by Paula Graves
“Ernie, are you hurt?” Draping the scarf over the back of one of the outdoor chairs, he picked up the cat, even though he knew Ernie didn’t like being handled. The cat wriggled but let him examine his red-stained muzzle without scratching or biting. The red came off easily, and Wade could see no sign of any injury to the cat.
But the blood seemed fresh. Had he caught a mouse or a squirrel before he committed his latest act of theft?
“Let’s get inside, boy.” He opened the door, and Ernie scooted inside. The cat waited patiently for him to pour food and settled in front of the water heater, munching the kibble from an old plastic bowl Wade had designated for the cat’s use.
Wade went back outside and picked up the scarf. Taking another sniff, he caught a whiff of perfume mingled with the blood. The scarf itself was pale gray silk, more decorative than useful.
His gaze drawn to the woods from which Ernie had emerged, Wade started limping across the yard to the edge of the tree line. “Hello?” he called into the dense darkness beyond.
There was no answer.
As he peered into woods, he felt something rub against his leg. Ernie had rejoined him, staring up at him with luminous green eyes. He must not have pulled the door completely closed.
“What did you find out there, boy?”
The cat sniffed the air and padded quietly into the woods. He went about five feet and stopped, looking back at Wade.
Was the bloody feline trying to lead him somewhere?
The cat continued forward. Wade followed.
The undergrowth grew more dense, vines and fallen limbs twisting around his ankles, making the trek into the woods unexpectedly perilous. For a man who’d grown up in these woods, who’d once considered them as much his home as the old brick and clapboard farmhouse where his father still lived, feeling alienated from his old playground was disconcerting.
It was the leg. The weakened muscles, the artificial joint, the constant sensation of feebleness—Wade felt as if he were dragging around an alien limb, one that could turn on him in an instant given the opportunity.
Panic rose like cold fingers up his spine. He quelled the feeling with ruthless determination and upped his pace through the woods, ignoring the faint quiver low in his gut.
Ahead, Ernie had stopped near a broad-trunked oak tree. The cat moved cautiously around the tree, his tail flicking with curiosity. Wade caught up and circled the tree, as well.
The first thing he saw was a pale, blood-streaked hand. Small. Female.
Dark hair splayed out across the ground, wet from the rain and, in places, from blood, as well. Her face was half buried in the loamy mixture of old, dead leaves and newly fallen ones that carpeted the forest floor.
Wade started to kneel, grimacing at the sharp pain in his knee. He adjusted position, bending from the waist instead, and felt her throat for a pulse.
The woman moved at his touch, a quick, almost violent recoil. She turned wild, dark eyes toward him, though he didn’t think she was actually seeing him. Blood coated one side of her face from a long gash near her hair line that was still oozing blood.
“I don’t know anything,” she gasped, slapping his hands away.
“Shh,” Wade murmured, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“I don’t know...anything....” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she was out again. He punched 911 into the phone and checked her pulse again. Steady, if too fast. But her skin was icy to the touch. If she wasn’t already going into shock, it wouldn’t be long.
Wade shrugged off his jacket and laid it across her, tucking in the edges while he told the 911 dispatcher the situation. The injured woman made a low groaning sound, deep in her chest, but remained utterly still.
He couldn’t make out much about her in the dark, other than a general description: female, youngish, dark hair and dark eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though he was pretty sure he’d never met her before.
The 911 dispatcher offered to stay on the line with him, but he told her he was going to call his cousin Aaron, a sheriff’s deputy. He lived close by and might be able to beat the paramedics there.
Aaron answered on the second ring. “What’s up, Wade?”
Wade explained what he’d stumbled onto. “Not sure what happened to her, but I think this could be a crime scene.”
“On my way,” Aaron said.
True to his word, Wade’s cousin arrived within five minutes, ahead of the paramedics, swinging a bright flashlight as he moved toward Wade through the woods. “Wade?”
“Over here!” Wade waved him over.
Aaron hiked through the underbrush with ease, his long legs eating up big chunks of real estate at a time. He carried a large blanket in one arm and had his Smith & Wesson M&P 40 in his weapon hand. Behind him, his wife, Melissa, followed in his wake, struggling to keep up with her big husband’s long strides.
Reaching Wade’s side, Aaron aimed the flashlight beam toward the woman. Her eyelids crinkled when the bright light hit them, and she groaned again as she turned her face toward the ground to block out the light.
“That’s a good sign, believe it or not,” Melissa said, crouching beside the woman. She checked her carotid pulse, just as Wade had. “Ma’am? I need to take a look at you. Are you awake?”
Wade kicked himself. Why hadn’t he been checking her over, trying to keep her awake? Had the damned Kaziri rebels shot all his good sense out of him when they nearly took off his knee?
You can’t crouch beside her. You can’t kneel. Better to let someone able-bodied take over the hero business, right?
“Wade?”
Wade looked up at his cousin, tamping down his irritation with his own weakness. “Yeah?”
“Take a look at her face.” Aaron moved the beam of the flashlight over the woman’s face again.
