Jordyn Redwood - Fugitive Spy

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 of the most common memories she had of their lives together. Now, this enemy of her missing father wanted her patient, who just by the very nature of Jared’s visit was now more firmly connected to her father in her mind.

And if Casper disappeared like her father, then perhaps her last hope of discovering the truth would vanish, as well.

“If this gentleman were here, I assume you have legal documents that say he can be relinquished into your care.”

Jared narrowed his eyes. “Such paperwork will be...forthcoming.”

“Excellent. Until then, I’ll need you to get off hospital property.”

He rapped the bottom of his cane against her desk like a metronome.

“Do I need to have security escort you out?” she asked, knowing how empty a threat this was as she eyed the seventy-year-old sentry that sat at the ER entrance perusing a newspaper.

“That won’t be necessary.” He tipped his head to her. “I think I can find my way out.”

Fleming motioned to his cohort. As soon as the two men disappeared through the door, Ashley sat in the chair, her head falling into her hands.

What she was contemplating was going to put her whole medical career in jeopardy.

THREE

Perhaps twenty minutes after Ashley had left him, she was back pushing a wheelchair, whisking the curtain closed over his glass doors so that he was shielded from peering eyes in the hall.

“Lance, would you mind leaving us? There’s a private matter I need to discuss with our patient.”

“CT just called for him,” Lance said.

“Yes, exactly. You know, I’m getting off work anyway. I’ll clear this matter up and then I’ll take him to CT myself.”

Lance looked at her blankly. “Are you...sure?”

“Absolutely.” Ashley motioned her hand in front of her to try to erase his doubts. It was a rare event for a doctor to personally escort a patient to Radiology. “It’s the end of your shift, too. I know you’re anxious to get home to your new baby girl.”

Lance’s smile lit his face up. “You’re right. Thanks, Ashley. It’s going to take me a while to get things wrapped up and give my report. You doing this really helps.”

“Have a great night,” she said as he exited the room.

The interchange confused Casper. Ashley looked disheveled, out of sorts. There was a slight sheen to her forehead. A mild tremble in her shoulders. She pushed the wheelchair next to his bed, parked it and then lowered the side rails.

“We’re leaving.” She rounded to his left side and turned off his monitor, then began disconnecting the monitoring cables from his body.

Her words had an edge to them—her face creased with worry. The actions she took coupled with her clipped words seemed to suggest something other than a simple trip to Radiology.

“This is going to hurt,” she said, taking firm fingers and ripping the defibrillation pads off his chest.

Casper gritted his teeth and suppressed a yell. Unable to keep his eyes from watering, he rubbed at the raw, burning skin.