Guarding Jane Doe

“That was it?” Across from her he raised his eyebrows. “For God’s sake, woman, it was probably a prank directed at someone who worked there.”

“I told myself that.” Stung, she glared at him. “My first reaction was that it was meant for me, because it seemed to fit my situation, but then I realized just how ridiculous that was. Martine and I cleaned the office, finished the rest of our area, and went back to the company depot with the rest of the workers like usual. I always took the same bus home every night and got off at a stop only a few steps away from my place. Except when I got off at my stop that night I saw that the bus shelter had been papered over with flyers. They were bright yellow, and in big black letters was—was—”

This time she couldn’t control the shaking. Her head bent, she didn’t see the waitress pause by their table, but when Quinn pushed the full glass across to her she looked up.

“Drink.” His tone brooked no argument, but she shook her head at him anyway.

“I don’t—”

“I said drink.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “It’ll help.”

Reluctantly she raised the glass to her lips, opening her mouth just enough for a trickle of the amber liquid to pass down her throat. But even that miniscule amount was enough to distract her, at least temporarily.

“It’s awful,” she sputtered.

“It’s not awful, you heathen, it’s good Irish whiskey. Look at your hand now—steady as a damn rock.”

She had stopped shaking, Jane saw. But she was only at the beginning, and there was much more to come. If she took a drink each time the tremors started she’d have to be carried out by the time she finished telling him everything.

Quinn took up where she’d left off. “The flyers had the same message as what was on the computer monitors?”

Jane nodded. “It was raining a little, and at first I didn’t look up. When I did the bus was just pulling away, and it felt like those garish yellow posters were screaming at me, each one saying the same thing. I was sure that whoever had put them there was somewhere close by, watching me, and I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was inside my apartment.” She grimaced. “Not very brave of me, was it?”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. That’d be enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.” He pronounced his e’s to sound more like a’s, and despite herself she smiled faintly at hearing such a quaint turn of phrase coming from a man as tough and hard-bitten as McGuire. Her smile faded as she continued.

“That was nine weeks ago. Since then the messages have come every few days, and always in a different way.”

“Like how?” He reached for his drink, forgotten at her elbow, and took a thoughtful sip.

“Like being whitewashed on the inside of the window of an abandoned store that I pass on Sundays. Like being written on a scrap of paper and tucked into the serviette I took from a dispenser in the coffee shop I frequent before work—I still can’t figure out how he managed that one.”

“He knows your routine. He probably knows which table you usually choose to sit at, and the approximate time you’d show up, if you were going to be there at all that night. If you’d checked, you probably would have found the first half-dozen or so serviettes had been tampered with, just to make sure one of them got to you.” Quinn rubbed his jaw. “Of course, whoever’s doing this could be a woman. What else?”

“More of the same until this week. It’s getting worse—that’s why I eventually went to the police.” She looked away, her gaze fixed on nothing. “Three nights ago Martine and I were taking bags of garbage to the service elevator. I was coming down the corridor and I could see Martine at the elevator, throwing her bags in. Then it looked as if she fell forward into the elevator, and the doors closed.”

Her eyes closed briefly and then opened again. “Serge, our supervisor, and another man took the regular elevator down to the basement, because that was where the service elevator was preset to go when the cleaning staff was working. I stayed where I was, waiting for them to come back. I thought Martine had had a fainting spell or something, and I was out of my mind with worry for her. Then I saw the indicator light above the service elevator show that it was beginning to climb again, and I assumed that Serge and Julio had found her and were bringing her up in it. But when the doors opened, Martine was in there alone, and she was screaming.”

Nothing, not whiskey, not the fact that she was in a crowded room with people all around her, not even Quinn McGuire’s reassuringly broad-shouldered presence across from her could stop the shaking now. The coldness of remembered terror seeped through her.

“She was hysterical. Someone had pulled her into the elevator and then the lights had gone off and the doors had closed. She’d felt a knife at her throat, and her attacker warned her to keep quiet or he’d kill her. Just before they reached the basement, he whispered in her ear that he had a message he wanted her to pass on—to me.”

