He seemed to understand. How could that be? But he was just standing by the side of her bed, her hand clutching his, patiently waiting.
She was brave, strong. Wasn’t she?
She let go of his hand and he stepped away. “I’ll be right back,” he said and she nodded, clutching the duvet tightly to keep from calling him back when he walked out the door.
Panic. Her heart raced, breathing fast and shallow, prickling under the skin. Classic signs of overwhelming fear which she didn’t recognize as a normal response from her body. She didn’t panic, ever. Except, right now, she was panicking.
Her job — then the thought vanished. But she’d had glimpses of her job — fast-paced and dangerous, requiring steely nerves. What was her job?
Fog.
I am self sufficient, she thought. Not dependent on anybody. I don’t need anyone to keep me safe.
She repeated those words over and over and felt slightly better, but her whole body gave a surge of joy when Matt walked through the door carrying a big tray.
The sound of her breath whooshing out in a relieved sigh was loud in the quiet of the room. She was appalled at herself but it didn’t make her relief any less strong.
He walked to her bedside, pulled down two flaps, turning it into a bedtray, shook out a big cotton napkin and placed it on her lap.
“Okay.” There was a crease in that dark, rough face that might have been a smile. “Here’s what we have. I just pulled some stuff out of the freezer but if there’s anything you don’t like, I can find other stuff. There’s actually a list in the central computer, organized by categories and ingredients. So far I’ve fed you soup and bread and you’ve seemed okay with that. But if there’s anything else you want, we probably have it.”
“Wow.” She didn’t remember much about herself but she remembered she was pretty useless in the kitchen.
“Yeah, Isabel is pretty thorough. And we have an OCD gear guy, Jacko, who has taken it upon himself to prepare this place for the zombie apocalypse or a virus that kills 80% of humankind, take your pick. So he has started listing survival stocks, and that includes food.”
“Pretty useful when civilization collapses,” she murmured. “Which it will, any day now.”
“Totally,” he agreed and that dent in his cheek grew larger. “So, back to us. I chose, as you can see, to nuke a bowl of white bean soup and I heated up a small loaf of whole wheat bread. Sort of boring choices but I didn’t know what your stomach could handle.”
Her stomach chose that moment to growl loudly.
“Well, I think we got a vote of approval.” The crease in his cheeks deepened even further.
The smells coming from the tray were divine. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”
“Maybe you hadn’t before I fished you out of the river.” The smile completely dropped from his face and his voice was deep and serious. “You were held a prisoner. You were certainly shackled and drugged. People who can do that aren’t usually good hosts.” He looked her deeply in the eyes. “Are you starting to remember anything?”
She considered. “Not much. Just a few flashes, and more about my life than the last couple of days. Or weeks. Or … months?”
Matt shook his head. “If you’d been a prisoner for months I think you would have been in worse shape than you are. There would have been some muscle atrophy. I wonder what they gave you.”
“Could be any number of drugs,” she said, bringing the bowl closer, picking up the spoon. “Midozolam, Thiopental. Ondansetron, with different stable target concentrations. There’s a whole pharmacopeia of drugs that can induce compliance and memory loss.” She put the spoon in her mouth and nearly sighed with pleasure. God, it was good. Earthy and dense and flavorful. She looked back up at him. “What?”
“I don’t know many people who could guess at a drug regimen. You have specialized knowledge.” He squinted at her. “Ring any bells?”
She blinked. “Some. I guess.” The information had been right there, at her fingertips.
“Eat now,” he ordered. “We’ll talk about it when you’ve got something warm and nutritious in your stomach.” It was a command, couched in reasonable terms. Since it was reasonable, she dug in.
“Delicious,” she said after a few spoonfuls.
He nodded his head. “It’s got bacon. Anything with bacon is good.”
She frowned and poked with her spoon. “I think it’s pancetta.”
“Huh. Something else about you. You’re a foodie.”
