“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.
* * *
“S HE 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 the 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.”
* * *
I NTERESTING , A NNIE 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