Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1)

by Donna S. Frelick

  "Between the heroine's gripping mystery and Frelick's silken prose, Unchained Memory was a book I could not put down. And did I mention heat? A sci-fi romance must-read!"

  --Sharon Lynn Fisher, author of Ghost Planet

  “Part political thriller, part sci-fi, part romance, Unchained Memory is an exciting read full of unexpected twists and turns highlighted by Donna Frelick’s excellent prose.”

  --Linnea Sinclair, author of The Dock Five series

  By

  Donna S. Frelick

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Donna S. Frelick

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address INK’d Press at inkdpress@gmail.com.

  First INK’d Press ebook edition February 2015.

  For Olene, who never found the one she was looking for, though she never stopped trying. For Graeme, who was mine from the beginning. For Michelle and Jessie, Gavin and Lana, who must define the concept anew for themselves and their generations.

  And for heroes everywhere.

  PROLOGUE

  For years I couldn’t remember what had happened to me that night. All I knew was that three hours of my life were gone, unaccounted for in any way that made sense. The search for those lost hours changed me. Finding them nearly killed me. Even now, there are times when I lie awake in the dark heart of night and wish to hell I’d left it all alone.

  Except for Ethan. I could never regret anything about him.

  I remember well enough how the night began. If I’d stayed home where I belonged I wouldn’t be telling this story now.

  The crowd in the Holiday Inn lounge was just getting loose. The band had finally found a tune even the broken-hearted could move to, and the dancers were taking on the glow of too much alcohol.

  I was out of place in that happy community of the drunk and the unattached. “I gotta get back to the kids, Sherry. It’s going on midnight.”

  “The kids are fine.” Sherry pushed the over-processed hair out of her eyes. “You’ve hardly been out of the house for weeks. Ronnie don’t never take you nowhere. Every once in a while even the Mom of the Year deserves some down time, don’t you think?”

  With three little kids, I didn’t have much choice but to stay home full-time, not if the family was going to stay relatively sane. Sherry thought I was the crazy one for sticking it out with a man whose idea of excitement was a beer so cold it made him shiver. She was a free bird and thought I should be one, too. But, then, she’d been married three times. Her only child was an overfed Cocker spaniel.

  I ignored the invitation to discuss my home life and dug my keys out of my purse. “The mall closed hours ago, Sherry. Our alibi’s shot.”

  She wasn’t listening. Her attention had been snagged by a tall specimen at the bar with the gone-to-fat look of a former high school football star. Sherry and I had run together since we were both new to the course, so I recognized the signs: she and Mister Right Now were headed for a tumble in the sheets a few drinks down the line.

  I shook my head and reached for my jacket. “I’m outta here, girl. If I stay I’m just gonna cramp your style.”

  Sherry sighed, returning her focus to me. “Tell me what Ronnie did to deserve a wife that looks like Shania Twain and acts like an angel to boot.”

  I snorted. Guess he won the lottery the night the condom broke and he “did the right thing.” “Yeah, well. I’m running home right now to polish the old halo. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Outside, the chill of late October had laid a damp hint of frosts to come on the pickups in the hotel lot. I could see my breath in the still air as I shrugged into my jacket. Despite the drinks, I didn’t stagger as I looked up to admire the spray of stars across the black of night. My head was clear when I got in my old Ford pickup and turned out onto the highway. I didn’t as much as wobble in my lane on the way home.

  That’s why, even months later, I couldn’t explain what happened next—not to my husband, not to Sherry, not to the police or the counselors or the doctors. Oh, I could blame myself, all right. But I couldn’t find any reason in this world why one minute I could be driving along Deerhorn Road, not a mile from my house, and three hours later be waking up in my pickup on the side of the road.

  I opened my eyes, and for a long baffling minute I couldn’t see anything at all. In the moonless midnight dark, all I could see was the dusty shadow of the truck’s dash hanging above my face. The view through the windshield revealed only a starlit sky and the ragged outline of a stand of pine framing the road.

  I lifted my head from the sticky vinyl seat and sat up. Razor-sharp pain ripped from my forehead to the back of my skull and tore the air out of my lungs. The inside of the Ford spun like a carnival ride, and I fought not to blow the contents of my stomach all over the front seat.

  When the steering wheel and glove compartment settled back into their usual places, my first thought was that I’d had one Lemon Drop too many. But no amount of vodka could justify the pounding inside my head. In fact, I wasn’t sure there was that much of the stuff available outside Moscow. And the little I’d drunk wasn’t enough to make me pass out in the middle of the road, practically within sight of home.

  I listened for a clue as to what might have left me sitting on the shoulder, the keys dangling from an ignition turned to OFF, but the road was as quiet as it was dark. In the woods, a mockingbird protested being awakened out of a sound sleep with a run through his repertoire. In the weed-choked ditch, a few late-season crickets still trilled. In my chest, my heart thumped with something close to panic, though the source of my fear was nowhere to be found.

  “Now, think, girl, think.” My hands gripped the steering wheel like it was the last railing on the Titanic. “There must be an explanation.”

