“You know, like you’re some guy I met on the beach who I decided was cute and so I’m willing to pay for your meals and drinks or whatever while you hang out with me.”
“Ah…this is something you do on a regular basis?”
“We’re talking about you, not me,” she laughed. “What’re the odds you can get away with no papers for a few days if you’re hanging out with me?”
“Good, but not excellent. If I have to get into someplace official, or I look too much like a vagrant, there could be trouble.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know where to get an identity card anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“That, I’m not worried about,” Francesca said. She studied him. “Straight up. How much do you actually remember? Not the bullshit you’re feeding the doctors and Stefan, but for real.”
Her shift to more direct language took Ryker by surprise, and he didn’t temper his response. “I know a fair amount,” he said. “The basics, anyway. How money works, the kind of jobs that people have—jobs I probably had at some point, though I have no recollection of specific work. What foods I like and what I don’t. The music I prefer. I know the names of popular performers, but not of any friends or family members.”
He didn’t tell her why he thought that was, and instead continued. “I know street names, places I expect to find in the city—all of them in the high-rent district though, which also makes me think my family is wealthy. I’m almost certain I’m not married and have no children. Stefan said as much, but nothing more. I know I live in the city, that I’ve lived there my whole life.” He spread his hands. “But I don’t know who I am, or what happened to me the night my plane went down. If I learn one, I suspect I will learn the other.”
“So you need time,” she said.
“Time, money, freedom.” He smiled wryly. “And apparently, false papers. To become someone I’m not until I can figure out who I am.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it.” The expression on Francesca’s face made her seem far older than her years. “A new identity, Ryker Stavros, isn’t going to be a problem.”
6
It took barely a few minutes of discussion between Dimitri and Ari to get the GNSF captain to see the wisdom of letting them go ashore in the sailboat’s small dinghy, versus cruising into the bustling marina. This way, Ari and Fran would seem like a happy, carefree couple, and could pull the boat ashore literally anywhere on along the beach, then carry it out or leave it.
Dimitri certainly didn’t seem to care.
“I won’t be returning to the island,” he said quietly to Fran as she counted out American dollars into his palm, keeping up with the charade of him as ferryman. “You need me, you call. You don’t need me, call anyway. I’ll be close by.”
“He may give me the slip.”
Dimitri grinned. “He’s thought of it, I’m sure. But not right away. He’s no fool. He’ll buy himself a few more days if his keepers think he’s with you.”
“True,” Fran said. She kept her manner easy, but the words cut a little more deeply than she expected. Of course Dimitri was right. Ari didn’t want Fran with him because he was overflowing with affection for her—merely to dupe his benevolent captors.
Well, she could help him go the extra step then by creating an identity they couldn’t track. Ari deserved to fast-track his recovery, and the sooner he remembered everything, the sooner her own life—and those of her friends—could return to normal.
Dimitri handed her down into the small boat and tossed down a third life jacket, which she held to her knees as Ari began to row. They hadn’t gotten more than a few yards from the sailboat when Ari cocked a glance at her. “You’re that worried I’ll dump you into the water?”
“Never learned to swim,” she said, and she heard the flat Midwestern twang in her voice. When she got scared, it always surfaced—which is why she’d done a good job of ensuring she didn’t place herself in frightening situations. But it was tough to avoid the ocean on a vacation of beach lovers, so she’d sucked it up. Sitting on the white sandy beaches of Garronia’s Royal Beach had been one thing though. Bobbing in the water with a man who only had half his mind was another.
“You didn’t have lakes or rivers where you grew up?” Ari asked.
“Both,” she said tersely. “Small river, pretty big lake. But we didn’t have a boat and I didn’t have a lot of free time to play in the water, so it was never something I picked up.” When she and her dad did go out to the lake—which was nearly once a week in the summer—it was to run a bar truck for the local bikers. From the time she was maybe ten years old, there was no way she was wearing a swimsuit around that crowd.
They hadn’t been bad men, though. Not most of them. And they did teach her a lot—like how to talk her way through her own fears, and how to fight when talking wasn’t enough. That’s what she needed to focus on, as Ari got them closer to land with each self-assured stroke. “You know how to row, so that’s something,” she said. “Maybe you’re a fisherman?”
“I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “Figured that out when I had to row ashore in a leaky boat after the crash. My hands are calloused now, but then—no. I didn’t work with my own sweat. But I don’t think I managed a trade either.” He quirked his lips. “Had to be pilot, or I was a kept man, which seems unlikely.”
Despite her nerves, Fran laughed. “I could almost see it. You’re a little scruffy now, but with another nice shave, a hair cut…”
“Perhaps you should reconsider your earlier offer. I could make an excellent boy toy.” Ari waggled his brows, and Fran’s heart quickened a bit. Despite the haggard look that dogged him, she could almost see the man who’d beamed out of the news photos from a year ago. That Ari had been untroubled, earnest, and seemed so much younger than the man leaning into the oars in front of her. But there remained glimmers of him.
“We’re getting close to the main beach,” she said, her attention drawn to the wide swath of sand. “You should…I don’t know, turn?”
“Turn.” He laughed again and glanced over his shoulder, sighting their position. As he did, his expression brightened so abruptly Fran nearly dropped her life jacket.
“What is it?”
“This…this I know,” he said. His voice was warm, his eyes dancing as he maneuvered the oars to take them at an angle to the beach. “There’s a rocky promontory up the coast with a small sandy inlet. We can take the boat in there, hide it in the trees. We used to do it all the—aigh!”
