Savior in the Saddle

by Delores Fossen

There was another sharp curve, and then the road stretched out again in a straight line. The SUV’s driver took advantage of it and slammed into the back of their car again. Brandon kept a tight grip on the steering wheel, somehow managing to keep the car on the road.

  Finally, he spotted the highway, and Brandon took the turn on what had to be two wheels. He quickly righted the car and took off.

  Despite the late hour, it wasn’t long before he spotted another vehicle just ahead of them. Brandon raced toward it and hoped there would be others to deter the SUV driver from another attack.

  The SUV stayed close, and Brandon braced himself in case they were rammed again, but the guy stayed back.

  Brandon passed the other vehicle but then slowed, hoping to keep the car between them and the SUV.

  “Are we losing him?” Willa asked.

  “Not just yet.”

  There were several other vehicles just ahead on the highway, and Brandon got as close to them as possible. The seconds clicked off in his head, and he held his breath until he saw the cluster of lit buildings at an exit. He wouldn’t leave the highway just yet, but only a few miles ahead was the exit for the county sheriff’s office and the fire department. He would get off the highway there and, if necessary, he’d even pull into the sheriff’s parking lot.

  Willa sat up just a fraction and glanced in the side mirror. She stared back at the SUV that was now several cars behind them. “Shore came out into the open at the rental house so he could follow us,” she reminded him. “Neither the neighborhood street nor the traffic stopped him.”

  Yeah. Brandon was aware of that. And that was one of the reasons the knot in his gut had tightened to the point of being painful. If that was Shore in the SUV, then why had he backed off? Of course, the answer might be that it wasn’t Shore.

  That thought caused Brandon to take a deep breath.

  Willa shook her head. “I’m past being tired of this. All I want is for my baby to be safe.”

  Brandon wanted the same thing, but he was aware that the danger was far from being over.

  He put on his blinker when he reached the exit for the sheriff’s office, and when Willa saw where he was headed, she sat up even farther in her seat.

  “I thought you didn’t want to involve the cops,” she questioned.

  “I don’t. We can’t,” he corrected a moment later. He pulled into the well-lit parking lot and stopped in the spot that was closest to the front door.

  The SUV slowed to a crawl but didn’t turn into the lot. Brandon watched as it crept out of sight.

  The driver wouldn’t go far. No. He would wait for them to make a move. For now, the only move Brandon intended to do was stay put. He could go into the sheriff’s office, of course, as a final resort, but the sheriff would almost certainly contact the San Antonio Police.

  He kept watch to make sure the SUV didn’t circle back around, and he glanced at Willa to check that she was all right. She wasn’t. She was pale and trembling.

  Brandon put his arm around her and eased her closer. She welcomed the contact.

  He tried to figure out how to word what he had to tell her and decided there was no easy way to spell out their situation. Basically, they were in the worst kind of trouble, and Willa needed to know that.

  “Shore—or whoever just attacked us—had to have known how to find us,” Brandon explained.

  She pulled back, met his gaze. “This means there’s a leak?”

  He nodded and hated the fear he saw in her eyes. “You were right, Willa. We can’t trust the cops.”

  She made a sound of agreement and blinked back tears. “What about Sergeant Cash Newsome? Can you call him?”

  “Maybe.” Brandon did trust his old friend and would try to contact him but not now. Not until he could figure out a way to make sure any conversation he had with Cash would be private.

  “So what do we do?” Willa asked.

  He put his hand over his gun and kept watch around them. “For now, we wait.”

  Brandon was sure it wouldn’t be long before there would be another attempt to kill them.

  Chapter Seven

  The sound of someone talking woke her.

  Willa forced open her heavy eyelids and realized it was no longer dark, and they were no longer parked outside the sheriff’s office. The car was moving. And judging from the massive buildings around them, they were driving through downtown San Antonio.

  She sat up, yawned and looked at the man behind the wheel. She recognized that dark hair and those steamy brown eyes.

  “I remember you,” she mumbled.