  I remembered slowing down to take the curve just before the Dry Run Bridge. I’d been listening to the radio—Stevie Ray or somebody—then . . . I’d lost the signal. It was as if my mind had switched off with the radio. I couldn’t remember anything else, and thinking about it made my head want to twist off my neck.

  All right. Shit. I sat up straight, clicked the seat belt and turned the ignition key. The truck started right up. No warning lights, gas tank almost full. I shook my head—a mistake that cost me a wave of dizzying pain—then I put the truck in gear and got back on the road.

  I had almost convinced myself my little nap could be shrugged off when I thought to check the clock on the dash. The numbers made no sense.

  “That can’t be right.” My throat tried to close up on the words.

  The clock read 3:22. Impossible numbers. Unbelievable numbers. Because if the damn clock was right, I’d been passed out for three hours on Deerhorn Road, and Ronnie had been home for at least ten minutes.

  Oh, God. I’m dead. My breath, short and ragged, tore in and out of my lungs. It’s fucking three-thirty in the morning, and I’m dead.

  I stomped on the gas, pushing the aging vehicle up to a reckless 65 on the unbanked road, but I knew it wouldn’t do much good now. I was going to walk in with no possible explanation for where I’d been, and Ronnie and I would be yelling about it for hours. First it would be about the fact that I’d been out at all, then it would be about my crazy friends, then it would be about the money I’d spent and how much I’d
drunk and how many guys I’d slept with and shit!

  I came up on the bend before the house, and I was within a cat’s hair of turning the truck around to head for the Kentucky line. I even slowed down, but I didn’t stop. Ronnie would have been easy to leave. It had been a mistake of my wild and wicked youth to marry him in the first place. The kids, though—my sweet, funny, bright, loving children—they were another story. I would never have left them behind, no matter how big an idiot their father was.

  But, you see, I’d already done it. I’d left my kids sleeping peacefully in their beds, the babysitter in the next room, Benjamin surrounded by Spiderman and little Micah cuddled up with Samantha in her room full of pink frou-frou. I believed they would be there, safe and sound and wrapped in their sweet dreams, when I got back. I’d left the bar at midnight for a trip that should have taken fifteen minutes. How could I have known it would take me three hours to get home?

  I turned that last bend and, sweet Jesus, even now I want to scream. I can still see the house in flames, black smoke rising through the leaping red and orange, the trees, the road, the cars, the fire trucks reflecting the fire back like the surface of a burning lake. My mind wouldn’t accept what I was seeing, couldn’t hold the concept of my home on fire, my babies inside. I’ve had years to accept it, a thousand nights soaked with sweat and tears to put out those flames. And still, a part of me believes I can come around that curve and see my house and my life as it had been, as it should have been. Safe and quiet. Unremarkable. Whole.

  The truck careened up into the yard by itself; I know I wasn’t driving it anymore. I threw myself out of the driver’s seat and stumbled toward the burning house, though what was left of my rational mind was shrieking at me that it was too late, too damn late. Someone tackled me and trapped me in a bear hug. To this day I don’t know who it was, and I thought I knew all the boys on the volunteer squad.

  “You can’t go in there, Asia,” he kept repeating. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  I fought him. I struggled like I would kill him if he didn’t let me go. “My kids are in there!” I screamed, my heart shattering, my soul shredding. “They’re in there!”

  “They’re gone, Asia. They’re all gone—even the girl who was watching them.” He held on until I finally slumped to the ground in shock, no fight left in me, no hope left in me, nothing left in me but horror and guilt and wrenching pain. He went down with me and we stayed like that on the cold, unforgiving ground, the heat from the flames washing over our heads, until Ronnie came over and pulled me to my feet.

  His face was marked with soot and tears and a kind of furious misery I never want to see on a human face again. “Where were you, Asia?” His hands twisted and tightened on my arms. “They’re . . . Jesus! Where the hell were you?”

  I know Ronnie would have hit me if the sheriff hadn’t pulled him off me. He might even have killed me in that moment. And who could blame him? I know I didn’t. For once, he had a right to be out of control. He had gone to work, leaving me to care for the only thing that meant anything to either of us. Now they were gone, and I had no explanation. I had no excuse. What happened was my fault; even I believed it.

  It was three years before I stopped wishing Ronnie had done what he wanted to do that night. It was a long time after that before I found any reason beyond sheer apathy to keep from putting a .45 to my head and leaving this world behind.

  Lucky for me, apathy is a bigger survival mechanism than most people think.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nashville. Three years later.

  I spent more than five sleepless hours prowling my apartment before arriving at my job at Music Rowe that morning, and it showed in the shadows under my eyes. The nightmares again.

  My supervisor took one look at me and went for the coffee pot. “What bridge did you sleep under last night?” Rita asked, shoving a mug into my hand.

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Good morning to you, too, Miss Sunshine.”

  “I’m not the girl who looks like she’s been hit by a semi. And from what I see, it wasn’t one of them six-foot-four, good-looking kind neither.”

