Alice Sharpe - Hidden Identity

Kneeling in front of her, he gently cleaned and bandaged the laceration. “You must have a million questions,” he began.

She sagged against the sofa and closed her eyes. “No,” she said.

“Don’t you want—?”

“No,” she interrupted, rubbing her temples. “All I want is to sit here.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“Yes.”

He got up to retrieve two aspirin and a glass of water and returned to find her staring around the room. He handed her the tablets and she swallowed them without comment. “I’d like to close my eyes for a moment,” she said as she gave him back the water glass.

There wasn’t time for her to nap, but how did he thrust her into action after what she’d just endured? “Go ahead. I have a few things to do.” Like pack up and get us out of here.

He desperately wanted to know how she’d ended up on his doorstep with a hired killer along for the ride. The most likely scenario was that they’d kidnapped her and forced her into taking them to him, but that didn’t wash because she hadn’t known where he was. No one did. His hands itched with the desire to shake her awake and ask her what was going on, but he couldn’t do that. They also itched with the desire to caress her, to tell her he loved her, that he was sorry he’d left, that finding her here was like a gift from heaven. Would she want to hear any of that? Judging from her aloofness, no, she would not. He shoved his hands in his pockets to kill the urge to shake her awake.

The fingers on his right hand brushed a hard ridge of folded stock paper. He pulled the small foil card he’d found with the flowers from his pocket and opened it, immediately recognizing Chelsea’s concise handwriting.

“‘My beloved Steven,’” he read. Steven. That’s the name he’d chosen when he’d relocated to California. It was the only name he’d ever given Chelsea. He cleared his throat and continued reading. “‘I think I know the location of the cabin you described the night you asked me to marry you. My plan is to drop these roses in the nearby river as a way of letting you go. I don’t want to do this but the reality is you’re dead. I’ll never stop loving you just as I wonder if I’ll ever understand what really happened to you or why that man from the government asked me a million questions, but wouldn’t answer even one of mine. Sometimes it feels as though I’m grieving a shadow. Goodbye, my love. Rest in peace knowing I will move heaven and earth to make a wonderful life for our baby. Yours forever, Chelsea.’”

“Baby?” he whispered, looking from the note to Chelsea. She was pregnant?

A huge smile came and went in a flash as the enormity of this development hit him in the gut. Had the baby survived the crash? What in the world should he do?

Protect her. Protect them! That’s what he should do. And right now that meant getting them out of here.

He threw his meager possessions in a box, then trotted out to the Jeep parked in the tiny shed/garage. The back was already filled with camping gear, a shovel and a chainsaw. To these he added the new box, then he went back inside to take whatever food and drink he could lay his hands on. He wiped things down and carried the perishables out to the Jeep, where he stowed them with everything else before covering the whole thing with a tarp, which he tied in place.

Small rocks separated the cabin from the riverbank. He drove across them and set the parking brake just as rain began to fall. The nonprescription glasses immediately blurred with raindrops and he pocketed them. The abandoned logging road, their only escape route, was a quarter mile downstream. The Jeep had no roof, and its engine was temperamental to say the least. It would be a miracle if it made it to the top of the ridge—if Chelsea hadn’t been there, he would have left it in the shed and hiked out just the way he’d hiked in. But she wasn’t up to that.

Of course, if an attack came from the air, they’d be sitting ducks, but it seemed more likely to him that ground reinforcements would show up instead. The downed helicopter had looked like someone’s paycheck-to-paycheck livelihood and that probably meant there wasn’t a handy fleet that Holton could summon from his jail cell at will.

“It’s time to go,” he said as he gently shook Chelsea’s shoulder.

Her eyes blinked open. “Where am I?” she said, and for a moment, he thought the catnap had cleared her head. “Do I know you?”

There went that hope. “Kind of,” he said carefully.

“I don’t remember you.”

“Not at all?”

Her eyes widened. “No. Should I? I mean, yes, of course I should—you called me by a name.”

“Chelsea Pierce,” he said.

“Then you know me?”

“Yes,” he said, confused. He sat back on his heels. “Do you remember how you got in the helicopter, who the passenger was, the gunshot, the pilot? How you got here, what happened...anything?”

She shook her head and winced. “No, none of that. I don’t even know who I am.”

His throat went dry. She was talking about amnesia. He’d known she was confused but he hadn’t followed that trail to this conclusion. “We have to leave,” he said.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Her brow narrowed. “I don’t understand. Where are we going?”

“We’re both in danger. We have to get away from here right now.”

She sat up slowly and his heart went out to her. He saw no blood on her tan jeans and that probably meant the pregnancy hadn’t terminated. “Do you hurt anywhere besides your head?” he asked her.

“My knee hurts a little.”

“How about your...tummy or abdomen? You know, where the pressure from the seat belt might have...bruised you?”

“No,” she said.

He took her hands and pulled her upright, resisting the urge to hug her reassuringly, sensing it wouldn’t have that effect. His gaze dropped to her midsection. She’d lost weight since he’d last seen her, but there was definitely a small swelling that hadn’t existed before. He tried to figure out how far along she could be and decided on no more than four months. He handed her the rain gear he’d set aside to shelter her from the weather and helped her put it on. “Hurry,” he said with a last look around.

They walked down to the river to the Jeep and he helped her climb aboard. The rain was coming down harder now. Once he’d stowed the rifle and jumped behind the wheel, she looked up at him, her face shaded by the oversized hood, blue eyes questioning. “What should I call you?”

Would the name Steven ring any latent bells that might help her place him? Probably not, so he gave her his real name. “Adam.” He was done lying to her.

“Nice to meet you,” she said with a wan smile.

The Jeep waddled into the river like an old wrestler climbing back into the ring. Thanks to the almost daily treks along this river, he knew to stay close to the western bank, where the water was relatively shallow. When he spied a small grove of red-barked madrones, it would be time to cross the river to the opposite shore, but only until a dead pine tree signaled a pool ahead, at which time he’d cross back to the west. It was slow going, the river gurgling under the vehicle, water washing under the doors and dousing their feet during the cross to the other side. A few times he turned to look behind to see if anyone was there, or to stare up into the sky. It was during one such glance that he remembered he’d left the binoculars hanging under the eaves. Lightning flashed to the south and he counted under his breath. On six, a clap of thunder sounded to the east.

At last he found the place to exit the river to access the logging road and jerked the steering wheel to the left. The Jeep grumbled its way out of the shallow water. The tires spun on the mud before finding purchase on harder ground. He drove forward a hundred feet, then ran back to scatter forest debris to cover their tracks. It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do. He ran back to the Jeep and gunned the engine.