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“No drugs,” he said, holding up a bottle of bourbon. “Just booze.”
And he’d save that for later, when he was sure he’d need it.
Missy was still staring at him, giving careful consideration to his black hair and dark complexion. “You’re a terrorist?”
“No, goddammit,” he snapped. In the army, everybody was supposed to be one color. Green. So he’d laughed it off when war buddies called him Captain A-Rab or teased him about being a Muj. But the assumptions people made about him now were no laughing matter. “I’m just going to sleep for an hour.”
“No you’re not,” she said shrewdly, narrowing her eyes. “You’re going into someone else’s head, like you just went into mine. Aren’t you?”
Clever girl, Ray thought. But he hadn’t any use for clever girls right now. “Will you shut up, so I can close my eyes?”
“How do you know I’m not just going to take your wallet and walk out the door once you’re asleep?”
“Because I peeked into your memories and I know you’re not a thief,” Ray replied. “Now, look, I’ll pay you another hundred bucks to just shut up and let me close my eyes.”
With the promise of cold hard cash, she went silent and Ray tried not to think about how nervous he really was. When his victims were in the same room, it was easy enough to enter their minds, but he’d blown it today with Layla Bahset. She’d nearly swallowed him up in the sands of her mindscape. Now he knew to be wary.
Flopping onto the hotel bed, Ray took a picture of Layla Bahset from his pocket. It wasn’t a glamorous photo; it was from a directory of mental health professionals, and showed her with her hair swept back and a pair of glasses precariously balanced on the bridge of her nose. Ray just needed the photo to help him focus. To help him remember that she had no power over him now. And if he could channel all his strength, she couldn’t hide from him. He’d have to enter the maze of her mind from afar, with just the memory of her cat-green eyes as his guide. He’d stared into those eyes enough times to remember them—he’d pleaded with her to believe him when he said that they had the wrong guy. It was a thin thread of shared memory with which they were joined, but now, hopefully, he could follow it back to her.
Once, he’d been at her mercy, but tonight Layla’s fate would be in his hands.
She’d taken sleeping pills to calm her nerves, so when Layla was half awakened by the rush of air by her ear, she told herself it was nothing. Just an all-too-vivid dream. Then she heard the sound again. A pant, bestial and strange. A breath not her own. A shadow fell across her, as if the darkness was a physical weight pressing down on her.
She wasn’t alone.
Even though she’d locked the bolts on her door, even though she’d checked every window latch as part of her nightly routine, and set her alarms, someone was here with her. The certainty of it froze her heart in her chest and shot a liquid chill through her veins.
Layla opened her eyes slowly, an eternity passing as she lifted her lids by creeping degrees. It was dark, but the casino lights of the Vegas skyline flashed garish in the night and briefly lit his silhouette in slashes of green and magenta. The stranger stared at her, his breathing heavier now that he knew she was awake. She couldn’t see the whole of him, only sense the strain of bone and sinew beneath his powerful muscles. Layla stifled a groan of terror, all but paralyzed.
He was an enormous man. Or was he something else? His chest was a mass of muscle. There was froth upon his … snout? It was as if she could see lust trembling upon his sleek haunches and it made her acutely aware of her body beneath the Egyptian cotton sheets. The way he stared at her made her feel vulnerable, obscene. Yet there must have been a time when it pleased her to have men admire her body, because a primal and utterly foreign rush of pleasure ran through her blood right alongside the fear. And she felt suddenly quite unlike herself, filled with some carnal delight that a man would seek her out in her own lair, that any man would dare.
Questions to try, answer or die, what am I?
As the little rhyme echoed in her mind, Layla slammed back into herself. The pleasure was gone and she pulled the sheet over her body. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice a low, terrified whisper. “I don’t know you.”
His answer was a snort of taurine rage that echoed through the bedroom. “You’re still so pretty when you lie…. “
Layla hissed, pushing herself up so that her back was against the silken headboard of the bed. “I want answers,” he said, coming closer. “I want my life back. I want justice for what you did to me.”
What had she done to him? Was her eal, or some figment of her imagination, one of her lost memories come hauntingly to life? In desperation, she whispered the only words she could think to utter. “Are you the man from the desert?”