  With the phone sandwiched between his shoulder and ear, Brandon glanced at her and nodded. The corner of his mouth lifted into a near smile. Thank God she didn’t have to re-create her life and memories this morning. But then Willa remembered something else.

  The danger.

  That kicked up her heartbeat to an uncomfortable level, and she looked all around them to make certain Shore wasn’t still following them. There were plenty of vehicles on the road, but she saw no signs of that SUV.

  “We’ll be there in a few minutes,” Brandon told the person on the other end of the line. “Remember, this stays just between us.”

  He closed his phone and shoved it back into his pocket. “That was Cash.”

  Her breath went thin. “You’re sure we can trust him?”

  “He’s given me no reason not to. Not yet anyway,” Brandon added in a mumble. “Cash insists there isn’t a leak at SAPD. He thinks Shore is tracking us some other way.”

  “How?”

  “Well, it’s not my cell phone because I know it has an anti-tracking device.” Brandon glanced at her PDA. And her stomach knotted. It was her lifeline. Her security blanket. It had saved her life—literally.

  “It’s just a possibility,” he added.

  True, but Shore was finding them somehow, and maybe her PDA had some kind of GPS tracking system.

  It made her physically ill to think of what she had to do, but she couldn’t let her lifeline put her baby at risk. Willa opened the glove compartment and fished out a pen.

  “Don’t give me any reason to regret this,” she warned Brandon, and Willa waited until he made eye contact with her before she scrawled the words across her palm.

  Trust Brandon Ruiz.

  He glanced at the sentence and then mumbled some profanity. Profanity he didn’t explain as he brought the car to a stop in a hotel parking lot.

  “Leave the PDA in the car,” he told her and checked their surroundings. “We won’t be coming back to this vehicle or the parking lot.”

  She glanced around as well, and her attention landed on the hotel. “Are we staying here?”

  Brandon shook his head, grabbed her overnight bag and opened the door. “In and out. We’ll be on foot for a few blocks.”

  Good. She didn’t want to be anywhere near her PDA or the vehicle with the shot-out windows. “But I’ll need to find a bathroom soon,” she let him know.

  Brandon took her request to heart and hurried them from the car into the hotel. They didn’t stop in the lobby but went to the back and exited into another parking lot. They walked past two more buildings before entering another hotel. Willa expected them to exit this one as well, but she came to a dead stop when she spotted the sandy-haired man in the lobby.

  He was almost certainly a cop.

  Willa didn’t know who he was, but he did seem familiar. About six feet tall, lanky build and green eyes. Cop’s eyes.

  Brandon stopped directly in front of the man. “Willa, this is Sergeant Cash Newsome.”

  She still didn’t release the breath she was holding.

  Brandon leaned closer to Cash and lowered his voice to a whisper. “If this puts Willa in any more danger, you’ll be the one to answer for it.”

  Cash stiffened, and his friendly expression faded. “That doesn’t sound like something an old friend would say.”

  Brandon scowled. “Friendship only gets you one shot
. If Shore finds us here, then I’m taking Willa into deep hiding where SAPD and their possible leak can’t ever find her.”

  “Think of those women who could become the next hostages,” Cash countered.

  “I’m thinking of Willa and the baby. Right now, they come first.”

  That started a staring match between the two men, and Cash hitched his shoulder toward the elevator. He started in that direction. So did Brandon. Willa stayed put, but after glancing down at what she’d written on her hand, she cursed and caught up to the men.

  They went to the fifth floor, and Cash directed them into a suite that was nearly the same size as the safe house they’d left hours earlier. There were massive windows revealing the city’s skyline, but what snagged Willa’s attention was the smell of bacon and eggs that was coming from the silver dome-covered plates on the coffee table. Her stomach growled, and the baby kicked as if sensing it was time to eat as well.

  Brandon handed her the bag. “Go ahead to the bathroom and then I’ll explain what’s going on after you’ve had some breakfast.”

