by London James
The man sitting beside the bed looks distinctly uncomfortable as I fight to control my emotions. He shifts in his seat, clears his throat, and looks everywhere, but at me. Not that I blame him. I know I’m an emotional wreck and I wouldn’t want to look at me either right now.
“I need to go make a phone call,” he tells me.
He stands up abruptly and leaves the room, leaving me there with nothing but my tears. A strange sound draws my attention, and when I look up, I see a large dog standing in the doorway, looking straight at me. He wags his tail, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. I give him a weak smile, which is apparently permission enough for him.
The dog bounds into the room and almost as if he senses that I’m hurting, gently leaps up onto the bed, seeming to do his best to avoid jostling me. He plops down and gently lays his big head on my stomach. I can’t help but laugh, as I start to scratch him behind his ears. The dog lets out a low, rumbling noise that sounds entirely pleased.
“Stabler,” the man chides from the doorway.
The dog looks up, his tail thumping against the bed, but he doesn’t move. I scratch his belly, making him scoot a little closer to me.
“He knows he’s not supposed to be on the bed,” the man says.
I don’t say anything, simply taking heart in the comfort and sweetness of the dog who seems intent on trying to make me feel better. The man gives me – and the dog – a soft smile.
“I guess he’s okay for now,” he says.
The dog whimpers softly and snuggles a little bit closer to me. The warmth of his furry body feels nice and gives me some small solace in this whole mess.
“He seems to like you,” the man tells me.
I look at the man for a long moment and realize that my own name isn’t the only one I’ve forgotten. I guess everything that’s happening is taking a big toll on me.
“I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name,” I say.
“Baker,” he replies. “Just call me Baker.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Baker,” I say.
“Stabler there is an excellent judge of character, so I guess I have to accept that you’re pretty okay,” he says. “I have Doctor Medina on her way here to check you out.”
“Why am I not in a hospital?” I ask.
The man sighs, a low, deep sound rumbling out of his chest. He then proceeds to tell me a story that sounds like something straight out of Hollywood. He tells me a story about drug cartels and federal agents – and about my involvement with them both – and also about a brother I can’t recall who is apparently the source of this tale of misery. Baker tells me a story about me being in the witness protection program and running from the cartel – because of the choices my brother made. It’s also how I ended up at the bottom of a ravine, and ultimately, in his house.
When he’s finished, I stare at him in stunned silence. It all sounds so unbelievable. It sounds like something that happened to somebody else, not to somebody like me. Though honestly, I have no idea who I am, so I can’t even say that with any sort of real authority. I just can’t believe I would be mixed up with something like a drug cartel. Even though I can’t remember who I am, I want to believe that I’m a good person.
I listen to his whole tale and can’t help but feel like he’s holding something back. Like he’s not telling me the entire story. I have no real reason to believe that and nothing to base it on – it’s just a gut feeling. I’m overwhelmed though, so I don’t want to press him. I don’t know that I can deal with any other big revelations right now.
A loud buzz sounds throughout the house, nearly making me jump out of my skin. The dog – Stabler – looks up at me, wagging his tail and gives me a soft whimper. He doesn’t seem fazed by the sharp sound, which somewhat eases my mind. If he doesn’t see anything to be afraid of, I guess I probably shouldn’t either.
“That’s going to be Doctor Medina,” Baker tells me. “Just stay put.”
He stands up and walks out of the room – and I can’t help but notice the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, which sends a cold chill sweeping through me. Somehow, seeing him carrying a gun makes the whole situation real to me. It makes it all more concrete – and all the more terrifying.
A few minutes later, Baker and a woman in blue jeans, and a black turtleneck enter the room. She’s middle-aged, has dark hair, blue eyes, and a kind smile on her lips. She gives Baker a look, and he slips out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“I’m Heather Medina. I’m the town doctor,” she says. “How are you feeling today, Isla?”
“Sore,” I respond. “Everything on me hurts.”
“Well, that’s not surprising, given the trauma you went through,” she says. “Truth be told, you’re a very lucky woman, Isla. It’s miraculous, really, that you came out of that wreck with nothing but scrapes and bruises.”
“It doesn’t feel very miraculous right now.”
She gives me a warm smile. “I’m sure it doesn’t,” she says. “But, give it a few days, and you’ll start feeling better. I guarantee it. Those first couple of days were a bit touch and go, but you pulled through well. You’re strong. A fighter.”
I stare at her, my eyes wide. “The first couple of days?” I ask. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days.”
“I’ve been out for three days?”
She nods. “Yes. I was worried about you that first night, but when you came through it, I was a little more confident that you’d be okay,” she said. “Though, I would still prefer that you went to a hospital, and got a full workup, just to be sure there are no lingering internal issues.”
“Yeah, Baker told me why he didn’t take me to a hospital, to begin with,” I tell her. “And it sounds absolutely outlandish.”
