Incognition
Kate Smith
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Incognition
Copyright 2009, Kate Smith
Cover Art by KSeriphyn Designs
All Rights Reserved.
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****
The male of the species was a closed book to Blaise.
A book in another language, eight-point type, an overly fancy font, and with minimal punctuation. Sure, she could guess at a word here . . . or there . . . maybe, but it was pretty much Homo sapiens incognito. So when she was confronted with one of the XY types . . .
Blaise removed her sunglasses slowly, buying time to think of something, anything, to say while the specimen before her shifted impatiently. He loomed, blocking out the sunlight seeping slow as honey through the glass dome. Against that golden haze she can’t make out his details except for strong solidity.
The dark chocolaty growl that emanated from him suited perfectly.
Blaise squinted myopically and frantically tried to tune in to that gravel accented voice.
He seemed to catch her bewilderment and eased back a pace as he repeated himself slowly, exaggerating the lip moves and raising his voice as though she were seventy-two not thirty-two.
The mild irritation broke her uncharacteristic daze. Then Blaise remembered she was seventy-two this afternoon. A very spry seventy-two, yes, despite the senior citizen fashion.
His move back allowed the sunshine to highlight his scowl and the efforts he put into concealing it. Blaise jolted, increasing the distance between them. Her camera bumped her wrist.
Camera!
Blaise fumbled the sleek silver cube up to her face. Then swallowed, hoping the motion would unpeel her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She hunched a little and tipped her head up to show the crêpey neck and the wrinkles around her eyes.
“Sweetie, may I have your photo to show the ladies back at the home?” Yes, yesss! The creaky reedy voice came naturally. Blaise made a show of scrabbling over the buttons of the digital camera, squinting at it from a distance of five centimetres. She pasted on a hopeful expression and glanced at him.
His stance relaxed a fraction. “We’re closing very soon, ma’am.”
“One photo? A treat for the ladies?” He deserved that for the ma’am, even if it was appropriate given her appearance. Oh, how she enjoyed the reddening along his cheekbones!
“Anything for the ladies.” He peeked at his watch and the rapidly emptying room.
Humouring her, and nicely too. Blaise rewarded him with a smile that felt bigger than usual thanks to the carefully sloppy application of lipstick. She never wore it normally but whenever she did, her lips felt plump and lush and not altogether hers.
His own smile was somewhat forced, she felt. It heightened rather than softened the harsh planes of his face. Then she remembered to take the photo. Fingers cold, Blaise fumbled the camera into her pocket. Done.
A warm hand the size of a cymbal wrapped round her elbow, branding her flesh beneath the layers of coat and cardigan. “Are you well, ma’am?”
Argh! Had he spotted anything? Had she slipped out of character?
Blaise craned her head round in one of the birdlike mannerisms she’d adopted for this role. He had sharp eyes, she noticed. Hazel eyes, with little flecks of gold, like sunlight through green tea.
She forced herself to inhale, forced a rueful smile. “Just old and there’s only one cure for that.”
“Not for a long time yet, I hope.” He walked her to the door.
“Hmmm, yes.”
* * * *
Jed Wolferton flexed his tingling hand and stared after the old lady as she left. She must have been something when she was young. Amazing eyes really, even nested in wrinkles. Not many men would have objected to having their photo taken when fixed by that gaze.
He snorted. Martin was going to love the pin-up of the nursing home story.
Shaking his head, Jed snapped the bolts, keyed in the sequence that secured the front doors and started for the rear of the complex. But it wasn’t as easy as all that to lock her out of his mind.
When he’d first spotted her she’d been moving well, cruising almost. By the time she’d left she’d been hunched. Maybe standing still had got to her bones, stiffened her muscles. He regretted halting her for those few minutes.
Jed stopped so fast his shoes squeaked on the tile. He turned just enough to see down the hall into the central atrium and his eyes narrowed. “Filius aper umbo,” he breathed and snapped into motion.
Two minutes later, Jed slammed through the matte black doors of the security suite on a collision course with the bank of monitors humming gently to themselves. On the edge of his awareness he noted the scrambling retreat of the operator but most of his attention was riveted on the recording he dialed up.
Jed watched the scene through all the way once and rewound to freeze it on just her, zooming in so her face filled the screen. He smoothed the prickling hair at the nape of his neck.
“You know, Tara has this friend who’s more your style if you’re looking for a date.”
Jed barely glanced at his brother-in-law leaning in the doorway. “You forget that I’ve known Tara all her life. I know her type of friend.”
Martin swung into the leather chair next to him. “Fine. Choose your own ladylove then, although if this is a sample maybe I should be worried.” He flicked his fingers at the screen.
Jed batted Martin’s hand away. “Oh, yes. My mystery lady and I definitely have to schedule a date.”
Martin eyed him critically. “Are you sure that accident didn’t scramble your brains?”
Trust Martin to toss the subject everyone else tiptoed around right out there like a football. Jed waved it away and jerked his head toward the monitor. “I think they’ve finally unscrambled. Take a closer look.”
Martin lazed back in his chair. “Sorry, geriatrics don’t do it for me.”
“And you’re a genius. Or so Tara maintains.”
“She loves me.” Martin flashed the goofy smile of the newlywed.
Jed thumped Martin’s shoulder. “You supposedly employ me to pre-empt problems so pay attention here. This woman is a problem.”
Four generations of arrogant ancestors came to the fore. “I did not employ you out of pity,” Martin enunciated.
“I know, I know.” Impatient now, Jed set the tape in motion, adding sound from the discreetly located mikes. He steepled his hands and rested his forefingers against his lower lip.
Martin’s eyebrows rose at the photo section but he waited until Jed punched the freeze button. “What?”
“That’s not an old lady. That’s paint and costume but for what purpose I do not know. Yet.”