She finished the soup, mopping up with several bites of the amazing bread.
“There’s more,” he offered and she consulted her stomach.
“I think that’s about all my system can handle now.” She reached for the steaming cup he’d put on the tray and sipped. “Mm. Lady Grey, my favorite.”
He cracked a smile or as much of a smile as that craggy face could manage. “The tea shelves are stocked better than the bar. Full of different types of tea, including Lady Grey, which I’m told is good.”
“Delicious.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I’m a coffee and beer man myself. So.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, big hands dangling. “Metal and I did some research. Please don’t think we were invading your privacy but I think it’s important to know who you are to figure out who might be after you.”
“Well, unless I somehow turn out to be a serial killer or an arms merchant or a politician, I can’t fault your reasoning. Did you guys find out who I am?”
He dipped his head. “We did, with the able help of Metal’s fiancée. You’re Honor Thomas. Dr. Honor Thomas. I was hoping you’d remember on your own when you were talking about the drugs you might have been given. You work in the emergency department of Eastern Memorial Hospital. Does that sound right? ”
Some of the words reverberated in her. Some not. She stared at him, trying to order her thoughts and feelings. “It … does. But it feels like a faraway world.” Images of a busy hospital filled her head, moving fast, blood and adrenaline. She frowned. “How can I not remember clearly my own life?”
“You might have been drugged for days. Be thankful they didn’t zap your medical degree right out of your head.”
“Right now I’m glad I don’t have to practice medicine. My whole brain is a fog.” Please God, let there not be permanent damage.
He held up two long fingers. “How many fingers?”
She smiled. “Three.”
He smiled back. He was … attractive when he smiled. It was a rough, tough face with harsh angles, a tight mouth, unused to smiling. But when he did smile, you could see that his features were clean and regular.
He took her hand, the forefinger crossing her wrist. What he thought of as a discreet way of taking her pulse.
Did he have the wrong woman. She knew all the ways to check a patient out without seeming to do so.
She was feeling much better, though. How many days had she been here? Two days? No, three, counting the day he’d saved her life . But that day was almost lost to her. All she remembered was terror and ice.
“How are you feeling?” His voice was soft.
“I think you’ve asked me a gazillion times now.”
The smile deepened the creases in his stubbled-covered cheeks. “Gazillion and one. How are you feeling?” He was trying to keep it light but his eyes searched hers keenly.
He didn’t need to watch her so carefully. She was on the mend. Her mind was still a foggy swamp and it hurt her head to try to remember the past, but some strength was returning. Maybe.
“Better,” she answered and then a huge yawn overtook her, enormous and irresistible.
“Okay, Wonder Woman. Instead of sending you out to plow the back forty, maybe you should take a little nap.”
“No, no.” Another yawn. Her stomach was warm and full and she was warm all over. Her eyes closed, opened, then closed again. She just needed to rest her eyes, just a moment.
Somehow, Honor found hers
elf sliding back down in bed, covers tucked under her chin as if she were a child. She wasn’t a child. She didn’t need to be tucked in, even if … even if it was a nice feeling.
The next second she went out like a light.
Matt watched her sleep and held her hand because it made him feel better. He stared at her wrists, trying to keep his breathing under control. It was hard because rage filled him every time he saw her wrists.
She’d bled, trying to get out of the shackles. The skin near her hand and further up her forearm, where the iron band had rubbed, was broken and scabbed, signs she’d bled, scabbed over, broken the skin again. It was a cycle he’d seen before, in the young kids he’d rescued back in the ‘Stan. They’d chafed against the irons, too. It had broken his heart then and it broke his heart now.
The kids had been shackled to the wall in a broken country where humans had devolved and become little more than wild animals in feral packs called tribes. But Honor had been held here, in this country.
From the little she’d said, her captors weren’t far from here. The fuckers had held a shackled woman here, in these United States.
