A few moments later he put the phone down. Jack no longer worked there.

They had no idea where he'd gone. The asshole had lost his job. Again.

Kate woke when Jack moved his arm and took hers along with his. The cuff pulled at her wrist and she was tugged toward his back with her arm across his body. Aware they were both naked, Kate tried to draw away but Jack turned so he faced her.

"Morning, darlin'. Sleep okay?"

"I think you made sure I did."

He chuckled. "Until you're willing to do what I say, I have to make you." Jack unlocked the cuffs. Kate tried again to move away and he pulled her back.

"Not so fast."

"Please don't hurt me."

"Then don't fight."

"I'll scream."

"Go ahead. No one will hear and even if they do, nothing will happen. I already told you, there's no knight coming to save you." He grabbed her breast and Kate caught his wrist.

"Are you going to make this easy or difficult?" He moved his hands to her neck and slid them up and down, squeezing gently. "You know I could kill you in an instant. Don't you want to stay alive?"

"Yes, so I can see you go to jail."

Jack smiled. "Well, there you are. Strong motivation." He turned her so her back lay against his chest and then locked his legs around hers, his erection pressing against her butt. He fondled her breasts and bent his head to the side of her neck, rubbing his rough cheek against her. A hand slid between her legs and a finger wormed its way inside her. Kate tensed.

"Do you like that, Kate? Is that what you do at night?" Jack took her hand and put it between her legs. "Show me what you like to do. Show me how you like to be touched."

"Stop it."

She made a fist. He laughed and turned her again so she faced him, held her down with his thigh. He pried her fingers apart and put them around his erection, holding them there with his hand.

"Okay, then I'll show you what I like." Kate didn't fight and he smiled. "Is this the next stage, Kate? You've moved from violent defiance to semi-submission?

Want me to believe you're co-operating? I tried that when I was a kid and one of my doctors fucked me in the ass. Maybe I should try that with you." Oh God. Jack tried to kiss her and she turned her face. His teeth latched onto her ear and she yelped, trying to wriggle free.

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I had a good time fucking your mom, but your resistance to my charms adds that little something to our love-making." Kate froze and he laughed. "She liked to be on all fours. I liked it better that way, too. I didn't have to look at her sagging breasts. But yours are real pretty." He flicked a nipple with his fingers. "Yeah, I like these a damn sight better than hers."

He sucked on her nipple, then looked at her and grinned. "Struck dumb for once, Kate? That smart mouth got nothing to say?"

"I don't believe you."

"She'd do anything."

"Shut up."

She lifted her hand to hit him and he caught her wrist.

"Suck my cock and I'll tell you how we met."

"You never met my mother."

"Susan Amelia Jane Evans. The first day we met, she let me come in her mouth."

He wanted to upset her. She wouldn't react, wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"So you know her name."

"Want to know where we met?"

"You never met her."

"Ashlands Psychiatric Hospital."

Kate's heart changed places with her stomach. She felt the electrical connections snapping in her brain.

"Believe me now?"

Kate tried to think back to when her mother had been admitted, faces she recalled, names she remembered. She didn't remember Jack. That meant nothing. Patient or employee? Patient. He'd known about the alien language and the spacecraft because he'd spoken to her mother. The sex was a lie, but...she took a shaky breath. "Why were you in Ashlands?"

"Get on your knees. Let me fuck you without fighting and I'll tell you."

"No." Kate tried to get up.

Jack shrugged and pulled her back. "I'm going to fuck you anyway." Kate locked her legs together and twisted away. The more she struggled, the rougher Jack became.

"You're not going to win, darlin'. Why fight?" She caught her breath as he forced his way inside her. Kate closed her eyes, swamped by fear and disgust. Counted back from a hundred in her head. Don't think. Don't think.

It was over quickly. A few short thrusts and grunts and he'd spilled his slime.

He rolled off her and pulled her back against him.

"Why were you in Ashlands?" she whispered.

"I stabbed my father."

"Oh my God."

"I wasn't trying to kill him." Jack's voice rose. "I was making a point. If I'd wanted to fucking kill him I would have. But then he made a point of his own.

Ashlands or prison."

She shouldn't be surprised. He'd probably spent his entire life in one institution or another.

Jack settled his chin on her shoulder. "I saw your mother sitting under a tree, an abandoned look in her eyes. One I recognized. I introduced myself and she said she couldn't tell me who she was, only who people said she was. Her name was Susan Evans, but she wasn't married to the man who'd had her committed. Nor was the girl with him her daughter."

Kate trembled.

Jack laughed. "She knew she'd been in a car accident, but she didn't remember much else."

Kate's father had been driving. A lapse of attention after he'd snapped at her mother and he'd slammed into a parked truck. All three of them had been hurt, but her mother's head injury left her unconscious for weeks. When she saw Kate and her father at her bedside, she called them impostors, said her real family had died in the crash and these people were pretending to be related to her. The doctors thought she'd get over it, but she hadn't and Kate had to learn how to deal with a mother who refused to acknowledge her.

