Dark Sins and Desert Sands Read online

  “My dad thinks I’m on drugs or just doing it for attention,” he said.

  “Are you?” Layla asked.

  Carson shook his head. “I guess I thought I was just some kind of moody artist who gets off on destroying shit. You know, like those rockers who smash up their guitars? I even wondered if maybe I was allergic to paint. But it doesn’t just happen to me in galleries or studios. The last time it happened, I was visiting the Grand Canyon with my family and my girlfriend. Well, she’s my ex-girlfriend now. I scared her off with what I did.”

  “What triggered it?” Layla asked.

  Carson’s lower lip wobbled. “It wasn’t fear of heights or fear of falling down the cliffside, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that when I looked at the enormity of the canyon—the jagged rocks and the water-carved curves—I picked up the tire iron and started swinging it blindly.”

  It was hard to imagine a gentle soul like Carson Tremblay wielding a tire iron. The young man hadn’t hurt anyone, but he’d destroyed his father’s car, upset his family, and scared away the girl he loved. “Were you angry, Carson? Did something make you so angry at your father that you’d want to smash his windshield and the headlights?”

  “Yeah. No. I dunno. My dad wanted us all to look at it, you know? He’s gotta know everything. He’s gotta uncover everything. I guess that’s his job as a reporter. But I was just staring at the rocks and the scrub. The wildlife and the barrenness. It was everything right and wrong with the world, and my heart started pounding.”

  Layla’s heart started pounding, too. Thinking of the desert. Thinking of the yearning.

  “I heard this rush in my ears and I went weak with a cold sweat,” Carson said. “I tried to close my eyes, like I couldn’t bear to look. It was just too…” He struggled to find the word.

  “Beautiful,” Layla breathed, finishing for him.

  At last, Carson met her eyes. “Yeah. Exactly. Too beautiful. Can things really be too beautiful?”

  Layla was sure of it. Things could be too beautiful. Too delicious. Too pleasurable. Desires were dangerous. Passion unlocked things in a person that might otherwise be best left undisturbed and unexamined.

  Layla cursed herself. She shouldn’t have let her mind go there. Without any real memories of her own, she seldom brought her own issues into therapy. It was one of the reasons she was very good at this, she told herself. One of the reasons she justified keeping her memory loss a secret. This way, it could be all about her clients. She could help people. Heal people. “Carson, you may be suffering from an unusual case of Stendhal Syndrome.”

  “I looked that up on Google,” Carson said, meandering around her office as if he couldn’t make himself sit still. He stopped by her bookshelves, running his fingers over the spines of her neatly organized books. “It’s where tourists faint or freak out after seeing great works of art, right? But I told you, it doesn’t just happen in a studio, and even if it did, I’m an artist. I can’t avoid art. I’ve got an exhibit this week. There’s got to be a cure.”

  Some therapists would recommend a psychiatrist who would almost assuredly prescribe antidepressants, Layla thought. But that would treat his symptoms, not the underlying cause. Besides, she worried about deadening his emotions. She didn’t want to turn Carson into someone like her. Someone numb to everything but the fear. Someone who couldn’t even remember herself and didn’t want to.

  “Carson, I think we’re going to try something called trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re going to slowly expose you to the trauma until you have a more balanced perception.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Carson said. “But I guess you know what you’re talking about. I mean, you must get some real crazies who come in here.”

  Layla glanced up to see that he’d plucked a piece of paper off of her shelf. Carson handed it to her. “I like to think I’d never really hurt anybody, but if I ever get like the guy who wrote this, I hope you have me locked up.”

  Layla didn’t recognize the note or the handwriting, which spelled out the words in bold strokes upon a slip of paper that was crisp and textured like papyrus. But she recognized a threat when she saw one: I’m always watching you, Layla, and when I come for you, there will be a reckoning.

  As she crumpled the note in her hand, her heart hammered so loudly in her chest that she worried her patient would hear it. All this time, she’d been half-convinced that her nighttime rituals of checking her locks were simply what any sensible woman who lived alone would do. But now she knew her dread wasn’t imagined. It was all real, scrawled in bold black ink.

