A Marriage To Remember Page 7

  “Sounds like a sweetheart,” Ryder commented.

  “He’s a good journalist.” Her eyes had flashed sudden fire at him. “He calls things the way he sees them.”

  “And how do you see it? Do you think I’m crooked?”

  He saw the answer in her face before she spoke. She didn’t know what to think—didn’t know if he was innocent or guilty of the crime he’d served a year in jail for.

  Well, hell, he thought. That makes two of us.

  But the doubt in Jayne’s pretty face hurt him more than he wanted to let on.

  “I think we need a lot more information before we can answer any of these questions,” she’d hedged.

  She’d suggested a mutual friend, somebody who worked in the Miami city attorney’s office. Ryder had rejected the idea. It was too close to the legal system to suit him. They’d finally agreed on a compromise: one of Jayne’s colleagues at the paper who would be able to get the information they were after, but who wasn’t close enough to the editor to be biased, or close enough to Jayne that his phone would likely be monitored.

  Jayne had called him on his cellular phone a couple of hours ago and explained—quickly, so even if the line was tapped, there wouldn’t be time to trace the call—what she was after. Now she was calling back.

  And Ryder was waiting.

  The two youths he’d noticed earlier were coming back into view now. They were cruising like trolling sharks in the midst of brightly colored schools of smaller fish. Ryder could see them casually scanning the landscape, the way he was doing himself.

  He watched as they moved toward the family in front of him. The umbrella was still giving the mother a lot of trouble, and the older kids were already deeply involved in digging in the sand. Ryder sat up a little straighter. If that woman didn’t turn around pretty soon...

  She obviously wasn’t going to. Her attention was focused on the umbrella, not on what was happening behind her.

  And in ten seconds her purse was going to be history.

  Ryder got off the park bench just as the two guys moved in on the beach blanket. By the time the taller one was leaning toward the inviting loop of the purse strap, Ryder was running. The second thief saw him coming and shouted something to his friend, and the pair of them spun around in a flurry of sand and took off.

  They had the purse with them. Ryder heard the woman’s cry of dismay and the shouts of other people nearby. There were protesting yells as the two thieves cut across picnic lunches and over unwary sunbathers.

  Ryder stayed right on their trail, ignoring the sudden pain that wrapped his ribs like a red-hot embrace. If he got lucky—if they did something stupid...

  They did. Reaching a dead end at a tall concrete breakwater, they tried to go over instead of around it. Ryder saw the taller one pause to boost his shorter buddy up, and knew he had them.

  His flying tackle took them both down, and jolted the purse loose from the taller youth’s grasp. Ryder ignored it for the moment. He ignored the second tough’s struggle to get to his feet, too. Alone, unarmed, he couldn’t hold down two of them. But he had the one who counted, and he was hanging on like grim death.

  People were crowding around now. Ryder could feel his lungs burning as he tried to get enough air past the searing pain in his ribs. The shorter thief was long gone, but the woman’s purse was safe. He glanced over his shoulder and recognized the red blaze of her bathing suit as she claimed it, thanking him volubly.

  “God, I wasn’t thinking—if you hadn’t been so quick—”

  He nodded, too winded to speak. The thief he’d collared was still trying to get up, halfheartedly, but with enough gusto to jangle Ryder’s rib cage with every spasmodic jerk.

  He’d just managed to get his knee into the small of the guy’s back when he heard a familiar crackle from somewhere behind him.

  He could feel his hackles rising at the sound of a police walkie-talkie. According to Jayne, he’d been a cop for years—fifteen, she’d told him. And it was clear he still thought like a cop, and acted like one—hell, he’d even caught himself reaching instinctively for the handcuffs that should have been at his belt when he’d pinned the tall thief to the sand at the base of the concrete wall.

  But right now he wanted nothing to do with the police in any form. The last thing he wanted was to end up in some police log where his pursuers could find his name.