Martin glanced at Jed and grinned slowly. “Keep me informed. And by the way, happy birthday. Although if that’s your gift, I’d be demanding a refund.”
“It’s all in the gift wrapping. Out,” Jed commanded, pointing to the exit. He set the cycle running again. “Who are you and what do you want?”
* * * *
Gritty eyed from a night spent staring at a screen, Jed thought about not walking to work for thirty seconds. He’d fallen into the habit of walking everywhere after the . . . accident . . . firstly because he could walk and that was pretty much a miracle, and secondly because the exercise helped him sleep and in those early days he’d needed all the help he could get.
So this morning he walked. He fitted his hands into his pockets and let the mild air clear his head. Somewhere a lilac was in bloom, scenting the morning. He heard an espresso shriek from the tiny café as he passed and noticed the college girls at number seventeen had painted their front door tart red.
Then the beagle ambushed him with a play with me! grin, flopping ears, and a brunette in a tight purple t-shirt attached to the other end of the lead.
“You are a terrible flirt,” the brunette said to the dog. She sounded resigned and a little amused rather than scolding.
The dog braced his front paws on Jed’s thigh and winked a toffee-coloured eye.
“He’s gorgeous.” Jed glanced at the woman as he knuckled between the dog’s ears. The t-shirt fitted extremely well. “What’s his name?”
“Sharkie. For the white pointer tail and the sharp teeth when he was a pup.” She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and grinned a three-pointed smile. “Although I’m seriously considering changing his name to Gorgeous. That’s what everyone calls him and if they don’t, he chases after them until they do.”
Jed laughed.
The triangular smile flashed again and he pegged her age as mid to late twenties, just starting to gain faint lines around the eyes. An interesting age.
“Come on, you hellhound, we’ll find some more people to admire you. We go zis vay,” she pointed and her hand brushed Jed’s arm.
He absently rubbed his tingling arm as he watched the young woman and her flirtatious dog trot down the street. Actually, the dog swaggered while the woman swayed. She looked back and waved before vanishing round the corner.
Jed’s eyebrows snapped together and he glanced at his hand on his arm. Pretty eyes, seemingly innocent encounter . . . he strode to the corner, breaking into a run the last few steps.
They’d gone.
This wasn’t good.
* * * *
Jed rethought his decision to go out for a late lunch when the car swerved toward him.
He’d thought the fresh air would clear his head, which it did, and also his lungs as he plastered his spine against the fence to avoid the gleaming chrome, the Styx-black paintwork, the heat from the V8 engine with the perfectly tuned headers.
It was amazing what the mind registered when death jumped the curb to block the footpath. Heat radiating from the metal bathed his face as Jed swallowed, kick-starting his respiration. As his ribs expanded on the inhale, the hem of his jacket brushed the sleek paintwork.
The window closest to him wound down and the driver leaned across. “Get in before I give in to my first impulse and run you over.”
Startled, Jed looked twice. It was definitely the woman from this morning, sans beagle, purple t-shirt, and gypsy black locks. “And you are . . .” he drawled invitingly despite the thumping of his heart.
“Besides imminently homicidal? I’m the one saving your excellent arse.”
“You know, I think there’s a contradiction there.”
Her hands clenched so tight on the steering wheel he thought her knuckles would explode through her skin. Jed glanced around the neighbourhood, saw nothing out of the ordinary to account for the staccato beating of his blood except her.
With an impatient hiss she leaned across the console and opened the passenger door, staring a challenge over the tops of her sunglasses.
Jed shrugged and slid into the low-slung chariot. The cramped confines brought her perfume to his nose and his kneecaps close to his throat.
The little car arrowed away from the curb at warp speed. Jed wrapped the seatbelt around himself and choked on questions, unwilling to divert her attention.
She obviously didn’t feel the same.
“What the hell did you do? Call your ex-associates the minute you hit the office?”
Jed wished she hadn’t said hit. He screwed his eyes shut as they whizzed round a roundabout without downshifting.
“I bet you did,” she answered for him. “Yeah. I bet I even know who you called. It was that little twerp Richard and he wanted something in exchange, but not ballet tickets. So you mentioned how daaaaarling Tara has this friend and Richard starts slavering. What was it, a whole hour before you get an answer to the who is that woman question? It doesn’t come from Richard though. No. The man himself, Jeremy Flannagan, so round he has an equator instead of a waistline, shows up and congratulates you on receiving a visit from the notorious, the elusive, the almost mythical, Blaise. Welcomes you to the ranks of those who have been Burnt. Yes?”
She was eerily accurate except for one pertinent fact.
“No.” Jed checked the tension of the seatbelt across his chest.
“No what?”
“I called Richard about two minutes after you and the beagle vanished this morning.”
That stung Blaise into silence. She drove with controlled fury, an aggressive contempt for other road users that whipped the vehicle through split-second gaps and ignored signage.
Jed managed to turn his head enough to see her rather than six ways of impending doom. She had a strong profile that might even be her own, stripped of disguises, though he wouldn’t bet on that. He would on the hair. The jagged lengths of silvery walnut weren’t the result of a salon cut but more of a pair of scissors when annoyed. The current crease marking her forehead pulled her brows into demonic slashes above eyes that glittered at him right through berry-tinted lenses as she flicked her gaze from the road ahead.
“Why?”
Not something he was going to answer even if he could. The itching of his nerves was not something he was willing to discuss. Those nerves screamed as Blaise checked her mirrors and wrenched the wheel hard left, sending the car into a neat turn beneath the grill of a semi-trailer. Down an alley, bumping over cobbles, a right, two lefts and she clicked her fingers. An ornate iron grill answered, sliding up. Just as slick, Blaise slid the car through into a courtyard.