Beautiful Stranger

Reaching the first floor, she yanked the door open and shot a quick glance in either direction. Seeing no one, she burst out into the corridor, easing the door shut behind her. Her best guess was that the loading dock was to the right, so she headed in that direction, sending up a prayer that she’d chosen correctly.

She moved quickly but quietly, her slippered feet silent on the linoleum. The fluorescent lights flickered unsteadily, casting shadows on the sickly green walls. She swallowed her nervousness and kept moving.

After turning two more corners, Claire found herself facing a set of double doors at the end of another corridor. The faint rumble of a large engine emanating from behind them was unmistakable.

Hurrying to them, she pressed her ear against the doors to try to detect any voices or footsteps inside. Hearing none, she waved Hobbs’s pass in front of the security scanner. The lock released with an audible click. With painstaking slowness, she cracked the door open a fraction and peeked inside.

And watched with stunned horror as a truck, no doubt the one she’d been hoping to catch, pulled away from the dock.

There was no time to lament this turn of events. Staring into the open space, she quickly considered her options. Despite this setback, they hadn’t changed much. She still needed to catch a ride out of here.

Maybe another truck would pull in immediately afterward to take the last one’s place. Doubtful, but a possibility. Otherwise, she would need to find a car. Either way, cutting through the loading dock was the best and fastest way to get outside.

Silence hung in the large, empty space. The far end of the room was wide open, filling it with fading sunlight. Ninety feet and she’d be outdoors. Poking her head through the opening, she looked to see if anyone was around. It appeared deserted. She eased through the doorway and took one last look around the room from ceiling to floor, just to be certain. Still nothing.

As sure as she could be, she dashed across the room, moving on the balls of her feet to minimize the sound. At the end of the dock she raced down a few short steps to ground level, burst around the corner and threw her back against the wall. Relief barely penetrated. Now that she was outside, she felt even more exposed. She had to find cover.

There was a parking lot a short distance away, across the driveway and a short stretch of lawn to her left. The rows of cars gleamed in the sunlight, each offering a possible escape. The sight practically called to her.

She started in that direction, crouching down and staying near the building so no one looking out a window could see her. Within seconds she reached a spot that gave her a straight shot to the parking lot. She drew in a shuddery breath and checked in every direction.

And ran.

It couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but the mad dash to the parking lot seemed like a thousand times longer. By the time she crashed to the pavement between two cars it felt like her heart had pounded through her chest.

Her breathing coming in short, rapid gasps, she slowly counted to ten, waiting for the sounds of running feet or raised voices, any sign that she’d been seen. None came. Even if someone had seen her and notified security, there wouldn’t be any immediate sign for her to know. She had to keep moving. First and foremost, she needed to find a car that would get her out of here ASAP.

Rising to her haunches, she quickly poked her head up just enough to see through the window of the car she was hiding behind and looked around.

Then she saw him, a familiar figure appearing out of the horizon just as he had the first time, now heading toward the parking lot.

It was the man she’d seen before. Hobbs must have left her sitting on the veranda for an eternity if the newcomer had conducted his business and was just now leaving.

She felt a surge of excitement. Great timing. He would be the perfect person to catch a ride with. He wasn’t a shrink and he didn’t work here. Combined with the fact that he was leaving, that just about made him her favorite person in the world at the moment.

He was still far enough away that she should be able to get to his car long before he did. She remembered what the other doctor had said to him. He drove a beat-up old wreck.

It didn’t take her long to spot the sedan. The back window bore a parking sticker from Center City General in downtown Philadelphia, no doubt the hospital where the other doctor said this one worked. The car had to be a couple of decades old, its paint faded and chipped. Not exactly a car she would have thought belonged to a doctor, but maybe he was paying off med-school bills, especially if he worked at a low-paying city hospital.

Unlike most of the cars in the lot, it was unlikely this one was equipped with any kind of alarm. Heck, its owner probably wouldn’t even feel the need to lock it.

For the first time in four long months her lips curved into a smile.

