Chapter 10BC---updated this oldie too...hope you enjoy and thanks for reading and the feedback...
The memory of her and Matt on the Hawaiian beach had shaken her and she tried to recapture it, just as she had done before when she felt that her concussed brain offered her glimpses of the life that she no longer remembered. They had been standing on the beach, as the tropical breeze brought the waft of the ocean's unique cologne in around them. Bits and pieces of the holiday they had spent together while she recovered from what…a bullet wound one of several that marked her body. She had seen them when she showered at the cabin and the motels and had no real memory of how they had gotten there.
She remembered riding in a van where every jolt burned her insides, of a man holding onto her and trying to brace her from the worst of it. Arguing with the man who had told him to shut up her cries by saying that it was them that had put the bullet there. That must have been Matt who had been with her. That memory seemed much fresher than many of the others, was it because it was more traumatic than most or more recent? She had woken up after a long dreamless sleep to find him holding her hand by her bedside and she felt the warmth of his touch penetrate her even as it hurt to breathe, to move and she still felt death waiting. He hadn't wanted to leave her, she remembered, to slip his hand out of her weak grasp but she told him, with what voice she could muster to go back to some cult and rescue a girl.
"Hey C.J., what's going on?"
C.J. shook her reveries to see both Rhonda and Fran looking at her.
"We have to help him," C.J. said, "We can't just let them take him away."
Fran looked at her.
"He seems like a guy who can handle himself, or anything that comes his way."
Rhonda nodded in agreement.
"Besides, he told us to stay away," she said, "Where those men couldn't find us."
C.J. frowned, remembering someplace else.
"But..."
Fran shook her head.
"If they capture you," she said, "They'll haul him in as an accessory after the fact. And you're wanted for murder."
C.J. shook her head.
"I didn't kill him."
"They won't believe you," Fran insisted, "They'll say that you killed him in some struggle."
"It wasn't like that," she said, "We struggled but only because I didn't want to go through with what he wanted."
Rhonda shrugged.
"Can't say I blame you," she said, "Piser's a creep. That's what I heard in the cell block anyway."
Fran nodded.
"He gets off on women's fear," she said, "The last woman they promised ran away, not that it did her any good."
C.J. furrowed her brow.
"She's the one that got killed."
Fran looked away.
"Not the only one," she said, "but yeah, she was one of them. We thought their bodies might have been dumped in some remote part of the desert miles from town."
C.J. shivered.
"I didn't want him touching me," she said, "That's why I hit him but I didn't kill him."
"He's no different than any other guy," Fran said, "They all want one thing."
Rhonda scowled.
"Not all of them," she said, "Matt's been really nice and he's helping us."
"Okay, he's not bad," Fran admitted grudgingly, "but he's only one in a whole planet of them who isn't."
C.J. frowned looking at both of them.
"How do you know that," she said.
Fran glowered.
"I just know and you don't remember enough from more than a few days ago to say otherwise."
Matt sat and watched the agents start to sweat. His uncle had been a good host, offering them glasses of juice freshly squeezed but they had turned him down.
"What's the big deal here," Matt said, loudly, "If C.J. had anything to do with Piser's death, it would have been self defense."
Stewart nodded.
"That's probably the case but that can only be determined through a thorough homicide investigation including the report from the medical examiner."
"You just said Piser was shot," Matt said.
Stewart and the other agent looked at each other.
"With his own gun possibly," he said, "He carried a firearm and it wasn't found with his body."
"So you think his killer has it?"
"Or at least used it and then possibly kept it or disposed of it," Stewart said.
Roy looked at Matt as he sipped his own glass of juice.
"That means it could be anyone who was in that building," Roy said, "Including his own partners."
Matt nodded.
"It could have been Sheriff Butz for all you know," he said, "and you want to know why you know so little, it's because you're not back in Arizona investigating the real crimes which was against those ladies unlucky enough to cross paths with any of those thugs."
"Including the one who is now deceased," Roy added.
Stewart set his jaw.
"You are talking about vigilante justice," he said, "We can't allow that."
"I'm talking about possible self-defense," Matt said, "On the other hand, it could have been good old fashioned greed that did Piser in."
Both agents seemed to consider that.
"What did your friend Ms Parsons do for a living," Stewart asked.
Matt looked at him, puzzled.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"She worked for you as a lawyer?"
Matt nodded.
"That makes her much different than the rest of the women we found," Stewart said.
"Including the dead ones?"
Stewart bristled at the reminder that some of the women who had thought they had escaped a prostitution ring had wound up dead when they walked into someone's crosshairs.
"If I knew where C.J. and any of those other women were, I wouldn't tell you," Matt said.
"Then you would be committing a crime," Stewart said, "because then you'd be harboring fugitives."
That got Matt's dander.
"Fugitives," he said, "These women are victims of these men and we're supposed to be all upset because one of these men who exploited them wound up dead."
"The one who had picked out C.J. as his date was the one who wound up shot on the floor," Stewart said.