  He’d been here. He’d slipped past her vigilant assistant and her locked doors. Whoever he was, he’d been in this very office. And he was coming for her.

  It took Layla several long minutes to regain her composure. If she let her mask slip, her patient might see how terrified she was, and it might ruin all the progress they’d made together. “You’ll never become like that, Carson, and no one is going to lock you up.”

  Fortunately, they were interrupted by Layla’s efficient—and officious—assistant Isabel who tapped lightly on the door to let them know that the session was over. While Layla tried to hide her shaking hands, Isabel marshaled Carson out of the office, then returned with a cup of tea and the newspaper, folded over to the crossword puzzle.

  It was a nice gesture, but Isabel wasn’t normally the kind of assistant who catered to her, which meant that Layla must not be hiding her emotions as well as she hoped. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Feliz cumpleaños!” Isabel crowed, and just like magic, she produced a lone muffin with a lopsided birthday candle on top. “Happy birthday, Dr. Bahset!”

  Was it her birthday? Layla fought the urge to check her driver’s license, which was the only way she could have known for sure. Layla hadn’t celebrated her birthday last year and her confusion must have been obvious, because Isabel added, “And don’t fuss at me that you don’t like sweets. It’s a low-fat bran muffin. Bland and tasteless, just how you like it!” Layla did prefer bland. Food was just fuel, after all. “Thank you, Isabel. It was so nice of you to remember.”

  Isabel clucked as she lit the candle atop Layla’s bran muffin. “Who else would remember?”

  That wasn’t quite fair. Over the past two years—the only two years of her life she could remember—Layla had made friends. Well, colleagues really. And she occasionally dated. There were other people in her life, but admittedly, probably none of them knew whether or not it was her birthday. After all, she’d become a master at deflection, always turning conversations away from herself and away from her past.

  “Let’s celebrate tonight!” Isabel said. “Come out with me and the girls.”

  Layla was tempted. After reading that threatening note, she didn’t want to be alone tonight. But Isabel was the very definition of a social butterfly with a swarm of adoring fans always in her wake. Layla wasn’t sure she could handle quite so much company. “I’m really tired lately.”

  “Don’t be loco. Come with us to amateur hour. I’ll teach you to dance up on stage.” Isabel, who was studying to be a sex therapist, managed to say this as if it weren’t scandalous at all.

  “No, thank you. I prefer not to be paid for my skills in dollar bills.”

  “Ha! I think you got other plans. Is Dr. Jaffe taking you out tonight?”

  “Boundaries, Isabel. Boundaries,” Layla warned, picking up her pen. She always did crosswords in pen. “Chica, you’d have more fun if you didn’t have all those boundaries.”

  Layla didn’t dare reprimand Isabel for her sass. After all, Isabel not only helped Layla keep track of her day-to-day life, but stood as a living reminder of all the lies she’d spun to cover the things she didn’t know. Isabel was the first person Layla had fooled into thinking that she wasn’t an amnesiac, and because of Isabel, it was easier to fool the rest. On the other hand, sometimes it seemed as if Isabel wasn�
��t fooled at all. “You’re sure not dressed for a hot date tonight, Dr. Bahset…”

  Layla wouldn’t have the first idea how to dress for a hot date. She owned a closet full of dark skirts and high-necked blouses. Isabel, by contrast, was always dressed as if she had a hot date. Today Isabel was wearing a curve-hugging suit and leopard print heels that weren’t entirely office-appropriate but made her look like some kind of sex goddess.

  Isabel handed Layla a lovely box from a fashionable Las Vegas boutique. “Here. A present for you. Open it, then I’m gonna sing.”

  “You didn’t have to get me anything,” Layla started to say.

  But Isabel held up her hand. “Trust me, I did. You need somebody to put a little sexy in your step!”

  Neatly folded beneath sparkling tissue paper was a siren-red dress. Layla pulled it out, laying it over her knees. “It’s lovely, thank you.” And it was. Given Isabel’s own taste in clothing, it was a remarkably restrained choice: a knee-length, sleeveless sheath with delicate shirring at the neckline. Layla didn’t own anything like it.

  Isabel grinned. “Wear that on your date with Dr. Jaffe and he’ll want to give you birthday spankings.”