Maybe the knight could come to her rescue after all.

And the best part was, he didn’t even have to know.

Chapter Two

He’d sold his soul to the devil.

Dr. Walter Emmons had suspected as much for some time now, ever since the day he’d admitted Claire Preston to Thornwood for a considerable fee above the norm.

Staring into the dead eyes of the man standing before him erased what little doubt remained in his mind.

“How long has she been gone?” his visitor demanded.

“At least an hour. That’s when the orderly took her back to her room. He was found about fifteen minutes later, and I was immediately notified.” And when the first search produced no results, he’d made the decision to contact the man who’d paid him to keep her here, figuring it would be far worse to have him learn about her disappearance some other way, like having her turn up on his doorstep without warning.

Thirty minutes later, despite his assurances that the situation was under control, this man had arrived at Thornwood at the other’s behest. And Walter Emmons wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

The man was tall, well over six feet, and lean, with dark olive skin and black hair cut close to the scalp. But it was the eyes Emmons couldn’t look away from, no matter how much he wanted to. They seemed to be all pupil, two glowing black orbs that focused unerringly on his face and seemed to burn right through him. He didn’t think the man had blinked once since he’d arrived.

His clinical side kicked in, and he knew without a doubt this man should be a patient in a facility like this, not responsible for tracking one down.

“How did this happen?” the man, who hadn’t introduced himself other than to say who’d sent him, demanded.

“I don’t know. I’ve been monitoring her medication closely—” a lie “—and every indication was that she was in a catatonic state.” Every indication being the reports from his staff he’d relied on so foolishly. He’d been assured that Claire Preston was unaware of her surroundings, her mind broken. Clearly, she’d managed to fool them all.

“What are you doing about finding her?”

“I have people checking the grounds and the building in case she’s still here. I’ve also had security review the surveillance tapes from the gate. Only three vehicles left the premises in the time span between when she was last seen and when her disappearance was discovered. We’ve already contacted two of the drivers, and neither has seen her. We’re still trying to get in touch with the third driver. If she somehow managed to sneak out in a car, it must have been with him.”

“Give me the address. I will go there.”

Emmons blanched. “We don’t know for sure that she escaped with the third driver. We’re still trying to contact him.”

“And in the meantime, she may be getting farther away. You said if she escaped it must have been with him. Were you wrong about that as well?”

“No, I—”

“Then give me the address.” He practically spat the words.

Emmons swallowed hard. “At least let me send a team with you. This man is a doctor. He may be reluctant to send her off with anyone other than authorized Thornwood personnel.”

The man appeared to consider this. After a brief pause, he signaled his agreement with a sharp nod of his head.

Emmons reached for the phone. “Even if she’s not with the third driver, rest assured, we will find her.”

A trace of scorn flashed across the man’s face. “The same way you could be trusted to keep her here?”

“I made it clear from the beginning this is not a high-security facility.”

“You also accepted money to ensure she would remain here. And you failed.”

Emmons felt his face burn. Suddenly the mountain of gambling debts he was struggling to cover didn’t seem like such a problem, only because it paled in comparison to the one literally staring him in the face at the moment.

He should have never let things get this far. He should have talked to a colleague about his addiction. He should have thought twice before digging himself into a hole of debt he had no hope of ever climbing out of.

He should have done a great many things. Except one.

“I never should have agreed to this,” he muttered as he started dialing.

“But you did,” the man said, his tone pitiless. “There is no turning back from it now.”

No, there wasn’t, Emmons thought. And now that this man had entered his life, he couldn’t escape the terrifying feeling that his true problems were only just beginning.

THE THUMP WAS HIS first indication something was wrong.

After completing the long drive from Thornwood back home, Josh pulled into his garage, more than ready to change out of his suit and grab some food. He stepped on the brake. The car lurched to a stop.

And a definitive thump resounded from the trunk.

He froze, his weariness after the long day forgotten. An uneasy suspicion raised the hair at the back of his neck.

