Chapter 2

"How about I just cut it?" Charlotte said, running her fingers through her long, dark hair. She studied her face in the cracked bathroom mirror, mentally resisting dyeing her hair blonde.

"Both would be better," I said as I headed for the door. "Charlotte, I need a new weapon, which will take some time to arrange. While I'm gone, cut and dye your hair, and then pack your new things, mine, too, please, except leave out a change of clothes for me. I'll bring food back with me."

She gave me a hard look. "If you ditch me, I'll never forgive you."

I laughed. "I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind, but we're talking trust here, Charlotte, mutual trust. Hopefully during the next hour or two, I'll be meeting with an illegal gun dealer. As a group, they're not the trustworthiest bunch to deal with. Accordingly, it'd be less than prudent for me to meet a gun dealer with my bag of money in hand." I pointed at the bag sitting on one of the beds. "So, I'm trusting you with our future." I grinned. "If you ditch me and steal my money, I'll never forgive you. Question. What do you know about guns?"

"Diddly squat, but I'm a quick study regarding anything involving eye/hand coordination. Why?"

"Would you like me to teach you about guns?"

"Yes." Among other things. Her eyes went to the gym bag. "I'm happy you trust me."

"Lock and chain the door when I leave. Don't let in anyone but me for any reason. Got it?"

"Got it. I'll look like a cheap slut as a blonde, Chad."

I groaned. "Okay, what color then? I'll buy the dye while I'm out."

"Auburn. A few red highlights ought to do it, and you can't be a blond, either, not with your complexion. Dye yours black." Tall, dark and handsome. Tall, blond and handsome doesn't cut it.

"All right."

"About food. I detest pizza. I love Chinese, anything kung pao, and ask for house mustard, not that stuff in plastic tubes."

She's something else. "I like crab puffs," I said.

"Me, too, and egg rolls." As I was leaving, she added, "Love the Stetson, cowboy. Be careful out there."

Part of perfecting a disguise involves attitude and posture change, and the clothes you wear can alter your attitude. In Vegas, I wore what I called tropical casual. For Phoenix, I'd opted for Western wear, mostly because men in Western gear often wore hats. Part of Charlotte's disguise, although she didn't know it, was a more in-your-face display of her amazing body. As a form of self-defense, she'd worn bulky clothes designed to hide her charms. No more. Not that her new clothes made her look slutty, just the opposite. When I noticed she was selecting her clothes to please me, I nodded and smiled when she modeled classy, sophisticated clothes that let her gorgeous curves shine through without being too blatant about it. The added benefit of her new look was her apparent age. Instead of barely nineteen, in her new clothes she looked more like twenty-one.

No XD-9s, dammit, but I couldn't complain otherwise. The gun dealer sold me two SIG SAUER pistols, a classic full size P226 for me, and a smaller classic personal size P239 for Charlotte. Navy SEALS used the P226. The magazine held ten rounds, the P239 only eight, but I didn't see Charlotte in a firefight anytime soon, and it was a good weapon to learn how to shoot. I also bought extra magazines for the weapons, holsters and 120 rounds of 9mm ammo.

"I need a late-model sedan for two weeks," I told the gun dealer. He was a skinny man, frail, and his face was crooked, one eye a half-inch lower than the other. "I don't want a stolen car, and it must be insured for any driver. I'll pay cash, half Kelly Blue Book price, but I won't take title, and I'll leave the vehicle somewhere in Arizona so the owner can retrieve it at the end of two weeks. If it's not retrievable at that time, the owner can report it stolen."

"Will the car be used to commit a crime?"

With that bandaged hand, the dealer thought, he could be the man the police are lookin' for that shot up Kingman yesterday. He hesitated. So what if he is? It ain't my business. They ain't offerin' no reward or nothin'.

