“This is going to hurt,” she said, taking firm fingers and ripping the defibrillation pads off his chest.
Casper gritted his teeth and suppressed a yell. Unable to keep his eyes from watering, he rubbed at the raw, burning skin.
“Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t sound nearly as penitent as he wanted her to be. Next, she removed the layers of clear tape that held his IV in place.
He clasped his hand over hers. “Wait, aren’t they going to need this for the scan?”
She blinked at him. If he had to guess, she pondered why he would even think to ask such a question. “No, we’re leaving the hospital.” With a quick motion, she pulled the catheter from his arm, put a cotton ball over the site and then wrapped a piece of self-adhering dressing around his hand.
“Dr. Drager, please, what is going on?”
“Ashley... You might as well call me by my first name. I’m essentially kidnapping you.”
Not that he minded, but for what reason? What had her so unnerved?
“Why are we leaving?”
She yanked one of the blankets from his chest, settled it in the wheelchair and then eased his legs so his feet were resting against the floor. The room spun.
“Sit here for a minute. You’re probably dizzy from laying down for so long. If you fall I won’t be able to pick you up by myself and I can’t call for help.”
Casper pressed two fingers into his temple until the sensation passed. “If I’m going to allow myself to be kidnapped then I need to know why.”
“Does the name Jared Fleming mean anything to you?”
Nothing registered. He shook his head.
“Something very weird is going on here. You show up, amnestic—almost beaten to death. Your tattoo is the same exact one my father, who’s been missing, has. You arrive with a photo of me in your pocket. And just as I was trying to insanely, and with a lot of denial I might add, talk myself out of thinking that you having a connection to me and my father was utter lunacy, my father’s arch nemesis shows up asking me to relinquish you into his custody without any legal documentation supporting such an action.”
Every last ounce of strength that Casper possessed, which was precious little at this point in time, melted away like the snow under a newly bright Colorado sun. Trouble was, he wanted to assist her, but doubted he could lift a finger to even help himself. Ashley had every right to make such assumptions and clearly she was operating for his benefit, albeit through selfish needs of her own.
Can I blame her? I’d do exactly the same thing under these circumstances. Sticking with her might provide the answers that I need. Maybe she’s the key to getting my memory back.
Casper inhaled sharply and gathered up the last vestiges of his energy. He eased himself up and pivoted into the wheelchair. Now all he wanted to do was go to bed and sleep the rest of this day away. She tucked the blanket around his torso.
“If we get out of here, what exactly is your plan?” Casper asked.
Ashley bent over and unlocked his wheelchair, her exhalation whispering past his ear. A hint of citrusy body spray lingered in her wake.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’ll probably take you to my mother’s house. If you knew my father maybe she knows you and can help me figure out if I should be worried about Jared coming for you or not.”
“So you don’t necessarily believe your father? That this man is his enemy?”
“It’s hard to put faith and trust in a man who deserted his family. My father said a lot of crazy things. Did a lot of scary stuff, but the one thing he was always consistent about for several years before he disappeared was his hatred of the man who just came looking for you.”
Ashley wheeled him to the door and peeked around the curtain. Seemingly satisfied, she yanked the curtain aside and pushed him through the sliding glass door. Making two quick turns, they came to a vacant hall. She locked the chair.
“Hopefully, everyone will be tied up for shift report. I need to grab my coat and purse. Don’t go anywhere.”
She disappeared behind the door to the doctor’s lounge and he was left alone. The chill was beginning to dissipate and he appreciated the warmth the blanket provided. If he’d been found in the snow, it likely hadn’t melted in the few hours since his arrival, particularly with the blackness of night making its claim against the last remnants of daylight.
Just as the door clicked closed behind Ashley, Lance rounded the corner.
“Mr. English, are you lost?”
The spry nurse rounded to the back of his wheelchair and unlocked the brake. “CT is wondering where their patient is.”
Casper took his left hand and shoved the brake into place just as Ashley came through the door, zipping up her coat and holding her purse and a large manila envelope.
“It’s okay, Lance. I’ve got it. Just didn’t want to come back to the department after I dropped him off.”
Lance nodded, though unsurely, but backed away so she could scoot behind the chair.
After a few more turns through the halls of the ER, Ashley came to a side entrance. “My car’s not far, but it’s going to be hard to get this wheelchair through the lot with all the snow.”
He nodded and flipped the footrests up. He stood, shakily. Ashley scooted next to him and fit herself under his right arm. Just the right size to act as a crutch. He leaned heavily against her, worried that she might topple over, but her strength surprised him and they soldiered through the door into the biting wind.
They walked perhaps thirty steps until they reached a pine-green Toyota Highlander. She pressed her key fob twice, unlocking the passenger door, and he poured into the seat, barely able to hold himself upright. After she grabbed the blanket and hastily threw it over his chest, she buckled the seat belt around him and hurried to the driver’s side. After starting the car, she turned on the heat, and he was immediately met with a blast of cold air that the thinly threaded blanket did little to protect him against, and the chill reasserted itself with a vengeance. His teeth chattered.