  He was glad enough to surrender his prisoner to the uniformed cop who stepped through the circle of onlookers. But he kept his face half-averted as the women with the purse explained excitedly what had happened. And when the cop’s partner turned to him, looking for corroboration, Ryder shook his head. “Just—being a good citizen” was all he could manage to say around the burning in his ribs.

  Damn it, what if the guy started asking why Ryder was doubled over like this? He didn’t want to end up with some well-meaning medic inspecting him. The cop was asking for Ryder’s name now, telling him—reasonably enough, Ryder knew—that the evidence of witnesses would help ensure the purse snatcher didn’t walk away from the charges the woman was willing to file.

  Ryder shook his head again and tried to think clearly. Should he give a fake name? It might work.

  What name, though? He could feel the black hole in his memory starting to gape open again, the way it had at the motel office. He knew “John Smith” wasn’t going to work this time. In fact, the cop was already starting to look as though he’d figured out Ryder was hiding something.

  “How about showing me some ID, sir?” he was saying. And then, when Ryder didn’t respond, he added, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Hearing the sound of Jayne’s voice was like stumbling across an oasis in the midst of what had seemed like endless desert. Ryder looked up from his bent-double position and saw that she’d managed to push through the crowd around him.

  She stepped matter-of-factly to his side and slid one arm around his waist. He could feel her warmth and strength even through the throbbing in his midsection.

  “He put his back out trimming the hedge last weekend,” she said to the policeman. “Although he refuses to believe it. I thought I’d gotten him convinced to come and sit quietly at a movie for the rest of the afternoon, but...”

  He felt her shrug, and heard a little ripple of sympathetic laughter from the spectators.

  “I can call a ambulance if you’d like,” the cop was offering.

  “What do you think, ace?” He could feel Jayne’s fingers circling his waist, smooth against the skin under the edge of the dark blue polo shirt. “You want an ambulance?”

  She was cool, he had to hand it to her. She must know as well as he did that any kind of official documents—like ambulance records—would be the fastest way to put that killer back on their track. But she was playing along with the scenario, acting the exasperated wife with a flair that was impressing the heck out of him.

  He shook his head. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “What time—was that movie?”

  She glanced at the watch on the wrist that was wrapped around him. As he caught the perfume of her skin, it was suddenly easier for him to drag in the air he needed.

  “If we’re lucky, we can still catch the previews,” she said. “Thanks, Officer. We’ll be okay now.”

  They escaped the circle of people before the cop could point out that he still hadn’t gotten Ryder’s name. Ryder grinned, despite the pain inside him.

  “Trimming the hedge?” He rasped out the words once they were out of earshot of the onlookers. “You couldn’t have had me doing something a little more dashing?”

  “Like tackling criminals single-handedly when you can barely walk?” She sounded exasperated and sympathetic at the same time. Ryder felt himself leaning into the strength of her grip, not so much for support as for the pleasure of hearing the half-buried compassion in her voice.

  “Honestly, Ryder,” she continued, “anybody would think you were trying to get into trouble,
instead of running away from it.”

  “It was—a reflex action.”

  “I could tell.”

  “And—I did get the woman’s purse back.”

  She didn’t have a good answer for that one. They were both silent while they crossed the road separating the beach from the strip of motels where they were staying. Ryder kept trying to stand on his own, but the clamor in his ribs was getting worse. It seemed smarter to keep leaning on Jayne’s supporting arm.

  Once they’d reached the sidewalk, she spoke again. “I know you got the purse back. It was a good thing to do. It’s just—”

  “I know. You don’t have to tell me. If my face happens to stick in the cop’s memory—”

  “Right. Especially if the FBI gets out a statewide bulletin for you—”

  “Wait a minute. Back up.”

  They were passing a strip of convenience stores. Ryder put out a hand and leaned his weight on the tiled front of the nearest one, trying to make sense of what she’d just said.

  “What does the FBI have to do with this?”