Matt had fought and bled and almost died to keep that kind of barbarity away from his country. And he would fight and bleed to make sure whoever had done this would be caught and punished.
He’d lost a lot of faith in institutions in the past year. He’d been betrayed and punished by corrupt men who worked for his government. But he had absolute faith that he could bring this to the attention of the Portland PD and they wouldn’t stop until they brought those fuckers to justice. Portland PD might have its share of fallible men and women but the commissioner, Bud Morrison, was the kind of man who wouldn’t let anyone in his command slacken. Bud couldn’t be bought, coerced or threatened. If Honor had been held a prisoner anywhere within the Portland police jurisdiction, Bud wouldn’t rest until he had her captors behind bars.
One of Bud’s best detectives was a former Ranger. Matt had cross-trained with him. He’d joined the Portland Police Department and was, according to Bud, the best cop in the building and a hell of an investigator. Luke Reynolds. If anyone could figure out where Honor had been held, Luke was the guy. And he’d be backed a thousand percent by Bud.
Luke had had problems lately. He’d resigned his position with Portland PD effective the end of the month, after which he was joining ASI. But for the moment he was still a sworn police officer and even afterward, he’d keep working the case since ASI was involved.
Bud and Luke hated bad guys as much as Matt did and they were as relentless as Matt was. Once the men who’d kept Honor a prisoner were caught, they were going down.
So Honor was safe now, and whoever did this to her was going to jail. If it were up to Matt, they’d be going six feet underground.
Still, it gave him comfort to hold her hand.
He studied her face. She was just so beautiful — perfect straight nose, high cheekbones, full lips — even with those pale gray cat eyes closed. There was color back in her face. She’d looked dead when he’d fished her out of the water. He’d seen more than his share of dead bodies and she’d been close enough to death to scare the hell out of him.
He’d pulled her back to life at the very last moment. Remembering that icy white cast to her skin, the utter stillness, that horrible moment when he thought he’d lost her.
He’d watched so many teammates die, some fast, some slow. All badly, because strong healthy young men do not die easy. They fight for life with every fiber of their being.
She’d fought, too. The scars on her wrists proved that. The fact that she’d escaped despite being drugged proved that.
The lines of her beautiful face showed character and determination. This was a woman who’d fight.
Now she was wounded, battered, and didn’t have much fight left in her.
No matter, he’d fight for her. He’d stand for her. She wasn’t alone.
Matt had no idea when he’d vowed to keep her safe. Maybe when he’d fished her out of the water. Maybe when he discovered she’d been making her way to him.
Didn’t matter. She was now under his protection and under the protection of ASI and its operatives. That was how ASI rolled. Matt was one of them, though he hadn’t actually started working, and what was important to him was important to them.
ASI was a formidable enemy. Collectively, they had brains and strength and courage. And money and enough gear to start a small war. Some operatives had had private wars going and ASI had always prevailed — against mobsters and criminals and even the head of the CDC. Nick Mancino had helped take down the head of the CDC recently. A man who’d gone rogue and used a deadly bioweapon to make himself rich.
Well, Nick had provided the muscle in taking the man down. His fiancée, Kay Hudson, had provided the brain power. Matt remembered expediting their escape from the Grange, part of which had been blown up by a bomb dropped from a drone. Matt had gotten them out and the entirety of ASI had been mobilized to help Nick and Kay as they went on the hunt.
Matt knew, absolutely, that he would be able to count on ASI and all its assets to protect this woman.
A soft buzz, barely audible. He’d put his cell on vibrate so it wouldn’t wake her up. Matt brought it out and thumbed it on one-handed. A text message from Metal.
Hey bro. Took the sample to a guy I know who owes me a favor or two and expedited the analysis. Our friend was injected with a low dosage of a ketamine-diazepam compound. Ketamine is what they use to fell horses. My guy says that higher doses of ketamine would have been enough to permanently impair her neurologically. He says that he thinks she was injected over the course of days. So whoever held her wasn’t trying to get intel out of her, just kept her sedated. Over days. Just the thought makes me mad as fuck.