The trunk was supposed to be empty. The thump indicated it wasn’t. Something was in there, something fairly sizeable from the sound of it.

Had someone put something in the trunk? He couldn’t imagine why. An animal might have climbed in, except he didn’t know how any creature would have managed it.

That left a person. He hadn’t stepped away from the car when he’d stopped for gas on the way back. The only place where he could have picked up a stowaway was Thornwood.

Josh quickly considered his options. Sitting in the car wasn’t one of them. It occurred to him that anything—or anyone—in the trunk could get into the car through the backseat, and vice versa, which was the only way anyone could have gained access to the trunk in the first place. He’d already sat there long enough to raise suspicions in the mind of any unwanted passenger that he was onto them.

He shifted the vehicle into park and shut off the engine, then hit the remote control to close the garage door before climbing out of the car. If there was someone in the trunk, particularly someone from Thornwood, he didn’t want them to get away. He was in enough trouble without setting a mental patient loose.

Once outside the car, he flipped the switch next to the kitchen door to keep the garage light on, not about to have it go out and leave him in the dark with whomever might be in there. He reached for the heavy wrench he’d left sitting next to the step after working on the leaky kitchen sink. The weight of it felt good in his hand. There was no telling if he’d need it, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

He moved to the back of the vehicle. Lifting the wrench above his head, he braced himself, then slid the key in the lock and threw the trunk open.

A pair of familiar brown eyes—wide and gaping with familiar terror—stared back at him.

He barely had time to react to his discovery when the woman lunged forward. Getting out of the trunk wasn’t exactly the easiest proposition with her body practically curled into the fetal position. She somehow managed it, albeit without much grace, heaving herself out of the enclosed space and landing on the floor in front of him.

He took a step back out of her way, but didn’t stop her. He hadn’t wanted anybody in his trunk to begin with. He wasn’t going to argue with her vacating it.

Once on her own two feet, she stood before him, her chest heaving, her body tense and fidgety. Her eyes darted every which way, clearly seeking an escape. He saw the moment she realized that, with the garage door closed, the only exits were the two doors in the near back corner of the garage—one leading outside, one into the house—and he was standing between her and the door.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction as her gaze shot up and down his body. Probably gauging her chances of rushing him and getting around him. From the way her lips thinned and she swallowed hard, she must have decided they weren’t good.

“Calm down,” he said in his most soothing tone, the one that had been known to settle down even the most terrified child in the E.R. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

In response, her eyes flicked to the wrench he still held aloft.

He slowly lowered it to his side, keeping himself on alert to defend himself if necessary. Not that he would probably need the wrench for that. Viewing her in a standing position for the first time, he could see that she was no more than five-six at the most, and thin. He had more than half a foot and a hundred pounds on her, easy. But he knew nothing about this woman or why she’d been at Thornwood, or what she was capable of. After all, the last time he’d seen her, she’d seemed completely unaware of her surroundings, with drool running down her face.

Only that brief moment when their eyes met had indicated she was lucid—and scared. The fear was still there, along with a fierce determination, and this time there was no doubting she was fully cognizant. He suspected if he dropped the wrench, she’d be on him in a heartbeat, scratching and clawing and kneeing, in her desperation to get away. He would defend himself if he had to, but he really didn’t want to hurt her.

He tried the soothing tone again. “Take it easy. Let’s both take a breath and see if we can’t talk for a second.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she shot back. Her voice was hoarse as though from disuse, yet calm despite her obvious tension. “Look, you don’t have to get involved. Just let me go and you can forget you even saw me.”

“It’s not that simple. I have to believe it’s not going to take the folks back at Thornwood long to figure out that you’re gone and, when they don’t find you on the grounds, start contacting anyone who left at roughly the time you disappeared.”

“All you have to do is tell them you don’t know anything about me, and you’re off the hook.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

A knowing gleam entered her straightforward gaze, and her mouth twisted with bitterness. “Because you don’t want to be held responsible for letting a crazy person loose on the streets, right?”