  The roadway was noisy, and there was a truck parked in a loading zone downwind of them. What little air Ryder was managing to get into his lungs was half-full of diesel fumes. It wasn’t making it any easier to think.

  And he could tell from the set of Jayne’s mouth that what she’d learned on the phone wasn’t good news.

  “Maybe we should get back to the motel and—”

  “Tell me now, Jayne. What the hell is going on?”

  Jayne didn’t like the way he’d gone pale again, or the tightness of his mouth as he asked the question. But she knew from experience that there would be no budging him until he’d found out what he wanted to know.

  “You are out of prison legally.” She decided to start with what little good news there was. “You were officially released on parole yesterday afternoon.” She paused. “The guy who picked you up was apparently an FBI agent out of Miami.”

  She could see him trying to put it together in his mind, frowning with that hawklike concentration she knew so well. “Is that who was driving the car I was in? The guy who was killed when we hit that canal?”

  She nodded. “His name was Santiago,” she said. “A rookie, twenty-three years old.”

  “Rookie.” He sounded disgusted. “‘Infant’ is more like it.”

  “I know. Chris said—” She shivered despite the heat of the afternoon sun. They had to scrape him out of the driver’s seat with a spoon had been Chris’s inelegant way of describing the young driver’s messy collision with a half-built bridge abutment on the way into the canal. If it had been Ryder’s side of the car instead...

  She shook her head. “You were lucky,” she said.

  She wished she could control her own reactions, but she couldn’t. She kept trying to stay objective, trying to remind herself that Ryder might very well turn out to be the bad guy in all this.

  But her own responses betrayed her every time she turned around. What she’d felt when Chris Jimenez had told her about the FBI agent’s death was sheer relief—relief that it hadn’t been Ryder’s body that had been smashed to pieces when that car had gone over the bridge.

  “Why was I being driven back to Miami by an FBI agent?” he asked.

  She made her answer brisk, to counter her sympathy at the sight of Ryder’s drawn face and too-careful breathing. “Nobody knows the answer to that except the FBI,” she said. “And they’re not talking. They are, however, very interested in talking to you.”

  She related what she’d learned from Chris Jimenez, who’d dug up the information quickly and willingly once he’d grasped why she wanted it. Chris was erratic, and tended to see the whole world through the screen of his computer. But he was bright. And nobody, he’d assured her, had seemed to wonder why he was asking questions about Ryder’s disappearance and Jayne’s possible involvement in it.

  “There was a reporter at the scene of the accident right after it happened,” she said. “Apparently, he overheard a witness saying she’d seen you and the driver struggling just before the car went over the railing. The witness didn’t stick around. But it looks like the FBI is taking the rumor seriously. Chris talked to the guy at the Bulletin’s crime desk. He said the scuttlebutt is why the FBI wants you brought in, and soon.”

  For a long moment Ryder was silent. His dark blond head was glinting gold on top in the sun, and she felt an unexpected urge to reach her hand and run it over the smooth, corn-silk hair slicked back so tightly against his scalp.

  When he finally spoke, though, it was obvious his own thoughts had nothing to do with the temptations that kept catching at Jayne. His deep blue eyes were anguished as he looked up at her.

  “What if I did?” he asked. “What if we were tussling in the front seat of the car? What if I was responsible for that kid’s death?”

  He was searching her face with an openness she hadn’t seen in him in a very long time. How long had it been, she wondered, since Nick Ryder had allowed himself to admit to her that he might be wrong, that he might be vulnerable? How long since he’d really shared his fears with her, the way he was doing right now?

  “You know me,” he was saying. His voice was rough, as though his need to know, his need to reach her, was pushing past all the defenses he’d built up so painstakingly. “At the moment, you know me better than I know myself. Am I capable of doing—what they said I did? Not just the accident, but—all of it. Stealing that money. Everything.”

  Everything included so much more than he knew—so much more than Jayne wanted to tell him. It included everything that had slowly soured between them, until they’d finally recognized there was no point in staying together any longer.

