Fugitive Spy

What were the odds this man would possess the same unusual mark as her father?

Did this stranger hold the answer to her father’s disappearance?

TWO

She had called him Casper. Dr. Ashley Drager. That was what she called herself.

The nurses were gone from the room. He huddled into the blanket she had placed over his shoulders. Never in his life could he remember being this cold. It was as if his bones were solid ice and would never stop leaching frigid water into his veins. Her hands, small, soft, yet determined, eased him back onto the raised head of the gurney.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.

Her dark blue eyes seemed a safe place to be. They exerted a trusting nature, an open mind, almost a pleading for information.

The name she called him...Casper...seemed to ring true, but neither was he positive that was correct. He searched his mind for an answer to her question and all there was to draw upon was a blank well of darkness.

Casper’s stomach clenched. He couldn’t remember. What was the last thing he could clearly recall? What had he been doing to end up here? He pulled the blankets down that covered his chest to examine his injuries. An IV was in his left hand. He touched it lightly, the fluid running into his veins warm and soothing. He tugged at the large patches on his chest, but Ashley grabbed his hand and pulled it down as if he were an intemperate child doing something he shouldn’t. In truth, it’s how he felt—young, uncertain. He honed in on her face for approval with each movement he made. Gingerly, he touched his jaw with his fingers. Several mounds of swollen flesh protruded from his skull in abnormal places, and even the slightest touch caused sharp spindles of pain to spread throughout his head. He settled against the pillow.

“I can’t remember.” Was this how his voice normally sounded?

Dr. Drager pulled her stethoscope from her pocket. “Let me see if I can find a reason why you’re having trouble remembering. Your body temperature is very low. That could be part of it, but I’m doubtful that’s the cause. You’ve sustained several blows to your head and that could be the answer right there, but we need to be sure you don’t have any bleeding inside your skull. We’re going to send some lab work and I’m going to get a CT scan of your brain.” She laid the stethoscope against his chest. The normal chill he expected was warmer than his skin. “Sorry about the rude awakening. Your heart was in a lethal rhythm and the only quick way to fix that was with a little electricity.”

Little?

He rested a fist in the center of his chest as counter pressure against the remnant of pain from that dose.

Clearly, there were things he did remember. He knew what things were—particularly in this room. A pen. A stethoscope. An IV. He could identify the contraption in the corner—a rapid fluid infuser. The device they’d used to get his heart rhythm normalized—a defibrillator. He knew what a doctor was. What a nurse was. He knew how to put an IV in and could easily recall other medical procedures—his fingers itching to perform them. Muscle memory existed intact. Did that mean he was in the medical field?

Casper just couldn’t remember anything about himself or his circumstances. How was that possible? Was he in the medical field? Was he a nurse? A doctor? A medic? Is that why he almost felt comforted by these surroundings?

Dr. Drager reached behind her and grabbed something from the metal stand that sat next to his bed. “This is your license. At least, we assume it is. Does this help strike up a memory?”

He took the plastic ID from her hand. Scanning the details didn’t jar anything loose. He shrugged and offered it back to her.

“You can keep it. We have all the information we need from it. You also had this picture with you,” Dr. Drager said.

He took it from her hand and glanced at it only briefly. Someone in a graduation gown he didn’t recognize. When he caught the doctor’s gaze, she looked exacerbated, one eyebrow hiked higher than the other—almost as if prompting him for...what?

Must be frustrating to have a patient show up without any answers when you’re trying to help them.

Reaching around, his muscles stiff and sore, he placed the items in the back pocket of his jeans. He riffled through his front pockets and withdrew a wadded piece of paper. Once he’d evened out the page—it contained an address.

“Perhaps we should give that to the police, see if it’s important,” Dr. Drager said.

“No!” The strength of his conviction surprised even him.

She took a step back, the flash of fear quickly recovered by her well-practiced, calm demeanor from handling volatile patients.

Why am I so adamant about hiding this information? I don’t even know what it means.

“Casper—” She paused, perhaps changing her mind about the direction she wanted to take the conversation. “I’m trying to help you.”

The blood pressure cuff squeezed his arm. “I know. I’m very thankful.”

Dr. Drager was headed out of the room when she suddenly turned on her heel and faced him. “Where did you get your tattoo? Do you recall anything about that?”

“What tattoo?” Casper asked, the words spilling before he could search the void that was his mind.

“The one on your back. Right between your shoulder blades. It’s a medical staff superimposed on a biological biohazard symbol.” Ashley walked across the trauma room to a box on the wall.

