“We need to go here,” he said, pointing to the slip that held the penned address.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Do you know exactly where it is?”
“In Colorado. We’ll need a map. You can buy one in there.”
“No credit cards I’m assuming.”
“Right.”
Ashley reached for her seat belt. Her heart pounded against her moral conviction of what he’d asked her to do. Did she not have a say? In fact, there could be an easy argument that she was of sounder mind and body than he was.
“I’m not doing what you ask.” Ashley turned and faced him. “I can’t steal a car. Whatever is happening here, I’ve already done enough to put my medical career at risk. Taking a patient from the hospital, if you corroborate my story that you came willingly...”
“You didn’t take me from the hospital without my permission,” Casper said. “That’s not a lie. I could have stopped you.”
She raised an eyebrow at the unlikeliness of that statement. Truly, he was in little condition to stop her from doing much. “Then that charge I can survive. The hospital won’t be happy that I drove a patient home, but a slap on the wrist might be punishment enough in their eyes.”
“I sense a rebuttal coming.”
“I just won’t steal a car. I’m willing to go on this...adventure with you to a certain point, but I can’t break the law.”
“Fine. I understand. This is all very confusing to me, as well—”
“I can only imagine.”
“Then what is your plan?”
She reached behind her, grabbed her purse and reached into its depths for her wallet. She opened it up and pushed her finger into the gap, a place she opened in the lining, for one of the last things her father ever gave her.
“My dad told me that if I was ever in trouble—‘weird trouble’ was the phrase he used, then I was to call this person and ask for help.” She opened the paper and traced her father’s blocky penmanship. “Horace Longbottom.”
She jolted as Casper laughed. “Seriously?”
In fact, he laughed so hard, he had to use the corners of the blanket to dab the tears from his eyes.
Heat flushed Ashley’s face. “Like you have room to laugh at a name... Casper? As in the friendly ghost? What sane parent names their kid something they know will be an automatic reason to bully their child?”
Casper raised his hand at her as his laughter died. “Point taken. I’m sorry. It’s just...sometimes you need to laugh when things get dark.”
True. That was one thing she could agree with. Black humor was a mechanism she used in the ER all the time to get through hectic shifts. It was a salve she and her coworkers depended on.
“You’re forgiven.” She opened her wallet again. Only about seventy-five dollars in cash. Enough to make a phone call, and buy some items for Casper. He was still shivering intermittently beside her. A slight wintery breeze drifted through the shot-out windows. Something hot to drink would help while they waited. “Stay here,” she instructed.
Ashley stepped from the vehicle and began to walk into the store, wondering if she’d be shot on sight just like her friend Noah.
FOUR
Casper watched Ashley walk away. The intensifying swirling snow obstructed his vision of her as she neared the entrance to the grocery store.
Will this be the last time I see her? Is she truly calling for help or surrendering herself? Is this drive to figure out what happened to her father enough to bring her back to me?
Lord, I don’t know what’s happening here, but I know You’re always with me, a light on my dark path. Show me what I’m supposed to do here? Give me back my memories, please. I don’t want this woman to be hurt by whatever it is I’m involved in.
In the short time he and Ashley had been together, she’d definitely made a mark on his psyche. There was a lingering presence of her in his memories—he was sure of it. She was strikingly beautiful. Dark brunette hair with fiery red highlights echoed the tenacious spirit within her. He eyed his left hand. No ring there, but it could have been taken during his attack. Casper rejected the thought. He brought his forearms up into the moonlight—a full moon, now bright, looked pregnant with mischievousness. His skin was tan and there lacked the characteristic white mark on his ring finger that would be there if an item of jewelry like that had been taken. Even without the ostentatious clue, he felt like he was alone...single. Not connected with anyone. A free spirit as they say.
That feeling left something hollow within him. Like he’d been alone too long and yearned for that to change. Was this true or just the frustrated musings of a man who only had faint shadows of an impression of himself and little else?
The snow seemingly parted as she walked back to the SUV holding a carrier of steaming drinks in her hand with a plastic grocery bag in the other. Casper reached across and cracked open the door and she hopped back into the driver’s seat. People glanced at the shattered windows as they walked by. Hopefully, their curiosity would be self-limiting.
“Horace should be here in about fifteen minutes. He said to look for a red tow truck. I told him about where we were parked and the model of my car. He said he doesn’t want us walking out in the open and was a little upset at our choice of stopping places.” She raised one eyebrow at Casper as if exerting her objections over his plan was something he should have considered more seriously. “He definitely wanted to meet somewhere more secluded, but didn’t think it wise to get back on the roads.”
Ashley handed him a sweatshirt and he begrudgingly put it on—obviously a deeply discounted Christmas item.
“Sorry, I couldn’t find any shoes I thought would fit your feet.”
Casper turned the key in the ignition to the point where the radio could turn on and scanned through the AM channels to see if there was any sort of alert out with their description. Thus far, they seemingly hadn’t been followed and there also wasn’t an increase in police activity that he noticed. Then again, they had traveled quite a distance from the hospital.
