Chapter 2
2
A ubree wanted to kick herself.
Well, if she could get up, she might have tried to do it, but as it was, she was sitting on the closed toilet lid, regretting her insistence that she could walk as much as she did.
Looking up into the mirror above the sink, she gave herself a glare. "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why did you do that?"
She didn't even really need to ask the question. She knew the answer.
She was always trying to be stronger. Harder.
And when she was rescued from the accident, everyone had their own opinions of what she should do. What she could do.
The worst of it was because of her memory.
There was a twelve-hour gap in her memory from the time of the accident that no one could seem to breach.
She'd been sent to therapists, even a hypnotist. She'd been sworn to secrecy about that one. The police didn't want to admit that they'd sent her to someone who practiced something that seemed more like a magician or circus performer than a hard-science doctor.
In the end it didn't matter.
Nothing.
Just dead air between her ears where her memory should be.
She knew that the main damage done to her body could be fixed, but the mystery of the brain? Well, even the handful of neurologists that they'd sent her to gave her different versions of the same helpless look.
Losing that time by itself didn't bother her, but she had a number of cases in various stages of prosecution that would require her to testify. While she knew those cases like the back of her hand, the prosecutors had given her a warning.
The defense attorneys from those cases had already sent in motions to dismiss. They were planning to introduce her memory loss to bar her from testifying.
"After all," she heard her boss talking to her in her head, "it'll be a tough sell to a jury that you've got your shit together if you're missing half a day from a little bump on the head."
Well, it had been a little more than a bump, but when you're a woman in a job traditionally considered a man's job, pointing out her back injury could seem like she was claiming she had cramps. When she bumped into other State Police or some of the local Los Alamos officers, they'd tell her she didn't "look all that bad," or that she'd "be fine. You just have to get back in the saddle and on the street."
She understood the feelings and sentiments.
In the Cueva household, when they'd fallen as children they were told, "You're okay." If they were bleeding and could walk under their own power her parents told them to, "Go wash it off and we'll bandage it."
It was a good way to grow up.
Get up under your own power. Go do something about it.
Even when her brother Diego had broken his arm playing soccer at school, he'd been so used to sucking it up that the nurse didn't see a reason to call the ambulance to take him to the hospital. Smiling, she remembered her mother telling her father the story. "I went to pick him up from school and his arm looked like a Tetris piece! The nurse had the nerve to say that his arm 'might' be broken and that he 'seemed' fine." The sarcasm had dripped from her mother's tongue. "Diego was in shock! I don't know how that nurse got her job."
Diego.
She lifted her hand to dash away the tears that came when she thought about him.
The eldest of the four Cueva kids, he'd gone into Law Enforcement first. He'd taken to it like the proverbial duck, finding his way as if he'd always been doing it.
Then again, they'd all grown up in and around police facilities.
What else were they going to do for work?
A life of crime?
But Diego, he'd also been the first to die.
A traffic stop gone bad.
All they knew at first was that he'd called in the traffic stop, run the plates on the car.
The car was clean, but only because the owner of the car hadn't realized that it had been stolen, yet.
The rest of the story was told on Diego's bodycam.
The driver, a pretty woman, had started to answer his questions and was pretty compliant. It was the man in the passenger seat that was the problem.
He'd been fidgety from the beginning, but they'd all had innocent people go a little crazy during a traffic stop. The pressure. The horror stories in the news and online?
It all made for misconceptions and crazy.
Diego had pulled his taser and directed the man to put his hands on the dash.
The man answered back. Arguing that he didn't have to, that he's an American National and didn't have to follow the law.
Everything had gone about as well as it could until the woman lifted a hand from the console.
Aubree had seen the video over and over. It played on the local news and had become viral on YouTube given the connection to the sovereign citizen doctrine that the two suspects had repeated over and over.
Pushing herself up from the toilet, she made her way over to the bed and dropped down onto the surface of it with a groan.
She laid her head down and tried to turn off the part of her brain that stored that particular memory, but it was no good. She might be missing half a day, but it wasn't the memory of her brother's death at the wrong end of a snub nose revolver fired into his neck. They heard the shot, watching the flare of light from the barrel of the gun and then they heard her brother cry out before the bodycam pointed up at the sky. The last words he said were twisted up in the blood rushing up and out of his veins.
And those criminals?
The reason they gave for drawing a gun on her brother? Killing him?
Well, the boyfriend had a warrant for unpaid child support.
He thought he'd end up going to jail for it and his new girlfriend? She didn't want to pay to bail him out.
So the best thing to do, she said, was trying to scare off the 'fucking pig.'
Aubree rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling above her head.
It was seven feet away from her face.
She knew it, having asked the question before agreeing to stay at The Refuge.
If it had been a top bunk or something like that, she didn't think she could get to sleep at all.
Having that much clearance over her head meant that she could at least fall asleep.
Staying asleep, now that was a different thing.
The pill she'd taken to get through the car ride to the campus had worn off a long time ago and she'd avoided taking another just for bed.
It had been a while since she hadn't been under its calming influence, but she knew she needed to try.
That was another thing she couldn't take with her when she went back to work.
Sedatives.
Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms around her pillow and curled up on her side and willed herself to sleep.
Ruben didn't look up when the door to the office opened up. He didn't need to know who it was coming in.
To access the room with the files, you had to have a code.
So whoever it was coming into the office in the dead of night was someone who belonged there.
"Up late?"
He smiled, at least a half of one. "Hey, Brick."
Brick was what they called Drake Vandine, the man who ran The Refuge, and yes, his boss.
Brick pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. "I saw the light on and came by. I knew it was you based on your code to access the records room."
Ruben looked at his boss. "Is there a problem?"
Sitting back in the chair, Brick held his hands up as if he was warding off Ruben’s words.