She had turned back toward them, some of the blood on the side of her face smeared away by the leaves on the ground, revealing more of her features.
Wade’s breath caught. “Son of a bitch.”
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Aaron asked.
Wade nodded, gazing at the pale oval face of the woman he and his family had spent the last three weeks trying to find.
Melissa looked up at them. “Who?”
“Annie Harlowe,” Wade answered. Daughter of the missing Air Force general.
Aaron looked at Wade, his expression grim. “So if she’s here, where the hell’s the general?”
Chapter Two
Annie couldn’t remember the dream, only that it had left her heart thundering in her chest and her stomach roiling with nausea. She woke to pain—in her shoulders, her wrists, her knees and especially her head, which felt as if it had been hollowed out and filled with burning agony.
For some reason, she expected to open her eyes to bright lights and chaos, but the room around her was blessedly dark, save for a faint light seeping in from the doorway several feet away. The unfamiliar bed supporting her weakened body was uncomfortable, the gloom-shrouded surroundings dull and sterile.
A shadow moved to her right, and her heart skipped a beat.
“You’re awake.” The voice was low and soft, broadened by a southern accent.
“Who are you? Where am I?”
“I’m Wade Cooper,” the shadow answered. “And you’re on the fourth floor of Chickasaw County Hospital.”
The pain made a little more sense. “How’d I get here?”
“I found you semiconscious in the woods near Gossamer Lake.”
She narrowed her eyes and instantly regretted it as agony streaked through her forehead. She lifted her hand to the aching spot and found a bandage. “What happened to me?”
“Don’t know yet,” Wade said. “Think you can handle the light?”
She wanted to say no, as she was pretty sure the last thing her throbbing brain could handle was anything bright. But she didn’t like talking to a shadow, so she said, “Yes.�
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He rose to his feet and turned on a light over the bed. After the initial shock, her eyes adjusted quickly to the mercifully dim light and the headache settled into bearable territory. Her visitor sat down, giving her a better look at him. Early thirties, she guessed. Lean and fit, with broad shoulders and a pugnaciously masculine jaw. In the low light, his eyes looked coal-black and mysterious, but his calm, neutral expression suggested her mind was playing tricks on her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I think so.” She noted his clothing—jeans and a green plaid shirt under a faded denim jacket. “You’re not a doctor.”
He smiled, flashing a set of straight white teeth. “No ma’am, I’m not.”
“Where did you say I am, Chickasaw County? In Georgia?” She couldn’t remember if there was a Chickasaw County in Georgia. She seemed to have a lot of gaps in her memory all of a sudden.
“Chickasaw County, Alabama,” he corrected.
“Alabama?” She frowned, the movement sending another dart of pain through her injured scalp. What the hell was she doing in Alabama?
“You don’t remember how you got here?”
Before she could answer the question, the door to the hospital room opened and a man in green surgical scrubs entered, holding a chart. His eyes widened with surprise when they met hers. “You’re awake.” He glanced at Wade. “And you have a visitor,” he added, his tone disapproving. “Well past visiting hours.”
Wade looked briefly sheepish but didn’t move. “I didn’t want her to wake up in the hospital all alone.”
Annie slanted a quick look at him, surprised by the kindness in his voice. She worked in Washington, D.C., where random acts of kindness weren’t exactly the norm, at least not in the circles in which she ran.
“Nice of you,” the doctor said without much sincerity in his clipped tone. “But I need to examine my patient now.”
Wade started moving toward the door. For the first time, Annie saw that he walked with a visible limp.
“Wait,” she said as he reached the exit.
He turned in the doorway, his powerful shoulders and lean hips silhouetted by the light from the corridor. Built like a cowboy, she thought, her dry lips curving at the notion. “Yeah?” he said.
“Are you leaving? The hospital, I mean.” Hating the neediness she heard in her voice, she told herself she’d be better off if he said yes.
“No, I reckon I’ll stick around a bit.” His face was in shadow, but she thought she could make out a smile.
Then he was gone, leaving her alone with the doctor.
“I didn’t get your name,” she said to the doctor.
“Dr. Brady Ambrose,” he answered briskly, reaching for her wrist to check her pulse. Even the skin of her wrists hurt when he touched them. “How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t know—a few minutes?”
He checked her eyes with a pen light. “Headache?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Anything else hurt?”
“Everything else hurts,” she admitted. New aches and pains seemed to be cropping up with each passing second. She looked at her wrist, which still stung from the doctor’s touch, and saw a deep purplish-red bracelet of bruises and abrasions. She lifted her other hand and found the same marks.
Those were ligature marks, she realized with rising alarm.
“What day is it?” she asked.
“Friday.” The doctor looked at his watch. “Actually, Saturday by now,” he added with a rueful smile.
“The date, I mean.”
“September 8.”
Her alarm exploded into full blown panic. “September?” That wasn’t possible. Just this morning, she’d flown from D.C. to Chattanooga to meet her parents at the airport for the drive to their vacation cabin north of Dahlonega. The last thing she remembered was—
What? What was the last thing she remembered?