She turned down the flow and put the SUV in Reverse, making her way through the parking lot.
Just as the parking lot arm was about to release them, a security guard came running toward their vehicle from the left.
“We shouldn’t stay,” Casper warned.
Ashley powered down her window, ignoring Casper. “Everything okay, Noah?”
“Dr. Drager. A patient has been reported missing from the hospital. A Casper English.”
She glanced back at Casper and he shrugged, his mind a muddled mess of frozen brain cells.
“He’s all right,” Ashley called out the window. “Mr. English is here with me, and he’s refused any further medical care. He’s asked me to drive him home.”
“Dr. Drager, as you know, it would be highly unusual—even against policy—for you to transport a patient off hospital property regardless of their wishes.”
“It’s fine, Noah. He’s an old friend. I think the hospital will—”
Ashley jerked back and Casper felt the warm spray of something hit his face. When he looked left, he saw a fine mist of red droplets covering Ashley’s hands, which gripped the steering wheel so tightly they were stark white. Noah staggered back a few steps away from the car, a hand held tightly against his neck as blood gushed between his fingers. The guard dropped to his knees.
“Drive!” Casper yelled.
Ashley reached for the car’s door handle. “I can’t leave him,” she cried.
The next shot cracked the back driver’s-side passenger window.
“Ashley, go! We’re going to die if we stay here.”
The next shot punctured through Ashley’s open window into the dashboard.
Ashley stepped on the gas and flew out of the parking lot.
* * *
The night rushed past Ashle
y. Light snow flurries danced unabashed. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful other than the fact that she was speeding through neighborhoods preparing for slumber—braking, sliding on the icy streets. The dropping temperature crystallized what little snow had melted during the day. Ashley used a wet wipe from her glove box to clean the blood spray off her hands. She took another and wiped the left side of her face.
She was crying. Thinking of Noah. She prayed her call to the emergency department and 911 about Noah’s injury and the shots fired got help to Noah in time and no one else was hurt. When one of her fellow physicians pressed her for information, she’d disconnected the call.
Ashley’s thoughts spun. Adrenaline-fueled blood rushed through her head and there was a faint pitched whine ringing in her ears that masked Casper’s voice. She looked at him, barely able to see through her tears, wondering if she’d have to resort to reading lips because she couldn’t discern what his words conveyed. Gibberish. What she did see was the surprise and apprehension that covered his face.
It was the worry that concerned her the most. Who were these people?
This is exactly why patients can’t talk when I tell them bad news. Why they can’t process any information. What is this insanity?
Clenching her teeth, she wiped the tears from her face.
I have to pull myself together. Crying isn’t going to help either one of us right now.
She gripped the steering wheel so hard her hands ached. Casper glanced behind them, his movements stilted. “They’re coming.” A simple statement filled with so much danger.
Ashley glanced up in her rearview mirror. A black SUV was quickly closing the distance. Perhaps two blocks behind. A crack of metal jolted the car.
A gunshot punctured her tailgate. Ashley pressed her foot into the accelerator.
Casper narrowed his eyes. “Nearest highway?”
Ashley tried to think. First thing, she needed to shake them off their tail. She whipped the steering wheel right—so tight was the turn that the car lifted up briefly on two wheels. Ashley’s heart climbed into her throat.
After a series of three Z-turns, their pursuers remained right on their tail.
“That’s not going to work. They’re more experienced at this than you,” Casper said.
“Who is ‘they’?” Ashley yelled, briefly glancing Casper’s way. Her hands were slick with sweat.
“Get to the highway.”
Fine. What sense did it make to let the confused, amnesiac patient determine their course of action? Not much, but there hadn’t been a med school class on outrunning thugs who intended to kill innocent people, so she gave him this one suggestion.
Two more turns and Ashley sped up the entrance ramp onto the highway. She merged quickly into traffic.
“Fast lane,” Casper said.
No, that wasn’t going to work. If driving was their skill, these delinquents would simply follow them until she ran out of gas. Somehow, she had to shake them.
There was a semi in the slow lane. Ashley began to position herself next to it...slowing their vehicle down.
“What are you doing?” Casper asked.
The black SUV sidled up next to them. The windows were tinted so dark she couldn’t discern the shape of any of the men inside.
The window of the SUV cracked open. Ashley hedged up until she and the semi were nose to nose. There was perhaps half a mile to the next exit.
Quickly, she looked left. The tip of a gun showed through the small gap in the window. The back passenger window on Casper’s side shattered. Air waffled noisily through the car so hard that her eardrums ached with the pressure. Ashley veered right. Casper turned his head her way reflexively, his head hunched down, expecting to impact against the tractor trailer’s side.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Casper yelled.
Ashley stomped on the accelerator, pulling ahead of the semi, and at the last possible moment jerked the steering wheel hard right, careening in front of the sixteen-wheeler and onto the exit ramp.
In her wake, she heard the blare of the truck’s horn in complaint. Ashley shook so badly she could hardly grip the steering wheel. Her legs quivered.
