Masquerade Read Free Page B

of notice. Two nights in a row, that is another thing. If we are fortunate, I may know something tomorrow."
    "I hope so. I have to find out who I am."
    He arched an eyebrow at her curiously. "You say that with unusual urgency, mam'selle."
    "I know." She heard the troubled note in her voice and tried to explain. "I have this feeling, Inspector—this vague yet very compelling feeling—that I'm supposed to be somewhere. It's important. It's more than important. It's as if something terrible will happen if I'm not there."
    "Where?" It was asked quietly, almost indifferently, as if to gently jar loose a fragment of her memory.
    But it didn't work. "I don't know." This time her voice was choked with the frustration and strain of trying to recall. But the more she struggled to remember, the harder her head pounded. Suddenly she didn't have the strength to fight them both. She sagged back against the hospital pillows and shut her eyes tight, hating the blankness.
    "I have overtired you with my questions. I am sorry," the inspector said, his voice gentle with regret. "You rest. I will come back tomorrow."
    Then he was gone and she was alone again— alone with the emptiness of her memory, an emptiness she seemed powerless to fill. With a turn of her head, she gazed out the window at the brilliant blue sky that had given the Côte d'Azur its name. If only there was something she could do, somewhere she could go—but where did a person go to find her memory?
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    From the hospital corridor came the murmur of typically hushed voices, the rustle of stiff polyester uniforms, and the whisper of white-stockinged legs brushing together in a striding walk. But no one approached her door, and no bouquets of flowers relieved the starkness of her room or sent their sweet fragrance into it to cover the sharp antiseptic smells.
    Agitated, restless, and tired of staring at the walls that echoed the blankness of her mind, she threw back the covers and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness hit her. She gripped the edge of the mattress and waited for the room to stop spinning, then slowly lowered her feet to the floor and stood up. Immediately she felt a coolness against her skin where the hospital gown gaped in back. But she had no robe to cover her—no clothes at all other than the evening gown. Turning, she pulled the blanket off the bed and draped it around her shoulders Indian-style.
    She was halfway to the door before she realized she was obeying that faint inner voice that said she had to leave, that she was needed somewhere. But where? Why? And why the urgency? Was she in some kind of danger? The man she'd been struggling with—had he deliberately tried to hurt her, or had he been trying to make her go somewhere with him? But where? And what was the danger? From whom? And where were they now?
    Driven by the endless questions, she crossed to the window with its postcard view of Nice, the city of fun and flowers, of sun, sea, and sex, a city that sizzled softly by day and crackled with action by night.
    In the distance the sunlight sparkled on the deep blue Mediterranean waters of the Baie des Anges, ringed by private beaches, crowded now with wall-to-wall sunburned flesh and languid egos. Closer were the red-roofed ocher buildings and Italianate churches of the town's old section, with its narrow streets opening to form little squares.
    She hugged the blanket more tightly around her and searched the scene with her eyes, a scene so reminiscent of paintings by Matisse and Cézanne. Here the dreaded mistral that roared down the Rhône Valley twisting and turning trees was but a breeze to stir the fronds of the palm trees along the Promenade des Anglais, and the architecture was distinctly Mediterranean in character rather than French, a reminder that less than a century and a half ago Nice belonged to Italy.
    Was it somewhere in Nice that she was