by Barb Han
Chapter One
“I’m sorry. Lieutenant Knight doesn’t remember you.” The army officer on the line cleared his throat. “But he doesn’t remember much of anything. He didn’t mention your name. That’s for sure. Are you positive you’re engaged to him?”
Paige’s hand shook as she tried to hold on to her phone. “That’s crazy. Do you think I’d make up some phony engagement to an injured Delta Force soldier?”
The army officer on the line paused, and a burning rage sizzled through Paige’s veins. She released it as a hiss through her teeth.
“I—I’m sure you are engaged and Lieutenant Knight will remember soon enough. The doctors are confident he’ll remember everything.”
“Oh, that’s encouraging.” Paige took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “What else has he forgotten?”
“Well, ma’am.” The officer coughed. “If he’s forgotten it, how would he be able to tell us about it?”
Her fist clenched in her lap. “You must know details of his life. Does he remember them?”
“I’m just the messenger, ma’am. I don’t know much about Lieutenant Knight’s condition.”
That’s for sure. Paige took a gulp of water from the glass on her desk. “Can I talk to his doctors? I’m a psychologist myself.”
“Ma’am, since you’re not next of kin, the doctors won’t speak to you.”
She ground her back teeth together, suppressing the scream that ached in her throat. “His mother is dead, his father’s in prison and he’s an only child. Whom exactly is the doctor speaking to about his care?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. We called you because Lieutenant Knight had your name and number in his phone. Yours was the only number listed in his favorites.”
“There!” She was his favorite. Didn’t that mean something? “Obviously, I’m the person he’d want you to contact in an emergency. Can I fly out to see him?”
“No, ma’am. We can’t allow that—yet.”
The soldier’s words punched her in the gut, and she doubled over. She had to speak to Asher, had to see him. Once they were back in each other’s arms, he’d remember everything.
“How much longer will he be in Germany?”
“Again, ma’am, I’m not at liberty to discuss any of the particulars of the lieutenant’s recovery with you. I got the order to call you out of courtesy...because you’re a favorite.”
She wished he’d stop saying that word. “Can you at least tell me he’s not badly injured physically? Will he make a full recovery?”
“He’s strong. As far as I know, he’s doing fine physically and is expected to make a full recovery. And, ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“That’s off the record.”
When the call ended, Paige sank to her chair behind the desk and placed her hands flat on the surface. What did this mean? Just because Asher had amnesia and couldn’t recall the details of their relationship...or her, did that mean it never happened? What were those doctors in Germany doing to help him recover his memories?
A light blinked above her door, indicating her next client had arrived. How in the world could she help anyone right now when she couldn’t even help herself?
She dragged herself out of the chair, straightened her shoulders and strode to the door. Plastering a smile on her face, she swung it open.
“Come on in, Krystal.”
Her next client sashayed into the room, flicking her long hair over one shoulder and wiggling her hips in a tight skirt that she must wear to impress her johns—which she wasn’t supposed to have anymore.
She smacked a piece of paper on Paige’s desk and tapped it with one long fingernail. “Can you sign now? Only two more sessions after this one before I satisfy the terms of my probation.”
Paige scribbled her signature on the form. “I hope you’ve gotten more out of these sessions than just the completion of your probation.”
“I have.” Krystal sat in her usual chair and crossed her long legs. “You’ve been great, Paige.”
Paige took the seat across from Krystal and nodded, which Krystal took as a signal to launch into a recitation of her sad life story.
Her words filled the room, and Paige tried to catch one or two to get the gist, although she’d heard most of it before.
“So, do you think I should call my father?”
Paige blinked and dropped the pencil she’d been tapping against the arm of her chair. She dipped forward and patted the carpet to buy time, to hide her confusion at the question that seemed to have come out of left field.
“It’s right next to the leg.”
“Huh?” Paige looked up, her face flushed with heat.
“The pencil. It’s next to the left chair leg.”
Paige’s fingers inched to the left and curled around the pencil. “Got it.”
Krystal arched one painted-on eyebrow. “So, do you? Do you think I should call the scumbag?”
Clearing her throat, Paige folded her hands in her lap. “What do you think?”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Krystal slumped in her chair and clicked together her decorated nails. “Why do you always answer a question with a question?”
“If you did call your father, what would you say?”
“I’m not sure.” Krystal chewed all the lipstick off her bottom lip. “I don’t want to remember any more stuff about him.”
“Any more stuff?”
“I know you helped me with the repressed memories and all that, and remembering my father’s abuse really did help me deal with my issues and figure out why I thought hooking was a good way to make a living, but I think there might be more.” Krystal dashed a tear from her face, leaving a black streak on her cheek. “I have a funny feeling in my gut that he did more to me, and I’m afraid seeing him again is gonna make those memories bubble up. And I don’t want them. I don’t want them anymore.”
Paige hunched forward, her knees almost touching Krystal’s, and shoved a box of tissues at her. “You want me to tell you what to do? Screw it. Don’t talk to him. Don’t see him.”
After Krystal left her office, all smiles and thanks, Paige plopped down in her desk chair and scooted up to her computer. She brought up her calendar on the monitor and placed her first call to cancel her appointments for the next two weeks.
If just seeing her father would prompt memories for Krystal, maybe seeing her would do the same for Asher.
She felt guilty canceling on her clients, but she’d just gotten her most important client ever.
* * *
ASHER WEDGED HIS boots against the railing surrounding the porch and squinted into the woods beyond the clearing. The doctors here must be wary of him going postal or something, because he could sense them spying on him. Spying? That was what his intuition told him, anyway.
