Enigma

“I don’t care. You owe me some explanations,” she replied. “I’ve not only put my job on the line, but also my sense of what’s right. You owe me something. Were you born with the mental telepathy? I’ve heard that twins sometimes share that kind of awareness with each other.”

“No, we weren’t born with the ability. As twins we were close, but normal. The ability came later.” He’d promised he wouldn’t get into her thoughts without her permission but as her eyes narrowed he wished he could see exactly what she was thinking.

“You aren’t going to tell me the truth, are you?” she finally asked.

“Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

“But it’s not the whole truth.”

“I can’t tell you everything.” A deep weariness washed over him and reminded him that he was still not himself, still physically and mentally weak. “Willa, for the past six months you’ve been the most important person in my life. It was your spirit, your optimism and care, that got me through the darkness. Hopefully very soon my brother will contact me and I’ll be out of your life. The last thing I want to do is give you information that, if somehow these men find you, will put you at risk. I care about you too much to do that.”

Her gaze softened. “It’s hard to argue with you when you use that kind of logic.”

“Then don’t,” he replied.

“You’re tired. Your color isn’t good,” she said briskly and stood. “Why don’t you take a little nap while we wait for your brother to contact you?”

He nodded, too exhausted to argue with her. He stretched out against the sofa cushions. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to contact the hospital and see if anyone knows anything about your whereabouts. It will seem suspicious if I don’t. Everyone there knew you were a special project of mine.” She blushed at the words and then disappeared into the kitchen.

He closed his eyes. She wasn’t the only one who had considered him a special project. Despite his weariness every muscle in his body tightened as he thought of the man who had destroyed his life.

Uncle Ken, that was what he’d had the two orphaned twins call him when he’d taken custody of them after their parents’ deaths in a car accident. He’d taken the grieving boys from the only home they’d known to a small house in a remote area. For the next eight years the boys were isolated from everyone except Uncle Ken, who gave them weekly injections and educated and tested them.

His muscles began to relax as he heard Willa on the phone in the next room. He shoved away those dark memories of the past and instead focused on the familiar, comforting sound of her voice.

Within minutes he was asleep and dreaming, and in his dream he stood in the dark, cold forest with his brother, free for the first time in fifteen years.

Despite the danger he knew they were in, his senses exploded, alive with sensations. The cold tickle of grass beneath his bare feet, the rustling sound of the wind through the last of the autumn leaves, the clean, sharp scent of the air, all combined to give him a heady rush.

The moment of exhilaration was shattered as the alarm of impending danger thrummed through his veins and rang in his head. Run. Jared didn’t know if it was his own thought or Jack’s, but he followed the command.

He ran with no thought to where he was going, only the need to get away. Both he and his brother were in perfect physical condition and Jared ran like a marathon man, his only desire to put as many miles as possible between himself and the place where he’d been held.

In his dream his heart pumped and his legs worked to carry him farther and farther away. Freedom sang through him with each mile he traveled.

They were going to do it. They were finally going to get away, to be free. Success filled him as his legs continued to pump.

And then he was crossing a highway and headlights appeared from nowhere and he saw the car and knew he was about to be hit. Then pain—excruciating pain.

“Jared, it’s okay. You’re having a nightmare.” Willa’s voice cut through the intense pain, her slender hand cool on his forehead as he jerked awake.

With a ragged breath he sat up. “Sorry,” he said as she stepped away from the sofa.

“No need to apologize. Want to talk about it?”

He smiled, as always touched by her concern for him. “It was just a bad dream.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I remember a man gave me a ride in a big truck for a while and then I got out and was walking along the side of the road. I was hit by a car. Do you know who hit me?” he asked.

She shook her head. “According to the police officer who accompanied you into the hospital it was a hit-and-run. A couple from another car saw it happen and thought the driver might be drunk. They called for help and stayed with you until the ambulance and police arrived. Is that what you were dreaming about?”

“Yeah, the accident. How long was I asleep?”

“About an hour. I made you some soup if you feel like you could eat.”

“Yeah, I am hungry.” He got up from the sofa and stretched to unkink his muscles, aware of her gaze sliding across the width of his shoulders, down the length of his legs, before she quickly looked away.

“Jared, last night before I went to the hospital …” She broke off but he knew exactly what she was talking about. “I had a crazy dream.” She met his gaze and he didn’t have to read her mind to know what she was asking of him.

“It was a beautiful dream,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Was it real?”

“As real as a dream can be,” he replied. A wave of sadness swept through him as he realized the dream of Willa was all he’d have to take away from his time with her.

WILLA SET THE BOWL of soup in front of him and then sat in the chair opposite him at the table. She still wasn’t sure what to think about him, but she believed he was in some kind of trouble. She didn’t understand it, found his most simple explanation cryptic and even questioned the reality of a twin brother.

