The Interpreter

Chapter 2

Panic was a wild creature inside her, clawing and fighting to break free. She stared at the stranger watching her through dark, suspicious eyes. He was so big, at least six foot two. The cowboy hat and the hulking, rumbling truck behind him somehow made him seem bigger, huge and dangerously male.

She had a funny feeling she didn’t particularly care for large men. Or men who frowned at her with such ill-concealed vexation bordering on outright hostility.

She climbed to her feet as pain sliced through, making her head throb and spin like a whirligig. Despite the change in altitude, the man still towered over her.

“Are you telling me you don’t remember your own name?” he asked, his voice as hard as the mountains around them. Her splitting headache kicked up a notch and she was afraid wild hysteria loomed on the not-so-distant horizon.

She screwed her eyes shut as if she might find the answer emblazoned on her eyelids and searched her mind for any snippet of information, no matter how tiny. All she found there was a blank, vast field of nothing.

No name, no age, no nothing.

“What’s wrong with me?” she wailed. “Why can’t I remember?”

The two children exchanged a nervous look at her outburst. Though she regretted scaring them, she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the pain in her head and her own burgeoning panic.

“Don’t cry.” The little boy spoke in Tagalog as he patted her hand. “It will be okay. You’ll see. Mr. Mason will make it all better.”

How perfectly ridiculous that she could find such comfort from this funny little creature with dark eyes and a win-some smile, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

“Miriam,” the American said in English, his voice deep and somehow calming, despite the suspicion in his eyes, “take Charlie to the truck and wait there. We’ll be along in a minute.”

The girl nodded and grabbed the boy’s hand, tugging him toward the pickup. She watched them climb inside the big cab, already missing the buffer they provided between her and this angry-looking stranger.

“What’s happened to me?” she asked when she was once more alone with the man. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

His silver-gray eyes narrowed with mistrust. “If this is some kind of game, lady, you won’t get away with it. I find you’re trying to play me, and you can bet I’ll be on you like a magpie on a June bug.”

She wasn’t sure what a magpie or a June bug might be but she sensed the metaphor wasn’t intended to be pleasant. “It’s not a game, I swear to you. I can’t remember anything.”

“You don’t have the first clue what you’re doing out here miles from anywhere? Come on. Think.”

She would like to, but her brain seemed to have gone on holiday. Maybe she could hold a coherent thought if it weren’t for the excruciating pain squeezing her skull.

She wanted nothing so much as to curl up again in the dirt until everything disappeared—the noisy truck growling behind her, this terrifying, suspicious American, and especially the hot stab of pain searing her skull.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I told you that. Why won’t you believe me?”

He appeared to consider her question. “I’m not sure about the U.K.,” he finally said, his voice dry, “but here in America women don’t just drop out of the sky. How did you get here?”

All she wanted was a lie-down. Her head seemed to be inhabiting another postal code entirely from the rest of her body and she absolutely did not want to be standing here in the middle of the wilderness exchanging words with an arrogant cowboy who seemed determined to think the worst of her.

“I don’t know,” she repeated, pain and frustration and that skulking panic making her testy. “Perhaps I was abducted by little green spacemen who sucked out my memory before conking me on the head and tossing me out of their flying saucer.”

He gazed at her out of those suspicious gray eyes for another moment and then she could almost swear she saw fleeting amusement flicker in his expression. At this point, she wasn’t sure she really cared. Her small moment of defiant sarcasm seemed to have sapped her last bit of energy. She could feel herself sway and took a deep breath, forcing her knees, spine and shoulders to stiffen on the exhale.

“I’m sorry to have troubled you.” She tried for as much dignity as she could muster. “If you could be so kind as to point me in the direction of the nearest town, I’ll just be on my way.”

He stared at her in disbelief for about half a minute then shook his head. “The nearest town is about seven miles that way on a dirt logging road. You really think you’re up for that kind of hike in your condition?”

Daunted but determined, she nodded. “Certainly.”

She could only wish her knees weren’t so damned wobbly and her head wasn’t throbbing like a finger slammed into an automobile door. She managed to take about five shaky steps before the American gave a put-upon sounding sigh and scooped her into his arms.

Her head whirled as the rapid shift in position exhausted all remaining equilibrium.

“Excuse me!” she still managed to exclaim hotly.

“You really think I’m going to let an injured, delusional Brit loose in these mountains? You need a doctor.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn’t seem to form any coherent thought, not when the cowboy held her so close. Heat radiated from him and he smelled earthy and masculine, of leather and sandalwood and something else ineffable.