Fuck. I figured the gunfight in Kingman would hit the news, but I'd hoped the authorities didn't have anything on me yet. They'd find my fingerprints, but there had to be thousands of prints in that bus. Running them through AFIS would take a while. AFIS, or automatic fingerprint identification system, is a computer network that scans crime-scene fingerprints and compares them with the millions of prints collected by law enforcement agencies around the world. That wasn't a memory, just more tradecraft. I also questioned if the Kingman police would go to the trouble of tracking down that many prints from the bus. Witnesses would tell them that I was defending myself. The real culprits were the men who had opened fire with automatic weapons as I stepped from the bus.

As a guess, while being questioned, someone on the bus, most likely the driver, had told the police about my bandaged hand. The police probably released my description to the media, a description that included the bandage.

It was snowing outside. Gloves wouldn't look suspicious. I'd buy a pair of gloves to wear while in Flagstaff to hide the bandage.

To answer the dealer's question, I said, "No, I'll use the car for transportation only. For various reasons, I can't take title to a car, and I can't rent one."

"I'll check around. Where can I call you?"

"I'll call you."

"Fair enough. When do you want the car?"

"Tonight or at the latest early tomorrow morning."

I was running out of steam. I needed sleep. Unless forced for some reason, we wouldn't leave Flagstaff before morning.

"Call me in two hours," the dealer said.

"All right. I also need two permanent resident green cards, good enough to obtain valid driver's licenses and apply for replacement social security cards."

Useable forged documents, I knew, involved stealing the identities of unsuspecting legal immigrants, but I wouldn't misuse the identities. I wouldn't create tax or credit problems for them because I wouldn't use the identity for employment or to obtain credit, except for a debit card for a bank account I could open with the replacement social security card.

"I can give you a name and telephone number in Tucson," he said.

"That'd be good."

He checked through what looked like a small address book, and rattled off the name and number.

"Ain't you goin' ta write it down?" he asked.

I tapped my temple. "Good memory."

"Use my name when you talk to the guy in Tucson."

"I will." The dealer would get a referral fee, which was fair and right.

"What happened to your hand?" he asked.

"Dog bite. The goddamn dog won't bite anyone else - if you get my drift."

The dealer nodded and walked away.

I flipped open Wayne Johnson's cell phone and called a cab. The cabbie waited for me at a drugstore while I ran in and purchased a pair of gloves and new hair dye for Charlotte and me. He also knew about a late-night Chinese restaurant for takeout.

"While you were out, I watched the news on TV," Charlotte said between bites of kung poa chicken.

She used a fork. I manipulated chopsticks. How and when I learned how to eat with chopsticks were events I couldn't remember. It was a good thing I'd ordered three main dishes. That girl sure could pack the food away!

"The cops are looking for you," she added.

"I heard."

"Not by name, just a description, and except for the bandaged hand, it was a crappy description."

"Good. I bought gloves to hide the bandage."

"I noticed."

"Did you count the money?"

She blushed. "Sort of - roughly. I counted one bundle and then did the math. Chad, we can live for two or three years with that amount of money."

"If we poor-boy it and if we weren't on the run, maybe. Later tonight or in the morning, I'll buy a car to use for two weeks for half its current value, so subtract $7,000 for temporary transportation. Subtract another $5,000 to $10,000 for forged identity documents. Once we've established our new identities, we'll need a different car, which will eat up another $15,000, or more. We can't live in a hotel, not for six months, so we'll rent a furnished house, and although we'll have furniture, we'll probably need pots and pans and dishes, towels and bed linens, those sorts of things. By my calculations, we'll be lucky if the money lasts six months."

He's so smart.

"If we run short, I'll drive to New Mexico or Colorado and find a poker game or a blackjack table in an Indian casino to replenish some of our stake."

"Are you a professional gambler?"

No, I'm a telepath, I thought as I gave my head a negative shake. "I don't think so. I'm good with math, can quickly calculate odds in my head, but gambling wasn't how I made a living in my past. I don't know what I did, so I could've been a gambler, but being a professional gambler doesn't feel right to me."

"What does feel right?"

Should I tell her? Why not?

"I'm good with a gun and I know martial arts. I know how to breakdown a locked steering wheel and hot-wire a car. I know how to disappear and how to buy illegal weapons. I know other things, little things I call tradecraft, like elevators can be traps, how to select a place to sit so I can observe everyone around me, those sorts of things, and what's more, I sense I used all this knowledge in my work."

