And you. But you caught me. Did you catch the man, too?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry.”
Fear instantly returned. If the man had gotten to her once, he could get to her again. But Alana didn’t think that was her biggest concern right now. There was something guarded about Jack’s expression. For one thing, he wasn’t glaring at her. In fact, he was treating her like a patient.
“Did you see the person who tried to grab me in the alley?” she wanted to know. “Not really.”
“It was the guard,” Alana concluded, though she hadn’t actually seen his face. “You’ll have to find him.”
Jack nodded, but it seemed to be a gesture to appease her. He eased his hands from his pockets, dragged a chair closer and sat down beside her bed.
Oh, no. She got a really bad feeling about this. He was obviously about to have a heart-to-heart chat with her.
“After I got you to the hospital last night, I called your brother, Sean, in San Antonio,” Jack explained. “Do you remember him?”
“Of course,” she said after she got her teeth unclenched. Great. Just great. Now her overly protective big brother knew everything she’d told Jack. But that also meant that Sean had known she’d been held captive.
He was probably already on his way to Willow Ridge.
Sean would powerhouse his way into the hospital and try to take over. His goal would be to get her away from there so he could convince her that she didn’t want to try to claim her son.
“I remember almost everything,” Alana mumbled. Including her brother’s objection to her being pregnant. Sean had hated the fact that she planned to become a single mom. Not because he was truly concerned about the challenges that might bring, but because of appearances. He believed their conservative business associates would think less of Alana and therefore think less of their company and him. Plus, Sean had also expressed concern that Alana’s focus might be on a child and not solely on her career.
“Good.” Jack followed that with a crisp nod. “I’m glad you’re getting your memory back.”
She’d been ready to try to get out of the bed, but that stopped her. “Good?” Alana contested. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “You recall why you walked out of here eight months ago?”
Alana hated to admit this, but she had no choice. If she told Jack as much as she knew, he might be able to help her put the pieces together. “No. But I know I gave birth to Joey. And I know I love him. I also want to see him. Now.”
Jack stayed quiet a moment. “That wouldn’t be a good idea. You have a virus, remember, and in case it’s something more, it’ll be another ten hours or so before the antibiotics take full effect. You wouldn’t want to make him sick, would you?” His tone was sympathetic enough, but there was a lot of emotion and anger simmering right beneath the surface.
“Oh, I get it,” Alana grumbled. “My brother told you to be nice to me.”
“Among other things,” Jack admitted. “He’s coming to take you home.”
Alana wanted to curse. “How much time do I have before Sean gets here?”
“An hour. Maybe two. He said he’d be here around noon, and it’s a little after ten right now.”
She sat up. “I don’t want him to see me like this. And I don’t want to go with him.”
Jack caught her arm and eased her back down onto the bed. “Sean told me that Joey’s birth father was dead.”
That clenched her teeth again. “You obviously had a long conversation.”
“We did. But Sean and I had that particular discussion eight months ago when I was trying to track you down.”
Everything inside her went still. She hadn’t thought of it sooner, but of course Jack would have tried to find her. Too bad he hadn’t. It would have saved her eight months of captivity, and that was just the beginning. It had also cost her time with her precious baby. She’d missed so much already.
Too much.
She wouldn’t miss any more.
“Sean didn’t know why you ran off the way you did,” Jack continued. “But he had a theory. He thought it was because you were clinically depressed. ”
Maybe. But that didn’t feel right, either. “Depressed, why?”
“Because of the death of Joey’s birth father, Neil Franklin.”
She shook her head. “My relationship with Neil had been over for months before he died. In fact, I ended things with him when I learned I was pregnant and he said he didn’t want to be a father.”
There were no gaps in those particular memories, including the big blowup when Neil had even questioned if he was indeed the father of her unborn child. That accusation had been more than enough to cause Alana to walk out. But then she’d had to listen to months of her brother saying “I told you so” and trying to pressure her to give the child up for adoption.
And then all those memories collided with her present situation.
“Why all these questions about Sean and Neil? Did Sean do something to get me to abandon Joey here at the hospital? Is that why I left?” she demanded.
Jack didn’t jump to deny it. Nor did he confirm it, either. He took his time answering, and the moment he opened his mouth, his phone rang. He jerked it from his pocket as if he’d been expecting an important call.
“I have to take this,” he said, and he got up, stepped outside and shut the door.
Alana wanted to listen to his conversation—it might pertain to her. But Dr. Bartolo put her chart aside and walked closer. “I got your lab results back. You had traces of a drug called Rohypnol in your system.”
“Rohypnol,” she repeated. “The date rape drug?”
The doctor nodded and must have noticed that she was on the verge of panicking. “You weren’t sexually assaulted,” he continued. He reached over and began to remove the IV. “But there was enough of the drug in your system to explain your memory loss.”
God knows how many doses of the Rohypnol she’d been given. The nurse and guard had forced her to take it almost daily. She was certain of that. What Alana wasn’t certain about was discussing it with the doctor. For some reason, she didn’t trust him. Had he done something to make her feel this way? Or was she just being paranoid?
If so, she had a reason for the paranoia. Someone had also tried to take her from that alley. He’d grabbed her, hard, and was dragging her away when Jack arrived.
“I delivered your son,” the doctor added a moment later.
“Yes.” She studied his body language. His forehead was bunched. His breathing, short and a little rough. “I don’t suppose you know why I left the hospital?”
She