“Are you crazy?” he said mildly.

He carefully watched her reaction. There was none of the anger or outrage he might have expected, merely what seemed like resignation. Interesting. “No.” She lifted her hand against the skepticism she must have anticipated would greet the comment. “I know that’s probably what all the mental patients say. But I’m not.”

“All right,” he said, privately reserving judgment. “I’m Josh, by the way. Josh Bennett. And you are?” he prodded when she said nothing.

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes considering. He didn’t know what she saw, but he suspected he hadn’t been examined this thoroughly on his last credit check.

“Claire,” she said finally.

She didn’t elaborate further. He figured it wasn’t worth pushing the point. “Okay, Claire. Why don’t you tell me why you were at Thornwood?”

She sighed, the sound so full of weariness it tugged at something inside him. “I don’t know. Four months ago I woke up there with no idea how I’d gotten there. This Dr. Emmons told me I’d suffered a mental breakdown. He didn’t get into specifics, saying there was time for that later, and when I demanded answers, he just gave me this patronizing look, like I was a misbehaving child.” She arched a brow, her expression turning wry. “Or a crazy person, I suppose. He just said they would take good care of me.” She practically snorted at that. “The next thing I knew, they were sticking a needle in my arm and I was knocked out.”

“What about the next time you saw him? Did he tell you more then?”

“I never saw him again. I was in and out of consciousness for the first month—out of it, mostly. Anytime anyone noticed that I was aware again, they’d bring out the needles. It didn’t take me long to figure out if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a drug-induced haze, I couldn’t let them know when the drugs wore off.”

“So when I saw you sitting on the veranda this afternoon, you were pretending, with the drooling and all?”

She hesitated before answering, as if not sure how much to admit. “I have been for the past few months. Not all the time. They were still drugging me, of course, though I think they were lowering the dosage. Or maybe I was getting used to the drugs. Either way, I gradually started to be more aware. I just never let them see when I wasn’t out of it anymore.”

“And no one on staff noticed that you were pretending for, what, three months?”

In spite of his best efforts, he couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of his voice. It was clear she hadn’t failed to notice.

“As long as I wasn’t causing trouble, no one paid too much attention to me. I was never examined by a doctor while I was conscious, and it was obvious the nurses and orderlies were only there to cash a check. They did what was necessary to provide a basic level of care, but otherwise none of them gave me a second glance. I was basically invisible.”

He couldn’t help frowning. The image she painted wasn’t the same Thornwood he’d heard wonderful things about, or the one he’d visited that afternoon. The place seemed a marvel of efficiency.

But that feeling he’d had when he was there, that something was somehow off about the place, nagged at him in a way that couldn’t be attributed to a forbidding exterior. It wouldn’t be the first case of something being too perfect to be believed, or at the very least, not all it seemed.

“Even so, you wouldn’t have been admitted for no reason.”

“But maybe for the right price.”

“What are you saying? That they were paid to admit you?”

“And keep me there. Think about it. Why else would they fail to explain exactly why I’d been brought there? Why keep me drugged for months rather than offer any kind of therapy or professional treatment?”

“But who would do that? And why?”

She paused, her gaze sharpening. “Can I trust you to keep this conversation between the two of us?”

“You mean doctor/patient privilege? I’m not your doctor.”

“Nor do I want you to be. I just want to know you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell you.”

He wondered who exactly she expected him to talk to, and why discretion was such an issue. Was she going to spin a story too easily proven false if he shared it with anyone else?

Still, he wanted to know what she was going to say. Confidentiality didn’t seem too much to ask for, if he could help it. He just hoped she didn’t force him to make a liar of himself. “All right.”

She took a deep breath, as though gathering strength. “My name is Claire Preston. My family owns Preston Aeronautics and Defense. You may not have heard of it, but we’re a private defense contractor that provides services to the government and the armed forces. It’s a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Tomorrow is my thirty-fifth birthday. At that time I’m supposed to take control of the company. Only it appears that someone wanted to ensure that didn’t happen. That’s why I needed to get out of Thornwood now, before it’s too late to do something about it. I’m just hoping it’s not too late already.”