I ate the last bit of food on my plate, chewed and swallowed. "Some of what I just outlined is illegal, but I'm not a crook. I had to leave Vegas on the run, but I paid half my hospital bill as I left, and I'll pay the other half when I can. A crook would've kept all the money and ripped off the hospital and doctors and nurses, even if they saved his life. I'm not callous or overly cynical, and I care about my fellowman... if they deserve my respect. I detest evil men and women, Charlotte."

I paused to take a drink of water.

"You still haven't said what feels right to you," she commented.

"With all the knowledge I've put together about myself, I still don't know what I did to make a living in my past. I don't know my name, my age, my birthday, whether anyone besides my enemy or enemies are searching for me. I don't know where I call home, whether I'm rich or poor, if my mother or father is still alive, if I have a brother or sister. I have no one."

"You have me."

"Yes, I have you. You are my family, Charlotte, my sister."

"No, Chad, I am definitely not your sister. Let's go to bed." And I'll prove to you why I can't be your sister.

"Can't, not yet. We need transportation, and we need to dye our hair, and, Charlotte, you and I will not have sex tonight. I'm dead on my feet."

Tonight, he said. I can live with that. He didn't sleep last night, so he needs his rest, but tomorrow...

"Or any night, little sister," I added and yawned. The food and warm room were knocking me out. I flipped open my cell phone and dialed my gun dealer's number.

"I know I'm a little early with the callback," I said, "but have you checked on that car for me?"

"Yes." He gave me a name and phone number. "Use my name when you talk to him."

An hour later I had transportation - a two-year-old Honda Accord, white with a gray interior. Charlotte let me back in the room, helped me dye my hair, and I was asleep ten seconds after my head hit the pillow.

I opened my eyes feeling rested and soon realized I felt something else - Charlotte, naked, warm and cuddly, asleep and spooned back against me, against my throbbing erection. My hand held her soft breast, and the small nipple, hard as glass, pressed my palm. My nostrils spread as I sniffed her feminine fragrances, like the scent of apple shampoo in her hair - dark hair, slightly shorter than yesterday and streaked with auburn highlights that made her even more beautiful than before the changes altered her appearance.

I wanted to nuzzle her silky neck, taste its flavor with the tip of my tongue, fondle her breasts, kiss them, suck on them, kiss her, kiss her lips, her... cunt, damp cunt, wet with arousal, ready for me, ready to take my cock inside her, cuddle its length with wet heat as her inner membranes squeezed gently, pulsing with her need to satisfy my needs.

With a silent groan of frustration, I backed away, removed my hand from her breast, and slid from under the covers to stand on the floor without waking her. My erection poked out of the hole in my boxers, and it was screaming at me.

Are you crazy? it screeched.

Little sister, you are a trial, I thought as I padded to the bathroom. I locked the door. If she joined me in the shower, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist her.

Should I resist her? Yes. The question came from my little head, the answer from my big head. Could I resist her? Maybe... probably not. My little head provided the answer. The more I was with her, the more I wanted her, and it wasn't just about sex. Then again, perhaps it was all about sex. I was a man in my late twenties. Her protestations to the contrary, she was still a girl, barely nineteen. I didn't know if my desire exceeded old-fashioned lust, not for sure, and I wouldn't have sex with her if all I wanted from her were sex. Sex was all Gloria and I shared, that's all we could ever share, but she had her life, and I had mine. We could enjoy some time together and go our separate ways, no harm, no foul. My situation with Charlotte didn't allow that to happen. I'd accepted the responsibility to help her become all she could be. She'd asked me to give her a future, and right or wrong, I'd accepted the challenge. In her mind, she was in love with me, but teenaged girls fell in love at the drop of a hat. Was that a memory? No. If I fucked her out of lust with no other deeper feelings, I'd be using and abusing the love she felt for me.

Pretending she was my little sister wouldn't work, not in the long run. She wasn't ready to give up. She wanted to prove to me that she was a woman, not a girl, a woman who could please me sexually so I'd never want another woman. What she didn't know, was probably too young, too inexperienced to know, was the fact that having sex with me wouldn't make her a woman in my eyes.