The words fell from her lips before she could stop them, and in response, she thought she saw furious flared nostrils. She thought she heard the thunder of hooves on her floor as he shouted, “You know who I am!”
“I don’t,” Layla said, shaking her head so violently that it dizzied her. “I can’t remember.”
“Then I’ll remember for you,” he said, his weight settling on the bed as he crawled overtop of her. “Let me in. Let me inside you.”
Was he a rapist? She’d be overtaken by his bulk, helpless against his size and strength. Layla shrank back, the sheet bunching up to expose one long bronzed leg all the way to the thigh. She saw the glint of sharp horns, as if he were intent upon goring her. Intent upon slashing through the sheets. Intent upon impaling her. She threw her hands in front of her as a defense, then heard herself scream.
This time, Ray expected the barren landscape of her mind. But there were subtle changes. The pyramid was more prominent, and he saw an entrance made of rotted old wood and iron. Maybe he could charge it—break it open and lay her memories bare. Inside the mindscape he was as strong as a bull. Ray threw himself against the entrance, his massive shoulder rolling into his charge. Wood splintered and he heard the groan of hinges. He charged again, and again, smashing and bashing for what felt like hours. He ached with the effort, his throat parched with thirst, but all at once, the entrance gave way and he found himself standing in the labyrinth of an ancient Egyptian tomb.
He found only one torch burning, and he carried it through the sand-filled passage until he heard a low growl. He didn’t see Layla’s memories. Instead, amidst the glittering gold and carnelian pillars, a lioness appeared and said, “You shouldn’t be here. Men who come near me die. They die. Choking, gasping … “
Shit! It was no lion, it was her. It was Layla Bahset. The same cat-green eyes. This was the way his cool, clinical interrogator envisioned herself in her own mind. Or maybe she was just trying to scare him off. “Don’t threaten me.”
“He’ll hurt me if he finds you here,” she said. “More importantly, he’ll hurt you. He’s watching … “
“Who?” Ray asked. “The guards? The sick bastards who got off on watching me bleed? I’ve already taken care of them. They aren’t ever going to hurt me again, and neither are you.”
“I’m different now,” the lioness said. “I help people now. I heal them.”
“I don’t care what you do,” Ray growled, though that wasn’t strictly true. “I want to know why I was pulled out of my unit in Afghanistan. I want to know why I was arrested. I want a name. I want to know who it was that accused me of treason.”
“My memories are locked away from me in the antechamber,” she said. “And even if I could give you a name, what good would it do?”
What good would it do? The question made crimson fury pass like a taunting veil before his eyes. If he had a name, he could confront his accuser. He could prove his innocence. He wouldn’t have to live as a fugitive anymore. He could be a free man.
“I can’t free you unless you free me,” she said, with a look of anguish. “Save me.”
Had she read his mind now? Ray was getting confused. “How can I save you?”
“Make me feel something,” she said.
He could have blinked only once, but when he did, he no longer saw a lioness on the ground, but a woman on her hands and knees, staring up at him with a needy gaze. Naked. Completely naked. He couldn’t look away, unable to tear his eyes from the way her hair flowed like a dark river over her bare shoulders and the elegantly arched curve of her back.
Layla seemed to luxuriate in his openmouthed fascination. She let him look at her glistening body in vivid color. The taut nipples, dark as berries. The thatch of dark hair between her thighs. She let him stare. She was enticing him, daring him to come closer and touch her. “Make me want something. Make my pulse quicken with excitement. Make me sigh with longing. Make my body weak with pleasure. Make me, make me, make me.”
Oh, the things he wanted to make her do …
But it had to be another trap. Just as she’d tried to bury him in sand this afternoon, now she was trying to make him lose himself in lust. He had no intention of becoming a desiccated carcass in the ruin of her mindscape. And yet, the heat of her wanton invitation was so strong that Ray felt himself harden in response.
If she understood the monster he was now, if she knew the mixed-up milieu of desire and hatred for her that swirled inside him, she’d run. Instead, she beckoned and Ray was atop her before he knew it, his body crushing down on hers. She didn’t recoil, not even when she must see him for the horned monster that he was. She stretched her hands up as he lowered his head. Together, they rent the sand, with … his horns or her claws, he couldn’t tell.