Lack of law enforcement could be both good and bad. If the local police were involved, then whoever was looking for him didn’t seem to mind someone knowing about it. On the downside, if local law enforcement wasn’t involved then the people who came for him were part of the underbelly of society. Criminals didn’t involve the police in their endeavors.
Darkness meant secrets. Secrets usually meant danger.
“You need to drink something warm to help with the hypothermia. I didn’t know what you’d like so I got one of everything.” She pointed to each drink as she named them. “Coffee, chai, black tea and hot chocolate.”
He smiled. It was disheartening and charming in the same breath. He wished she hadn’t spent what cash she had on hand on something so frivolous, but the deep-seated cold that had taken residence in his body cried for something...anything...to increase his body temperature, and he didn’t think asking her to snuggle was an option.
“Thank you,” he said. Most people drank coffee so why not try that first? He slurped at the liquid and his taste buds cried out in horror, and it was all he could do not to spit the brine out onto Ashley’s lap. He clenched his eyes and swallowed. “No, not this. It’s terrible,” he said and she took the cup from his hands.
“It’s all right. I’m not much of a coffee fan, either.”
“Well, what do you like?” Casper asked. Perhaps they had the same taste.
“Any of the other three. I’ve got cream and sugar in my pocket for the tea if you taste it and don’t like it plain.”
“How about the hot chocolate?” he said, taking the cup from the cardboard tray. He didn’t miss the slight downturn of her lips at his choice. “Tea, then.”
She pushed gently at his hands to keep him f
rom putting the cup back. “No, it’s all right. I’ll take the chai. Close enough to hot chocolate anyway.”
He sipped the liquid. “Peppermint?”
She nodded. “One of the few things I like about the holidays.”
Casper let the liquid slosh playfully over his tongue. A brief vision sparked in his mind. His younger self perhaps. A man and woman. Another male child. Brother, maybe? A train circling the bottom of a Christmas tree.
Ashley held the cup with chai between her hands. “Did you remember something?”
Casper shrugged. How could he know what was real and what wasn’t when he didn’t have a sense of his true self?
“The littlest things can make you recall memories. A taste. A smell. Sometimes those impressions can be even more powerful than pictures.”
“Why one of the few things?” Casper asked.
Ashley’s eyes widened. “What?”
“You said there were few things that you liked about the holidays. Why is that?”
“It was just after Christmas that my father disappeared. We’d had a late Christmas dinner together. The next morning, he goes out for pastries and just never came home. No trace of him has ever been found.”
“Do you have a picture of your father?”
Ashley pulled her wallet out again. “No laughing. The last family photo we had taken was when I graduated from college.”
She pulled it out. A classic studio photo. Her mother and father sitting on a bench with Ashley and her brother standing behind them. Casper traced the man’s face with his thumb. Almost a feeling of kinship, but his mind remained blank.
The drone of an engine sounded behind them. Ashley tapped at his leg. “It’s him. Horace.”
Casper pulled the blanket tightly around him. He looked out the window. No passersby at the moment. How ridiculous would he look walking in a parking lot dressed in ripped jeans, no shoes or socks, and a discounted sweatshirt featuring Santa and Rudolph high-fiving each other?
Ashley had already exited the vehicle and he quickly followed suit. She opened the passenger door on the tow truck, scooted over to the middle and motioned Casper inside.
Standing on the running board, Casper hoisted himself up and sat down on the torn leather seat. One jagged-edged spring poked his thigh from a particularly thin spot. He reached over to shake Horace’s hand. His hair was dark red, bordering on brown, and cinched tightly with a rubber band at the base of his neck. A lighter red beard, scraggly and unkempt. The inner border of his hairline and the upper portion of his beard were tinged with gray, giving the appearance of a silver, not gold, halo that might have sank forward, sticking to the outer reaches of his face. Blue eyes that held both secrets and a smile engaged Casper’s. From the gap between his teeth he juggled two toothpicks, the space serving as an anchor point.
“Better get movin’,” Horace said, as he glanced in his rearview mirror.
That was when Casper saw a vehicle slowly driving down each parking lot row.
Clearly looking for someone.
* * *
From the outside, Horace’s garage looked how you’d expect a tow truck business to look. The inside was a different story. Behind a few doors, down a hidden flight of stairs, and it was like she and Casper had entered another world. The only word Ashley could use to describe the room was bunker, as in fully prepped for most things shy of an apocalyptic event.
It held two twin beds with a small bathroom off to the side. Ashley could see Casper eyeing the mattress wistfully and couldn’t imagine how tired he felt. Beaten. Hypothermic. He needed rest.
“Is it okay if Casper sleeps?” Ashley asked Horace.
“This is both a place to rest...and hide.” He shifted his gaze to Casper. “Looks like you could use a few hours.”