Still, she'd wear me down. Somehow, I had to make her understand how confusing sex would make our relationship, help her understand the dynamics of our relationship, help her understand that I couldn't have casual sex with her and why.

Armed with resolve, I turned off the shower and reached for the towel - a wet towel, I soon discovered. Cheap fucking motel.

And I'd fucked up otherwise. With my mind fried with lust when I entered the bathroom, I hadn't brought a change of clothes with me. Perhaps she'd still be asleep. With my body still wet, I pulled on yesterday's underwear and walked out of the bathroom.

She was wide-awake, and she hadn't dressed. She was stretched out on the bed. The top sheet wasn't covering her. She'd kicked it to the side. She smiled at me and stretched her hands high above her head, offering me a full view of her stunning, young body. Her nipples jutted hard; her skin looked flushed, and lust shaded her dark eyes. A living, breathing wet dream.

"Good morning," she breathed.

I nodded.

She rolled gracefully from the bed to her feet and walked to me. Her arms went around my neck, and her eyes gazed into mine.

"I am not your sister, Chad."

"I know, but..."

She kissed me to shut me up.

If she'd kissed me with passion, I could have resisted her, but her kiss was soft and sweet and romantic. She didn't rub her mound against my erection - yes, I was erect. I'd become fully hard when she stretched on the bed. She didn't try to push me beyond the simple, sweet kiss.

My arms went around her, and she melted against me.

"But what?" she asked when she leaned back from the kiss.

"I'm not in love with you."

"I know, but sometime soon, you will fall in love with me, Chad."

"I won't have sex with you until love happens."

"Sure you will."

She kissed me again, another soft, sweet kiss.

He isn't ready for me, for us, not yet.

"But not this morning," she said. "Not in this cheap motel on a lumpy bed, not that they matter a lick to me, but they matter to you."

Her hands cuddled my face. "Chad, you will make love with me before you fall in love with me, and you won't fall in love with me because you make love with me. You'll fall in love with me because I'm loveable, and I love you. You're like me. You're a sucker for romance. Did you use all the hot water?"

"No, but good luck regarding a dry towel."

We drove out of the snow at 4,000 feet elevation as we descended on I-17 from Flagstaff toward Phoenix. The sun came out and offered us a glorious day.

"We'll stay in another cheap motel in Tucson tonight, not Phoenix," I said.

"Why Tucson?"

"I have the name and phone number of a man who sells forged green cards." I explained the system that would allow us to become almost legal permanent residents.

She asked good questions, which I answered, and she nodded enthusiastically when I told her she could get a driver's license with a green card. She balked when I told her that she would probably be listed as my sister.

"That would complicate things later, Chad."

"But..."

"Don't to that, please."

"We'll see."

As I drove, we made up back-stories for both of us. She'd never been to Canada, and because I couldn't remember anything farther back than last month, I told her we'd research the specific areas involved in our back-stories on the Internet. When I finished outlining our made-up pasts, she changed hers, made it more believable, and made certain we weren't related in any fashion, let alone as brother and sister.

We met with the green-card specialist, a dapper, middle-aged man named Juan Cortez. He took our photographs, using a half-profile pose, the correct portrait for a green card, I discovered.

I became Dr. Kenneth LaPlant, a psychologist. I was a thirty-year-old Canadian from Toronto. Charlotte changed her name to Colleen Melton, a twenty-year-old from Montreal. I was in the country as an EB-2, or a worker with advanced degrees. Our forger told me the real Kenneth LaPlant had returned to Toronto from Dallas, Texas. Colleen Melton had become an immigrant as the fiancée of an American citizen. The love affair had fallen apart before the wedding, and she'd recently returned to Canada.

"These identities are clean, no credit problems, no tax problems, no legal problems," Cortez said proudly as he handed me the green cards the next day. He surprised me when he also gave me two social security cards. "These cards are forged, but they're useable. They match the real numbers for your new identities."

"May I use them to open bank accounts?"