Casper laid a reassuring hand over hers. “Nice job.”
His touch had a surprising calming effect. Her father hadn’t been the touchy-feely type. She could count the number of hugs she’d received from him growing up on one hand. One of her regrets after her father disappeared was not having had a closer relationship with him.
Ashley made several more turns, attempting to put a confusing amount of distance between them and their attackers.
Casper pointed at the twenty-four hour grocery store coming up on their right. Perhaps thirty minutes had passed without evidence of them being followed. He motioned his finger up and down. “Turn in here. Park close to the front.”
Ashley’s body felt like a tangle of nerves on fire. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”
One of Casper’s hands gripped the dashboard. He looked as lost as he no doubt felt. This wasn’t good in any measure. They were being hunted. This was something both of them understood. How could an amnesiac man and a healer ward off armed gunmen?
Since Ashley’s mind remained a muddled mess and she couldn’t think of any alternative argument, she did as Casper asked and parked her car among the other vehicles, but not directly under a parking light, hoping the darkness would offer some disguise. She turned the car off and killed the lights and looked at the world in front of her.
It was that peaceful seasonal lull. Just after the holidays but before all the outdoor lights were taken down. The hubbub of the holidays was over and the spirit of Christmas could be enjoyed without the accompanying stress.
Casper scanned the road that ran past the grocery store. He was sitting up and forward in his seat, a guard dog on alert. His continuously roving eyes narrowed and Ashley’s chest ached as she held her breath.
A black SUV was turning into the lot. How was it possible for them to be found so quickly? Her mouth dried. Did they duck down? Get out? Stay as still as statues?
Ashley looked for some direction from Casper, but he remained pensive and silent next to her. They both watched the vehicle turn into the lot and park a few rows away, and then a mother with two teen daughters emerged.
“We need a different car,” Casper said.
“As in steal one?”
“Unless you have another spare vehicle that’s perhaps not registered to you or anyone you know. What I know is that this Jared Fleming is going to know who you are now. It looks like he has some resources at his disposal that maybe fly under the letter of the law. We need to disappear.”
Her mouth gaped open. Casper was serious.
Is that what her father had done? Gone into hiding because of Jared?
Ashley shook her head. “What do we do after that? Where do we go? I don’t think going to my mother’s is a good idea anymore. We don’t know who these men are or what they want. I won’t put her life in danger.”
“Well, we do know what they want...at least partially.”
He was right. “They want you, but why?”
Casper shrugged. “And is it connected to your father? I’m not one to believe in coincidences. I don’t know the meaning behind these events and I don’t know why I was attacked or by whom, but I think we’re together for a reason and that’s been orchestrated.”
By God. Those were the two words he didn’t end with but meant wholeheartedly. That was what she felt like he was saying to her. Her view on God? That He was a disconnected, distant being that cared little for the everyday affairs of humans. Just like her father was currently and had been from her earliest memories. It’s not that she didn’t believe in God, it’s just that she didn’t think He orchestrated the minutiae of her life.
Thoughts tousled through her mind, lo
oking for a way to connect with one another. Was the thumb drive she’d received important to the events that just happened? Should she tell Casper about it? What did she know about this drifter sitting next to her? Her father might be missing for nefarious reasons. Nothing said that her father wasn’t involved in some criminal undertaking. Who was to say that he and Casper weren’t part of some criminal underbelly and she’d just tethered herself to him from one assumption—that her father had told her never to trust Jared Fleming and that man had wanted her patient.
But could she trust her father?
Ashley shook the thoughts away. She’d keep the thumb drive a secret...for now. She needed more data to make an informed decision.
Casper wanting to steal a car boiled down to her doing it. What condition was he in to go searching through a bustling parking lot looking for a vehicle to abscond? Breaking the law could lead to repercussions by the Board of Healing Arts. She could lose her medical license. What was stopping her from just calling the police? Wouldn’t that be a wiser choice?
Her instincts told her not to. What help had the police been to her and her family after her father’s disappearance? Not a scrap of evidence, a lead or hint that he was even still alive had been given to them from law enforcement. The packages were the only evidence she clung to, but receiving them didn’t mean he was alive. The first sense of promise that she might discover answers was from this stranger who possessed the same unusual tattoo and had landed in her ER as if gifted from desperation.
Her heart sank. Her cell phone...was it already being traced? Probably. Or was she being paranoid? Probably not. She pulled the device from her back pocket, but before she could power it down, maybe even destroy it, she had to do one thing.
Mom, I’m okay. You may not hear from me for a while. I love you. Please, don’t worry.
Immediately after the message showed delivered she turned the phone off. Casper nodded approvingly. Weird thing was, his assent meant something to her. An alliance, though tenuous, was forming.
Was turning the phone off enough? Could they trace it powered down? She didn’t have any experience in evading the law—or the lawless. Casper unlocked his seat belt and began sifting through his pockets and removed the wadded piece of paper.
Fugitive Spy Page 3