“The same message you’d been getting all along?” Quinn sounded grim.

“I Know Who You Are,” Jane agreed dully. “But this time there was an addition. The message Martine gave me was two sentences.”

“What was the second one?”

Her stricken gaze met his. “And I Know What You Did.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “How the hell could the police ignore you after that, dammit? What did they say when they came?”

“They weren’t called. The incident wasn’t reported.” At his incredulous expression she leaned forward, her words coming out in a rush. “I told you—the people I worked with weren’t about to draw attention to themselves. I’m pretty sure Martine was an illegal immigrant, and when I told her I was going to call the police, she said she would deny everything. The rest of the crew backed her up. They all liked me, but not enough to risk being deported. And not enough to continue working with me, either,” she finished hopelessly. “I was fired that night.”

Quinn grimaced. “Sooner or later your stalker’s going to stop playing around.”

“Playing? You call what he’s done so far playing?” Shocked, she stared at him. “He’s turned my life into a nightmare! He obviously knows everything I do, everywhere I go, and he’s either right behind me or just one step ahead of me, day and night!”

“That being true, he could have killed you by now,” he said brutally. “But he hasn’t. That’s why I say he’s just playing with you.”

“If driving me slowly out of my mind is playing, then yes, I suppose you’re right, McGuire.” She could feel the tears spilling over, and she knew that people nearby were looking at her, but she was past caring. “But you’re forgetting one vital component in his game plan—he knows who I really am. That gives him a weapon to use against me, and I can’t fight back!”

“Sure you can. You’ve got the same information he has, only you won’t admit it.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of the T-shirt he was wearing straining over his biceps. “I could agree to take on the job of keeping you safe, and while I was by your side, you would be. But as soon as I left, you’d be in danger again. The only person who can find out who your stalker is and why he’s targeting you is yourself. And for some reason you don’t want to do that.”

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I can’t do that. My memory’s a blank!” She was shaking again, Jane noted with a detached part of her mind. But this time it was from anger.

“It’s a blank because you want it to be a blank.” Those pale eyes met hers emotionlessly. “I told you, true amnesia’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Besides, if you really wanted to find out who you were and why someone wants to harm you, you’d tell the police the truth and let them investigate you—and you haven’t, have you?”

“No.” She looked down at her hands. “No, you’re right. I haven’t told them the truth. I haven’t asked them if I match the descriptions of any missing women, and I don’t intend to.”

“Then your stalker will just bide his time until you’re unprotected again.” He shook his head. “The best advice I can give you is to disappear into yet another life, lady. I can help you get out of town without being followed, but that’s all I can do for you, since you’re so determined not to help yourself.”

He was turning her down. After everything she’d told him—and except for the amnesia, he hadn’t seemed to doubt her story—he was turning her down. She couldn’t believe it. She said the first foolish thing that came into her head.

“Is it the money? I don’t have much, but Serge gave me a couple of weeks termination pay so I’d keep quiet about what—”

“It’s not the money.”

“But you’re not on an assignment right now.” She heard a shrill edge to her voice, and attempted a more reasonable tone. “If you’re between jobs, why can’t you take this on?”

“I’m only between jobs because I took your phone call today, instead of making one of my own.” He shrugged. “If you’d called half an hour later, I doubt that we’d ever have met. If you call again tomorrow, I won’t be there to answer.”

“You’re going off to fight another war,” she said slowly. “I guess I should have known mine would be too insignificant to interest you. My little war doesn’t have the elements you’re looking for.”

“And just what the hell is that cryptic comment supposed to mean?” His gaze had been idly glancing around for the waitress. Now it sharpened.

“You seem to think I’m not willing to put up a fight, McGuire—that some part of me is willing to die. I think you’re putting your own motives onto me.” She felt for her purse, her movements jerky and awkward. “You’re the one who keeps letting yourself be led to the slaughter. Every time you walk away alive there’s a little twinge of disappointment in you, isn’t there?”