"Si, of course. Most likely, the banks won't ask to see the cards if you give them the numbers verbally."

I paid the man, and Colleen and I headed toward Phoenix.

"What's next?" she asked.

"We'll find a cheap apartment, and rent it for a month. We won't live in it, though. We'll live in a hotel for a few days until we find a suitable furnished house for lease. We'll use the apartment address for our driver's license and bank accounts. When we find the house, we'll put in a change of address at the post office, and we'll be good to go."

Four days later, we moved into a three-bedroom house in McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix. Colleen and I had bank accounts, debit cards, and valid Arizona driver's licenses.

I'd also managed to dampen my libido enough to fend off Colleen's flirtations; no, flirtation is too weak a word for the all-out campaign she'd been waging.

I was lying on a lounge by the pool catching some rays and drinking iced tea when Colleen stepped out of the house wearing nothing but lipstick and red paint on her fingernails and toes. She dove into the water, making only a small splash, and surfaced halfway across the pool. Rolling onto her back, she let her legs float apart. She'd trimmed her pubic bush, and her labia had to be as smooth as a baby's bottom with nary a hair in sight.

My dick rose up hard and long.

She turned and swam to the edge of the pool, lifting herself out of the water with such athletic grace that I felt a catch in my throat. She was the type of female, and there aren't very many of them, who looked beautiful even with wet hair. She didn't dry off, just stretched out on the lounge chair next to mine.

"That master bedroom, that's yours. You are the master, but it's mine, too. I'm the mistress," she said without looking at me. "It's our bedroom. Got it?"

I huffed with disdain. "We might as well start off in the same bed. You end up in my bed sometime during the night anyway."

"Good. We understand each other." She moved to her feet and walked into the house.

I followed her inside.

"Can you cook?" I asked.

"Plain cooking, nothing fancy, but I want to learn fancy."

"We'll buy some cookbooks."

She turned to me and walked into my arms. Looking up into my eyes, she said, "My father was a drunk; my mother a whore. They didn't teach me how to lead a good life or about the good things in life. They couldn't. They lived with despair and fear, and each day was a struggle, not so much because they were poor, but more because they didn't like themselves. Dad hated himself because he was too weak to stay out of the bottle. Mom hated herself because she believed her only value was as a receptacle for semen. You'd think that with such pitiful role models and their narrow, sad view of life that I, too, would move through each day with despair and fear. I don't. Would you like to know why?"

"Tell me."

"Because I believe in tender, sweet love, cowboy. I'm not talking about sex. Sex is just one of many ways a man and woman express their love for each other. Love is an emotion, a deep, abiding emotion that has no beginning and no end. It just is, and you love me, cowboy. You love me as deeply as I love you. I can see it in your eyes, your expression, in how you treat me, the things you do for me, usually without even thinking about what you do. But you're fighting yourself and your feelings for me just like my parents fought themselves, and I want you to quit it."

"How am I fighting myself?"

"I'm too young for you, you say. What I feel for you is just a schoolgirl crush, you say. You've stated that you won't have sex with me. Fine. I don't want to have sex. I want to make love. I want you to wrap me in your tender, sweet love and stop worrying about how much younger I am than you, or wondering if you will hurt me when your memories return and you discover that you're committed to someone else from your unknown past, or..."

I kissed her. I'd never kissed her. She'd always kissed me, but this time I kissed her, and then I picked her up and carried her to our bedroom and wrapped her in my tender, sweet love.

She was right. I'd been fighting my feelings for her, and they'd grown stronger with each passing day. The motel or hotel rooms I rented had two beds, and she'd let me go to bed alone, but every morning I'd wake up with her spooned against me with my hand on her soft breast. Yes, a lot of lust was involved. I wanted her more and more every day, but I'd also noticed that love was creeping in, and I'd been fighting it, railing against it, afraid of it.

No more. I stopped fighting myself, and when I let go, my love for her washed over me like a soft, cool mist. The heat of sex became the joy of love, and I knew I'd never want just sex again because sex without love is barren and edged with a sense of loss.

