Cassie Miles - Frozen Memories

Her breath caught in her throat. The whirlwind of confusion buffeting inside her head went still, and she was suspended, floating in midair. She felt neither cold nor hot, neither right nor wrong, neither safe nor terrified. She was simply there.

“Spencer,” she said. “Spence Malone.”

And then she was in his arms. The cold from outdoors still clung to his Irish fisherman’s sweater, but the internal heat from his body raised the temperature. She snuggled against him, inhaling the natural scent of lamb’s wool and warm man.

He whispered in her ear, “You couldn’t forget me.”

Apparently, she’d guessed correctly.

Chapter Three

Now she knew his name was Spence Malone, but Angelica had no idea what that meant to her. He was incredibly good-looking, just exactly her type. She glided her hand across his rock-hard chest and down his arm. Even through his thick sweater, she felt the ridges of his biceps. Were they lovers?

He tilted her chin so she was gazing up at him. His blue eyes flicked from left to right, reading her expression. “Seems like you’ve forgotten a few things,” he said.

“A few.” She shrugged.

“What do you recall?”

“There were four men, big guys, dumb as dirt.” His penetrating gaze was like a truth-seeking missile, and she wasn’t sure how much she should reveal. She turned toward Trudy and said, “Remember? I told you about them. One had a Texas accent. They were armed with HK417 assault rifles. They took me to a cabin.”

“And she mentioned a van,” Trudy said helpfully, “a dark blue or black van.”

Leaning down, Spence kissed her forehead. The light touch of his lips set off a chain reaction of shivers that had more to do with her internal engine than with the snow and cold. Her inner machinery had definitely come back to life. She exhaled a soft moan.

“What else?” he murmured.

Resisting him wasn’t going to be easy. “Nothing much.”

“It’s okay. You can tell me.”

But maybe she’d better not. Though his tone was gentle and cajoling, she knew he was digging, probing, interrogating. If he discovered the gaps in her memory, what would he do? He said he was a federal agent, but that didn’t mean he was innocent.

She turned the tables with a question of her own. “What do you do for the FBI?”

“Mostly administrative stuff,” he said in a silky voice. “Do you remember where we are?”

“Near Peterson Air Force Base.” Luckily, the pastor had provided her with that much info.

“Do you know why we’re here?”

“For one thing, my parents live near here.” Before she could think twice, she said their names. “Peter and Lana Thorne.”

“General Thorne?” Pastor Clarence straightened his posture, almost as though he was snapping to attention. “You’re their daughter?”

“One of their daughters,” she corrected.

Her memories came fast and furious as a mental family portrait formed. There were two girls and two boys. Angelica was second or third oldest depending on who was doing the counting. She and her sister, Selena, were identical twins, and they always argued about who was born first. The youngest—a boy who chose the marine corps over the air force, much to his father’s chagrin—had moved out last year. Though Dad was mostly retired, her parents kept their six-bedroom house in the hills above Manitou Springs.

She was looking forward to visiting them and having them meet Spence, which meant he must be important to her. Since it wasn’t her habit to introduce casual lovers to the parents, Spencer Malone must have a different significance. Maybe she worked with him. He was a born leader, similar to her high-ranking father. Both were tough, competitive and feisty.

She gave him a grin. “You and Dad are going to love each other.”

The gleam from his cool blue eyes dimmed. “You introduced me to your father yesterday.”

“Indeed.” Couldn’t be. That’s not something I’d forget. She treasured every moment with her mom and dad. Family was everything to her.

“We were at their house for dinner. You don’t remember?”

“Give me a minute. It’ll come back.”

He sat her on the hard-back chair. His touch became less sensual and more clinical as he massaged her scalp. “Does your head feel sore? Is there a possibility of concussion?”

“I was afraid of this,” Trudy said as she clenched her fingers into a knot. “It’s amnesia, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Spence said. “She needs a CT scan. And she ought to be examined by a doctor.”

“We put in a 911 call,” Trudy said. “It felt like an hour ago.”

“I’ll call again,” Clarence said. “They warned me about slow response time on account of the weather. And there was a pileup accident on I-25. When I told the dispatcher she wasn’t bleeding and didn’t appear to have broken bones, he suggested I drive her myself if it was possible.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Spence said.

“Wait!” Angelica waved both hands to interrupt the plans that were being made for her. She was wide-awake, sitting right here, and she didn’t like having other people take control of her life. “I don’t need a hospital. I didn’t hit my head.”

Spence hunkered down in front of her. He captured her fluttering hands and held them. “Would you remember if you had?”

“Did you find any bumps on my head?” she demanded. “No, you did not. And my skull doesn’t feel concussed. There are plenty of other places on my body that are painful, but not my head.”

“Where does it hurt?” he asked.

“My lips are chapped and were bleeding.” She yanked her hands from his grasp. “My feet are stiff and sore. My throat is scratchy.”

“She has bruises,” Trudy said. “I noticed them when she was changing clothes.”

Shrinking back in the chair, Angelica wrapped her arms protectively around her midsection. She knew very well that she had injuries. Both her knees were scraped. A massive contusion spread from her rib cage to her lower pelvis on her right side. Though she couldn’t see her back, she felt an occasional throb of pain.

The physical damage might have come from a hard fall or a car wreck. She might have been beaten but didn’t remember, didn’t want to remember. She’d been doing her best to ignore these aches and get back to the business at hand—whatever that was.

She glared at Spence. “No way do I have a concussion.”

“There are other ways to lose your memory.” He placed his hand on her knee, reestablishing contact. “You could have been drugged.”

She glanced down. Her eyelids closed. For an instant, she caught a glimpse of what had happened. A brief sliver of memory revealed itself, and she saw things as they had occurred instead of as they were now.

Her wrists were fastened to the arms of a chair with duct tape. She wasn’t uncomfortable but firmly secured, immobile. Behind her back, disembodied voices talked about dosage. They mentioned a drug.

She repeated their words, “A derivative mixture of benzodiazepine and propranolol.”

When she looked up, she saw Spence nod. “Those are drugs that could be used to induce memory loss.”

“I knew that.” Oddly enough, that was her first outright lie. She knew zip about drugs and memory loss, but she wanted desperately to speak with some kind of authority.

“If you were drugged,” Spence said, “we need to take you to the hospital for tests. Be reasonable, Angelica. I want you to be checked out. I feel responsible.”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Feel responsible.”

She bolted to her feet. Even though she couldn’t exactly identify her career at the moment, she was dead certain that she was well respected in her field. She’d always been an achiever, proud when her slacker sister teased her for being “daddy’s little darling.” Ever since Angelica hit her first home run in T-ball, she’d been a winner. Valedictorian and senior prom queen in high school, magna cum laude from college, and she’d received dozens of grants in computer cryptography, science and hacking.