Matt looked up, stared at the wall, trying to keep his breathing under control. God damn! The picture he got in his head wasn’t pretty.
My lab rat says there might be retrograde amnesia, she might have lost her memory of a period before the drugs. So try to find out what her last memory was and work from there.
Matt switched his gaze from his cell to the sleeping woman. So days — maybe weeks — had been wiped from her mind. It was a pharmacological way of wiping their tracks. Yet they hadn’t killed her.
Why not?
He looked back at the screen of his cell. Felicity had taken over from Metal, only live. She was concentrated, focused, unsmiling. He held up a finger to the camera. Wait. Then got up and walked out of the room.
“Hey Felicity,” he said once he was out in the hallway.
“Hey, big guy. I did some digging into Dr. Honor Thomas. She has a top notch reputation at Eastern Memorial, citations up the wazoo, was offered a more administrative job which was considered a promotion with a big raise but turned it down. Likes doctoring. She hasn’t been at work since the 6th. You rescued her on the 12th. Six days. She was in the hands of a bad guy or bad guys for six days. Not a happy thought.”
He blew out a breath. “No, not a happy thought. Anything else?” Though, being Felicity, of course there was something else.
“Yes. I did some social engineering and got her cell number but it’s not traceable. Probably the battery was taken out. Last known location was on her street, just outside her door. Her building has security cameras. The last time she was recorded was the morning of the 6th. She drives a late model Prius, green. Current whereabouts unknown. I got from cameras that she usually takes a bus into work, it’s on the direct bus line. On the evening of the 6th, she sent an email to her boss saying an emergency had come up and she had to take temporary leave. The email address is hers but not the IP address. The IP address of where that email originated is registered to someone called Hailey Bosnick, who doesn’t exist. Just a ghost, untraceable.”
She frowned even harder. Matt could read extreme frustration in her voice. Not much was untraceable for Felicity.
“Dead end,” he said.
“Yeah, but the
re’s hope. So, here’s the kick. Suzanne came in and heard the name of Dr. Honor Thomas and got really agitated.”
Suzanne was Suzanne Huntington, the wife of one of the Big Bosses, John Huntington, aka Midnight Man.
“She knows Honor Thomas?”
“In a way. Turns out Dr. Thomas saved the life of Suzanne’s father when he was here on a visit six months ago. Professor Barron was having a heart attack but it was misdiagnosed as a stroke. She intervened and saved his life. You were still OUTCONUS. Once Suzanne realized Dr. Thomas was in trouble she made John and the Senior promise they’d do everything in their power to help.” She gave a faint smile. “You know John —”
Matt did. John Huntington was one tough, hard son of a bitch who was completely enamored of his wife. Anything Suzanne wanted she got. Excellent. If ASI had a personal stake in protecting Honor, Matt’s job was going to be so much easier. They would have helped anyway, but now …
Felicity nodded. “So, right now finding out what happened to Dr. Thomas is Priority Number One. You’ve got us all here, Matt. Engines revving. Waiting to help.”
“Does she have family?” God. Parents, worried sick. Maybe … a husband? No, Felicity had said she was single. But she could be co-habiting. He swallowed. If she had a partner, he’d be crazy with worry.
Felicity turned and typed rapidly on another laptop. She had five of them. All going at once. Matt had no idea how she kept track.
She read off the screen, face turned slightly away. “A very small family. No siblings. Mother deceased. Father still alive. So basically just her father.”
“Partner?”
More fast typing. “Nope. Doesn’t look like it. From the videocams, she goes to work and comes home alone.”
Matt let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “So she has a father. Has he reported her missing?”
“First thing we checked. No missing person report. So maybe her father doesn’t know she’s missing because they are not in contact that much.”
“Should I ask her when she’s feeling better?”
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 5