  “I wish.” Unless a naked man dropped into my living room out of the clear blue sky, there wasn’t much likelihood of that happening. I worked. I tried to forget. I passed out. The nightmares came. Then I got up and did it all over again. Not much time for romance. I’d tried half a dozen jobs in Nashville before settling into a receptionist position at this three-person talent agency with its second-rate client list. Rita liked to say our boss, JW, broke hearts for a living, and my job description read like a bouncer’s. I was the gatekeeper, the troll under the bridge for any musician seeking fame and fortune behind the inner office door.

  Still, it wasn’t such a bad job, once JW and I reached an understanding about what constitutes sexual harassment. I liked the office, a converted bungalow with a window that looked out on dogwood and crape myrtle. I liked the clients, who worked hard to make me like them. And the best part of the job was Rita Davidson, who ruled the inner office and whose true job title should have been vice president (or maybe queen), rather than executive secretary.

  Rita perched on my desk and gave me the evil eye. “Asia, darlin’, you make out like you’re just a little ole country gal come to the big city, but I ain’t buyin’ it. There’s something different about you. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”

  I swallowed coffee that was too hot for my throat. “Damn. Now everyone will know I’m really a Harvard Ph.D. doing research on the life of a lowly worker bee in the hive of Nashville’s signature industry.”

  Rita waved her mug in my direction. “See, that’s just what I’m talking about. My smart-mouth, college-graduate kids would know why that’s funny. My Aunt Patsy from Donaldson wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “You know why it’s funny, and you didn’t go to college.” Rita wasn’t the only one in Music City who wore her country accent like she wore her hair—big and brassy. And like the others, she was a lot smarter than she let on.

  “I didn’t need to go to college. I had three Brainiacs at home to do it for me.”

  “Well, they must have gotten their smarts from somewhere.” I slipped around her to get to my chair.

  “Yeah, and it sure as hell wasn’t their father,” she agreed. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

  I looked her in the eye. “No, we’re not.”

  “Asia, I’m not trying to pry into your business, but I know a little bit about people.” She refused to look away. “And I know there’s more to you than you’re willing to tell.”

  “There’s more to most people than they’re willing to tell.”

  “All right. You don’t have to confess your deep, dark secrets.” She shrugged and shuffled papers on my desk. “I just hope that psychiatrist you’re seeing—what’s his name, Claussen?—does you some good. If he don’t, you’re going to explode one of these days—most likely all over my desk.”

  I scowled. In fact, my pompous ass of a psychiatrist was only making things worse. I had another appointment with him that afternoon, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  She sighed. “Okay, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m out of line. The old mama hen in me is just worried about you, that’s all.”

  Suddenly, all I wanted to do was lay my head on Rita’s soft, round shoulder and cry. Instead, I found the quickest lie I could.

  “Rita, there’s no big mystery in my past. Just a short childhood, a bad marriage, and an ugly divorce. Nothing you haven’t seen a hundred times before.” I tested out a smile. “Hell, if it weren’t for people like me, this town would be left with nothing to sing about but huntin’ dogs and moonshine.”

  “Oh, sh . . . oot!” Rita stared out at the street, shaking her head. A line of potential clients was headed in our direction, carrying guitars and backpacks full of demos, promo shots and hope. “I just hate it when I have to look them in their moony cow eyes and tell them they can’
t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow.”

  “Better you than the kind folks on American Idol.” I braced myself for the onslaught. “Looks like a busy morning. Let’s hope the boss is in a friendly mood.”

  “Oh, hell, no. JW looks even worse than you do.”

  Rita caught me in that raptor-like stare of hers as she turned to go back in her office. I could see it in her eyes: I hadn’t fooled old Rita. Not by a long shot.

  Ethan Roberts was late. And, as usual, the elevator was stuck on the second floor. He took the stairs, cursing the pain that shot through his right leg with every other step. By the time he got to the Psychogenesis Institute offices on the third floor, he was sweating, his hair clinging to the back of his neck, his thigh burning with effort.

  As he checked in with the receptionist, a door banged shut in the corridor leading to the inner offices. He looked up to see a woman charge into the waiting room, her high cheekbones flaming with color, her amber eyes snapping with fire. She was so furious she seemed on the verge of tears. She was so beautiful he forgot to breathe.

  Her long, angry strides carried her to within paces of him, close enough for him to see her full, sensual mouth and the jump of the pulse in her graceful neck. She stopped and glanced down at something in her hand—a business card? She started to crumple and toss it, but seemed to change her mind, and stuffed the card in her purse. Then, without a word or a look for anyone in the office, she jerked open the outer door and swept through it.

  Ethan watched her go, a smile lifting his lips. The Institute was usually such a model of quiet and efficiency. For a brief moment, her emotions had transformed the lackluster room. Now that she was gone, the place seemed lifeless and gray.

  Dr. Robert Claussen appeared in the inner doorway and gestured at him to follow. “Ethan, how are you? Have you been waiting long?”