Nothing. The airport was the last thing she remembered. Walking through the terminal, grabbing her suitcase from the baggage carousel and heading off to look for her parents, who would be waiting to pick her up.
That had been August 18.
Almost three weeks of her life were missing.
* * *
“SHE SEEMS LUCID,” Wade told his brother Jesse, who sat across from him in the fourth floor waiting room. “But I don’t think she remembers what happened to her and her parents. It would have been the first thing she’d have asked about, don’t you think?”
Jesse ran his palm across his face, his eyes dark with frustration. “So it’s not going to be the lead we hoped.”
Next to him, their sister Megan shot Jesse a sharp look. “A woman I was pretty sure had to be dead turned out to be alive,” she said flatly. “That’s not nothing.”
“Of course not,” Jesse agreed with a faint smile. “But we aren’t any closer to decoding General Ross’s journal than we were before.”
“Maybe she doesn’t remember now,” Megan said, “but that doesn’t mean she won’t remember eventually. Remember when Hannah was attacked and lost some of her memories? They eventually came back.”
“Eventually,” Jesse agreed. “But three weeks have already passed. And apparently she escaped from her captors, which may put her parents in even graver danger.”
“She’s not out of danger, either.” Wade looked toward the waiting room door, remembering the look of confusion and vulnerability in Annie Harlowe’s caramel-brown eyes. “If she escaped, she may know something that could lead us to the kidnappers. And they’ll be looking to stop her from telling what she knows.”
“The kidnappers won’t be the only people who’ll want custody of her,” Jesse warned. “I imagine the Pentagon will want to know everything she knows about what happened to her father, too.”
Wade nodded. The Department of Defense certainly wasn’t feeling very sanguine about a recently retired Air Force general with years of operational secrets stored in his brain going missing for three weeks. The hunt for the missing general was all over the news, with conspiracy theories flying all over twenty-four-hour cable news channels.
Coverage of his missing wife and daughter had been tangential in comparison, thanks to the general’s potential significance to American national security. But the news shows had flashed their photos often enough. Someone in the hospital could have already recognized Annie Harlowe’s name and face.
Wade stood and limped over to the window, which looked down on the front entrance of the hospital four stories below. No news trucks yet. But information would get out soon enough. Then what?
“We have a limited window of opportunity to get anything out of her,” he told Jesse, who’d crossed to stand next to him at the window.
“Aaron’s supposed to be here any minute to ask her questions in an official capacity.”
Aaron had called in a crew of Chickasaw County deputies to do a grid search of the woods behind Wade’s house. Along with his wife, Melissa, he’d stayed with them to direct the search while Wade followed the ambulance to the hospital.
“That may not be soon enough,” Wade warned, spotting a Huntsville television news van moving up the drive toward the hospital entrance.
Megan joined them at the window. “Here come the newsboys,” she said with a grimace.
“They’re just doing their job,” Jesse said.
“They’ll be all over her like stink on a pig.”
Wade had to smile at his sister’s description. Apt, probably, but Jesse was right. The news people had a job to do.
Just like he did.
“I’m going to go see if the doctor is finished examining her,” he told his brother and sister. “Why don’t y’all go see if you can waylay the reporters for a little while?”
Jesse clapped him on his shoulder. “What are you going to tell her?”
“The truth,” Wade answered simply.
The door to Annie Harlowe’s hospital room was half open when he reached it. He listened for th
e doctor’s voice but heard only a soft, snuffling sound coming from within the room.
Crying, he thought, his heart twisting with a disconcerting mixture of sympathy and dread.
He made himself knock lightly on the door. “Annie, it’s Wade Cooper. Can I come in?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “Yes.”
He crossed to her bed, trying to keep his limp to a minimum. He wasn’t very successful. She lay with her head turned away from him, as if she were staring out the window. But the window shades were drawn.
“What did the doctor have to say?”
“I have a concussion. Some scrapes and contusions.” She turned her face toward him. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. “And I’m missing three weeks of my life.”
* * *
INTERESTING, ANNIE THOUGHT, watching Wade Cooper’s face for a response. His only reaction was a softening in his dark eyes, a hint of sympathy creasing his forehead.
Her words came as no surprise to him.
“You already know who I am,” she whispered.
Wade sat in the chair by her bed. “You’ve been all over the news for three weeks.”
“Why aren’t my parents here? Has anybody even thought to call them?” They must be frantic, she thought, showing up at the airport only to discover their daughter had disappeared from the airport without a trace.
Or had there been a trace? She didn’t know. Everything after the baggage carousel was a big blank.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Wade asked.
“Arriving at the Chattanooga airport,” she answered, not liking the fact that he hadn’t answered her question. “Where are my parents?”
“We don’t know,” Wade said. “You all went missing at the same time.”
She stared at him, nausea rising in her gut. “My parents are missing?”
“You don’t remember anything after the airport?”
“No. I thought—I assumed that’s where I was abducted or whatever.” A new, horrifying thought blackened her mind. “Was I—did anybody check to see if I was raped?”
Wade’s face blanched. “I don’t know.”
She struggled against a sudden flood of nausea. “I think I’m going to be sick.”