She had no idea what kind of brain damage he might have suffered because of the accident that had put him in her hospital, had no idea if what was going on now was a result of his brain not functioning on all cylinders.

There was no question that he could read her thoughts, that somehow he was able to communicate with her in her mind.

“I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” he said, breaking in to her thoughts.

“An appetite is a good sign.” She got up to get the saucepan to refill his bowl. As she stood close to him she caught the scent of him, a clean male coupled with a hint of something wild. She focused her attention on filling the bowl and tried not to think about the hot dream they had shared.

“Tell me about Paul,” he said.

She nearly dropped the saucepan in his lap. “How do you know about him?” she asked as she carried the pan back to the stove burner.

His electric-blue eyes held her gaze. “All I really know is that you thought about him a lot over the past six months and when you did, you were sad.”

She returned to her chair. “It definitely isn’t fair, this gift of yours,” she exclaimed. “You know way too much about me and I don’t know anything about you.”

“Paul was your lover?” he asked, obviously ignoring her comments. He placed his spoon down on the table and looked at her with a single-minded intent.

She leaned back and worried a hand through her hair. “Paul Callahan was my high-school sweetheart, the only man I really dated and the one I thought I was going to marry. About eighteen months ago he broke up with me. He told me he wanted to see what was out there, date other women and explore new experiences.”

“He hurt you,” Jared said.

She sighed. “For months after it happened, I was devastated. He’d given me no warning signs, no clue that he was unhappy, that he wanted anything different than me. The breakup was particularly hard because we shared the same friends, hung out in the same places. I finally decided I needed a fresh start in another city, a place to make new friends and build a new life, so I moved here from Kansas City.”

“Your Paul was a fool,” he said with conviction.

She laughed, surprised to discover that thoughts of Paul no longer hurt. “I like to think so,” she agreed. “Actually, I suppose I should be grateful to him that he decided he wanted out before we got married. A breakup is definitely easier than a divorce. What about you, any old lovers running around in your past?”

The spark of light in his eyes was instantly doused and he picked up his spoon once again. “No, nothing like that,” he replied.

She was twenty-six years old and she guessed him to be at least her age, perhaps a year or two older. She wanted to press him on the subject. Surely there had been some woman in his life who had meant something special to him, but there was a darkness in his eyes, a knotted muscle in his jaw, that let her know the subject was closed.

“I called the hospital while you were asleep. The consensus is that you awoke from the coma and were disoriented and wandered off. They’ve contacted the local authorities, hoping that somebody will find you and return you to the hospital.”

“Did they mention if anyone else had been by to see me?”

“I asked,” she replied. “And the answer was no, nobody else has made any inquiries about you.”

“That’s because they already know I’m gone.” He frowned and stared down into his soup bowl. “I hope nobody saw us leaving together last night.”

“I think if anyone would have seen us, we’d already know by now.” Despite the fact that she had no idea who was after him and what they might want, a small chill stole through her.

He finished the soup and she carried the bowl to the sink, where she rinsed it and placed it in the dishwasher. “You have no family?” he asked.

“My mother died five years ago after a long battle with cancer.” She leaned with her back against the cabinet, reluctant to return to the table where the scent of him made her remember the wild and wonderful dream they’d shared.

“It was during her illness that I decided I wanted to become a nurse,” she continued. “My father walked out on the two of us when I was four years old. I really don’t have any memories of him. So, no, I don’t have any family.” She’d once believed that Paul would be her family, that together they would have children and build a life filled with love and laughter.

Jared got up from the table and approached where she stood. “One of the strongest emotions I felt from you, one of the thoughts that was uppermost in your mind, was your loneliness.”

He stopped just in front of her, so close she only had to lean forward a little bit to touch him. Her mouth went ridiculously dry at his nearness. “I just haven’t taken the time to make too many friends here.” A nervous laugh escaped her. “You must never get lonely. I mean, anytime you feel that way you can just jump into somebody’s mind.”

“You’d be surprised at how unpleasant being in somebody else’s mind can be,” he replied. “But I never found it unpleasant to be in yours.”

He reached out and touched a strand of her hair that had escaped from the ponytail holder at the nape of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat. “So soft,” he murmured more to himself than to her. “I knew it would feel that way.”

Her heart slammed a quickened rhythm in her chest as he took a step closer to her, his fingers still entwined in her lock of hair.

At that moment her cell phone rang. She jumped away from him and he dropped his hand to his side. “Maybe that’s Jack,” he said, hope or some other emotion she was afraid to identify thick in his voice.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and answered, but it wasn’t Jack. It was Nancy from the hospital calling to chat about the gossip making the rounds with John Doe’s disappearance.

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