Anyway, it was ridiculous to squabble with the man, especially when he was perfectly right. She wasn’t sure she could have made it another step, much less trudged seven miles to the nearest town.

Her eyes drifted closed as he carried her to the large vehicle. Though she told herself it was to hold the vertigo at bay, in truth she was aware of a wonderful—but supremely foolish—sense of safety in his arms.

The cowboy opened the passenger door to the lorry and ordered the children to slide over, then set her inside with a careful gentleness that for some ridiculous reason brought tears to her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He paused, studying her with an inscrutable look, then with an odd sigh he closed the door, walked around the vehicle and climbed inside. He worked the gears and the lorry surged forward. A moment later he had turned the huge beast around and they were headed in the opposite direction.

They rode in silence for several long moments. Through the ache in her head, she was aware of furtive looks sliding in her direction with some frequency from the two younger occupants of the vehicle.

They were darling children, small and slender with huge dark eyes. Given their use of Tagalog, she had to assume they were Filipino and she wondered what they were doing with this large, formidable man.

“I am Miriam Betran,” the girl said after a few more moments. She spoke in solemn, careful English, as polite as if she were performing introductions at a garden party. “This is my brother, Charlie. I am nine, he is only five.”

“Almost six,” the little boy piped up.

“Hello,” she replied, wishing she had some kind of name to offer in return.

“Our mama and papa are dead. Mr. Mason says he is our papa now. That is why we come to United States.”

She shifted her gaze to Mr. Mason and saw a muscle twitch in that masculine jaw. He offered no explanation and she couldn’t summon the energy to request one, even if any of this had been her business.

“Thank you for helping me, Mr. Mason,” she said instead.

“Just Mason. Mason Keller.”

“Are you a cowboy, Mr. Keller?”

His mouth curved slightly. “Something like that. My family ranch is on the other side of these mountains.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” she murmured.

“I don’t know about that. Mostly sagebrush and dust. But I like it.”

She wanted to answer but couldn’t seem to make her brain communicate with her mouth to squeeze the words out. She also couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she was so drowsy suddenly but her eyelids seemed to weigh five stone each.

The urge to close them was overwhelming. Perhaps only for a moment, just long enough to ease the strain a bit….

She must have drifted to sleep. Her dreams were full of fear that tasted like bile in her mouth and the rapid pulse of blood through her veins. She needed to run, to get away. From what?

A sudden cessation of sound and movement finally awakened her, to her vast relief. She opened her eyes and found her escort had parked before a small single-story building of pale-red brick. A carved wooden sign out front proclaimed the structure to contain the Moose Springs Medical Clinic. Below it was the name Dr. Lauren Maxwell.

“She is awake, I think,” the boy pointed out, peering around his sister to be sure.

“Yes. I’m awake. I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“It would really make my day if you could tell me you woke with crystal-clear memory of who you are and what you were doing in the Uintas,” Mason Keller said.

She poked around in her mind again but found it empty beyond that moment earlier when she had opened her eyes and found him staring down at her. That beastly panic returned to gnaw at her control. “No,” she whispered, her head still pounding.

He blew out a resigned breath. “Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say. Let’s go see if Lauren can fix you up.”

“The doctor is nice,” Charlie confided in Tagalog. “She gives candy if you do not cry.”

She had to smile at the little boy, despite the nerves fluttering in her stomach. “I’ll try not to cry, then,” she responded.

The something-like-that cowboy climbed out of the truck then moved around to her side to open the door. He reached a hand inside to help her out and she had to admit she was grateful. Without his assistance she would have stumbled on knees that seemed as wobbly as a bowl of pudding.

The medical clinic was airy and bright, painted a cheerful yellow. The reception area seemed empty of patients but two women stood talking behind a desk, a matronly brunette who looked to be in her fifties and one at least a couple of decades younger, wearing jeans and a casual T-shirt.

She would have guessed the older woman to be the doctor but soon learned her error. The young woman’s features lit up when she saw Mason and the children, and she came out into the reception area through a door to the left of the desk.

She smiled at the children, touching Miriam gently on the shoulder. “Hey, kids. Great to see you again!”

The girl gave her a tiny smile in return, but Charlie turned suddenly shy, hiding behind the tall cowboy.

“Who’s your friend, Mase?” the woman asked.

“Hey, Lauren.” He stepped forward and kissed the lovely young woman on the cheek. “I brought you a little business. Jane Doe. The kids and I found her up in the Uintas. Damnedest thing. She was just lying in the middle of the logging road up near Whitney Reservoir. Claims she doesn’t remember who she is or how she got there.”