“I go into an assignment aiming to walk out alive. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare was flat, his posture rigidly tense. He raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Dammit, I’m not the one who hated my life so much that I sealed it up in a box and buried it six feet under.”

“Even if your theory’s right, at least I want to hold onto some kind of existence. That’s the difference between us.” Getting out of her seat, she stood, looking down at the man she’d hoped would be her salvation. “You won’t admit it, but that’s the reason behind every choice you make. I want to live, but deep down, you want to die. Did she realize that, too—that sister of yours who won’t leave you alone?”

“You just crossed the line, darlin’. Back off.”

He’d half-risen, and with the difference in their heights, that brought his gaze on a level with hers. His face was inches from hers, and even at that moment Jane felt her focus slipping away. His eyes were like crystal, she thought, her breath catching in her throat. Everything else about the man was harshly masculine, but those mesmerizing eyes and those thick, sooty lashes belonged on the parfit gentil knight she’d wanted him to be.

It was one more reason not to believe in fairy tales. She drew back, suddenly uncomfortable at his nearness.

“Have a nice war, Mr. McGuire,” she said coldly. “I doubt that our paths will ever cross again.”

For one long last moment their gazes remained locked, his still brilliant with anger, and hers, she knew, showing nothing at all. She’d tried, Jane told herself tiredly. She’d tried, and failed. Now her Pandora’s box of troubles had lost its only saving grace. All of a sudden she knew that the tears that had been threatening all night were about to burst forth in a humiliating flood.

“Let me get you out of town, at least,” Quinn began. His anger had faded as completely as hers had, and there was a rough sympathy in his voice.

“I’ll arrange something myself.” She shook her head furiously, wanting only to get away before she dissolved right in front of this man and a whole roomful of strangers, most of whom were already casting interested glances her way. “You’re right, it probably is the best option. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—” She saw a tiny muscle tighten at the corner of his mouth, and changed what she’d been about to say. “Goodbye, Quinn.”

Even before his name had left her lips she’d turned abruptly on her heel. The next second she was blindly making her way through the crowded tables toward the back of the room where the washrooms were, both hands clenched around the strap of her shoulder bag, her face averted.

If she was lucky—and God knew she deserved some small scrap of luck tonight—there would be no one in the ladies’ room. She would lock herself in a cubicle and cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. Then she would get up, splash cold water on her face, and leave—preferably without running into Quinn McGuire.

She’d only known the man for an hour or so. For most of that time they’d been antagonists. If he was right, and she could wipe her memory at will, then it should be easy for her to forget that moment when his hand had touched her arm and his thumb had stroked her skin.

But Quinn’s theory was wrong. And she had a feeling she’d be proving it wrong for a long, long time to come.

Chapter Three

She’d been about to cry. No, Quinn corrected himself, she’d already started to cry by the time she’d spun around and taken off from him in that clumsy half-walk, half-run that had nearly cannoned her into a handful of bar patrons and at least one waitress before she’d disappeared into the washrooms. He’d seen the tears shimmering at the corners of those dark blue eyes, and they’d made him feel like a dog.

He’d done the right thing, there was no doubt about that. “No doubt at all, McGuire,” he murmured under his breath. “Someone had to make her face facts.” He downed the last of the whiskey in his glass, and wondered if he was drinking out of the same side as she had. She hadn’t been wearing lipstick—as far as a mere male could tell, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup at all on that poreless, creamy-pale skin—so there was no way of knowing what part of the rim her lips had touched. But he thought he could taste her.

He drew himself up sharply. He’d been heading for drunk tonight. Obviously he’d achieved his goal, if he was sitting here trying to persuade himself that under the smoky, peaty flavor of Bushmills he could discern a hint of crushed strawberries. But that would be what she’d taste like, he thought unwillingly. Like the wild strawberries he could just barely remember picking when he’d been a boy—the small, sweet ones that had looked like tiny jewels against the green, green grass.