"If I had been there, he would have been dead before he laid one hand on her."
Stewart chuckled derisively.
"Somehow I don't doubt that," he said, "If I hadn't known you were accounted for at the time by being miles away from Piser's ranch, you'd have found yourself in an interrogation room in Arizona."
"Isn't that where we are now," Matt said, "or was this a social call and you forgot to dispense with pleasantries."
Stewart just shook his head at him. Roy looked over at the two nonplussed federal agents.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like any juice?"
They mutely shook their heads as Roy went to pour himself another tall glass.
C.J. had closed her eyes again, willing time to pass and for those agents to leave and hopefully, not take Matt with them. She had never felt helpless as she did now, or at least not in ways that she remembered. She didn't like it, anymore than she hadn't liked it when Piser had tried to get his money's worth from her body. Back then, she had fought back but now, she had to sit her quietly in hiding and wait until she received the alls clear from someone in Matt's penthouse suite that the men had left.
"I don't think those men are ever going to leave," she said, finally.
"They will C.J.," Rhonda reassured her, trying to infuse confidence in her voice.
C.J. shook her head.
"I can't let them take him into custody just for helping us."
Fran countered.
"If we all get taken in, how is that going to help him…or us?"
C.J. rested her head on her hand.
"I don't know…I just feel so helpless like…"
And then she remembered back to when Matt had been kidnapped and she hadn't seen him for over a month. She had talked to him on the phone before he left his office building on the way to catch a flight to Hawaii and then…he just disappeared. Next thing, she knew is that her night sleep was interrupted when he called her, in desperation after he had woken up with no memory of his immediate past.
How she had felt when she heard how frightened he had been on the phone, how worried he had been that he had done what he was accused of doing, killing a woman by strangling her in cold blood. She remembered doing her best to reassure him that he didn't have it within him to hurt anyone unless in self-defense or while protecting those he loved. She had sat with him in the car and had stroked his hair as he had finally broken down in frustration and she had wrapped her arms tightly around him, to comfort him. To try to reach inside past the walls of confusion and uncertainty he had erected to the part of him that she knew so well. Time seemed to stop as he grabbed her and held on as if she were a lifeline and in a way she had been, he told her later when all their hard work to put the nightmare behind them had succeeded.
And wait, something good had come out of that whole ordeal as Matt had been reunited with his estranged uncle who had been a covert operative back in the day before essentially going into seclusion after his beloved son had presumably died behind enemy lines in Vietnam during that crazy war. She had glimpses of them eating dinner and laughing with each other, and the look of love that she had seen in his uncle's eyes at the nephew as their relationship had come full circle.
Matt and his uncle sat as they watched the two federal agents finally sigh and stand up as if to leave. Stewart reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. He handed it to Matt.
"Give me a call if your memory suddenly returns," he said.
Matt nodded, pocketing it.
"You're hunting for the wrong people," he said, "Those women didn't commit any crimes."
Stewart sighed.
"From what it looks like, someone else has been hunting them," Stewart said, "You'd better hope we find C.J. and the other women before they do."
Matt and Roy watched the two agents nod at Chris at her receptionist desk before getting on the elevator. After the doors closed, Matt turned to his uncle.
"We'd better go track down our guests."
"They're probably somewhere in the building," Roy said, "I'll help you."
Matt went to his stairwell and walked a couple flights down and stopped at one floor. He looked down the hallway and saw C.J. and the two women standing there, as if unsure what to do next.
"Hey there he is," Rhonda said, "It took you long enough. Did you finally lose the suits?"
"They left, but they'll be back."
C.J. looked up at him.
"We'd better get out of here," she said, "I don't want them to come and get you."
"We'll be safe here for a while at least," Matt said, "We can keep digging for information to arm ourselves before we go back to Arizona."
"I'm ready to do that," Fran said.
"That's good to hear," Matt said, "Besides, my uncle's making something to eat and he'll be offended if you don't at least try it and tell him what you think."
Rhonda nodded.
"I'm not turning free food down."
The women turned to go back up the stairs but C.J. lagged behind a bit and Matt could see she seemed deep in thought. He walked beside her.
"You remember anything else?"
She studied him a moment and nodded.
"I remember seeing you on the beach with a stack of paperwork…"
He laughed.
"I told you before you went to recuperate in paradise that I would be forwarding your paperwork," he said, "It was a joke but then I decided to bring it to you myself."
"It was nice to see you," she said, "Did we have a good time?"
"Yeah we did," he said, "We tried parasailing, but even with a healing gunshot wound, you did better than I did."
"That sounds risky."
"We both like pushing the adrenaline a bit," he said, "Sky diving, scuba diving, car chases…"
"It sounds exciting," she said, "I wish I remembered that."
They continued up the stairwell.
"You will," Matt said, "Give yourself some time. You've remembered a lot already."
"Mostly about us," C.J. said, "and that part of it still confuses me."
Roy greeted them with something that smelled delicious as the four of them entered the penthouse suite to eat some great food and to figure out a plan of what to do next.