Casper shifted uncomfortably on his feet. It was as if he didn’t know the right decision to make. Considering what he’d been through, indecisiveness could be a natural symptom of head injury and hypothermia. His brain cell connections had been interrupted and then frozen. The neurons were trying to find their way back to one another. Sleep was an excellent treatment—the only way to get the mind to rest and heal.
“You should nap,” Ashley said to Casper, and was mildly surprised he didn’t fight her on the issue and immediately lay down. She stepped to the other bed and grabbed a few of the quilts at the base and unfolded them over his body—his eyelids already closing.
Medically, she worried about an undiagnosed brain injury. Was he bleeding inside? Would his closed eyes remain that way? Years of medicine had been practiced without the diagnostic tests as readily available as they were today. Ashley realized how much she would need to rely on her medical training.
Did I make the right decision taking him from the hospital? Have I risked his life by not having the information those medical tests would have provided?
Horace motioned her into the next room, which held a mixture of computer equipment. The place was tidy. Not a smudge of grease marred the surfaces of the myriad of tables crammed into the space. He pulled out a chair and Ashley sat down.
“Thank you,” she said. “I never dreamed I’d have to use your number. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if the things my father told me were true or not.”
“Probably a mixture. It’s hard...this game he’s playing,” Horace said, turning away from her, seemingly not wanting to elaborate on his point.
“How do you know my father?” Ashley asked. Perhaps reminiscing with Horace would enable her to learn some of her father’s secrets.
“We met in the years following the Gulf War in Iraq. Guess it was early ’90s. Seems like two lifetimes ago.” Horace shrugged, his eyes locked on something behind her.
Ashley turned around and saw the wall of military photos. She narrowed her eyes to see if she could make her father out. She knew so little of his past. “What were the two of you doing there?”
“I was serving in the military. I was part of a small peacekeeping force left behind to stabilize the country. Your father was with the United Nations Special Commission at the time investigating the claim that Iraq had a biological weapons program.”
Ashley’s throat tightened. “You’re serious?”
“It doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t share much of this with you. When you’re on foreign lands, you never know who will turn out to be friend or foe.”
“Lands?”
“Excuse me?”
“As in plural,” Ashley said. “Like Iraq wasn’t the only foreign country he’d been in.”
Horace drummed his fingers. “You’re smart, just like he was.”
Ashley didn’t know how to take his comment. Was he being condescending? Just making a factual observation? Her mother’s advice came to her. First, assume people are operating with good intentions at heart. After all, Horace had picked them up from a pretty dicey situation with no questions asked and it looked like he was used to helping other people in similar predicaments.
“Did they find bioweapons?” Ashley asked.
Horace nodded. “Did you know it’s been illegal since 1972 to manufacture bioweapons? There’s an international treaty in place.” Horace raked his fingers through his patchy red-and-gray beard. “Your father shared a story with me once about watching footage of a government’s chemical weapons attack against its own citizens. It horrified him. He said he watched women running, carrying children, fleeing from the city, and then they just dropped...dead.”
Ashley swallowed hard. She’d heard of events like this in the Middle East. For her own sanity, she didn’t watch the footage of such carnage. Sometimes, it was hard to relate to something thousands of miles away, but her father had witnessed these horrors. What did that do to a person?
“That scene of that mother and daughter broke him. He’d just found out that your mother was pregnant with you and it became a mission
of his to stop these attacks from happening wherever he could. However, he’d specialized in medicine—not chemistry. He found biological agents fascinating. That’s where he decided to concentrate his work.”
“What did he find in Iraq?”
“There was evidence of anthrax and a few other agents.”
“Do you know what happened to my father? Where he’s been these last two years?”
Horace’s face twitched as if his body was betraying his mental conflict. It was clear to Ashley that he knew something, but why should they trust one another?
Ashley tried a different approach. “Are you helping him?”
“I always help...but I try to avoid a lot of direct person-to-person contact. For you, because of Russell, I’ve made an exception. Meeting with fugitives can be dangerous. I don’t want others to discover what I have here.”
“How do you help?”
“Sometimes people need to disappear. That’s what I help with.”
“Did you do the same for my father?” Ashley asked.
Horace offered a slight smile. “You’re crafty. Asking the same question a different way will still not get me to answer.”
Some said intuition was built on years of experience and perhaps Ashley had those years whether or not the stories her father shared with her were true. Something felt kind and honest about Horace. Ashley reached into the pocket of her lab coat, which held the thumb drive she’d been sent with the unsigned note admonishing her to keep it safe.
She opened her palm and revealed it to Horace. His eyes widened briefly, but then settled. He tried to assume a nonplussed manner.
“I think my father sent this to me.”
“He did and I...helped...get the packages to you,” Horace said.
Horace reached out, Ashley assumed to take the drive from her for examination, maybe even put it in one of his computers to see the information that it contained. Instead, he closed her fingers back over it.
“You don’t want to see what’s on it?”
Fugitive Spy Page 4