"No problem at all, Leon."
Ruben relaxed a little at the use of his Army name. Most of the time he felt like it was a better fit for him than his birth name.
"It's just that I've never seen you in here at this hour."
Ruben nodded, hearing the truth in the man's words.
"I met one of the new clients today. An officer with the State Police."
It only took a moment for Brick to recognize who it was. "Aubree Cueva. Injured in a car crash. Spinal injury and memory loss."
"She was touring the grounds with Henley today and we had a chance to talk." He shook his head. "Not really talk so much as get introduced to each other. I think I'm going to get her in the pool. At least she showed interest in the idea even if she can't swim."
Brick found that entertaining. Or at least his arched brow gave that impression. "You're up on your life guarding skills, right?"
Ruben nodded. "You know I'm certified in all of the necessary areas."
"And more, if memory serves."
And it did.
Ruben had gone in for advanced certification and training, taking his job at The Refuge very seriously.
"She had a walking device and didn't really use it until she was tired, but when they left, she was leaning on it quite a bit. I wanted to look at her medical records and make sure that I can do what's best to help her regain her strength and mobility."
Brick reached out and moved the file so he could look at it.
Ruben knew that Brick had already seen the file before, but there was no harm in letting him see it again, even if Ruben felt a pull toward Aubree. He knew that Brick was just trying to help.
Besides, there was nothing that said Aubree was going to work with him on the regular. She'd just promised to come down and try the pool. If that didn't work out, Brick would be involved in helping to design the best program to help her succeed.
"She had back surgery like you."
"Yeah, I saw that." Ruben used his fingertips to draw a paper out of the stack in the folder. A printed image of an x-ray post-surgery. "It doesn't look like mine where I'm basically a pin cushion, but she had two discs replaced."
Brick looked over the x-ray and nodded. "Did you see the photos of the accident?"
Ruben hesitated for a moment. "No. I didn't want to see... her in pain."
Brick picked up the file folder and turned to the back where they had a clasp closed envelope. "She's not in the photos, but I did ask her father to include photographs of the car." Brick released the clasp and slid the photos out a few inches.
Ruben watched his boss as he selected the photo he wanted to show him.
"Here."
Brick laid the photo out on the table and turned it so that Ruben was looking at it straight on.
As his eyes moved over the image, Brick explained what he was looking at.
"Her car went over an embankment off the side of the road. From the damage, it looks like it pitched forward landing on the front end and then fell forward, landing on its roof. The windshield, you can't see it in the photo, but it was cracked from top to bottom, spider-webbed across the surface. It's a miracle that it didn't splinter because she laid on the windshield for hours before she was found. I've seen windshield damage like that shred flesh, but somehow it held together.
"There's more about her accident, but that she'll have to tell you if she wants to. I just wanted you to see the physical damage to the car, so you'll know the physical aspect of her injuries. But we both know..."
"That's just the tip of the iceberg." Ruben finished Brick's thought. "Yeah. I know."
Brick clapped a hand on his shoulder. "We all know, Leon. I just wanted to remind you. I have a feeling that this client is going to be different from the others."
Ruben looked up at Brick as the other man stood and headed for the door.
He was lost in his thoughts a moment later and when he sat up to close the folder, he noticed that he was alone in the room again.
He knew that Brick wasn't trying to worry him. He wasn't like that. He wanted the best for their clients and the staff. But he also knew Brick well enough to know that he meant what he said.
Ruben closed the file and put it back in the file cabinet for their current clients. He had to get some sleep so he'd be ready for Aubree's visit to the pool. He knew her reservations, but it wasn't swimming that he had in mind for her. She needed strength and flexibility to get back on the force.
He shut the door of the cabinet and stared off into the void.
It was strange, how worried he was for her.
Oh, he worried about all of their clients. You have to care about them to work with them and have them be successful, but there was more to this feeling inside of him. Maybe it was what Brick said. They'd had similar surgeries even if the cause had been worlds away from each other. Maybe that was it.
Or maybe it was the way she held herself.
She'd been determined to hold onto her pride and walk away, but then she'd given up all pretense and opened her walker.
He knew that she wasn't someone who gave in very easily. He could tell that from the energy around her.
The energy from her.
Working with Aubree was going to be something special.
He knew that for certain.
He just hoped that he could bring her the kind of healing she needed.
Aubree woke with a start.
Her first thought was pain.
The next, confusion.
Where was she?
Why couldn't she move her arm?
That's when she felt the panic settle in.
Trapped.
She was trapped!
Back in the car.
Back in the wreck.
"God, no."
Her heart felt like it was going to tear free of her chest and explode. Her hands-
No, her hand.
She could make a fist with her fingers and the sensation caught her by surprise.
Fabric.
Cool to the touch.
Cotton?
Cotton.
Not dirt.
Not rocks.
Fabric.
Sheets.
Her eyes snapped open, and everything shifted.
She knew where she was, but her heart was still pounding in her chest.
Her skin was cold and clammy.
Her mind a jumble of thoughts but one swam to the surface.
She had to get up.
She had to get to the bathroom.
She didn't want to throw up in the bed.
Been there.
Done that.
It took forever to get the smell out.
Shuddering, she used the motion to work herself free of her blankets.
How she'd gotten wrapped up in them, she'd never know, but that didn't matter now that she was in it.
It took a lot to work her way free and even more when she had to get to the bathroom.
It left her shaking and gasping as she emptied whatever was in her stomach into the toilet bowl.
When she was done, she laid down on the bathroom floor. Feeling the cool kiss of the tiles against her cheek, she fell back asleep praying that she could sleep the rest of the night through.
She was exhausted.
And she was tired of running scared.
She had to change her future and hoped that The Refuge was the place to do it.