The woman had stirred up far too many memories, he thought abruptly. He needed another drink.

Like magic, his waitress appeared, her smile a little harried as she set down a new glass, but then turning to a puzzled frown as Quinn stopped her from taking the empty one away.

“Humor me, Molly. Leave the glass here, and take this.” He dropped a thick wad of bills on the round cork-topped tray she carried. “That should cover the tab I’ve been running. The rest is for you.”

This time her smile was real. He’d made one woman happy tonight, he thought ruefully, as he lifted his glass and stared into the golden liquid. He’d made one happy, and he’d torn another one’s world apart.

Actually, if he were honest with himself, the odds were more like two to one. He was forgetting the nun.

…you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.

He’d welshed on his debt. He could call it whatever the hell he wanted, but what it came right down to was that Quinn McGuire had weaseled out of an old debt. He closed his eyes, and there she was in front of him, the way he always remembered her….

In the antiquated conditions of the jungle hospital, she’d worked miracles. Of course, she hadn’t taken credit for them. There’d been a gleaming brass crucifix above her packing-crate desk. It had been the only thing in the place, besides the few surgical tools, that hadn’t been allowed to tarnish in the tropical humidity.

She’d been changing his dressing. Whenever he thought of her, that was how she appeared in his mind’s eye, but she looked like no one’s idea of an angel of mercy. If truth be told, Quinn had often thought, she’d always seemed forbiddingly unapproachable in the heavy black habit that she persisted in wearing. She had a slight limp, the legacy from a bout of polio when she’d been a child, he’d learned, and besides her bat-like attire, she’d been as blind as one. Her speech was sharp, and her English, though good, was heavily accented.

“You want to die. I want you to live. We’ll see who wins, Mr. McGuire,” she’d said grimly the first time he’d drifted up out of unconsciousness. One look at those angry brown eyes, ludicrously magnified behind the thick lenses she wore, had been enough to send him spiraling down into oblivion again. But she’d dragged him back, again and again, pitting her faith and her steely strength of will against the shadowy figure with the scythe. Only once had she even come close to losing hope, and that had been the day that his fever had climbed to its highest. He had been delirious, and whatever he’d been babbling, it had shaken her badly. All he could remember of that delusional day and night were two things.

He’d had wings, and he’d known if he only let himself go he would find himself soaring straight up from the sweat-soaked sheets he was lying on into a colder, lighter sky than the blazingly blue one that hung over the hospital. He’d heard them calling him, and he’d felt himself rising to meet them—

—and the second thing he remembered was Sister Bertille’s angular face, her mouth working soundlessly, huge tears standing out behind her crooked glasses, pressing a heavy, chilling weight against his forehead and bringing him crashing back down to earth. Just before dawn the fever had broken. He’d opened his eyes and she’d been sitting beside his bed in a golden pool of light from the gas lantern above her, her rosary in her hands and her mouth slightly open in exhausted sleep. He could still feel the heavy weight on his forehead, and with returning lucidity, he’d reached up and removed it. It had been the cross she usually wore around her neck.

You will know when the right case presents itself…

She’d been right. He had known. And still he’d done his level best to get out of it. Hell.

“You’re a stupid man entirely, Quinn McGuire,” he said out loud. “A stupid, bad man. A debt’s a debt, and you must have been crazy to think that you could get out of paying it with a clear conscience.”

He’d catch her on her way out and tell her he’d changed his mind. She didn’t have to know why, and although the nun was part of it, Quinn wasn’t sure he knew the whole reason either. If anyone needed someone to protect her, though, Jane Doe did.

Even if only half of what she’d told him was the truth.

“…know who you are. It was creepy!”

“It had to be some crackpot. I kept expecting some jerk to look over the stall partition, for God’s sake.”

The two young women passing his table had taken a couple more steps before what he’d overheard them say registered. Before they’d taken a third, Quinn was up and out of his seat and somehow blocking their way. One of them was a blonde, and she gave a little jump.