  She really did need to use the bathroom, but she didn’t budge. “I’d like to hear now.”

  Cash and Brandon exchanged glances. Cash’s expression was laced with skepticism, but Brandon looked as if he were bracing himself for an argument.

  “We need your help,” Cash insisted.

  But she ignored him and stared at Brandon instead. “What do they want you to convince me to do?”

  “They want you to see a doctor who might be able to help you recover your memory.”

  “A psychiatrist who’s a friend of mine,” Cash supplied. “Her name is Dr. Lenora Farris and she’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

  “A shrink?” Willa made sure she let her tone convey her displeasure, and she aimed that displeasure at Brandon. “I’ve already seen therapists.”

  “She’s supposedly different.” Brandon turned so that he was between Cash and her. “I thought if you could remember it might help us put an end to the danger. All the danger for both you and any other possible hostages. We might also be able to figure out who hired Shore to come after you.”

  Willa couldn’t argue with that, but she still wasn’t convinced this would help. Plus, they were in a hotel suite with a cop, and if there was a leak, they could be sitting ducks for another attack.

  Brandon put his mouth right against her ear. “I agreed to two hours. That’s it. And then we’re getting out of here.”

  Willa still wanted to argue, but then Brandon brushed a kiss on her forehead. That took the fight right out of her. Of course, maybe the fatigue and her full bladder were partly responsible as well. She shifted the bag to her shoulder, huffed and headed for the adjoining bathroom.

  She didn’t dawdle, but she did take the time to freshen up and change her top. Thankfully, she’d packed a green sweater in her overnight bag.

  When she went back into the main room of the suite, it was obvious she was interrupting a tense discussion—maybe even an argument. Whatever had been going on came to an abrupt halt when Cash and Brandon spotted her.

  Brandon scrubbed his hand over his face. “Eat,” he told Willa. And he headed to the bathroom, leaving her alone with Cash.

  Since her stomach was still growling and she was getting light-headed, Willa sat and helped herself to one of the plates. There was even a glass of milk and a bottle of prenatal vitamins on the tray.

  “You don’t remember me?” Cash asked. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a gleaming silver carafe and took the chair across from her.

  “No. We’ve met?”

  He nodded. “I was the first officer to get to you after the hostage standoff ended.”

  Without her PDA, she couldn’t confirm that, so Willa settled for making a noncommittal sound while she ate her scrambled eggs.

  “I found you in the hall outside the hospital lab,” he continued. “You’d fallen, or something. You were barely conscious.”

  That got her attention. Had she known that “barely conscious” part? She didn’t think so. Willa was sure she had put in her notes that she regained consciousness not at the maternity hospital but in the medical center after she came out of a coma.

  “Did I say anything when you found me?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “You were worried about losing the baby.”

  Well, that was a no-brainer, but she got the feeling that Cash was withholding something. Or maybe it was just her overactive imagination.

  Brandon came out of the bathroom at the same moment there was a knock at the door. The sound sent both men reaching for their weapons, and it was Brandon who went to the door to peek out the viewer.

  “It’s a woman,” he relayed to Cash. “Tall with auburn hair.”

  “Dr. Farris,” Cash supplied. He confirmed that by looking through the viewer as well, and then opened the door to greet their visitor.

  Since she wasn’t always able to rely on her memory, Willa had gotten accustomed to reading people. There was usually something—a quick unguarded glance, a tightening of the mouth. Some small detail.

  But not with Dr. Farris.

  Cash made the introductions, but Willa still didn’t get any clues when she shook the woman’s hand. Dr. Farris seemed friendly enough but, more than anything, she was a blank slate. Maybe because of her psychiatric training.

  “Willa,” the doctor greeted, and she held on to Willa’s hand for several seconds. “I’m here to help you.”

  Willa didn’t try to hide her skepticism. “Others have tried. And failed.”

  The doctor nodded and calmly whisked a loose curl from her pale ivory face. “But those therapies were used early on after your injury. Sergeant Newsome tells me you’ve made improvements since then and that you’re not having as many issues with your short-term memory.”