He was angry with himself, and angry with her. With his blood running hot, he’d nearly forgot what he’d come here for. He’d come here for answers, for justice. Nothing less would satisfy.
And then she asked, “Will you save me?”
Chapter 3
What lives without a body, and speaks without a tongue? Everyone can hear it, but it’s seen by none.
Her plea was an echo and it tore something inside him, making him thrash. Another sound followed, shrill as a siren, and he thrashed again. Something shredded as a cacophony of beeps exploded in his brain. Someone was shaking him, pulling him out of Layla Bahset’s mind and back into his own body.
It was the teenaged hooker that woke him up. A good thing, too. The alarm clock was ringing and probably had been for some time. What he’d seen inside Layla’s dream had nearly unraveled his sanity and now a headache roared behind his eyes with renewed vengeance.
“What’s the matter with you?” Missy asked, eyeing the shreds of fabric in his hands. He looked down to see that he’d torn the bedsheets, ripped them with such violence that lint floated in the air around them like fairy dust. What’s more, he was burning up, and the motel room was fetid with his sweat. Then there was the blood, freely flowing from both his nostrils.
Missy took a few steps back. “Dude, are you sick? Are you trippin’?”
What was wrong with him? Ray used the ruined sheet to soak up the blood. He felt as chapped and dehydrated as if he’d been trekking a real desert. “Get me something to drink,” he barked, and tried to get his shaking under control while she padded across his room and returned with a cloudy glass of his bourbon. He drank it down in three swallows and it burned all the way.
Squinting his eyes back into focus, Ray saw that his bag was open, his papers all over the floor. There it all was; all the clues and clippings, the file folders and photographs. “You went through my things?”
“I’m not a thief,” the hooker said. “But I am a snoop … or didn’t you see that when you were snooping in my head?”
A group of hooting partiers crowed about their winnings in the parking lot outside and Ray winced at the noise. The motel room door did little to block the sound and it bothered him. Everything bothered him. The colors, the smells, the sounds.
“So who is she?” Missy asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it. In fact, I’ll pay you double to just shut up.”
“Double! No shit, big spenda!” the hooker gasped in feigned astonishment as she waved Layla Bahset’s picture around. “Seriously, who is she?”
Layla Bahset was his tormentor, the cool-eyed bitch who had tried to win his trust—tried to convince him that there was something between them. But it had only been a trick to get him to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. She’d abandoned him in that hellhole. She was a fiend. But now he’d seen inside her mind and … What had he seen?
He should know. He’d destroyed enough minds since he’d been cursed with these powers. He’d left his jailers and torturers trapped and ruined, afraid and devastated. But he wasn’t sure that even he could have taken all her memories and buried them in sand. And he hadn’t done it. Someone else had. Someone else, someone more powerful, had gotten to her first. The realization rocked his world. There might be others, just like him …
“You should really keep all your notes on a laptop or something,” Missy was saying. “Otherwise you just seem like a paranoid nut job.”
He wasn’t paranoid. They’d taken his dog tags from him and put a black bag over his head. They’d bound him with a plastic zip cord that cut into his wrists. His protestations of innocence had made no difference at all. These were just the times.
Ray’s nose seemed to have stopped bleeding, so he threw the bloody rags onto the floor. Then, with a shaking hand, he reached for the glass and the bourbon and filled it. “You can go now.”
Missy didn’t move. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
“Will you just get the hell out?”
Missy snorted. “Are you going to make me?”
He couldn’t make her do anything in this state. He could barely hold his drink. “Fine, stay or go, I don’t care, but if you stay, put some clothes on.”
“I am wearing clothes,” Missy objected, straightening her miniskirt so that it covered more of her legs. “Besides, you were all hot and bothered in your sleep. So what’s the matter now? Don’t you want me?”
He realized she was actually propositioning him. “Not gonna happen, Jailbait.”
“Why? I don’t charge much. Don’t you like me? I’m not your type?”
“Ask me again in ten years,” Ray said, too weak to get up and gather his things, and still thinking about the woman who was very much his type, all naked in the sand.
