“Sam told me she gave you copies of the pages I got from the control room.” When he handed her the document copies, she tried a grin, but failed miserably. Her head ached with a vengeance. “She was right to preserve the evidence and process for prints. I wasn’t thinking my best last night. Guess I was pretty out of it.”
Payton filled her in on what had happened after the fire. For the time being, he avoided any talk of his niece Nikki, but she knew he would get to it when he was ready. As he talked and paced her hospital room, she listened to what he had to say—to a point.
Jess felt completely vulnerable, confined to a hospital bed wearing nothing but a hospital gown that resembled a hankie with ties. Her battered appearance, both old scars and new, would have made her feel self- conscious around anyone, but being in this small room with Payton Archer compounded her awkwardness. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this ridiculous around a man. She found herself counting the steps he took as he paced the floor near her bed and how many times she caught a glimpse of a dimple.
If she thought dismissing him would help her cope, she might have tried faking indifference, but Payton Archer was hard for a woman to ignore. He looked damned fine in those jeans, with his broad shoulders and narrow hips, which only the NFL could produce. He wore his hair long and straight, far too appealing for her taste, the glistening blond streaks giving him the look of a beefy surfer on steroids. And worse, the fierce blue of his eyes against tanned skin had a way of stifling her breath, giving her the heady startling sensation of jumping into the deep end of a pool filled with nothing but ice water. Those eyes could be downright lethal. Yet what surprised her most was the gentleness of his voice when he spoke. It had the drizzle of honey mixed with the gravel of sultry Kentucky bourbon.
Unfortunately for her, he didn’t fit the picture of an overindulged self-centered jock, except his breath smelled of alcohol. And at this time of morning, that made him entitled to full membership in the barely functioning walking wounded club. But she knew she wasn’t one to judge, being a charter member herself.
No doubt about it, Payton Archer spelled pure trouble. His quiet appeal triggered something she had thought was dead in her. And the fact that he had been in a desperate search for his niece made her want to get to know him all the more. He pushed all her buttons and some she didn’t even know she had.
“It took a lot of guts for Nikki to reach out to me, especially when she was so scared,” she told him. Despite fighting a burgeoning headache, she set the cup of ice aside and broached the touchy subject of his niece, waiting for him to open up to her.
Sam had told her about Payton’s breakdown at the scene after her delirious outburst about Nikki being left in the control room. She had no way of knowing for sure what had happened, and he couldn’t have done anything about it in the midst of an explosion, but logical reasoning wouldn’t stop the pain of grief. And by the look on his face, he would have a long road toward becoming whole again.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell my sister.” He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “I haven’t called her yet, but no sense in putting it off. She has to know. Guess I was hoping this was a nightmare. That I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be true. Any of it.”
“None of this is your fault…or your sister’s. These predators know how to manipulate little girls like Nikki. And…” She could have gone on but stopped herself, knowing he wasn’t ready to hear her tirade or her recollections of the last minutes of Nikki’s life. “When you’re ready to hear it, I’d like to tell you…about Nikki.”
He stared at her a long moment, trying to decide what he was prepared to hear. Eventually he nodded and let it go. Jess hated watching him struggle with the unresolved grief, but sooner or later he’d have to come to terms with what had happened to Nikki.
“So how did you find me in the fire?” she asked. “I don’t remember much after the Russian slugged me over the head.” By his reticent reaction, she wondered if she had pushed too much. But she wanted to open a door for him. “If you don’t want to talk about this, that’s okay too.”
“Actually, I heard your whistle, then you called out…asking for help.”
“You heard what?” Jess thought long and hard about what he’d said but could only recall vague impressions. “I was really messed up, but I don’t remember calling to anyone.” She furrowed her brow. “And I definitely can’t whistle loud enough to be heard over that damned alarm. That doesn’t make sense, but I’m sure you heard what you did or else you never would have found me.”
She shuddered at the thought of how close she’d come to dying.
“It was a woman’s voice.” Payton jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Do you remember anyone else with you…besides Nikki?”
By the expression on his handsome face, the mention of his niece’s name took its toll, but when he mentioned a woman’s voice, it triggered something.
“You know, I have this memory of…” She stalled long enough to pull an image out of the blur of last night. “…a blond woman. Her face is stuck in my mind. Last night is still fuzzy, but I think she was there. Sam said I was outside that burning room, but I was in no shape to do that on my own.”
Deep in thought, Jess hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Payton asked her a question.
“Are you saying there was someone else there? Because I didn’t see anyone leave the way we came in.”
The urgency in his voice forced her to think harder about what happened, for his sake. Had she imagined the whole thing or was she recalling something from another time long ago? She was treading a dangerous line, threatening to drag him into her delusions if she was wrong.
“I can’t be sure, but I think someone pulled me from of the fire,” she replied in a voice that lacked resolve. How much could she trust her recollections after what had happened?
When she looked up, Payton had a pained expression on his face.
“What?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”
“If there was a blond woman there, where did she go? I mean, she didn’t come through us or we would have seen her. If you’re right about this woman, then she got you help…and maybe she helped Nikki too. A big place like that? Maybe there were other ways in and out.”
Although her memories were muddled, Jess had a vague notion of a back way out. The pieces to the puzzle of last night hadn’t clicked into place yet, but Payton was grasping at very thin straws, and she knew it. In her line of work, she’d dealt with the scum of the earth, leaving her more cynical than someone like Payton Archer. The dark thought that percolated in her brain now would not be easy for him to hear, but encouraging him to believe that Nikki might still be alive would only prolong his agony if she was wrong. She considered her words carefully before speaking.
“Listen, Payton.” She couldn’t look him in the eye. “My memories sometimes get jumbled with a past I’d sooner forget. My childhood…I get confused between what actually happened and all the nightmares since…I don’t want to get your hopes up over something I may have conjured from thin air.”
“But—” He stopped short and considered her point. “I can see the pain behind your eyes. Are you okay?”
His astute observation surprised her. Was he talking about her physical pain, or the emotional scars most people chose to ignore? To his credit, Payton didn’t ask her any more about her personal recollections. He gave her the privacy she normally craved. And she liked that very much.
“I know Sam has got people digging through that old factory,” she said. “We’ll know what happened real soon. Maybe by then I’ll remember…be more sure.”
Her words sounded hollow. She wanted to comfort him but had no idea how to do that. She knew how she’d feel if it had been her loved one killed in the blaze. And by the look on Payton’s face, nothing would have consoled him either.
But she had to be sure about the troubling thought that plagued her now.
If a mystery woman had helped her from the fire in the control room, that woman may have done the same for Nikki, just as Payton had speculated. But if she was mistaken, and the woman had only been an illusive figment of her chronic bad dreams, she would be leading Payton and his sister down a grim path of false hope. After all they had been through, she didn’t want to be the cause of an even greater emotional setback.
Sure it would have been a comfort for Payton to realize he hadn’t left his niece behind in the fire, but another scenario remained, with serious implications. Jess shivered at the thought of his niece still in the hands of the Russian. The girl would be no match for the man’s cruelty.