The words came out in a rush, then stopped abruptly as though she figured she’d said too much. Once she stopped, she simply lifted her chin and stood there, watching him.

Josh could only stare back at her. He had no idea how he was supposed to respond to a story that outlandish. Bribery? Billion-dollar corporations? A conspiracy hatched by an unknown “someone” against her? It was the stuff of paranoid delusions, created by an unstable mind.

Yet the eyes that met his were clear and focused. She’d related her story calmly and concisely, her voice unwavering. Whatever the veracity of her tale, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she believed it to be true.

But then, he’d spoken the truth to Aaron that afternoon—he wasn’t a psychiatrist. All he had were his instincts to tell him whether or not to believe her, instincts he was no longer certain he could trust.

He could either believe she was the victim of a conspiracy or simply a mental patient who belonged in the institution to which she’d been committed.

And Josh had the sad feeling that in this case the more likely answer was the correct one.

HE DIDN’T BELIEVE HER.

His expression hadn’t changed. He had that patient, pleasant look on his face that revealed nothing of his thoughts. She could tell all the same.

Claire swallowed a groan of frustration and forced herself to take the deep breath he’d suggested earlier. She couldn’t afford to lose her composure. Her only hope of getting this man on her side was to come across as sane and rational as she knew she was.

If only she hadn’t fallen asleep and lost her grip, tumbling back against the side of the trunk when he’d come to a stop. But it had been a long drive, and once the initial adrenaline rush of her escape had worn off, she’d felt the damned fatigue dragging at her. Even now, it pulled at her. Her body trembled, from exhaustion, tension and perhaps the lack of drugs her body was used to receiving by now.

Her stomach twisted with anxiety. Every moment she stood here was another moment she was wasting not getting away. She had to agree with him—it wouldn’t take the people at Thornwood long to discover that she was missing. Even now they could be on their way, ready to reclaim her, while she was making the mistake of confiding in this man.

She’d probably said too much. But after four months of speaking to no one, having to keep all this bottled up inside, her story seemed to come out on its own, a raging torrent that couldn’t be stopped.

For all the good it had done her.

“You think I sound paranoid,” she said knowingly. “And maybe I do. But like they say, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

From the impassive look on his face, he wasn’t ready to concede even that point to her.

She saw in his eyes that there was another option. That she really was mentally unbalanced, making up stories of persecution that bore no resemblance to reality.

Trying to think of another way out, she raised a hand to push back her hair.

“What’s that?”

She met his gaze, then followed it where he was looking. Her unconscious gesture had caused her sleeve to slide down, revealing her wrist.

Heat flooded her cheeks. Embarrassed, she quickly lowered her arm, pulling the sleeve all the way over her fingers. “It’s nothing.”

He finally set the wrench down on the floor just behind him and slowly moved closer, reaching out to offer her his hand. “May I see? I’m a doctor. I promise I’ll be careful.”

It was the gentleness in his voice that broke her. It was so different from the cool indifference and sneering cruelty she’d heard the past few months from the Thornwood staff. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken to her so kindly. Maybe never.

His face matched his voice. His blue eyes were warm with sympathy. The corners of his mouth tilted ever-so-slightly upward in a compassionate smile. Part of her wondered if this was his doctor face, the practiced expression that conveyed just the right note of caring and made his patients feel at ease. The rest of her couldn’t help responding to it. It seemed so genuine. He seemed so genuine. Up close, she could see the faint beginnings of laugh lines worn into the skin around the corners of his eyes, while not a single line marred his brow. All of which told her this was a man who smiled a lot. Could it be that this wasn’t an act, that this was who he really was? Despite her better judgment, she found herself wanting to believe it, as the band of tightness in her chest eased slightly. Her initial impression of him returned in full force, that this was someone she could trust, someone who could help her.