He opened the door, and Ernie scooted inside. The cat waited patiently for him to pour food and settled in front of the water heater, munching the kibble from an old plastic bowl Wade had designated for the cat’s use.
Wade went back outside and picked up the scarf. Taking another sniff, he caught a whiff of perfume mingled with the blood. The scarf itself was pale gray silk, more decorative than useful.
His gaze drawn to the woods from which Ernie had emerged, Wade started limping across the yard to the edge of the tree line. “Hello?” he called into the dense darkness beyond.
There was no answer.
As he peered into woods, he felt something rub against his leg. Ernie had rejoined him, staring up at him with luminous green eyes. He must not have pulled the door completely closed.
“What did you find out there, boy?”
The cat sniffed the air and padded quietly into the woods. He went about five feet and stopped, looking back at Wade.
Was the bloody feline trying to lead him somewhere?
The cat continued forward. Wade followed.
The undergrowth grew more dense, vines and fallen limbs twisting around his ankles, making the trek into the woods unexpectedly perilous. For a man who’d grown up in these woods, who’d once considered them as much his home as the old brick and clapboard farmhouse where his father still lived, feeling alienated from his old playground was disconcerting.
It was the leg. The weakened muscles, the artificial joint, the constant sensation of feebleness—Wade felt as if he were dragging around an alien limb, one that could turn on him in an instant given the opportunity.
Panic rose like cold fingers up his spine. He quelled the feeling with ruthless determination and upped his pace through the woods, ignoring the faint quiver low in his gut.
Ahead, Ernie had stopped near a broad-trunked oak tree. The cat moved cautiously around the tree, his tail flicking with curiosity. Wade caught up and circled the tree, as well.
The first thing he saw was a pale, blood-streaked hand. Small. Female.
Dark hair splayed out across the ground, wet from the rain and, in places, from blood, as well. Her face was half buried in the loamy mixture of old, dead leaves and newly fallen ones that carpeted the forest floor.
Wade started to kneel, grimacing at the sharp pain in his knee. He adjusted position, bending from the waist instead, and felt her throat for a pulse.
The woman moved at his touch, a quick, almost violent recoil. She turned wild, dark eyes toward him, though he didn’t think she was actually seeing him. Blood coated one side of her face from a long gash near her hair line that was still oozing blood.
“I don’t know anything,” she gasped, slapping his hands away.
“Shh,” Wade murmured, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“I don’t know...anything....” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she was out again. He punched 911 into the phone and checked her pulse again. Steady, if too fast. But her skin was icy to the touch. If she wasn’t already going into shock, it wouldn’t be long.
Wade shrugged off his jacket and laid it across her, tucking in the edges while he told the 911 dispatcher the situation. The injured woman made a low groaning sound, deep in her chest, but remained utterly still.
He couldn’t make out much about her in the dark, other than a general description: female, youngish, dark hair and dark eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though he was pretty sure he’d never met her before.
The 911 dispatcher offered to stay on the line with him, but he told her he was going to call his cousin Aaron, a sheriff’s deputy. He lived close by and might be able to beat the paramedics there.
Aaron answered on the second ring. “What’s up, Wade?”
Wade explained what he’d stumbled onto. “Not sure what happened to her, but I think this could be a crime scene.”
“On my way,” Aaron said.
True to his word, Wade’s cousin arrived within five minutes, ahead of the paramedics, swinging a bright flashlight as he moved toward Wade through the woods. “Wade?”
“Over here!” Wade waved him over.
Aaron hiked through the underbrush with ease, his long legs eating up big chunks of real estate at a time. He carried a large blanket in one arm and had his Smith & Wesson M&P 40 in his weapon hand. Behind him, his wife, Melissa, followed in his wake, struggling to keep up with her big husband’s long strides.
Reaching Wade’s side, Aaron aimed the flashlight beam toward the woman. Her eyelids crinkled when the bright light hit them, and she groaned again as she turned her face toward the ground to block out the light.
“That’s a good sign, believe it or not,” Melissa said, crouching beside the woman. She checked her carotid pulse, just as Wade had. “Ma’am? I need to take a look at you. Are you awake?”
Wade kicked himself. Why hadn’t he been checking her over, trying to keep her awake? Had the damned Kaziri rebels shot all his good sense out of him when they nearly took off his knee?
You can’t crouch beside her. You can’t kneel. Better to let someone able-bodied take over the hero business, right?
“Wade?”
Wade looked up at his cousin, tamping down his irritation with his own weakness. “Yeah?”
“Take a look at her face.” Aaron moved the beam of the flashlight over the woman’s face again.
She had turned back toward them, some of the blood on the side of her face smeared away by the leaves on the ground, revealing more of her features.
Wade’s breath caught. “Son of a bitch.”
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Aaron asked.
Wade nodded, gazing at the pale oval face of the woman he and his family had spent the last three weeks trying to find.
Melissa looked up at them. “Who?”
“Annie Harlowe,” Wade answered. Daughter of the missing Air Force general.
Aaron looked at Wade, his expression grim. “So if she’s here, where the hell’s the general?”
Chapter Two
Annie couldn’t remember the dream, only that it had left her heart thundering in her chest and her stomach roiling with nausea. She woke to pain—in her shoulders, her wrists, her knees and especially her head, which felt as if it had been hollowed out and filled with burning agony.
For some reason, she expected to open her eyes to bright lights and chaos, but the room around her was blessedly dark, save for a faint light seeping in from the doorway several feet away. The unfamiliar bed supporting her weakened body was uncomfortable, the gloom-shrouded surroundings