  “Isabel!”

  Isabel laughed and in spite of everything, Layla couldn’t help but laugh with her. Her incorrigible assistant had that effect on everyone, so as far as Layla was concerned, Isabel could say, do and wear whatever she wanted.

  “Happy birthday to you…” Isabel sang, her voice a Spanish purr. But when Layla leaned over to blow out the candle on her bran muffin, Isabel stopped her. “Wait. What are you gonna wish for?”

  That was a good question. Layla already had plenty of money, though she had no idea where it came from. She had a successful practice, but not successful enough to justify her fat bank account. So, what should she wish for? Did she dare wish for her memories back?

  “You’re thinking too hard,” Isabel scolded. Then she leaned forward, pursed her ruby-red lips, and blew out the candle. “There, I made a wish for you!”

  Layla put the dress back in the box and tried to make her desk as neat as it was before Hurricane Isabel arrived. “I’m afraid to even ask what you wished for me.”

  “Just because I can’t find a man who can keep up with me doesn’t mean you have to settle,” Isabel said, sashaying toward the waiting room. “All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be surprised if a new man comes walking into your life. And unlike Dr. Jaffe, this one will actually be your type!”

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t have a type,” Layla assured her. But did she?

  She couldn’t remember anything from her past. No husbands, lovers, boyfriends. She was only dating Dr. Nate Jaffe because healthy adult women had relationships. The aging psychiatrist was interested in her and it’d seemed easier to go to bed with him than to say no. She was fond of him, but not more than that. She couldn’t let it be more because whatever lurked in Layla’s past, she knew it was dangerous, and she didn’t want anyone else to have to pay the price.

  Ray was home. Well, he was stateside anyway. For the past two years, he’d imagined himself climbing up the steps of his mother’s front porch—the one she swept clean and adorned with pink petunias. He’d imagined his nephews throwing open the front door and running into his arms to welcome him. Instead, he’d had to sneak back into the country under an assumed identity, greeted only by the bells and whistles of the slot machines in McCarran International Airport.

  Las Vegas was where he’d find Dr. Layla Bahset, so here he was.

  The first thing Ray did was rent a cheap motel room that accepted payment in cash. Now he stood before the grimy bathroom mirror, which was steamy from his shower. Staring at his reflection, he tried to recognize himself. As a soldier, he’d always been fit, but the musculature of his hulking shoulders was something entirely new. He’d wasted away in a dungeon for two years; he should’ve been gaunt and frail. Instead, his biceps bulged and his muscles strained over the broadness of his chest.

  But not everything about him had changed. He still had the marks of his captivity. The burns, the cuts, the lashes. Some parts of his body were a gnarled web of scar tissue that made him shudder to look at. Ever since he’d escaped, he’d been going on pure adrenaline. Now that was subsiding in favor of exhaustion, and his limbs felt heavy and sluggish. He thought about sleeping, but then he’d be at the mercy of his nightmares. If he wasn’t dreaming about being locked in a box, then he was dreaming about his brother’s suicide or he was dreaming about Afghanistan. The hail of bullets. Screaming at his buddy to stop shooting. All the blood…

  Best to stay awake. At least for a little longer.

  He had a palpable need to hear his family’s voices and make sure they were okay. He’d never thought he’d miss his mother’s nagging or his father’s sardonic comments, but he did. He only hoped they’d be happy to hear from him even though he was a fugitive. No. He couldn’t even call them. The last thing he wanted was to incriminate or shame his family, which meant there was only one person in the world that Ray could contact.

  Jack Bouchier answered on the third ring. “Howdy!”

  “It’s me,” Ray said.

  There was a shocked pause on the other end of the line until his old war buddy finally said, “Naw…it can’t be. Ray?”

  It was almost too much to hear his name spoken by someone who knew him when he was a soldier, when he was still a man and not some kind of monster. Emotion welled up in Ray’s throat until he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak over it. He had to squeeze his eyes shut. “Yeah. It’s me.”

  Jack’s slow and lazy Southern drawl suddenly snapped to stiff attention. “Where the hell are you, brother?” They had been brothers. Brothers-in-arms and more than that, too. There was no one Ray trusted more. But even though Jack was a good ol’ boy from Virginia with ancestors he could trace back to the Jamestown settlers, that didn’t mean Homeland Security wouldn’t pick up the call. “Not on the phone,” Ray said.