  Willa aimed a scowl at Cash. “And how exactly would you know that?”

  Cash shrugged his shoulders. “Lieutenant Bo Duggan. I had a long talk with him before I set all of this up.”

  Then obviously the lieutenant was recovering. That was something at least, especially since he’d gotten shot while trying to protect her.

  Brandon stepped even closer to Willa and caught her hand in his. However, he directed his attention to Dr. Farris. “How do you think you can help Willa?”

  “Well, since we obviously can’t use any drugs to induce an altered state, I want to use something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming—NLP—that incorporates video hypnosis. I plan to use triggers that might cue in other parts of her brain to unlock the lost memories.”

  “What kind of triggers?” Willa demanded.

  The doctor offered her a calm smile. “Both visual and auditory. By using NLP, I want to re-create the environment of the maternity ward the way it was when the hostage situation started.”

  Willa felt a chill go over her. “I’m not going back to that hospital.”

  “You don’t have to. In a way, I’m bringing the hospital to you.” Dr. Farris extracted a shiny DVD from her purse. “My assistants and I have worked on this for hours so you can replicate the experience.”

  Willa didn’t want to replicate it because her time as a hostage had almost certainly been terrifying. But she couldn’t refuse the opportunity to regain her memory simply because she was scared. As Brandon had already pointed out, the information trapped in her mind could ultimately give them the name of the person trying to kill them and it could save those possible Christmas hostages.

  “Is this safe?” Brandon asked.

  “Absolutely.” The doctor didn’t hesitate, either. “And if Willa becomes agitated, I’ll stop.” She looked at Willa then and waited.

  Willa went over everything the doctor had just told her. This, whatever this was, wouldn’t harm the baby. And she could stop if it got too extreme. There was no way she could refuse, not with her risking so little and with so much at stake for the future hostages.

  Willa finally nodded.

  Dr.
Farris didn’t give a sigh of relief. She didn’t show any emotion as she went to the large flat-screen TV and inserted the disk in the DVD player.

  “You two should wait in the other room,” the doctor told Brandon and Cash.

  Willa felt as though someone had just taken her security blanket. Not good. Trusting Brandon was one thing but relying on him emotionally just wasn’t very smart.

  “I’m staying,” Brandon insisted.

  Cash said the same, and after staring at them, the doctor finally showed some emotion. She made a sound of mild annoyance and turned away from them.

  Despite the little lecture Willa had just given herself about not leaning on Brandon, she was thankful that he would be nearby. After all, it was his name and his name only that she’d written on her hand.

  “Should I lie down or something?” Willa asked.

  Dr. Farris shook her head and started the DVD. “Just stay seated and focus on what you’re seeing and hearing.”

  That sounded simple enough. Well, simple unless her short-term memory decided to take a hike. Since it’d been weeks since that had happened, Willa thought that part of this ordeal might be over, but she’d been wrong before.

  The images started to appear on the screen. Someone was holding a video camera and recording their walk through the double automatic doors.

  “We know from the exterior surveillance cameras that this is how you entered the building,” the doctor explained. “Once you reach the fourth floor, your movements and what happens there are reenactments based on eyewitnesses.” She kept her voice at a whisper and lowered the lights so that the only illumination came from the TV.

  Willa forced herself to imagine that she was the one walking into the San Antonio Maternity Hospital. The greeting area didn’t look familiar, but they quickly went through it and to the elevators. She pretended that it was her hand that pushed the button to take her to the fourth floor. When she stepped into the elevator and the doors closed, Willa heard the music. There was nothing unusual about it, but it seemed familiar. The elevator seemed familiar, too. There were posters of mothers holding their newborns.

  She felt her heart speed up a little when the doors swished open and she saw the fourth floor. Again, there was nothing unusual about it, and she guessed wrong about which direction she would take. The camera went to the left, past an empty waiting area. She saw the signs on the wall leading to the lab.