Chapter One

The Call

I don’t know my name. Jane Doe appears on the hospital forms. It’s better than nothing, I guess, but no one could tell me much beyond that. I’m about thirty, medium length dark blonde hair, fair skin, with grey eyes. Whoever I am I’ve kept my body in good shape; toned, thin waist with no hanging stomach and the ass is in decent shape. Breasts aren’t sagging, in fact they’re pretty good if I say so myself, but none of that helped answer the burning question: Who am I? And no one else at the hospital could either. It didn’t matter how demanding or shrill I got; they just didn’t tell me anything more. Not until they threatened me with tie down straps did I give up bugging them.

‘Be patient, young lady,’ the harried shrink of an old man at the hospital psych ward said. ‘You have just come out of a coma. You must have undergone some kind of shock. There are treatments that will help. You’ll eventually remember. Eventually.’ But after he rushed away to his next hopeless patient I knew that if I wanted to find out about myself then sitting in a dingy day room with a bunch of other poor medicated victims wasn’t the way to do it. I needed to find out what happened to me. So against doctor’s orders, (technically against orders, although it was fairly obvious he was secretly glad there would be one less case file he had to worry about), I checked myself out against medical advice.

My possessions? Well, they found me in a short dress, skimpy panties underneath, and a pair of sandal pumps, all black. Also a small red clutch with exactly one thousand dollars, all wadded up, and one other thing.

A burner cell phone.

No identifying information in it, not even a record of calls previously made. But it was mine, and the only link to my previous life. So, thus provided, I found myself on the streets of Manhattan.

The energy off the streets seemed familiar, as if it were an old friend that happily welcomed me back after an unexpected absence. But that’s all I got from it. No whispers, no clues about who I was. It was like I was born on the streets, and that’s where I had been found by some passersby late one night. The shrink said I was just standing on a corner, staring into space. Unresponsive to any questions, unresisting to any of the EMT’s requests as they laid me on the gurney and load