More painful for Kate because she wasn't the child her Mom had wished for.

The accident gave her mother the opportunity to dismiss her from her life, but left Kate too riddled with guilt to do the same. She and her father tried to talk her around. They'd gone over the past, relived vacations but nothing made any difference. It was as if her mother had gotten lost and couldn't find her way back, but instead of letting them help her retrace her steps, she'd continued walking, getting farther and farther away.

"Don't you remember me, Kate?" Jack chewed her nipple, and she winced.

"No. When did you know it was her daughter you'd raped?"

"When I saw you visit. How could I forget you? My first love. Mine. We were meant to be together."

Kate swallowed hard.

Jack licked his way to her neck. "She thought you were after her money."

"There was no money." Her father sold everything to buy the last few months at Ashlands. He owed them money when he died. They wiped the debt in return for not taking legal action over her death.

"I know there's no money," Jack said. "What was it called, what she had?"

"Capgras syndrome." No treatment, virtually no chance of recovery. Her father clung to the belief that given time in a quiet, exclusive place like Ashlands, she might come around. The only difference it made was to his bank balance.

Jack turned Kate onto her stomach and began to nuzzle her back. She let it happen. Didn't fight. Her mind raced. It was hard to take everything in. She felt as though she was missing some piece of a puzzle that would make everything suddenly clear but it kept slipping through her fingers.

"Why did you keep going to see her when she didn't want to see you?" he asked.

"We couldn't abandon her." Something niggled at Kate. "You told her we were impostors, didn't you? You agreed with her. That's why she trusted you."

"No one was on her side. I know how that feels."

"What do you think she'd have thought if she'd known what you did to me?"

"You mean, would she still have let me fuck her?" Kate flinched.

"Why didn't you tell her what happened when you came home from school?" Jack asked.

Kate didn't answer.

"You could have confided in her, let her help you, but you didn't. Imagine how she must have felt."

"Did she say that?" Kate whispered.

"She was there for you but you turned your back." Kate shook her head.

"You let her down, Kate."

Her heart pounded. She turned her mind off Jack's touch, onto his words.

Motherhood had been a job to Susan Evans, something you worked at. Take your child to the museum, enroll them in advanced math, have them learn a musical instrument, make them an A' student-tick enough boxes and you were a good Mom, tick even more to reach Super-Mom status. Kate's childhood achievements were never fun; swimming had to be done faster than the neighbors' kids. Oliver's swum a mile? Well, my daughter's swum two. Same with the violin. None of the family was musical. Her mother had chosen the violin because it was different and difficult, made Kate carry on long after she wanted to give up and made her feel guilty when she stopped.

Jack grabbed her chin and turned her face toward him. "Why didn't you tell her you were pregnant?"

"Because I knew they'd blame me."

Jack leaned on one elbow and looked down at her. "You should have stopped visiting her. That's what she wanted. She didn't love you." If he thought to shock her, he was wrong. "I know." Nor had her father. One day, he'd told her everything was her fault. Kate was cooking. He walked into the kitchen, said it and walked out. He never spoke to her again. Not a thank you or good night. When she went to Ashlands to tell her mom he was dead, Kate wanted to be held and told everything would be all right.

She really thought her mother would snap out of it, but she'd sat as if Kate talked about a stranger.

Jack's lips brushed her shoulder. "She said she wished you were dead." Kate had wished her mother was dead. She'd been glad when Ashlands called to say she was because it marked the end of her responsibility. She hadn't been able to rid herself of the thought that her mother had known who they were all along. She was different in Ashlands. She walked and spoke differently as if she'd discovered another person hiding inside her, one she liked better, one with no husband and no daughter.

Jack put his mouth to her ear. "I asked her if she wanted me to kill you." Kate's eyes opened wide.

"Don't worry. She said no."

"Did she ask you to look for me?"

He didn't answer which made Kate think she was right.

"She asked you to find her real daughter. You knew I was her real daughter, so it wasn't exactly hard. But you didn't tell her you were the bastard who raped me when I was sixteen."

A further thought paralyzed her throat. A nurse had found her mother in her room, hanging from the sash of her dressing gown, a pink silk noose tight around her neck. She'd attached it to the door handle. "You had to be very determined to kill yourself like that." The exact words the doctor used. What if...?

"What are you thinking?"

"You told her and she killed herself," Kate said.

"You sure you're not wondering if I killed her?" Kate's stomach lurched. "Why would you?"

He put his mouth to her ear. "Because she was a fucking heartless bitch and she treated you like shit."

Chapter Eight.

Jeannie Lawrence didn't stop phoning Fryer, the building superintendent, until he promised he'd check Kate's apartment the next day. On Tuesday morning, she got nothing but his voice mail. After five attempts, she went and knocked on his door.

Fryer's eyes flickered with annoyance. "Mrs. L., what can I do for you?" Jeannie bridled at the abbreviation. "Come upstairs with the key to Kate's apartment." She crossed her arms and stared straight at him.

"I've already told you, I can't go barging into tenants' apartments. She could be taking a shower."