Blood and Bone(11)

He moves cautiously with purpose to the desk, picking up a file and  sliding it across the table to me. He nods at it. "Sam, you were my  partner for five years. We were undercover together at Berkeley for two.  We were undercover in Ireland for a year. We worked the assassinations  of seven men and one woman. It's what led us to this case." He chuckles  again as he takes small steps to the desk and sits slowly. Everything he  does is purposeful and planned, like a tiger walking in a cage, always  watching you.

I lift a hand, dragging open the file.

Everything crashes inside me. My emotions hit a wall of sorts, but break  through. Hot tears flood my face. They try to blind me and block out  the truth, but every page is another answer to a question I never  thought to ask until recently.

I am thirty-two years old. I work for the American government in  something that's blacked out on the files, so it must be intense if they  won't even tell me about me.

My mother's name was Sheila. She died in a car accident when I was two.  My father was an abusive drunk. His name was Leroy Anderson. I was  abducted as a small child, taken by my aunt Pat, and raised as her  daughter. Barnes is my aunt's name. She's still alive, living in North  Carolina. The file says she saved me. She abducted me to save me from my  father.

I have no sisters or brothers.

There are pictures of a cat, a black-and-white cat.

The tears try to block it all out, so I get blurry images of a history-schools, houses, and people that just can't be real.

It's all about me.

Me as a blonde, a redhead, a brunette. I am thin in every shot, much thinner than now.

"Aye, look how skinny ya were."

I lift my snotty face, crying harder.

He laughs at me, completely at me, as if we have a comfort level that  can support that level of mockery. He hands me a tissue. "You look  better like this. More real. You were always a bit of a Barbie doll  before. So thin and pert. Ya look like a regular girl now."

I sniffle. "I don't believe this, any of it. I'm Jane Spears, and I want  a lawyer. You're trying to make me do something I don't want to do. I  need to go home. I demand to be released." Panic fills me as the walls  creep in closer and closer.

"You don't know you're Sam, and it's gonna take some time to get you  back on track. Just look at the evidence." He nods. "I would imagine you  have spent a long time being lied to. How long since you lost your  memory?"

Before I answer, I blow my nose and wipe my face. Trying desperately to  get some sort of control over my emotions, I shake my head with my eyes  closed. It's like being in Oz or The Twilight Zone. But when I open my  eyes again, he's still here and I'm still some secret agent of sorts  with a dead mother, an abusive father, and an aunt who might have  actually saved my life.

"Answer the questions and you can go home."
         

     



 
"Three years. I was in an accident and got amnesia."

His eyes narrow in disbelief. "Were you hurt badly?"

I shrug. "I have hordes of scars. Derek said it was bad."

He scowls. "Who? You aren't with Dash anymore? Did you kill him? Fuck, he didn't get away, did he?"

My brow knits. "You have to ask questions I might understand."

He reaches for me slowly, stopping at the file to flip pages. He comes  to a shot of a man who could be Derek, maybe, and thumps his finger down  hard. "Dash, Benjamin Dash. Is he dead or alive?"

I swallow hard, worried about exactly what kind of trouble Derek is in. My instinct is to protect him. "I don't know this man."

He winces, wrinkling his nose. "Of course ya do. He's a skeezy fucker."  He says it like focker and snorts. I have never seen a human being react  that way to Derek. He's a god among men. "What were your injuries in  the accident?"

"I have scars on my ribs, back, and my arm. My head has a small one under my hair."

"You've always had those scars. They're old as sin. I don't think you  were in a car accident. I think he did something to your mind. Fucked  with it. Feel like protecting him now? The old you was hard as nails and  woulda killed him in a heartbeat. He's made you soft." He snorts and  grabs a picture from the bunch of the blonde girl who is identical to  me, in a bikini. The scars are the same. I had them before. They're not  from the accident. His words cut through me, making new scars.

No accident is ringing in my head like Quasimodo is in there himself,  pulling on the rope. After a second I nod. "His name is Derek, not Dash.  He's a good man."