He huffed out a breath and watched it form a cloud in the cold air. Funny how he could remember all the skills he’d learned as a Delta Force member, including that last mission—the one that had thrown him for a loop and wiped out all his previous memories—but he couldn’t recall the rest of his life.
The doctors had assured him it would all come back, not that he had much of a family to come back to—mother dead, father in federal prison for bank robbery and no siblings or even aunts and uncles. No wife.
He glanced at his left ring finger and wiggled it. No ring tan and the docs had assured him they’d perused his army files and no wife was listed—even though it felt like he could have one. Something—or someone—more than just his memories felt missing.
The guys who might know more about him than anyone else—his Delta Force team—couldn’t be reached right now. Their commander, Major Rex Denver, had gone AWOL. He should know—he’d been there the moment Denver had escaped.
The man he’d trusted with his life, had looked up
to, had followed blindly, that man had shot and killed an army ranger and had pushed Asher over the edge of a cliff before escaping. Asher had been rescued by a squad of army rangers, surviving the fall with minor injuries...because his head had taken the brunt of the impact.
Asher ran a fingertip along the scar on the back of his head where his hair had yet to grow back. That moment, that scene when Denver had shot the ranger and then turned on him and pushed him into oblivion was etched on his brain, but he couldn’t remember his own family.
The doctors in Germany had tried to fill him in on his background, so he knew the outline, hadn’t even been shocked by the details of a dead mother and a father imprisoned for bank robbery. On some gut level that life had resonated with him, but he couldn’t recall the specifics.
The docs showed him pictures of his Delta Force teammates, had even allowed him a phone call with Cam, who’d been on leave.
Asher scratched the edges of his scar. That phone call hadn’t gone well. Cam had accused him of lying. He didn’t have a chance to get into it with him because the psychologist ended the call. The doc had shrugged off Cam as a hothead, and that definitely rang a bell with Asher.
An ache creeped up his neck, and Asher tried to massage it away. The doctors had warned him about trying too hard to remember, but what else could he do in this convalescent home? The army called it a rehabilitation center, but Asher didn’t feel rehabilitated. He needed...something. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but a big piece of his life was missing.
He snorted and dropped his feet from the railing, his boots thumping against the wood porch. Most of his life was missing right now, and if he wanted it back, he’d be well-advised to keep taking his meds and going to his sessions with the shrinks. Shrink. Shrinky-dinky.
Where had that come from? He shook his throbbing head. The stuff that popped into his mind sometimes convinced him he’d already gone off the deep end.
A flash of light glinted from the trees, and Asher squinted. As far as he knew, no roads ran through that part of the property. A new symptom, flashes of light, had probably just been added to his repertoire of strange happenings in his brain.
He rubbed his eyes, and the light flickered again, glinting in the weak winter sunlight. He cranked his head around to survey the buildings behind him. Most of the patients here napped after lunch and the staff took the time to relax. He had the place to himself—as long as his spies were on break.
When the third flash of light made its way out of the dense forest, Asher pushed back from his chair and stretched. Investigating this would take his mind off the jumble in his brain.
He zipped up his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets. This felt like a mission and his fingertips buzzed, but he felt stripped bare without his weapon. He wouldn’t need it for what would probably turn out to be something caught on the branches of a tree, but at least he had a mission.
He strode across the rolling lawn, scattered with chairs and chaise lounges, abandoned in the wintry chill of December. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting someone to stop him, although he didn’t know why. He wasn’t a prisoner here. Was he?
Hunching his shoulders, he made a beeline for the forest at the edge of the grass. When he reached the tree line, he tensed his muscles. His instincts, which seemed to have been suppressed by the drugs he got on a regular basis, flared into action.
He stepped onto the thick floor of the wooded area, his boots crunching pine needles. Where had the light gone? It had flashed just once more on his trek across the lawn, like a beacon guiding him.
The rustle of a soft footstep had him jerking to his right, his hand reaching impotently for a gun. “Come out where I can see you.”
A hint of blue appeared amid the unrelenting greens and browns of the forest, and then a head, covered with a hood, popped out from behind the trunk of a tree.
“Asher?”
He swallowed and blinked. Had the docs chased him out here, too?
The figure emerged from behind the tree and the hood fell back. A tumble of golden hair spilled over the woman’s shoulder, and Asher had a strange urge to run his fingers through the silky strands.
“Asher, it’s me.” She held out a hand, keeping one arm around the trunk of the tree and leaning out toward the side as if approaching a wild animal. “It’s Paige. Do you remember?”
Paige? Her voice sounded like cool water tumbling over rocks in a stream. A sharp pain lanced the wound on his head, and he rubbed his fingers along the scar to make it stop.
She hugged the tree with one arm, her other arm stretched out toward him in a yearning gesture that made his heart ache.
“Are you in pain, my love?”
His mouth gaped open. “I-is this a joke?”
Her eye twitched, but her smooth face remained impassive. “No joke, Asher. I’m your fiancée.”
“My fiancée? But...”
A million emotions coursed through his brain in a tangled mess. Ivy. Shrinky-dinky. He tried to latch on to one, but something stung the back of his neck. As he clapped his hand against his flesh, the beautiful face before him melted away and he sank into darkness.
Copyright © 2018 by Carol Ericson
ISBN-13: 9781488033698
Bulletproof Christmas
Copyright © 2018 by Barb Han
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