attention back to the case. It was full of gelcaps, all the colors, including the ones he’d run out of a few days ago. That sorry bastard King Banner hadn’t been any better off than he. No matter how Souk had sold his research to Lancaster, every soldier who’d been through Atlas Exports was playing a losing game.
“Jane,” he said her name. Jane Linden. But that wasn’t the whole truth. “You have another name.” A name he’d heard many times. And the mere fact that he recalled it made something shift deep inside him, like a widening crack in a fault line. “They called you Robin Rulz.”
And he knew why. It was a shout-out to Robin Hood, with the wild girl ruling the streets instead of the forest, stealing from the rich to feed all those grimy little brats who had always been underfoot everyplace she’d gone. He picked a white pill out of King’s case and put it under his tongue.
Geezus.
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, and he breathed—deep and slow, soft and easy. With luck, and King’s meds, he just might make it through the night.
The cops continued to rustle around outside, shining their lights everywhere and talking on the radio, and through it all, the white pill slowly dissolved until it was nothing more than a citrus taste in his mouth.
“That was your street name, Robin Rulz,” he said, waiting for the first wave of relief to wash over him.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“I thought you’d lost your memory.”
“So did I. For forever, I’d figured, but since I got to Denver, things have been changing for me, especially since I saw you on the street.”
“Me?” She sounded disbelieving, then let out a short laugh. “Do us both a favor, and don’t remember too much about me.”
Yeah, he understood. She’d had a helluva life.
“Too late,” he said. “I think I’ve just about got it all: the kids, your street-rat days running a crew for that bastard who got sent up for importing heroin through his rug business. That must be how you got in trouble with that junkie, you and Sandman.”
She stiffened in his arms, swearing under her breath, and tried to push away from him.
“Hey, hey, don’t go anywhere, not yet,” he whispered, pulling her back.
He kept his hold on her gentle but firm, and after a moment, she relented. She wrapped her arms around herself, keeping her distance, but stayed within the protective shelter of his lap.
“You got a rough start,” he said. “There’s no shame in that, and as soon as you saw another way, you took it. That’s the best any of us can do.” And she’d done it in spades. No one looking at her would ever see the grimy kid she used to be. He’d been looking at her all night and hadn’t seen anything but—
Trouble.
Hell. He let out a sigh and relaxed more deeply into the corner, feeling the shakes slowly fading away. The white pill worked fast, and he was starting to feel pretty good, like he was going to make it through the next few hours.
She felt good, too, all soft curves, silky dress, and even silkier hair, long and loose and sliding down his T-shirt, catching on his arm. He wanted her, but he sure didn’t see that going anywhere.
Outside, he heard a pair of car doors slam shut, and then the flashing lights faded from the windows. The cops were leaving. It was time to move.
“Come on,” he said, gathering her close and standing up. He let her feet slide to the floor, and as soon as he knew she was stable, he released her and headed into the bathroom. “Can you make us some coffee, maybe see if there’s something in the fridge to eat?”
There would be. The kitchen in this house was always stocked, the woman who lived here always generous in a thousand ways that had kept him coming back year after year.
This place … this place … He stopped and looked around. He’d come here for a reason. He just wasn’t sure what it was, or who the woman was who owned it.
Nothing was as clear to him as the Wild Thing. Every time he looked at her, another image from the past slid across his mind. Some of them not so great, like one night when he’d caught her on the street, literally, he’d had his hands on her, holding her, and she’d been a mess, coughing, her