Beside him, her spine stiffened at his choice of words and the inherent suspicion in them. “I don’t remember! Why on earth would I lie?”

He ignored her heated defense of herself as if she were an annoying little bug. “I did a little triage on the scene. Looks like she cut herself somehow on her face—a while ago, I’d guess, judging by the dried blood—and she’s got a heck of a goose egg on the back of her head.”

“But no ID?”

“Nothing. No car, no purse, no nothing, at least not that I could see. I didn’t reconnoiter the whole area, though. I’m wondering if she might have taken a wrong turn up there somewhere, then had an accident and wandered away from the scene.”

“What a mystery.” The doctor gave her a curious look that made her feel a bit like a primate in a zoo exhibit.

“She seems to think little green men in a spaceship dropped her off,” Mason said.

“I do not!” she exclaimed. “I was merely responding to your suspicions with sarcasm.”

For some reason, that seemed to amuse him. A corner of his mouth lifted then he turned back to Dr. Lauren Maxwell. “On the way out of the mountains I put in a call to Daniel, since mysterious Brits with head injuries are his territory. He should be here any minute. I figured maybe you could check her out in the meantime, see if anything’s permanently busted.”

“Of course.” The physician gave her a friendly smile that was undoubtedly meant to be reassuring. “I’m sure everything will be just fine. Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”

She studied the other woman, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move, reluctant suddenly to leave Mason Keller’s side.

How perfectly ridiculous. She didn’t even know the man and what she did know, she didn’t particularly care for. He was dictatorial to the children and had treated her with nothing but harsh suspicion since stumbling upon her.

She knew she was being silly to cling to him but he and his Tagalog-speaking children were the only relatively known commodity in her world right now and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his side. What if he left her here?

When she couldn’t seem to make her legs cooperate to follow the young physician, Mason turned to her. For the first time since he’d found her, his gray eyes softened and his expression seemed to relax slightly. She blinked at him, disoriented. Why did he suddenly look so familiar?

“Go on,” he urged quietly. “We’ll wait out here until you’re done.”

“Promise?” She despised the slight quaver in her voice but couldn’t seem to help it.

“Stick a needle in my eye.”

Slightly reassured, she followed the young doctor down a hallway to a small examination room painted in a soothing blue and decorated with dried flowers and a pile of magazines stored in what looked to be a large antique washbasin. There was a mirror in the room above the sink and she had the disconcerting realization that she had no idea what kind of reflection she would encounter there.

The doctor gave her a friendly smile and pulled a hospital gown from a drawer built into the examination table. “So you have no memory of your name or anything?”

She shook her head, embarrassed and afraid all over again.

“Mason called you Jane Doe. Do you mind if I call you Jane until we find out your real name? It’s better than ‘hey, you’ and that way I’ll have something to put on your chart.”

The name didn’t seem wrong, exactly, so she nodded. In an odd way, it actually felt good to have a name to hang on to, even if it wasn’t the correct one. “Jane is fine,” she murmured.

“Good. And you can call me Lauren, all right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, Jane,” the doctor said. “Let me wash my hands then we’ll get started. Have a seat.”

She climbed onto the examination table and had time to wonder how she could possibly know that contraption hanging on the wall was called a blood pressure cuff but she couldn’t remember her own bloody name.

“All right, then, let’s take a look.”

Jane sat quietly while the doctor looked her over. “This cut on your face looks superficial,” she said. “I imagine it stung quite a bit but I don’t believe you’ll have a scar. I think I’ll order a tetanus shot under the circumstances, just to be safe.”

The doctor shifted attention to the bump on her head and Jane couldn’t contain a gasp at the pain at her gentle probing.

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave it alone now.” She stepped away. You said you don’t remember anything at all before Mason found you?”

Terror.

The bitter, metallic taste of fear in her mouth.

I have to get out of here. Help me. Oh, help me.

The impression slammed into her out of nowhere. She caught her breath, grateful she was sitting down.

“No,” she finally managed, frightened by the strength of the memory but somehow loathe to share it with the other woman.

The doctor studied her. “You’re obviously British, though you might be an expatriate, I suppose. Do you have any idea at all what you might be doing in our little neck of the woods?”

“No. It’s as if there’s a huge closet in my mind with all those memories jumbled away. I know it’s there. It has to be. But I can’t manage to fit the right key.”

