Dark Sins and Desert Sands

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.”