“Who is she, Kieran?” she asked.
“I think she’s the reason I needed to come to this place,” he said. “She’s a part of my past.”
Alex wanted very badly to lean against the gasoline pump, to let the strength seep out and give up the attempt to hold herself together. But she straightened, aware of the woman and child behind her, and met Kieran’s steady gaze.
“Then more of your memories are coming back.”
“Not many.” His eyes flicked away to the truck behind her. “I think when I decided to stop here, I was remembering Lori. But not clearly. Only that there was something here… part of something I hadn’t finished.”
Hadn’t finished. A strange way of putting it. Alex thought of the woman who had appeared so suddenly out of the blue. She was pretty, in a hard-edged way; she wore heavy eye makeup, lipstick that was too vivid against her pale skin. Her nails were long and brilliant red. Her clothing smelled of cigarette smoke. Her overall appearance had a certain cheapness to it, as if—
Stop it, Alex. Just what are you trying to prove?
“How did you know her, Kieran?”
For the first time Kieran looked away. He didn’t want to talk about it; she saw that in the tightly confined restless ness in his lithe body, like that of a wolf on the edge of flight.
“It’s come back slowly, in fragments,” he said with obvious reluctance. “I knew her six years ago, when I passed through this way before. You remember I told you I was a wanderer.” He smiled without humor. “I don’t know why I stopped in this town. I got some kind of work with a farmer. I spent my time off in the local bar.”
A bar. Kieran had said he’d frequented bars. Alex shivered and hugged herself. “And that’s where you met her.”
He nodded, his smile fading into bleakness. “Somehow we got to talking. She started telling me about her life, and I listened. It wasn’t a good life she had. Her husband… beat her up. Frequently.”
Alex felt her face heat with shame for thinking a single uncharitable thought about Lori Carstens.
“I remember that I was angry about what she told me. I think I must have offered to take her away with me. She wouldn’t come. I know I hated her husband for what he’d done to her.”
And Kieran’s hatred would be a formidable thing. Alex remembered when he’d confronted Howie in the cafe, and Peter in front of the bar in Merritt. In defense of someone he cared about…
She refused to think further. “Something happened, didn’t it?” she asked softly. “What did you do, Kieran?”
Kieran no longer seemed to see her. “Lori didn’t want me to talk to her husband. But she needed me. We kept meeting in the bar, and… other places, when we could. Her husband found out about it, and one night he came for her.”
Alex could see the scene all too dearly. “You fought him,” she said, praying that was all it had been.
“I warned him off,” Kieran amended. “He wouldn’t back down. He started hitting her, and I… attacked him.”
Alex closed her eyes. “Did you—”
“I didn’t change,” Kieran said harshly. “I’d been drinking. But I injured him. Maybe I almost killed him. I don’t remember. All I know is that I wanted him to suffer the way Lori had suffered. But then his friends came after me. There were too many of them. They took me out of the bar, and—” He broke off, and met her gaze again. “I ran, Alexandra. That’s all I know. I left her there and ran—”
“Because they almost killed you,” Lori said. “They would have if you’d stayed.” She walked around the gas pumps and stood halfway between Alex and Kieran, but her eyes were all for him. “He’s the last man who’d ever run from a fight.” She glanced at Alex. “You’d know that.”
“She knows it,” Kieran said, his mouth a grim line. “Alexandra, Lori is leaving her husband. That’s why she needs to get out of town.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Lori put in. But there was no real reticence in her face or voice. She smiled at Kieran. “I don’t know what I’d have done—”