Missy arranged some of Ray’s notes in a new pattern on the floor. “Maybe I can help you find the guy who ratted you out. That’s who you’re looking for in all these little pieces of paper, isn’t it?”
“Nobody ratted me out.” Ray took another swallow of liquor. It soothed his nerves. “Somebody flat-out lied about me.”
“And you think this woman in the picture knows who it was?”
Ray nodded. But a fat lot of good it was going to do him now, with her mind wiped clean. He’d hit a dead end and now Missy was laughing at him. “What the hell is so funny, Missy?”
“This chick is a shrink but you were trying to get into her head.”
“Hilarious.” Ray smiled wanly, throwing her a wad of cash. He guessed she’d earned it.
He’ll hurt me if he finds you here, the lioness had said. He’s watching. Was it just the crazy talk of a woman who’d had her mindscape destroyed by someone like Ray? Possibly. But she’d asked him for help and he’d sensed that she was actually in danger.
He shouldn’t give a damn. But he did.
“Hey, Jailbait,” he said to Missy, who was on her way out the door. “Maybe you can help out … I want you to follow Layla Bahset.”
Layla gasped fully awake. The horned monster had only been a dream. She was safe and alone in her own bed. The only thing she had to fear was the syrupy sweetness running through her veins, a dull but incessant throb between her legs. She still remembered the feel of the monster that had crawled into the cradle of her thighs and she didn’t have to be Dr. Freud to understand the symbolism. Could there be a more potent icon of masculinity than a well-endowed bull?
She thought she wasn’t the kind of woman who responded to things like that, but now the sensual tension streaked across the canvas of her body and trailed off, leaving her … unfinished. Incomplete. Wanting. It was better when she didn’t want things, when she didn’t need things, when she didn’t feel like some kind of flower bud that wouldn’t blossom.
A swath of morning sun made its way up the stark white bed and she watched it move over the pillows. Dear God, how long had she slept?
It wasn’t until she slipped out of bed that she saw the jagged rips in the beige silk headboard. The fabric was slashed, like some horned animal had pierced it in the midst of angry passion, and Layla’s heart seized. Throwing on a robe, she ran to check the bolts on her front door. All the locks were still in place. The alarm was set. There was no sign that anyone had been here. No sign at all—except for her torn headboard.
Layla returned to the bedroom and stepped out onto the balcony. The whole expanse of Las Vegas spread out beneath her at a comforting distance. Unless the man in her dreams could fly, there was no way he was actually in her high-rise bedroom last night. It was a dream. A nightmare. She must have slashed the headboard herself. Her stalker had terrorized her so thoroughly that she could no longer tell what was real.
She knew the old saying. Physician, Heal Thyself. It wasn’t going to cut it anymore. She’d built her life on a shaky foundation and now it all seemed ready to come falling down. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that it was time to ask for help.
She should’ve invited Nate Jaffe to her condo, but it was Layla’s compulsion to pretend everything was fine that made her agree to meet Nate for dinner. She donned her lovely new red dress, the gift from Isabel. Pearls might have been a nice touch, but the only jewelry she ever wore was a sixpence coin on a long chain around her neck. Her first memory was finding that coin in her hand, and now she was afraid to be without it. Once she was dressed for dinner, she put on her happy face and hailed a cab. And why not? In this city, everyone wore a mask. From the feathered showgirls at the Rio to the gondoliers at the Venetian. In Las Vegas, how was anyone to know what was real?
A young blonde teenager in a miniskirt was standing by the street, sucking on a red Popsicle, probably in some vain hope it would cool her off. Technically, prostitution wasn’t legal in Vegas, but it was a technicality barely observed and it was clear to Layla that the young girl was working. Another lost soul in need of saving …
The cab ride to the casino was brief. Stepping from the taxi onto the curb, Layla was hit with an oppressive wall of heat. It made her dark hair wilt, her knees soften, and little beads of perspiration gather on the back of her neck. The Egyptian motif of the Luxor had always bothered her. She told herself it was because the decor was a callow mockery of her ethnic heritage, but it was more than that. Layla couldn’t bear to look upon the statuary outside, and having to actually pass under the sphinx at the entrance of the casino made her shudder. What’s more, the inside of the pyramid was a claustrophobic maze of confusion. Balconies hung out over the floor, elevators moved along diagonal paths, and the lighting seemed low and eerie.
