Milo greeted them at the door and welcomed them back. Marcus hadn’t told them what had happened with the airplane but it was a small town and he was certain they’d heard by now. Before they went inside, he pulled Milo aside to make certain they were still invited to stay there.
“You know you’re always welcome here, son.”
“I don’t want to put you and Marie out. We just need a safe place to stay for another night.”
“Stay,” Milo assured him. “We take care of our own around here.”
He thanked his friend then walked back to the SUV and found Bethany pulling out a large box from the back.
“What are those?” Marcus asked, reaching to help her.
“Oh, this? This is your life, Marcus. Every file, mention and scrap of paper I’ve gathered tracking your movements from Afghanistan to here. You and I are going to dig through it. Maybe you’ll see something I missed. I think we can both agree that whoever is after you, I led them here. They’ve been following my search for you.”
He glanced at her, surprised. “Someone knew I was alive. That’s who my caretakers who nursed me back to health were so afraid of.”
She nodded. “And if they’re CIA, the villagers who hid you risked their lives to do so. The Afghani people are on the front lines, dealing with operatives and soldiers every day. If they were hiding you instead of handing you over to the army, either they were looking for an opportunity to cash in or they were just plain scared of whoever was after you.”
Marcus didn’t like the scenario she was painting. He was wanted by the government and now, apparently, by some dark force inside the CIA, as well. What on earth had he done to elicit such animosity?
He carried the box inside and placed it on the table. He couldn’t wait to search through the files, but first he needed to know something.
“Tell me about that night, the night of the ambush.”
“Marcus, I don’t think now—”
“This may very well be the last moment I have to hear it before someone bursts through that door to kill me. What happened that night?”
She sighed, resigned, and slowly slid into a chair. “We had what we thought was credible intel that a high-powered official in the Taliban was hiding out in a compound. Your ranger team was called in to act as point for an assault. It was a coordinated operation that took days of planning and preparation. However, once we arrived, we realized our intel was wrong.”
“Wrong? How so?”
“The cars were out of place and the livestock had been moved. When your team arrived, armed men began shooting. Delta charged in to help and many of them died, too. All in all, only six members of your team survived that night. It was later determined that the Afghani man I recruited as a translator betrayed us.” She swallowed hard. “We were unable to locate him after the ambush. However, four months later, I read a cable stating he’d been found dead, assassinated by the Taliban. That was when I began to suspect something greater had occurred that night than the official reports stated.”
“But what happened to me?”
“I don’t know, Marcus. We don’t have an official report to track you that night. However, one of your teammates, Garrett Lewis, reported seeing you lying on the ground and said you weren’t moving. He was convinced you were dead and turned to help one of the other rangers who was hurt, Levi Thompson.” Hitching in a breath, she met his gaze. “I know this man, Marcus. I met Garrett before the ambush and the two of you were close friends. He wouldn’t have left if there’d been doubt that you were alive. I heard he didn’t handle it well when they were unable to recover your body.”
“Garrett Lewis? Levi Thompson?”
Her blue eyes lit up. “Are those names ringing any bells?”
He hated to dash the spark he’d seen there, but he shook his head. The names were unfamiliar to him. “None.”
She dug through the boxes, pulled out a photo of his squad and handed it to him. “This was taken two days before the ambush.”
He took the photo and saw that it was a team picture. Men in khaki uniforms and hats, holding guns. He scanned the faces, stunned when he spotted his own. It was like seeing someone who looked just like him. However, that Marcus Allen was nothing but a mystery to him.
She moved to sit beside him, scanning the photo before pointing out the surviving rangers. She rattled off their names—Josh Adams, Garrett Lewis, Levi Thompson, Matt Ross, Blake Michaels, Colton Blackwell—but all he heard was the beating of his heart as the sweet scent of her skin wafted into his nostrils. Nothing about the ambush or his teammates seemed familiar...but she did. She was the first familiar thing he’d discovered in two years.
Bethany glanced up at him and her eyes widened, probably at the spark of attraction he was sure blanketed his face. The familiar, wide blue eyes and graceful curve of her round face called to him. He reached out and stroked her jaw, moving down to her lips. She didn’t pull away. At least, not at first. Her head bobbed backward and her breathing heightened. He wanted to kiss her, just as he had a hundred times before in his dreams. It was her he’d been remembering. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life.
Suddenly she tensed, pushed his hand away and stood, putting some distance between them.
“No, I can’t,” she said, but her voice was hoarse with emotion. He knew she recognized the attraction between them and she was just as moved by it as he was.
She turned back to the files on the table. “I should probably go over the other details I uncovered that made me realize you hadn’t died that night.”
Marcus propped his hands on the table and stared at her. He wasn’t interested in facts and details, not when the truth was standing right in front of him and evading his questions.
“Tell me about us, Bethany.”