  For far too long, she’d hoped for a happier ending. She could feel a ridiculous echo of that naive hope now, tugging at her, murmuring, Maybe things will work out, after all.

  But right on its heels was the bleak certainty she’d finally come to terms with. It’s over, her common sense told her. It’s finished.

  She’d be a fool to let herself listen to that hopeful little voice again. Ryder hadn’t changed—he’d just lost his memory, that was all. The chances were very good that it would come back—the nurse at the hospital had said so quite matter-of-factly.

  And the chances were even better that if Jayne let herself be seduced by the searching heat of Ryder’s eyes and the rough temptation of his voice, she would only end up with her heart broken all over again.

  Standing a little straighter, she met his hungry gaze and said bluntly, “I don’t know you, Ryder. Not anymore. It’s been a long time since I could predict what you might or might not be capable of.”

  It was hard to watch that open expression vanish from his eyes, hard to see the watchful mask settle back over his aquiline features, shuttering his blue gaze. Jayne swallowed past the sudden regret in her throat, and tried to steel herself against the desolate note in his voice as he said slowly, “Maybe I should turn myself in. Maybe I’m on the wrong side in this. Maybe—” It was obviously hard for him to say it. Jayne’s fingers had closed into her palms at her sides as she watched Ryder grappling with all the ugly possibilities in his mind.

  “Maybe I’m part of something crooked in the Miami police department,” he said finally, harshly. “And the reason they want me out of the way is so I won’t tell anyone about it.”

  The same idea had occurred to Jayne. It would certainly explain why the FBI had been interested enough in Ryder to pick him up at the prison. If there was funny business within the Miami police, the federal authorities could easily be investigating it. But...

  “We know something’s crooked in the police department,” she said. “Somebody ordered that tap on Madeleine’s phone, and alerted the guy with the gun about where we were. But we don’t know for sure where you fit in all this. I’d like to have a better idea of which side you’re on before I see you walk back into custody.”

  In an instant that wary mask was gone.
She felt him searching her face again, felt the little quiver of connection down low in her belly as he reached for her wrist and closed his long, strong fingers around it.

  He didn’t need her physical support now—he’d shifted his body so he was leaning against the tile-covered retaining wall bordering the convenience store. It was something else he was looking for—something that made her breathing quicken as she felt the sensation of his skin against hers.

  “I haven’t said thank-you—for helping me.” His eyes were steady and direct.

  She could feel the renegade appeal of them, just as she’d felt it all those years ago.

  And she knew she needed to fight against it this time.

  “There’s no need for thanks,” she said. “It just seems—like the right thing to do.”

  She could tell by the way he was holding himself that his ribs still hurt. But his dark blue gaze never wavered. “Just like it seemed like the right thing to do not to finalize the divorce while I was in prison, right?” he said.

  Now, how had he figured that out?

  He was right—she’d delayed the official divorce because pushing the legal work through while Ryder was in jail had felt too much like kicking a man who was already down. But she was surprised that he seemed to understand it now. The old Ryder—the man who’d walked away from her without a word just over a year ago—hadn’t cared about any of this. It was all the same to him, his lawyer had informed her, whether she divorced him then or later.

  That was the real Ryder, she reminded herself. It was this Ryder—this hunted, battered man with eyes like a distant storm at sea—who wasn’t real. When his memory came back, this moment of closeness, of empathy, would be forgotten.

  She was sure of it.

  His next words didn’t make it any easier to keep her distance. “You’re a good person, Jayne Robards,” he said.

  Something deep inside her started to warm and blossom at the slow sincerity in his voice.

  And another part of her wanted to turn and walk away before she got tugged any more deeply into this dangerous swirl of memory and desire.

  The silence between them lengthened as Jayne tried to come to terms with her own contradictory impulses. She could feel Ryder waiting, trying to gauge her response.