Man Behind The Voice
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“Y-you’ll be cold,” she whispered, her teeth already chattering from shock and the chill of the wind.
He shrugged, doing his best to pretend that wearing little more than a T-shirt in the gusting wind was no big deal.
“I’m fine. Right now, I’m more worried about you, Miss…”
She licked her lips, squinting up at him in the darkness. “Eleanor. Eleanor Rappaport.”
“Well, Eleanor. How’s the head?”
“Hurts.” She squeezed her eyes shut, blinked then opened them again. “I must have banged it on the side of the car when I tried to get out.” She frowned. “But then, I already told you that, didn’t I?”
Jack felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that it was because of his truck slamming into her that she’d been injured at all.
“Does anything else hurt?”
She shook her head. “I’m really…fine. Don’t know why…I feel so…shaky.”
He took her hand, squeezing it. “Don’t you worry. You’ve got a nasty goose egg beginning to swell over one eye. You’re bound to be a little woozy.”
Releasing her hand for just a moment, Jack tore open the first aid kit. Selecting a pre-moistened towelette, he swabbed the gash. To his relief he found that it probably wouldn’t require stitches.
Working as quickly as he could, he cleaned the area, then applied a thick gauze bandage. Then he touched her forehead again. She was cold. Cold, clammy and so very, very pale.
Her eyes suddenly opened. She blinked, squeezed them shut for a moment, then peered at him again.
“So blurry.”
Jack felt his mouth grow dry. “You can’t see?”
“I’m having trouble…focusing…on things.”
Since the fact evidently agitated her, he touched her cheek, then took her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ve probably got a concussion or something. A little rest and you’ll be fine.”
“You never…” she murmured, her voice faint and somehow fragile “…told me…your name.”
He squeezed her fingers. “Jackson. Jackson Mac—” He broke off, his head lifting. From far away he heard the faint wail of sirens.
“Hear that?” he said. “They’ve already sent someone to help. In no time at all, you’ll be safe and snug inside an ambulance.”
But when he searched her face for a sign of relief, he saw instead that she was gazing at him wide-eyed, a look of sheer horror spreading over her features.
“Jackson? Jackson!”
“Shhh,” he offered gently, calmly, even as his heart thudded in his ears and the wailing of the sirens grew louder and louder, scraping nerves already raw from the night’s events.
“I’m here, Eleanor,” he said, wondering if she were about to lose consciousness. Instead, as he bent low, he realized that her eyes were open, but they weren’t tracking him. She stared at him blankly, huge tears beginning to well up and spill down her cheeks.
“Jackson, I can’t see,” she cried, softly at first, then louder, the sobs tearing at his heart. “Jackson! I can’t see!”
Chapter One
Six Months Later
Jackson MacAllister bolted upright in bed, his own shout echoing in the darkness of the hotel room.
Breathing heavily, he dragged his fingers through his hair, trying to calm the fierce pounding of his head.
The dream. It had come again—as it always did when he was tired or feeling under the weather.
Or recovering from a nasty concussion.
Wincing, Jack swung his legs over the edge of the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. His body throbbed with the aftereffects of injuries he’d sustained on the job that day and the dregs of his dreams, causing his head to ache until he thought his skull would split with the pressure.
Standing, he padded into the bathroom. Under the harsh glare of the overhead light, he shook four aspirin from the bottle on the counter, then gulped them down with a glass of water from the tap.
Only then did he begin to relax.
Willing himself not to think of the dream or the woman who had seemed so real, so vulnerable, he moved to the windows. Pulling the heavy curtains aside, he peered down at the pre-dawn glow seeping over the Lincoln Memorial in the distance.
It had been nearly a week since the stunt car he’d been driving had flipped end-over-end during a staged high-speed chase for the film adaptation of the bestselling techno-thriller …Savage Justice. The scene had been choreographed and reshot three times in the first month of production, but since the director had spent only a quarter of a million dollars more than his budget had allotted, he’d decided to celebrate his good fortune by spending another fifty grand expanding the final chase scene.
Jack grimaced at the irony of the whole situation. Naturally, the director had decided that the footing showing Jack’s accident was “mar-r-r-velous”—as if Jack had planned to roll out of control and finish the take upside down next to a broken water hydrant. If Jack hadn’t immediately been rushed to the hospital, he would have grabbed the director by the collar, pinned him against a wall and chastised the man for moving a camera crew into the middle of the road—unannounced. As it was, Jack had still been in the emergency room when he’d received the news that the filming was finally—finally—over.
His anger at the director hadn’t eased with the announcement. If anything, Jack’s ire had increased—to the point where he’d made an effort to ignore the man so that he wouldn’t say anything politically incorrect. Jon Palermo might be an idiot, but his films were spectacular, and Jack enjoyed the creative freedom and lucrative budgets that came with a spot on Palermo’s crew. In the meantime, he planned to avoid Palermo.
Which was why Jack was booked on the next afternoon flight to Los Angeles. Once he’d returned to California he could put this whole miserable week behind him.
As if of its own volition, his mind quickly strayed away from all thoughts of Palermo to the nightmare that had awakened him.
Eleanor Rappaport. Why did the memories of that night, that woman, still continue to haunt him?
But even as he asked himself the question, he already knew. In the months since the accident, Jack had thought about Eleanor more than he would care to admit. He couldn’t seem to banish the image of her lying next to him, gripping his hand, and crying, “I can’t see!”