Undercover Memories by Alice Sharpe

forehead with an open palm. “I’m an idiot,” she said under her breath. “I’ve just been too distracted to think clearly.”
    She drove a little way farther before pulling to the curb in front of a motel. She switched off the engine and turned, searching the backseat for something.
    “Why are you an idiot? Can I help you find something?”
    “Where’s my laptop?” she insisted.
    “Right there under that coat. I’ll get it for you.”
    He retrieved the computer for her and waited while she opened the case, bringing it to life.
    “Just as I hoped,” she said, typing quickly.
    “What’s just as you hoped?”
    “We’re picking up the motel’s internet connection. I’m going to look you up on Google.”
    And as he watched, she did just that. The screen instantly filled with links to him and he looked away, not sure how to handle an onslaught of information that might reveal things about himself he didn’t want to share with her.
    No way around it, though.
    “Mostly updates on the police search and your supposed victims, although there’s mention here of another person being wanted for questioning. That’s probably me or Anatola Korenev. Anyway, here’s something about you personally. Want to know?”
    “No,” he said.
    “John?”
    “Okay. Just leave out the bad stuff.”
    “You’re divorced,” she informed him. “No children. Ex-police. John, you were a cop before you became a bodyguard. In fact, you were a hero. You pushed a congressman out of the way of an armed gunman last year. Hey, I remember reading about that. That was you?”
    “You’re asking me?”
    “Sorry.” She read for several seconds without speaking. John was beginning to get nervous when she said, “Well, anyway, you’re thirty-nine years old and adopted, but it says not much is known about your early life. You work in Lone Tree as a bodyguard and are currently missing. They quote a woman named Natalie Dexter, who’s identified as a friend of yours, as saying you left town three days ago on a job. And it gives your address.”
    “We can punch it into the GPS,” John said.
    She was typing again. “We don’t have to. I found it on here. Looks like we passed the area where you live about three miles ago. It’s on the other side of the bridge.” She folded the computer shut and handed it to John.
    As she made a U-turn and headed back the other way, John thought back to what they’d passed before getting on the bridge. The area had looked industrial to him, not residential, with train tracks running alongside the river and big warehouses sharing space with fenced, paved lots.
    “Ready to go home?” Paige chirped as they started back across the bridge.
    He nodded, filled with dread. It wasn’t every day a man had to confront the unknown essence of his own life. He just hoped he hadn’t buried any skeletons in plain view....
    * * *
    P AIGE COULDN’T GET THE passage she’d read about John—and hadn’t related to him—out of her mind. As she drove the nearly vacant streets of what appeared to be the area of the city where shipping and receiving took place, she considered telling him the part she’d omitted.
    But she couldn’t believe it. John guilty of accepting a drug bribe? Everything she knew about him went against such a thought, and she did her best to shove it out of her head.
    It wouldn’t go far. She glanced at him now as he scanned the numbers on the buildings, not sure how he would take this kind of news about himself, because sooner or later she had to tell him. Keeping it to herself was the chicken’s way out, but it seemed cruel to ambush him with more vague questions about his character.
    The truth was if she couldn’t reconcile this information with the man seated beside her, what was he supposed to make of it?
    “How are we going to know Anatola Korenev isn’t at your place waiting for us?” she asked.
    “We’re not. He could easily have been here by now.”
    “Or he could be one step