She nods. “An understandable reaction,” she says. “But I’ve known Baker Redmond for a few years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about him, it’s that the man does not overreact to a situation. And he’s honest to a fault. He’s a good man. One of the best I’ve ever known. If he says the threat is real, that’s good enough for me. I may not like it, but I respect it.”
“I can’t remember my name,” I say. “I can’t remember anything.”
“That’s what Baker said,” she replies. “And that’s what has me concerned. It very well could be nothing more than temporary amnesia. Your memory could come back tomorrow for all I know.”
I heard the unspoken words in her statement. Heard what she was leaving out.
“Or, it might not come back at all,” I say, completing the thought for her.
Her lips compress into a tight line, and she looks away from me for a moment. But she gathers herself and returns her gaze to me. There’s a look of compassion on her face, but also one that tells me she’s honest enough to tell me even those things I might now want to hear.
“It’s – possible, yes,” she concedes. “Injuries to the brain are difficult to diagnose with any specificity. It’s impossible for us to say for certain, whether or not your memories will return.”
“Wonderful,” I sigh, fighting off the frustration that threatens to envelop me.
“I would feel better if we could get you in for a full workup,” she says. “At least we might be able to get a better look at what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“Yeah, you need to talk man-mountain out there into it,” I tell her. “He doesn’t seem like a man who’s easily swayed.”
Medina gives me a small smile. “Let me worry about that.”
Chapter Fourteen
Baker
“She’s damn lucky to be alive,” I say.
I pace the dining room with the phone pressed to my ear. Walt’s just returned my call – finally – and I’m filling him in on the situation. I tell him about the firefight in the woods with Zavala’s men, as well as finding her in the wrecked-out car. He listens to it all but doesn’t say much.
“I’m relieved you got
to her in time,” he replies.
“Almost didn’t.”
“But, you did,” he replies.
“When are you coming?”
“Not sure yet, kid,” he sighs. “I’m caught up in the middle of –”
“With the cartel creeping all over town, I really think she’s going to be better off in the custody of the Marshals,” I interject, though I don’t know that I actually believe that.
“I disagree,” Walt says on the other end of the line. “We were compromised, Baker. Zavala’s got his hooks into somebody here. We’ve launched an investigation to find out who it is, but right now, we are locking down all of our witnesses tied to any case involving the cartel. We’re stashing them even deeper and are trying to make them hard to find. Case officers are the only ones who know the identity and location of their wits.”
“Total information blackout, huh?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he replies. “Until we can figure out who’s been compromised. And to be perfectly honest, I would feel a hell of a lot better if Isla were under your protection.”
“Why is this one girl so important to you?” I ask. “You’ve got a couple dozen cases –”
“I can’t explain in any way that makes sense, really. Hell, maybe I don’t get it myself,” he says. “But she didn’t ask for any of this. This whole shitshow was dropped into her lap, and I kind of pressed her to take the relocation. I sort of pressured her into it. And now, I feel responsible for her.”
I understand exactly where he’s coming from. Back then, I always felt a deep sense of responsibility for my charges. I always felt a deep sense of responsibility for anybody I ever put into WITSEC. No one is more important than any other, in terms of the information they provide, but some certainly feel like they are. Mostly, the ones who are just bystanders – collateral damage in somebody else’s shit.
“How is she doing?” he asks.
“Physically, she’s doing well. Surprisingly, all things considered. It’s a fucking miracle she didn’t die in that car,” I tell him. “But, mentally, she’s all kinds of fucked up right now. Can’t remember a thing – not even her own name, Walt. And she’s pissed off about that.”
His chuckle is rueful. Grim. “Yeah, that sounds like her,” he says. “She’s a spitfire, that one.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”
The more I listen to her talk, the more I see of her spirit, and her attitude, the more she reminds me of Jenny in that way. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. There are definitely things that make Isla unique, no question about it. But there are definitely some similarities to Jenny in her personality – similarities that I find entirely compelling about her.
In one sense, I’m glad that Walt is leaving her here in my care. I don’t know what it is, but I too, already feel a deep sense of responsibility for her. I feel profoundly protective of her for reasons that I can’t explain – not even to myself. There’s just something about her that makes me want to keep her safe.
On the other than though, I'm loathed to involve myself in matters where the Zavala Cartel is involved again. The last time I was in the middle of that mess, Jenny and our witness both ended up dead, and I came very close to joining them. I can’t lie; the experience shook me. Right down to my core. As a Marine, we were dropped into some really tight spots, and facing death was such a common occurrence, that it was really unremarkable – like commenting on the weather.
But, as many tight spots and nasty situations as I was in over there, I never came as close to dying as I did that night. Perhaps even more than that is the fact that even though I lost brothers in the Corps – and it never failed to hurt me – losing Jenny cut me in ways I never anticipated losing somebody I cared about could.
And yet, despite all of that, I find myself wanting to get back into this fight for the first time in a long time. I find myself wanting to do whatever it takes to keep Isla safe. To protect her.
“She’s a fighter; I’ll say that for her,” I say.