She seemed flustered, which surprised him. He wouldn’t have thought anything could unnerve her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He waved his hand over the table full of file folders. “None of this, these papers and facts and details, have given me the slightest bit of familiarity that I just felt and have felt since the moment I laid eyes on you.” He moved toward her. “Please, Bethany. I just want to know something about my life. Who are you? Who are you to me?”
She could have turned and told him she was his wife, lover, longtime girlfriend, and he wouldn’t have batted an eye. That was how strongly he felt he knew her. But she didn’t say any of those things.
“I’m nothing to you, Marcus.”
He clenched his jaw and gave her a disbelieving look. “I know that’s not true.”
“You want the truth, Marcus? Then I will lay it out for you...
“We met two weeks before the ambush, when I arrived at the base to work on the logistics of the operation. When the teams weren’t actively on a mission, they often acted as bodyguards for CIA field agents. You were assigned to my protection detail, which meant you had to drive me around.” She snickered softly. “You were so mad at first. You hated that assignment. But, after a couple of days and a lot of time spent together, you changed. You made me laugh. I liked that because my work was always so serious.” She folded her arms at her waist as her voice cracked. “Given enough time, I thought we could have had something real between us, but our time just ran out.” She started packing up files and he could see that wasn’t the entire story.
“What else?”
“You made me care for you, Marcus, and then you were gone. I was so angry at you for that and I was angry that God would allow it to happen and then snatch you away. However, all that changed when I began to suspect you weren’t dead.” She released a sharp breath. “There were rumors of an American being hidden inside an Afghani village. They couldn’t be substantiated, so there wasn’t an official investigation, but I knew it was you.”
“But how could you be so sure?” he demande
d softly.
She shrugged. “The pieces just seemed to fit. They never found your body and then these rumors surfaced. That’s when I knew you had to be alive. But then, as the months passed and you never contacted anyone, or me, I began to suspect something was awry with your disappearance. I told myself if you didn’t die that night then you’d planned to leave. You’d planned to make me fall for you and then leave me.”
A look of shock and disbelief shadowed his face as she continued.
“I started questioning everything. Why would you do that? Did I have something or know something that you needed from me? And, most importantly, did you get it? You did more than run out on me, Marcus. You made me question my ability as an analyst. I couldn’t even trust my own judgment after that night.” Her voice cracked and she swallowed back a sob. “I tried twice to go back out into the field, but I just couldn’t, so I applied for a desk job. It’s lower risk and, given my coworkers, there’s very little chance of me getting my heart broken.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Bethany, but I have a hard time believing it was by design. Every time I try to see my past, all I can see is you.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
“It might,” he said gruffly.
“I’ll never let my guard down that way again. It hurt too much. Besides, I don’t think I could ever trust you, Marcus. I would always be waiting for the other boot to drop.”
Her words sounded so final and so full of pain. He hated that he’d hurt her, but could she really hold him responsible for something he didn’t remember doing? A wave of frustration swept through him. He could not even defend himself because he did not know the truth. Had he been using her to gather information? His gut told him no. His attraction to Bethany was too real, too intense, to have been faked.
He loaded up the rest of the files and replaced the top on the box. She was right. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t find the answers she needed until he uncovered his own answers. Maybe he had hurt her on purpose. Maybe he had been acting on orders. Whatever the deal, he needed to find out.
He shuddered, realizing he might discover something worse—that he wasn’t worthy of someone like Bethany.
No matter what, he had to find out.
* * *
“Bethany, you have to give me some time to regain my memories. I can’t walk back into CIA headquarters without knowing the truth about myself. They’ll railroad me. I think it’s been proved that someone in the CIA doesn’t want me to talk. How do I even know who I can trust if I have no clue what’s going on?”
His words didn’t surprise her, but she couldn’t agree to his request. “Don’t ask me to do that, Marcus. I have a job to do.”
“And you’ll be doing your job...just a little delayed. I’m not asking you to let me go. I only want an opportunity to find out for myself what happened that night.”
Still, she hesitated. She was supposed to bring him in.
“Your boss told you to bring me in. You’ll still do so. We’ll just make a few detours along the way.”
She had to admit she, too, wanted to know the truth before they walked into CIA headquarters. Was he right that he would be made a scapegoat? She’d heard the rumors about how the Agency operated. Was it possible he might disappear and she would never know the truth? There was so much uncertainty right now, but he was right about one thing: she didn’t know who she could trust at the Agency.
She wanted to believe she could count on Rick, but he’d been insistent that she not mention her plans to anyone. Did that mean there were people around him who didn’t have his back?
Once again, she was torn between her loyalty to Marcus and her sense of duty to the CIA. Her gut told her that she could trust Marcus, but she’d been burned by him before.
“Let’s go,” she said, reaching for her purse.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the hospital.”
