She tells you her story.

She looked at me like she was trying to prove a point. She said, “I know my name is Victoria Reef. I know that I own this apartment. I know that when I was five I had a white cat named Mittens. I know everything about my life up until two years ago. It was like one day I woke up and found out I overslept for two years and somebody else had been running around using my life.”

I admit it. This was a story I had never heard before. I had once had a guy hire me who claimed he had amnesia, but he was just **** to get out of some gambling debts. He thought by carefully pretending that he couldn’t remember he could get the loan sharks off his back. The only problem with the plan was the guys he borrowed from definitely remembered him. Just losing two years was a new for me.

I gave her a look over. If she was lying, she wasn’t being obvious about it. I decided to play along for now. “All right, let’s say you’re telling the truth. Why are you afraid that someone might be watching you?”

She said, “Because, I used to work for the pharmaceutical giant, The Chiron Corporation.” She paused, “Let me tell what I know first. It’s just like I said, one day I went to sleep and the next day I woke up. I noticed things seemed a little strange, but it wasn’t until I got to work and they said I had been fired a week ago that I figured out something was very wrong. I learned that I had lost two years of my life. I lost a part of me. I’ve gone to dozens of different doctors and none of them can find anything wrong. My friends all say that I was fine for all that time. Then I was fired for insubordination. It was one week later that I lost my memory. It can’t be a coincidence. The company must have done something to me to make me forget something that happened in those two years. If they went to those lengths, then bugging a room would be nothing to them.”

I rubbed my chin. “I think I saw this plot in an old Star Trek episode.”

Her face fell. “You believe me, don’t you Whisper? Please, you have to believe me. Most of my friends either think I crazy or that I’m faking it for some reason. I need someone to believe me.”

I wasn’t sure if I did believe her. She might be trying to pull some scam, a very unnecessarily complicated scam. Maybe she thought that’s why she would get away with it. Who could come up with such a strange story?

Still, something about her intrigued me, now even more so after hearing what she had to say. Hell, I knew that I decided to take her case even before I left my office with her. One way or another, I was going to see this through to the end.

I looked into her shimmering opal eyes and told her the truth, “I don’t know what to believe, but I am curious as to where this is heading. I’ll take the case.” Anything to be close to you, I thought.

She smiled and hugged me, “Thank you, Whisper. Thank you so much.”

I would have answered but I was awash in her presence. The feel of her holding me and touching me…It was like swimming in the ocean and suddenly being pulled to the bottom by an undertow. I fight to get my head above the waves, but I can’t. And just like the ocean, it wasn’t until she let go of me that I could breathe again.

She said, “I have loads of research that I’ve already done on my computer and boxes of documents that I have to go through yet. I think it would be as good a place as any to start.”

She wasn’t kidding. She had two years worth of receipts, credit card statements and other records that tracked what she had been doing for her missing time. We starting going through them, sorting them by dates and places. After six hours of work, we had barely made a dent.

I yawned and stretched. “I think we got a good start for today. I’m going to go home, get some shut eye and see you tomorrow.”

She said, “You’re welcome to stay here if you want. I’ve got a spare bedroom and there is a wonderful Thai place around the block if you’re hungry.”