I stand at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the backyard. Birds flit from tree to tree, and the sky is a dazzling shade of blue. Fat, fluffy clouds drift by lazily, and the thin dusting of snow we got has already melted away, leaving a beautiful blue and green paradise in its wake.
The storm has broken, but that was just a prelude. It was the overture, as the atmospheric symphony begins to tune up for its first real performance of the year. I’ve been tracking the weather online, and I know a bigger, more powerful storm is on its way. And with the nights turning even colder, if this storm is half as powerful as they say it will be, we are going to get blasted.
Which, in one sense is good – Zavala’s men won’t be able to operate real well in a blizzard. It will keep us safer longer. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before they start poking around in town and follow the trail of breadcrumbs that will lead them right to my door. I don’t doubt for a second that Hernan Zavala hasn’t forgotten me, and if – or rather, when – he finds out I’m a resident of Grizzly Ridge, it’s not going to take him too long to put two and two together.
Hernan is smart. Scarily smart, and a fair bit more coldly logical than his father. He takes the emotion out of things and looks at a situation critically. He acts from that place of logic and reason, rather than blind emotion and fury. That’s one thing that makes him so dangerous.
“You have no idea,” he tells me. “Listen, I know this is a huge ask, and I wouldn’t ask it if –”
“Yeah, I’ll stash her here,” I say. “Until either you come, or you send reinforcements.”
“Good. That’s good, kid,” he sighs in relief. “Thank you.”
I laugh, ruefully. “I think you knew we’d end up here when you left that file at my place.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” he replies. “But I was hoping I could count on you to be a failsafe, yeah.”
“Well, congratulations, it worked.”
“You watch your asses out there,” he says. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
I disconnect the call and set the phone down on the table, a thousand different thoughts swirling through my mind. But, through all the chatter going on in my head, I keep seeing Isla’s face floating behind my eyes. I see her flaming hair and sparkling green eyes. The image of her face is suddenly indelible in my mind, and the harder I try to push it away, the firmer it seems to stick.
“Baker, we need to talk.”
I turn to see Doctor Medina standing behind me, a look of concern on her face.
“What is it, Doctor?”
“We need to get Isla to a hospital,” she tells me.
“We’ve been over this.”
She gives me an even look. “I’m really concerned about her,” she says. “We need to get her checked out. We need to make sure there are no bleeds in her brain or anything that could cause further problems down the line.”
“I don’t disagree with you, but we can’t run the risk, Doc,” I argue. “She seems to be doing better, and you said before, that her memories may come back to her on their own.”
She nods. “Physically, she seems to be improving, yes. And her memories very well may come back on their own,” she says. “But the more information we have, the better.”
“It’s just too big of a risk to take,” I say. “We can’t let the cartel get their hands on her.”
“What if we could get her in and out without anybody seeing her?”
I cock my head and look at her. “Know how to turn people invisible now, do you?”
“I might.”
“This is crazy,” I say.
“Crazy enough to work,” Medina replies.
I pull my truck around to the rear entrance of the hospital and park between a couple of ambulances. I get out first and step around the truck, surveying the parking lot. I sweep my eyes left and right, searching for signs of anything out of the ordinary. This is crazy. Nuts. Marching Isla into that hospital makes me feel like we’re m
arching her into the lion’s den. I don’t have a particularly good feeling about this, but on some level, I recognize that Medina is right – Isla needs to be seen by a specialist.
“Clear,” I call.
Medina gets out of the truck and joins me. She looks around and nods.
“Okay, you sit tight,” she says. “I’ll be back.”
I watch Medina cross the lot and disappear through the back doors and into the hospital. I step back and open the back door. Isla looks at me with wide eyes and fear etched upon her face. Our gazes lock for a long moment, and there’s a palpable energy that flows between us. That energy sends an electric buzz throughout my body and makes my heart race. It’s the same sort of buzz I used to get when I looked into Jenny’s eyes, and I have to fight off the urge to kiss her right then and there. My reaction to Isla is as puzzling as it is disturbing, and it’s throwing me for a loop.
Isla lowers her gaze, but her cheeks flush with color. She picks at the clothes Medina had brought over for her – jeans, a plain black turtleneck, and tennis shoes. They’re a little bit big on her, but it’s not too bad. Isla just looks grateful to be wearing something other than my t-shirt.
“You think this is going to work?” she asks, finally looking up at me.
I shrug. “Doc Medina seems to think it will,” I reply. “And I trust her.”
“Honestly, I feel fine. I’m not in quite as much pain anymore, and –”
“She’s worried about anything that may crop up internally,” I tell her. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she says. “I’m just scared. And frustrated. And pissed off. I can’t remember a thing about myself or my life. Whenever I try to recall what I do for a living, where I grew up, or if I’m married, I just keep coming up empty.”
“I know this has to be frustrating for you,” I say. “But, maybe, once we get you all checked out, they can tell us more about getting your memories back.”