"A good liar, ya mean." He sighs, licks his lips, and slaps the picture.  "What can you tell us? What have you gotten on him in the last six  years?"

Every time he mentions how long it's been, he looks like he might hug  me. I move my chair a little, backing away from him. I don't know what  to say about the scars so I focus on Derek. "Nothing. He's a surgeon and  a humanitarian and a good cook."

He bites his lip, furrowing his dark brow. "Right, and he's got a magic  cock. How about the assassinations with their serial-killer tactics  used? He doesn't assassinate like a normal cleaner would. Who does he  work for? Why always political and royalty with him? Why not the average  random, like normal serial killers?"

"He works at the hospital. I don't know." Tears build back up in my eyes again.

He slumps back in the chair, groaning. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what  the bleeding hell did he do to you? Ya baking cakes now for him, or  what?"

"Who are you?"

He cocks an eyebrow, pausing as if he doesn't understand the question,  before bursting into a fit of laughter. His dark-blue eyes narrow with  the laugh, squinting with tears of joy. He's tall and broad, just like  Angie said he was. He's handsome and chiseled-that's the word I would  use for him: chiseled. His dark hair and tanned skin make him a perfect  tall, dark, and handsome. It's too bad he cusses so much, just like  Angie said he would. I almost want to record him so I can show her she  was right. If I wasn't on the verge of losing my mind and committing  myself into a center, I would actually do it.

He slaps the desk once more, wiping his face. "Rory Guthrie. I can't  believe I never introduced myself." He reaches over, flipping to the  section in the file about him and me. There are dozens of photos of us  together. I blush when I see us kissing.

"Well, we had to be a couple, but we kept it professional."

There is a photo of us young and in Berkeley sweaters. Mine is gray and  his, black. We look like typical college nerds. His hair is longer and  fluffy and he has glasses, but it's like Superman and Clark; you can't  hide his type of beautiful with some nerdy shit.

Seeing the pictures makes my heart flutter in the wrong sort of way. He  instantly makes me uncomfortable. The smell of his cologne or aftershave  fills the air.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"For you to finish the job you started."

I glance up at him, completely lost. "What job?"

"Bring in Dash." My eyes clearly answer the request, because Rory  laughs. "You have to, or they're going to consider you rogue. You know  what the charges for treason look like?"

My insides twist. "How can I? I don't know anything, and he's done nothing wrong. He's a good person; this is a mistake."

"You're still alive after six years. He clearly feels something for you or he would have killed you. He must know what you are."         

     



 

I shake my head. "What am I? I work in shops. I'm lucky to have him. I'm  the one you want. At night I sleepwalk and murder animals."

He cocks an eyebrow. "You're a fucking vegetarian! Stop the act."

I shudder. "No. I'm not."

"Yeah, ya are. Ya been one since you were five years old. Your dad was  killing a pig in the barn. It was making all kinds of fuss. He was  cocking it up 'cause he was drunk off his ass and you woke up, caught  him, and freaked out. He fucking cooked the pig and made you eat it. You  decided from then on, no more animals."

My throat turns sour. "You have to be wrong. I eat meat."

He sighs. "Well, I guess being with nutty old Dash has cured you of one thing. Thank God for that."

I push the images away, pretending the last ten seconds never occurred.  "It doesn't matter. I woke with blood all over me. He told me I kill  animals in my sleep."

He scoffs. "He rubbed you down with blood and lied to you. He's a sociopath. He's going to play with you, Sam. Get used to it."

"Jane. If that's the case, you can't expect me to go back there and pretend everything is normal."

"Your name is Sam." Rory nods. "And yes, I do. I expect ya to do your  job. I won't go to the superiors yet. I'll give you a week to figure  this all out. But the minute they find out you have amnesia, they're  gonna haul you in for testing. No one wants CIA testing of any sort." He  nods at the file folder. "Read it, memorize it, and get the fuck back  home." He winks, and I think I might actually hate him a little. "Also,  what's your cell phone number, so I can rig your line?"