She paused, then finally voiced the question that had haunted her since she’d opened her eyes on the road and found Mason Keller standing over her. “Doctor, will I ever remember?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you a straight answer to that. All I can tell you is that you appear to have suffered a nasty head injury. It wouldn’t be unusual for such an injury to result in some degree of memory loss, but whether that’s permanent or not, I can’t say. I’m sorry.”

Jane hugged her arms around herself, cold suddenly even though the room’s temperature was comfortable.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. I’d like to take an X-ray and possible CT scan, just so we know for sure what we’re dealing with, all right?”

Jane nodded, though she doubted any medical test could explain away the fear that seemed to simmer just below the surface.

“It sure is good to have you back in town, Mase.” Lauren’s receptionist Coralee Jenkins beamed at him, her wide features friendly and open. “I know you were doing important work in the military—your dad was mighty proud of you for it—but we missed you while you were gone.”

Mason had to force himself to smile politely. The last topic of conversation he wanted to dig into was what he’d been doing with himself while he was away from Moose Springs.

He had always liked Coralee. He’d even dated her daughter for a few months back in high school, and Coralee and her husband Bruce had always gone out of their way to treat him better than an obnoxious punk like him had deserved.

Still, he had to wonder what Lauren’s receptionist would have to say if he filled her naive little ears full of his real activities during the last dozen years instead of the politely vague cover he provided to family and friends.

In her quiet, safe world, she would probably never believe the kid who had stoically endured a thirty-minute lecture from Bruce after he’d returned Sherry home fifteen minutes past curfew could spend more than a decade submerged deep in a shifting world of lies and deceptions.

Coralee would understand little of that world—and he had to admit, that’s just the way he liked it.

“How’s Sherry these days?” he asked, keeping one eye on Charlie and Miriam watching a television set in the corner of the waiting room where SpongeBob SquarePants was frying up Krabby Patties.

The question diverted Coralee, as he’d hoped. Her eyes lit up and she reached for a framed photograph on her desk. She handed it over the counter to him and he studied the picture for any trace of the perky, flirtatious cheerleader he’d dated in the suburbanite who beamed back at him, flanked by a handsome balding man and a trio of red-haired kids. He couldn’t see much resemblance to that girl he’d known, except maybe for a little devilish light in her eyes.

“Great,” Coralee said with a proud smile. “Just great. Married to an Ob/Gyn in Utah County and she keeps plenty busy raising my three grandkids. Aren’t they something? The baby just turned two. He’s a handful, I’ll tell you. Keeps her running all day.”

She went on to detail Sherry’s soccer-mom lifestyle that seemed completely foreign to him, but he surprised himself by managing to carry on a halfway coherent conversation anyway.

Adaptation.

That was the key to being a good counterintelligence agent. His first lessons after being recruited from the Army Rangers had focused on learning how to conform to his surroundings, to blend in and appear part of the landscape, whether that was a crowded Manila bar or a tiny fishing village in Mindanao.

He had been good at that part of the job. Whoever would have thought that subterfuge and deceit would come so naturally to a hick cowboy from Utah?

He had spent so long trying to be someone else, it was sometimes hard to remember who he was.

“Speaking of kids,” Coralee said suddenly, “those sure are a couple of cute ones you brought back with you.”

He ignored the blatant opening she gave him to spill the details he was sure she hankered after about Charlie and Miriam.

The Moose Springs gossip line was no doubt buzzing like crazy when he’d showed up after all these years with a couple of Filipino kids. A few trusted friends knew as much of the story as he could freely tell, but the rest of the town probably had all kinds of ideas about where Charlie and Miriam came from.

He had to wonder what the gossips would say when word got out that he’d found a mystery woman up in the mountains.

Somehow his plans to come back to a quiet, uneventful life on the ranch weren’t exactly coming to fruition.

He was spared from having to come up with a polite answer to Coralee’s conversational probe by the door opening. A moment later the Moose Springs sheriff sauntered inside, looking big, bad and hard as a whetstone.

The other man took one look at Mason and narrowed his gaze. “I should have known trouble would follow your sorry ass back to town.”

Mason slowly straightened. “You got a problem with my sorry ass coming back to your town?”

His cool tone had the children looking up warily. Before he could reassure them, the sheriff’s stern expression melted into a grin and he slapped Mason on the back, the male equivalent of a hug.

“Damn, it’s good to see you, man!” Daniel Galvez exclaimed. “How long has it been? Three years? Four?”

“Something like that.”

Mason hated that he had come to avoid his good friends over the years. Friends tended to ask the kinds of questions he couldn’t answer honestly, like what he was doing with his life. Since he hated lying to his friends the way he did to everyone else, it had become easier just to stay away.