It shouldn’t be so stark, she thought to herself. Ancient Egypt was a riot of paint and color. Why these thoughts crowded her mind, she couldn’t say and, already upset, Layla wasn’t sure how she was going to get through this night.
At the restaurant inside, Dr. Jaffe had already ordered for her, and now smiled expectantly from across the table. Layla gave him what she hoped was her fondest smile. They ate. They talked. He complimented her dress. It was all very pleasant. After all, Nate Jaffe was a very nice man. More importantly, he was a psychiatrist and she needed his help.
As she dragged her fork over a nest of green asparagus sprouts in a hollandaise sauce, Layla thought about what she should say. I can’t remember who I am. No, if she started with that, he’d realize how long she’d been pretending, and feel betrayed. Someone is stalking me. That would certainly get his attention, but he’d insist on calling the police. I think someone can hunt me down inside my own mind. If she told him that, he’d worry about her sanity. Which, admittedly, he should.
“Don’t you like your filet?” Dr. Jaffe asked, peering over his spectacles.
“You know I’m indifferent to food,” Layla said, then dared to glance up at him. People weren’t meant to be indifferent, were they? They were meant to enjoy the pleasure of taste. They were meant to inhale beautiful scents that made them sigh. People were built to feel strong emotions other than fear, weren’t they? It was something hardwired, right down to the lizard core of the brain. She was meant to feel things, to taste things, to take pleasure in things, even if she couldn’t remember who she really was. “Would you kiss me?” Layla asked.
Nate Jaffe stopped midsentence. She had no idea what he’d been saying, and from the look on his face, neither did he. She’d kissed him before.
She’d gone to bed with him, too. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. But in the past, she’d never felt more than the faintly soothing sensation of skin upon skin. Last night, in her dream with the monster, she’d felt something more. Now she wanted the man she was dating to take the spark inside her and coax it into a flame.
Dr. Jaffe didn’t make any sudden moves and when he leaned forward to kiss her, Layla closed her eyes. It was a very proper kiss, one borne of sincere affection, but it didn’t make her feel like she had last night. Nothing had changed, and even the decorative hieroglyphs on the wall, stolen from some ancient tomb, mocked her with their message of doom.
It was the hieroglyphs—not the kiss—that made the blood drain from her face.
“Layla?” Nate Jaffe was staring at her, but she couldn’t reply. “What’s wrong?”
I can read hieroglyphics, she thought. That’s what’s wrong. Among so very many other things. The symbols swam before her eyes, taunting her. There had to be a simple explanation for it. Maybe she’d been an archeology student in college. Maybe her parents had been curators of a museum. If she remembered her past, it would somehow make sense. “I have to tell you something,” Layla began.
Dr. Jaffe’s face reddened and he spread his palms on the table. “You don’t have to say it, Layla. I’ve known for some time that your heart isn’t in this relationship.”
Layla’s mouth fell slightly open. “Nate—”
“Are you going to deny it?”
Layla brought her lips back together, unable to tell even one more lie. A fatal moment of silence passed between them before he looked away. “We’re both adults,” he said, motioning to the waiter for the bill. “Let’s just end things while we can still be friends.”
She hadn’t come here to break up with him. She’d come here for his help, but given the hurt in his eyes, she didn’t dare ask him for anything right now. She’d call him tomorrow. Things would be better in the morning. They’d have to be.
He paid the bill and escorted her out of the hotel like the gentleman that he was. As they passed out of the lobby onto the street outside, he even gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out,” he said, and then, because he looked so forlorn, Layla pressed a very soft kiss to his cheek.
After four tours of duty, scouting missions were a thing of second nature to Ray. What amazed him about Vegas was the ease with which he could hide in plain sight. Poised near the Luxor entrance with a disposable camera in hand, pretending to take photos of the sphinx, he knew the precise moment that Layla Bahset stepped out of the casino wearing that smokinghot red dress.