wounds.

“I think we’re finally done.” The doctor rolled his stool away from the table and stood.

The left side of Kenna’s face was still numb, her eyelid droopy from the anesthetic, when she finally let go of Keir’s hand. He and the nurse helped her sit up and swing her legs over the edge of the table while Dr. McBride rattled off wound-care instructions and washed his hands. He shone a light into her eyes one more time, checking her pupil reaction, before smiling and giving her permission to leave on the proviso that she contact her personal physician Monday morning.

The nurse rolled aside the stainless steel tray piled with bloodied gauze and various tubes of antibiotics and skin glue. After depositing the sharps on the tray in the disposal bin, the nurse handed her several sheets of printed instructions and a package of sterile gauze pads and tape. Meanwhile the doctor reminded her of the symptoms to watch out for that might indicate the injury to her brain was getting worse.

“Thank you, Dr. McBride.” Kenna spoke slowly to articulate around the numbness beside her mouth. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“You’re lucky you can’t remember what happened to you, Ms. Parker.” He reached out and shook her hand, holding on for a few compassionate seconds. “If the amnesia turns out to be permanent, perhaps that’s a good thing. I can’t imagine how frightening an attack like that would be. You take care.”

After Dr. McBride and the nurse had gone, Kenna tilted her gaze to the detective still standing beside the examination table. “So why don’t I feel lucky?”

“Because you don’t know who did this to you. And you’re afraid he or she might come back to finish the job.”

Exactly. “I think I liked you better when you held my hand and didn’t say anything.”

Keir slid his hands into the pockets of his charcoal slacks and grinned. “And here I thought you didn’t like me at all, Counselor.”

Kenna couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t have found this man charming. True, he seemed to be a few years younger than she was, but not enough to make any awkward difference. She had a feeling his sarcastic sense of humor was very much like her own, and she owed him more than she could repay for rescuing her and standing by her through this whole, tortuous ordeal. She tried to match his smile. “Tell me again why we’re supposed to be enemies? I hurt you, didn’t I? Hurt someone you care about. Oh, God, I didn’t sue you, did I?”

“No. You didn’t sue me.” He reached over to pluck the surgical cap off her head and let her hair fall around her face. “According to the doctor, I’d better not fill in the blanks. He said that in order for your memory to recover you need to figure out the missing details in your brain for yourself.”

That wasn’t all Dr. McBride had cautioned her about. “If it comes back at all.”

“You want to try again?”

“Try what?”

The detective pulled out his phone to show her a picture of a man wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie and blue jeans. “Do you recognize this man?”

Kenna studied the image for a few seconds. “Did he do this to me?”

“I can’t say.”

“Because you don’t know? Or because you want me to tell you who he is.”

Keir’s firm mouth eased into a grin. “Can you identify this guy?”

She looked again. Even if she could remember the attack, there was little to identify in the picture. The man stood in the shadows behind a parked car, beneath a harsh circle of light from a street lamp creating shadows that rendered his face a black void that reminded her of the Grim Reaper.

“No. I don’t know him.” Not even the clothes looked familiar. She tucked the loose hair behind her ears. “What if I never remember what happened to me? How good a detective are you? Can KCPD solve a crime like that? I may not remember clients and faces, but I remember my books and law school and what it takes to make a good case. I can’t imagine getting a conviction if the victim herself isn’t a reliable witness. Any decent defense attorney would fry me in court.”

Keir’s eyes darkened to an unreadable midnight blue, and the grin disappeared. She’d struck a nerve there. Something to do with shredding his case again, she imagined. A fist squeezed around Kenna’s heart. She didn’t want whatever had happened between them in the past to ruin this...what? Friendship? Attraction? Maybe she was the only one imagining a connection between them. What if he was just a good cop following through on an investigation and she could have been any citizen he’d taken an oath to protect? Maybe she was more addled in the head than she knew and she couldn’t tell the difference between being kind and caring.

Kenna dropped her feet to the floor and stood, reaching for Keir when he turned away. “What did I just say? I reminded you of something. What did I do to you?”

His cell phone vibrated, creating an audible buzz in the silence of the room while she waited for him to answer.

“Keir?”

But an explanation wasn’t coming. Keir read the summons on the screen as it buzzed again. “The doc said I couldn’t use my phone in here, but I need to take this.”

An instinctive response to ask a different question—to get him to open up about something else before she steered the conversation back to what she really wanted to know—kicked in. “Who’s calling you before dawn?”

“My partner. I asked him to do a wider search grid around the alley where I found you, see if he could find a primary crime scene or at least where you parked your car. He’s searching to find the guy I showed you, too.”

“He’s a person of interest, isn’t he?”

“I spotted him in the general vicinity where I found you. Don’t know if he was sizing up a mark, if he was watching the alley to see if anyone noticed you or if he just had nothing better to do on a Friday night. I’d sure like to talk to him.” The phone buzzed impatiently, and Keir backed toward the door. “I’ll be out in the lobby.”

Manipulating the conversation to get to the answer she needed was starting to feel like second nature to her. Had she possessed this stubborn streak before the attack? “Tell me why you called me the Terminator earlier. It didn’t sound like a compliment.”

“I’ll ask up front about getting you some clothes, too, since the CSI took your suit and shoe to the lab.”

This conversation wasn’t done. Kenna walked right up to him and fingered the lapel of his gray tweed jacket. She rubbed her thumb over the crimson smear staining the nubby material. “You’d better ask about a change of clothes for you, too. You’ve got blood on your jacket. My blood.”

“I’m coming back.” The gap—both literal and figurative—widened between them as he pulled the material from her fingers. Then he put the phone to his ear and turned away. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

Kenna hugged her arms around her weary body and watched the door close behind him. Keir had managed to be supportive and evasive at the same time. “Run, you clever boy.”