A sharps container.

How could he know that and not know any personal details of his life?

“The symbol is exactly like this one.” She tapped at the box to staccato her point. There was pain in her eyes as she looked at him. They glistened under the fluorescent lights.

He clenched his fists. Heat surged into his body, but not a welcome feeling physically normalizing his body temperature.

What he felt was anger. Unidentified. Smoldering.

And for her, he felt an ache in chest. Something akin to sorrow.

What’s happening to me? What do these emotions have to do with anything?

“I feel...” He wanted to scream. Cry out. This was so maddening. “Do you know me?” he finally asked her.

She dropped her hand from the box on the wall. “I don’t know you, sir.”

“But we’ve met before...haven’t we?” he asked, his heart almost begging for some sort of connection, a lifeline for his sinking psyche.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever met you,” she answered. Her eyes locked on his as if she was trying to bolster her certainty. “However, the photo you carry is of my medical school graduation. How did you get that picture?”

Her not knowing him—everything about her statement felt wrong. He felt like he knew her. That he’d been the beneficiary to personal details of her life that she was unaware of.

“Did you have a dog when you were young? A cocker spaniel? Named Lady? After the movie...” He snapped his fingers. “Lady and the Tramp.”

Her eyes widened and then a smile placated her lips. “The tattoo on your back matches exactly to one my father has. Strangely, he’s been missing for two years. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

What is going on here?

Ashley nodded her head, his astonishment at her statement more an answer to her question than any words he could have spoken. “Let’s get those tests done and see if we can find out why you’re having trouble remembering who you are. In the meantime, we’ll continue our rewarming measures. One of the nurses should be back shortly to take you to Radiology.” She locked Casper’s gaze. “We’ll get you feeling better, Mr. English.”

“Please, don’t leave. We should talk.”

Dr. Drager turned on her heel and left the room.

* * *

Ashley fled the trauma room, turned down the nearest vacant hall and leaned against the wall.

None of this is right. How can this patient have a picture of me? The last time I saw that photo I’d pulled it out of my father’s wallet. How could this man know such a detail about my life? Was this handsome stranger plunked in my ER like some whimsical practical joke?

If so, it was elaborate. ER types were known to play pranks, but this? No, it was impossible. Too complicated.

This was too much—especially on the heels of another package being delivered to her just today. They were always accompanied by a letter, in her father’s handwriting, simply requesting that she keep the items safe. One of many packages she received over the last several months.

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.

“Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t sound nearly as penitent as he wanted her to be. Next, she removed the layers of clear tape that held his IV in place.

He clasped his hand over hers. “Wait, aren’t they going to need this for the scan?”

She blinked at him. If he had to guess, she pondered why he would even think to ask such a question. “No, we’re leaving the hospital.” With a quick motion, she pulled the catheter from his arm, put a cotton ball over the site and then wrapped a piece of self-adhering dressing around his hand.

“Dr. Drager, please, what is going on?”

“Ashley... You might as well call me by my first name. I’m essentially kidnapping you.”

Not that he minded, but for what reason? What had her so unnerved?

“Why are we leaving?”

She yanked one of the blankets from his chest, settled it in the wheelchair and then eased his legs so his feet were resting against the floor. The room spun.

“Sit here for a minute. You’re probably dizzy from laying down for so long. If you fall I won’t be able to pick you up by myself and I can’t call for help.”

Casper pressed two fingers into his temple until the sensation passed. “If I’m going to allow myself to be kidnapped then I need to know why.”

“Does the name Jared Fleming mean anything to you?”

Nothing registered. He shook his head.

“Something very weird is going on here. You show up, amnestic—almost beaten to death. Your tattoo is the same exact one my father, who’s been missing, has. You arrive with a photo of me in your pocket. And just as I was trying to insanely, and with a lot of denial I might add, talk myself out of thinking that you having a connection to me and my father was utter lunacy, my father’s arch nemesis shows up asking me to relinquish you into his custody without any legal documentation supporting such an action.”

Every last ounce of strength that Casper possessed, which was precious little at this point in time, melted away like the snow under a newly bright Colorado sun. Trouble was, he wanted to assist her, but doubted he could lift a finger to even help himself. Ashley had every right to make such assumptions and clearly she was operating for his benefit, albeit through selfish needs of her own.

Can I blame her? I’d do exactly the same thing under these circumstances. Sticking with her might provide the answers that I need. Maybe she’s the key to getting my memory back.

Casper inhaled sharply and gathered up the last vestiges of his energy. He eased himself up and pivoted into the wheelchair. Now all he wanted to do was go to bed and sleep the rest of this day away. She tucked the blanket around his torso.