She took all the love I offered and gave me back more. We had sex, but the act was wrapped in emotion, and the exquisite sensations became more intense and long lasting. Her dark eyes shined, and then went soft when I entered her. She didn't cry out with pleasure. She made loving sounds, murmurs... whimpers. She climaxed easily and frequently, not because I was a superior lover, but because she carried her love for me on the surface, up front and open, with no games, no hidden agendas. She had no artifice in her. When she saw pleasure in my eyes she was pleased. When I touched her, she quivered with her own pleasure, and her pleasure pleased me. We gave and took without thought or effort, and her thoughts didn't wander into the obscene.

An hour later, she surprised me yet again.

With a schoolgirl giggle, she said, "Wanna fuck now?"

"Huh?"

"We just made tender, sweet love, and it was beautiful, and I want us to make love often, but too much sweetness can be... well, too much of anything can become... boring. So, what I'd like to do now is fuck. Let's get nasty and fuck, cowboy. Waddaya say?"

I didn't say anything. I laughed. I also got nasty and did some fucking.

While we'd made love her thoughts hadn't wandered into the obscene. When we fucked, they started nasty and whirled down into the truly obscene - the type of obscene that I found endearing, though. Her verbal responses were no different. She was just as up front and open about fucking as she was about making love.

Fuck it to me, cowboy.

"Pound my pussy. Harder, dammit. Yeah, like that."

"Love your cock, cowboy."

I can't decide whether I like his cock more in my mouth or my cunt.

"I'm coming!"

I was getting impatient. I'd traveled to Phoenix because I sensed a connection with the city and figured it would offer me some memories I couldn't otherwise retrieve from wherever they were stored, and Colleen recognized my restlessness, which verged on the edge of irritation.

"What?" she said. "Are you getting bored with your life of ease?"

Her question pointed out that I hadn't been very active since we acquired our new identities and settled into the house where I planned to disappear until all my memories returned.

Sedentary. That was my problem, part of it anyway.

"What do you do for exercise?" I asked her.

"Our laundry, vacuuming, cooking, swimming..." She giggled. "Fucking. Considering my activity list, I must admit that fucking gives me the best workout and, other that making love, provides the most pleasure. Of course, I could swim until my vision turned black and my muscles screamed at me to stop, but I'm a lazy swimmer." She gave me a hard look, and then grinned. "I am not a lazy fucker."

"No you're not. Would you consider running with me each morning a chore or a pleasure?"

"Being with you pleases me, cowboy. Every time and always, whatever we do. I will run with you, chore or otherwise. I have a request, too. I watched you this morning again as you practiced dancing in slow motion. I would like it if you'd teach me the steps, and we could dance together after we run together - or before, at your option."

Dancing?

Suddenly I understood and laughed out loud. "I wasn't dancing, Colleen. That was tai chi, a martial art form, but I use tai chi to find my center. It's more a form of meditation for me than a martial art."

With a teasing look, she thought, I knew what he was doing wasn't dancing, and I figured it was tai chi, but I do enjoy his windy explanations.

Windy? Humph.

"Well, will you teach me tai chi?"

That was the moment I remembered her daydreams while on the bus traveling to Kingman. She'd run away from her mother, carrying her high school transcripts with her, to live with her father, find work and realize her dream of going to college. I'd knocked her dream train right off the tracks.

"What about college?" I asked.

"Later. First, I want to go to your school, cowboy. Teach me tai chi, and I'll run like the wind with you every morning. Also, I want you to teach me what you call tradecraft because, it seems to me, that your tradecraft will protect me. And please teach me about guns. You asked me once if I wanted you to teach me about guns, and I said yes, but the subject hasn't come up again."

Protect!

She'd said that knowing my tradecraft would protect her.

That's what I was, what I did for a living. I was a protector!

I jumped up and took her in my arms, twirling her around as I whooped with happiness, and then I set her down and kissed her, and she kissed me, and finally I explained my exuberance.

"A protector? You mean like a bodyguard?" she said.

I flinched at the word. Bodyguard held negative connotations for me. That I might be considered a bodyguard grated me.

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Paul Phenomenon

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