He jumped up. “Are you all right? Do you need me to call for an ambulance?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for you.”
They made the drive back to the hospital and tracked down the doctor who had reluctantly given Bethany her discharge papers.
He looked concerned when he spotted them approaching.
“Agent Bryant. You’ve returned. Are you having any problems?”
She didn’t need to go over her medial issues with him. Instead she got right to the point. “What do you know about amnesia, Dr. Wayne?”
He glanced at her, concerned. “Are you suffering with memory loss?”
“It’s not me.” She looked at Marcus, who was standing behind her, and Dr. Wayne nodded knowingly.
“It’s okay, Doc,” Marcus said and then glanced at Bethany. “One of the first things Marie insisted on when I arrived in town was that I see a doctor about my memory loss. Dr. Wayne did an MRI and determined there was no damage to my frontal lobe.”
Bethany shook her head, stunned that he’d not mentioned this. “What does that mean?”
Dr. Wayne responded. “One of the most common forms of amnesia is retrograde amnesia, basically the loss of past memories. It can be due to either traumatic brain injury or a traumatic event that results in memories being repressed to protect the mind. We’ve already ruled out a physical cause for his amnesia, which means there is a good likelihood that he can retrieve those memories in time.”
Bethany’s heart fell. No physical reason to believe he was suffering amnesia. No, that would have made her decision to trust him too easy. She felt her face redden. Had she really been rooting for brain damage? “So how does he do that?”
“The study of the brain and especially memory is not an exact science. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the mind and its functions. He needs to immerse himself in things that are familiar. I told him this before, but, of course, he didn’t know anything that was familiar. Now that you can provide his true identity, you might be able to make it happen. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. If you haven’t recovered them by now, you may never.”
Marcus looked to her. Confusion filled his expression and she was certain he was wondering what she would do if his memories never returned. There was no question in her mind. She would do what she had to do—return him to Langley to face his crimes. And what would they do to him when he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell them who he’d been working for?
Her heart broke thinking about what he might suffer for his actions but her own mind was still spinning in confusion. Why wouldn’t he run if he knew what he was facing once they returned to Langley? And if he did know who was after him, why would he risk not returning immediately?
Bethany sighed, facing the truth she’d been fighting for the past twenty-four hours. She believed him when he said he couldn’t remember. She had believed him since the first moment she’d seen him walking toward her without a shred of recognition on his face.
It was the only hope she had to cling to that maybe he wasn’t the monster she’d spent the past two years convincing herself he was.
* * *
Marcus drove as they returned to his apartment. Bethany was silent beside him and he could see she was wrestling with herself about what to do. He wondered if her silent struggle was obvious to everyone else, but something about it seemed familiar to him, as if he’d seen this expression on her face before.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked him quietly, breaking the silence in the SUV.
“Ready for what?”
“What if we go through all this, Marcus, only to discover that it’s all true? That you’re a traitor and that you used me to gather information.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. That thought haunted his every waking moment, but he would not allow it to stop him from finding out the truth. “At least I would know for sure. If I’m going to prison, I want to
at least know what I did to belong there.”
He turned into the driveway that led to his garage apartment and stopped in front of the door.
Bethany turned and stared up at him, but he couldn’t read her expression so her words surprised him. “I’ll give you three days to discover the truth, but you have to make me a promise, Marcus. Once those three days are over, you’ll return with me to Langley regardless of what you find out.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, I promise,” he said. He’d given his word to her that he would return with her and he had no intention of reneging on that promise, but this extra time might provide him answers he’d been seeking. He’d already discovered more about himself in the past two days than in the past two years. Three days wasn’t a lot, but it might be crucial to uncovering what he needed to know about his past.
“Fine. I’ll follow your lead, but we need to leave this place tonight. It won’t take the sniper long to figure out where we are. I would suggest we go now, except that I need a few hours of sleep. Whoever is after us won’t stop until you’re dead. I don’t want to make it easy for him to complete his mission.”
Marcus nodded. He agreed that leaving was for the best. He loved Milo and Marie. They’d been like a family to him when he’d had no one, but he wasn’t willing to put them at risk any more than he already had. “I’ll be ready.”
They went inside and she retired to the bedroom. Marcus couldn’t sleep so he spent the next few hours poring over the files she had collected. So far, nothing was jumping out at him. Bethany had been thorough in her work and doggedly persistent. He smiled, liking that she hadn’t given up.
But had she given up on him already?
A knock on the door that connected his little apartment with Milo and Marie’s home caught his attention. Marcus opened the door and saw Milo standing there, still wearing his bathrobe and slippers. He glanced at the clock, realizing it was just pushing 3:00 a.m.
“I saw your light,” Milo stated. “Having trouble sleeping?” he asked.
Marcus nodded. “You could say that.”
Mission--Memory Recall Page 6