  Jack breathed heavy into the phone. “They wouldn’t tell us what happened to you. You just didn’t show up for muster one mornin’ and when we asked, they told us to mind our own business.”

  Ray’s knees wobbled, so he sat on the edge of his motel room bed. “Just tell me about my family. Are they okay?”

  “They’re fine, Ray. I ain’t gonna tell you they’re right as rain, but they’re fine as they could be under the circumstances. When I came back stateside, I helped ’em hire a lawyer for you, but you done disappeared. They’re scared outta their wits for you.”

  Ray bet they were. His parents were immigrants. They’d fled from Syria and even though they’d always taught Ray that America was different—that America was a place of laws and tolerance—he wasn’t sure they ever truly felt safe. “Tell my family that I’m innocent and I’m alive. I’ll owe you one.”

  “You don’t owe me shit,” Jack said. “Not after what you done for me.”

  Ray didn’t like to think about what he’d done for Jack, so he didn’t say anything.

  “I owe you big, Ray, and you know it, so what else do you need?”

  “I need you to believe that whatever anybody says about me, I never worked with the enemy. You’ve gotta tell my family that and don’t do it on the phone.”

  “You got it. Then I’ll come get you. Just give me an address and I’ll jump in the pickup.”

  “Can’t.” Ray rubbed his neck, the image of beautiful but cold green eyes dancing mockingly in his mind. “There’s someone I need to take care of first.”

  It wasn’t difficult for Ray to find Layla Bahset’s office. She hadn’t gone to any trouble to hide her identity. She was listed right there in the Las Vegas phone book like she was just an ordinary woman and not evil incarnate. This had probably been a mistake—to come directly to his interrogator’s office in the middle of the day. They’d have him on the security cameras and someone might be able to identify him. But unless he planned to stalk Layla Bahset down the street, l
ike he’d done with the guard in Aleppo, this was the easiest way to handle things.

  “Hola,” the woman at the desk purred, eyeing him with unabashed interest while her fingers arranged a vase of flowers. “My name is Isabel. And aren’t you just trouble in a tight black T-shirt…”

  She was a glamazon with cinnamon-brown eyes, Latin curves in all the right places, and a smile that could cause a war or two. Ray felt himself flush under her magnetic charm. She was sexy as hell and it’d been a long time, but Ray couldn’t let himself be distracted by flirtation. He’d come here for Layla Bahset. He’d come here for justice. He’d come here to clear his name. Nothing less would satisfy.

  “So, will the doc see me, or not?” Ray asked.

  “Lucky for you, Dr. Bahset’s a workaholic. I’m sure she’ll squeeze you in, Papi.”

  Were they already to the nickname stage? “Thanks, Cha-cha,” Ray returned, swiping a piece of candy from her desk. He popped it in his mouth hoping the sugar would steady him, but the intense sweetness put him even further on edge.

  Dr. Bahset’s office door was half-open, and he took a moment to watch her. Was it just Ray’s imagination, or had he been in prison so long that every woman looked like a goddess today? Layla Bahset was as flawless as he remembered her, and Ray found that comforting. If a wisp of her black hair had escaped the confines of her severely upswept coiffure, it might’ve given him pause. If her lips had been slightly chapped instead of delicately glossed, he might’ve hesitated. But she was perfect. Beneath the demure white blouse and dark skirt, there wasn’t a single crack in the facade through which her humanity might have shone through.

  Yet here she was, in the flesh.

  It all happened in slow motion—fractional increments of time. He stepped into her office and locked the door, hearing the satisfying sound of the bolt sliding into place. Layla Bahset looked up, her emerald eyes disarmingly and deceptively warm. He remembered those eyes, as green as the Nile and as timeless as the pyramids. Eyes so penetrating and pitiless that his throat had constricted with every question she’d asked. Now he made himself just as hard and pitiless. His boots rapidly closed the distance between them and her smile faded. His coat caught the edge of a low end table and overturned it just as she rose to her feet to call for help.