her statement felt wrong. He felt like he knew her. That he’d been the beneficiary to personal details of her life that she was unaware of.
“Did you have a dog when you were young? A cocker spaniel? Named Lady? After the movie...” He snapped his fingers. “Lady and the Tramp.”
Her eyes widened and then a smile placated her lips. “The tattoo on your back matches exactly to one my father has. Strangely, he’s been missing for two years. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
What is going on here?
Ashley nodded her head, his astonishment at her statement more an answer to her question than any words he could have spoken. “Let’s get those tests done and see if we can find out why you’re having trouble remembering who you are. In the meantime, we’ll continue our rewarming measures. One of the nurses should be back shortly to take you to Radiology.” She locked Casper’s gaze. “We’ll get you feeling better, Mr. English.”
“Please, don’t leave. We should talk.”
Dr. Drager turned on her heel and left the room.
* * *
Ashley fled the trauma room, turned down the nearest vacant hall and leaned against the wall.
None of this is right. How can this patient have a picture of me? The last time I saw that photo I’d pulled it out of my father’s wallet. How could this man know such a detail about my life? Was this handsome stranger plunked in my ER like some whimsical practical joke?
If so, it was elaborate. ER types were known to play pranks, but this? No, it was impossible. Too complicated.
This was too much—especially on the heels of another package being delivered to her just today. They were always accompanied by a letter, in her father’s handwriting, simply requesting that she keep the items safe. One of many packages she received over the last several months.
Ashley reached into her lab coat and fingered the small envelope. It had come packaged as nondescriptly as the other ones. Addressed to her—always coming through department mail. Nothing but the simple note inside. No information on where he could possibly be. Never a return address. There were different items. Most were photos. Some with numbers on the back that didn’t make any sense to her.
This time a thumb drive.
She leaned over and rested her hands on her knees hoping the light-headedness would pass. This was a known complication of the emergency department. A sight. A sound. A stranger could be the impetus of dredging up pain from the buried, murky depths of her past.
The day her father disappeared was always fresh in her mind. Few days went by without her thinking of him and those circumstances. They’d celebrated dinner together as a family. A late Christmas dinner as she’d been working. It had been her, her parents and her younger brother—to celebrate the end of her fellowship and her new job as an attending. The next morning, he was gone. Her mother said he’d slipped out for some doughnuts and coffee and just...never came home.
Nothing had ever been found of him. Not his car. No electronic fingerprints. He had to be off grid, maybe operating under a new identity. If he wasn’t alive, then who was sending these packages?
To live with a ghost was worse than knowing the truth.
“Dr. Drager?”
She looked up, her vision fuzzed, and she pressed her thumb and index finger to the bridge of her nose. A headache was starting to take hold.
“Yes?” She blinked her eyes. Her vision cleared. The two officers who’d been waiting for the report on her patient stared at her expectantly.
“Any information?” one of them asked.
“Right now, he doesn’t remember anything. Amnesia...likely a result of several blows to his head.” She shoved her hands into her lab coat, curling her fingers around the small but bulky envelope. “Why don’t you leave me your card? Give us a few hours to sort through his medical issues. Even if his CT scan is normal, I’ll consult neurology for the memory loss. Until he can remember something, I don’t know if you need to stay here. He can’t offer any details of his attack right now.”
The other officer reached into one of his coat pockets. “That would be great. We’d keep camped out, but there’s been an officer-involved shooting across town. All hands on deck as they say.”
Ashley took the card from the officer’s hand. “Stay safe out there.”
She watched them exit the department through the ambulance bay before making her way to the nerve center of the ER, the central hub where doctors and nurses mingled. She sat down at a computer and pulled up Casper’s chart to enter some orders for tests when a man tapped the top of her computer screen with the tip of a cane.
Ashley flared her fingers out above her keyboard in annoyance before glancing up.
She pressed her lips together to keep from screaming.
Jared Fleming stood in front her. His bright blue eyes bored straight into her.
Her father’s arch nemesis.
Who clearly didn’t recognize her.
“You are?” he clipped.
He was exactly how she remembered him from her youth. Six feet, which was tall considering her five-foot-two-inch frame. Gray hair. Bushy black eyebrows.
“I asked you a question,” he reiterated in the wake of her silence.
A man in a military uniform stood a few feet behind him, but Fleming was dressed in a black tailored suit. The vibrant, sapphire-blue shirt beneath it was almost too bright to look at.
“Dr....” Something in her told her not to continue. She reached up and flipped her ID badge around to cover her identity as she stood up, wishing she had a step stool so she could be eye to eye with the tyrant. “How did you get back here?”
“I don’t need permission to—”
“Actually, you do need permission. Are you family of a patient?”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s...complicated.”
Thrusting her arm up, she pointed to the door that exited to the waiting room. “If you’re not immediate family of one of our patients, then you’ll have to leave.”
He straightened and squared his shoulders. “I’m here on important business. A matter of national security.” He rustled through one of his pockets. “I’m looking for this man. Have you seen him?”
A striking photo of her patient, handsome, clean-shaven. Unbeaten.
Casper.
She lowered her arm, her fingertips tingled.
“It’s imperative that he be turned over into our care,” Fleming said.
A sharp pain flared in her gut. The one thing she knew about this man was that her father had told her never to trust him. In fact, so often came this warning in the years before he went missing that it was one