“If we get out of here, what exactly is your plan?” Casper asked.

Ashley bent over and unlocked his wheelchair, her exhalation whispering past his ear. A hint of citrusy body spray lingered in her wake.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’ll probably take you to my mother’s house. If you knew my father maybe she knows you and can help me figure out if I should be worried about Jared coming for you or not.”

“So you don’t necessarily believe your father? That this man is his enemy?”

“It’s hard to put faith and trust in a man who deserted his family. My father said a lot of crazy things. Did a lot of scary stuff, but the one thing he was always consistent about for several years before he disappeared was his hatred of the man who just came looking for you.”

Ashley wheeled him to the door and peeked around the curtain. Seemingly satisfied, she yanked the curtain aside and pushed him through the sliding glass door. Making two quick turns, they came to a vacant hall. She locked the chair.

“Hopefully, everyone will be tied up for shift report. I need to grab my coat and purse. Don’t go anywhere.”

She disappeared behind the door to the doctor’s lounge and he was left alone. The chill was beginning to dissipate and he appreciated the warmth the blanket provided. If he’d been found in the snow, it likely hadn’t melted in the few hours since his arrival, particularly with the blackness of night making its claim against the last remnants of daylight.

Just as the door clicked closed behind Ashley, Lance rounded the corner.

“Mr. English, are you lost?”

The spry nurse rounded to the back of his wheelchair and unlocked the brake. “CT is wondering where their patient is.”

Casper took his left hand and shoved the brake into place just as Ashley came through the door, zipping up her coat and holding her purse and a large manila envelope.

“It’s okay, Lance. I’ve got it. Just didn’t want to come back to the department after I dropped him off.”

Lance nodded, though unsurely, but backed away so she could scoot behind the chair.

After a few more turns through the halls of the ER, Ashley came to a side entrance. “My car’s not far, but it’s going to be hard to get this wheelchair through the lot with all the snow.”

He nodded and flipped the footrests up. He stood, shakily. Ashley scooted next to him and fit herself under his right arm. Just the right size to act as a crutch. He leaned heavily against her, worried that she might topple over, but her strength surprised him and they soldiered through the door into the biting wind.

They walked perhaps thirty steps until they reached a pine-green Toyota Highlander. She pressed her key fob twice, unlocking the passenger door, and he poured into the seat, barely able to hold himself upright. After she grabbed the blanket and hastily threw it over his chest, she buckled the seat belt around him and hurried to the driver’s side. After starting the car, she turned on the heat, and he was immediately met with a blast of cold air that the thinly threaded blanket did little to protect him against, and the chill reasserted itself with a vengeance. His teeth chattered.

She turned down the flow and put the SUV in Reverse, making her way through the parking lot.

Just as the parking lot arm was about to release them, a security guard came running toward their vehicle from the left.

“We shouldn’t stay,” Casper warned.

Ashley powered down her window, ignoring Casper. “Everything okay, Noah?”

“Dr. Drager. A patient has been reported missing from the hospital. A Casper English.”

She glanced back at Casper and he shrugged, his mind a muddled mess of frozen brain cells.

“He’s all right,” Ashley called out the window. “Mr. English is here with me, and he’s refused any further medical care. He’s asked me to drive him home.”

“Dr. Drager, as you know, it would be highly unusual—even against policy—for you to transport a patient off hospital property regardless of their wishes.”

“It’s fine, Noah. He’s an old friend. I think the hospital will—”

Ashley jerked back and Casper felt the warm spray of something hit his face. When he looked left, he saw a fine mist of red droplets covering Ashley’s hands, which gripped the steering wheel so tightly they were stark white. Noah staggered back a few steps away from the car, a hand held tightly against his neck as blood gushed between his fingers. The guard dropped to his knees.

“Drive!” Casper yelled.

Ashley reached for the car’s door handle. “I can’t leave him,” she cried.

The next shot cracked the back driver’s-side passenger window.

“Ashley, go! We’re going to die if we stay here.”

The next shot punctured through Ashley’s open window into the dashboard.

Ashley stepped on the gas and flew out of the parking lot.

* * *

The night rushed past Ashley. Light snow flurries danced unabashed. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful other than the fact that she was speeding through neighborhoods preparing for slumber—braking, sliding on the icy streets. The dropping temperature crystallized what little snow had melted during the day. Ashley used a wet wipe from her glove box to clean the blood spray off her hands. She took another and wiped the left side of her face.