Clever boy. Where had that phrase come from? While she’d seen glimpses of a boyish charm, there was certainly nothing immature about Keir Watson. Not in his stature, his tone or his demeanor.

“Clever boy,” she muttered the words again, mentally chasing the blip of a memory that floated through her head. “It’s from a TV show.” She watched TV. She had a hobby. “Blue box. British accents.” One lightbulb, however dim, finally turned on inside her head. “Dr. Who.”

She seemed to be in pretty good shape, so she wasn’t a full-blown couch potato. Who did she watch it with? Family? Friends? A significant other? Why hadn’t whoever she watched that show with come to see her at the hospital? Okay, sure, there was that whole thing with the missing phone and purse and relying on the police to track down where she lived and worked—but wasn’t someone missing her? Alarmed that it was five in the morning and she hadn’t come home?

Or was someone at home the danger she needed to fear? The person who’d gotten so angry that he or she had tried to kill her? How should she handle this? What was her next step? How was she supposed to know who to trust?

“Take a breath,” she warned herself before panic reclaimed her.

Kenna hugged her arms around the thin cotton of her gown and glanced around the room, looking for answers. Looking for someone to talk to. Looking for a friend or sympathetic doctor or polite detective or anyone who could keep this helpless, lonely feeling from seeping in as surely as the air-conditioned chill that dotted her skin with goose bumps.

She had a feeling she wasn’t used to relying on others to take care of her. Kenna eyed the soiled remains from treating her injuries that the nurse had wheeled into the corner. She wasn’t used to being weak like this, forced to put her trust in people she didn’t know. Had she put her trust in the wrong person, making herself a sitting duck who’d had no clue she was about to be attacked?

Fear crawled across her skin as the knowledge she would have to trust someone to help her through this sank in. Where was home? How was she supposed to get there? What was she supposed to do with herself the next morning? And the day after that?

Her gaze drifted over to the ER room’s metal door. She’d put her trust in Keir Watson tonight. Not that he’d left her much choice. He’d allowed her a token argument, then had swept her up into his arms, bundled her into his car and driven her here. But she could have asked him to leave the treatment room at any time, and she hadn’t. She wanted him with her.

Crazy as it seemed, Kenna knew Keir better than anyone else in her life. Once she’d come to and realized her brain had turned into Swiss cheese, it felt as if her whole life had reset. There was the time before the assault where her memory was riddled with empty spaces and vague shadows, and there was the time after—when she’d stumbled into Keir Watson’s arms. He was the person she’d known the longest in the part of her life she was more certain of. And his abrupt departure to chat with his partner left her feeling about as vulnerable and confused and alone as she’d been when she first woke up with her cheek in a puddle of her own blood on the cold, gritty concrete.

Chapter Three

A sharp rap at the exam room door rescued Kenna from the maddening examination of her thoughts. She turned as quickly as the ball bearings inside her skull would allow and smiled, eager to apologize for showing Keir Watson anything but gratitude. “You came back.”

“I haven’t been anywhere yet.”

Not Keir. Not a familiar face. Her smile quickly flatlined and she backed her hip against the examination table as an older man with neatly trimmed hair that held more salt than pepper in it dropped what looked like a carry-on bag on the chair inside the door.

“Kenna, dear. Look at you. How horrible. Does it hurt?” He swallowed her up in a hug and planted a chaste kiss on her numb lips, giving Kenna the chance to do little more than wedge her hands between them and gasp in protest. “Of course it hurts. When I heard you’d been attacked...”

Kenna straight-armed him out of her personal space, pushing the older man back to get a better look at his face, hoping for a ping of recognition as he rattled on.

“...I paged the doctor. Pulled him out of a room down the hall and explained who I was so I could get a report.” He squeezed her shoulders, threatening to hug her again. “He said you could have died.”

“I’m sorry. I...?” Once again, it was disadvantage Kenna. Something kick in. Please.

The older man’s eyebrows, as thick and wild as his hair was neatly cut, arched above his brown eyes like two fuzzy caterpillars. “You’ve forgotten me. The doctor said you had gaps in your memory—that you didn’t even remember what happened to you.” He covered her hand, capturing it against the front of the cashmere sweater he wore. “I’m your emergency contact. I’m the one who faxed your medical history to the hospital. It’s me. Hellie.”

What kind of silly name was that for a man? She tried to place the face, thinking those bushy eyebrows that so desperately needed a trim should look familiar. His skin was perfectly tanned, from too much time spent either on a golf course or in a pricey salon. And his teeth were unnaturally white. He was barely taller than she was in her bare feet, although he seemed reasonably fit for a man his age. “Hellie?” She repeated the odd name.

“Good grief, my dear, I’ve known you for fifteen years.” Known her? How well? “Here. I’ll prove it.” He reached into the pocket of his pressed khaki slacks to pull out his billfold. “Here’s my license, along with a picture of us with your mother and father.”

“No. Wait.” Kenna put a hand on his wrist to stop him. If Dr. McBride had talked to him about her condition, this man must have shown proof of a connection to her. The doctor had said she needed her memories to return to her naturally, that she needed to discover for herself what she knew and what she’d forgotten, or else she’d never be able to trust her own judgment again. “Let me figure it out.”

The pungent scent of cigar smoke clinging to his clothes sparked a glimmer of recognition. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and she’d already noticed she wasn’t, either. Not even an indentation from where one might have been stolen. Good. She hadn’t forgotten a husband. But she had forgotten whatever relationship she shared with this man who thought he had the right to kiss her. Although it hadn’t been much of a kiss. But perhaps the lack of any toe-curling response and spark of recognition had more to do with the anesthetic and swelling around her mouth rather than any innate repulsion. Still, she seriously hoped she could rule out boyfriend as a possibility.