“Hey, you scared me!” Her gaze took him in, and she relaxed visibly. “I think he should buy us a drink to make up for it, right, Kathy?”

Before her friend could answer, Quinn’s hand shot out and held her lightly by the shoulder. “I heard you say something just now—know who you are. What were you talking about?”

“Do you mind?” The blonde’s flirtatiousness was instantly replaced by peevish annoyance. “The hand, mister. Get it off me.”

“It’s important,” he said impatiently, letting her go and curbing his own irritation with difficulty. “What did you mean by that?”

“We saw it in the washroom.” The blonde’s companion had been watching his face. Now she spoke quietly and quickly. “Those words were written on the mirror over the sinks in lipstick or something. It gave me a bad feeling—”

But already he’d dodged around them, and was heading toward the back of the room. He elbowed a beefy young man in a Yale sweatshirt out of the way, and heard an aggrieved shout and the crash of breaking glass behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him back, and without looking around he grabbed it and threw it off.

He was about ten feet away from the entrance to the washrooms when the lights went out. The whole room was plunged into pitch-blackness, and he heard a woman’s terror-filled, choked-off scream coming from somewhere ahead of him.

“No need to panic, people. Sure, and we’ll have the lights back on in a minute. Everybody just stay calm and remain where you are.”

Someone was trying to stem the panicky hubbub that had started up. The women’s washroom had to be nearby, Quinn told himself in frustration as he fought his way through the crowd and felt along the wall. There was a flimsy, freestanding partition that had shielded the washroom entrances from the view of the main room, so he hadn’t been able to note the exact location previously, but this was where Jane had gone. He came to a dead end, and realized he’d gone the wrong way.

Her scream—it had been hers, he knew it in his bones—had ended abruptly. That meant that even now she could be beyond his help. What had he told her? Something about if her stalker were serious, he would have killed her by now? Something criminally callous like that?

If the nun had ended up where she’d hoped, she could damn well bully God into giving him some help, he thought harshly as he felt a knob, turned it and swung the door back on its hinges with a crash.

Moonlight streamed through high-set, slightly open windows. Along one wall was a shadowy line of cubicles, each one of them open. Along the other wall was a long vanity, with sinks set into it and a mirror stretching its whole length. The place was empty.

He caught a reflection of movement in the darkened mirror, and instinctively looked around. There was nothing there. He looked back at the mirror, and the same wavering reflection caught his eye again.

Then he was whirling around and looking up at the ceiling just beyond the last stall and his heart was turning over in horror.

She’d been hanged by the neck, and even as he realized what he was looking at, her feet stopped twitching.

“Mother of God and all the saints…” The sickened prayer came automatically, but Quinn wasn’t relying on divine intervention. Already he had smashed open the door of the last stall, was clambering up onto the back of the toilet tank and hoisting himself to a precarious balance on the metal partition. The open ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes, and he grabbed one to steady himself, even as he wrapped his other arm around Jane’s limply dangling body. He lifted her up to ease the pressure on her neck, and her head lolled over onto one shoulder.

The lights—why hadn’t they gotten the damned lights working yet? Her dress had come undone, most of the buttons that had marched primly down the front probably somewhere below on the floor, and he could feel bare flesh against the forearm he had around her chest.

He had to get her down, lights or no lights. Whatever was around her throat was no longer cutting off her air supply, but if she still had a heartbeat, he couldn’t feel it. One-handed, he couldn’t fumble with a knot in the dark and keep her supported at the same time, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to get her down the logical way.

The building wasn’t new. The plumbing, in the washrooms at least, would be either zinc or lead, and neither of those metals was known for its strength. Judging from the trickle of cold water that was dripping onto him, there was a leaky joint only inches away from her noose. If he let go of his pipe, and grabbed hers as he jumped from the top of the washroom stall, the weight of one oversize Irishman would be more than enough to break the join and send them both, pipe and all, crashing to the floor.

All he had to do was hope the break was clean, and close enough to the knot that she slid straight off. Anything else didn’t bear thinking about.