Chapter Three
Adam
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“HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” Elsa withdrew with the glass of water she’d offered me. Unable to lift my head from the pillow for more than a few moments at a time, I’d been reduced to drinking from a straw like a bloody infant. “Have you slept?”
“Ein wenig,” I murmured, pleased to see her smile at my German. “I managed a little sleep.”
“That is good.” She put down the glass and checked the machine reading my blood pressure. Slim and blonde, she wasn’t my normal type, but I was happy to have somebody so easy on the eye looking after me. “And your memory. How is that now?”
Closing my eyes, I contemplated her question. What did I recall from before I walked in the desolate fog and had woken up in the hospital with her?
“Do you remember where you were before you were brought here?” she prompted.
“I...” I focused on the window beside my bed, watching a small bird wander along the windowsill. “I don’t know why I’m in Germany.”
“Switzerland,” she corrected.
“What?” I glanced her way, regretting the haste with which I’d managed the deed.
“You’re in Zurich, Adam.”
Her lips tugged, but that time, the gesture expressed her pity, not her delight, and my stomach lurched at the contrast. I was a man of importance who wasn’t used to being pitied.
I hoped my strength would return soon so I could resort to seeing the flicker of admiration and fear in other people’s gazes.
“Zurich?” That location made even less sense.
Why would I have been in Switzerland? Ian wouldn’t have sent me there on foreign business. He needed me in Fortorus, rolling out Rehome.
“It’s okay.” Her tone was consoling. “The doctor thinks you will remember. We must just be patient.”
“But why am I here?” I glanced around the room as though the sterile décor would have the answers for me. Fortunately, the pretty nurse had managed to persuade the officer outside to remove my handcuff, but nothing else had been explained since I’d woken up. “Do you know?”
“I am an emergency nurse.” She jotted down some digits on a chart as she went on. “It is my job to help my patients, not to know their backgrounds or why they are here.”
“Of course.” My hand rose to rub at the side of my head.
“Do you have a headache?” she asked, apparently concerned about the prospect. “You are booked in for an MRI later today, but I can pull that scan forward.”
“No,” I assured her. “There’s no pain.”
“Okay.” She sounded unconvinced. “Let’s MRI you now anyway.”
“Whatever you say, Nurse.”
It was unusual to be dictated to by a woman, but unlike my glorious leader, I had no problem with female authority.
My mother had always run our family with stern intent, and her discipline had never done me any harm.
I smiled at the thought of the woman who’d raised me, hoping Ian’s most recent crackdown hadn’t extended to women of her age.
Either way, she would be safe because my position protected her.
“I’ll arrange the MRI in the next hour.”
“Fine.” I nodded slowly.
Whatever had landed me in hospital, I needed the medics to make sure I had a full bill of health before I traveled home.
As soon as I was back in Britain, I’d ask Armitage to give me a once-over anyway, but I didn’t want to risk the journey if there was any chance of my blood pressure spiking again.
“If only all my patients were as obliging.” She chuckled as she stopped to review my heart rate.
“I try,” I replied.
“After your scan, I shall find some breakfast for you, and then the doctor will be back to see you.”
I had the sense she was talking more to herself than to me.
“After that, I’m afraid the officer outside will need to speak to you, as well.”
“The officer?” The beeping of the machine sped up as my pulse picked up its pace.
“The police.” Her frown conveyed how little she’d wanted to tell me the news.
“Yes, the doctor mentioned the police before, but I still don’t know why.”
Bewilderment ricocheted in my mind. Why would the police want to see me? I was a dignitary from another country, not a common criminal.
Approaching my bedside again, she gently patted the back of my hand. “You must not worry on these things. Think of your health.”
“I just don’t remember why the police need to see me.” If a local officer had been sent to escort me from the airport, I’d never known one to cuff me before.
“It is not for me to say.” She sighed.
“Please,” I murmured. “Maybe you can help me start to put the pieces of my memory back together.”
“Well...” she hesitated, her otherwise flawless brow creasing. “I know only that you were in custody when you became unwell.”
Wait, what?
“Custody?” I could barely even get the word out.
“Yes.” Her reticence continued. “And already I have said too much. Wait there while I confirm the MRI.”
With a final pat to my hand, she turned and stalked out of the room, leaving me alone with only my puzzled thoughts.
Why the hell was I in custody? And why was I in Zurich?
Closing my eyes, I concentrated on trying to identify at least one strand of the answers. What could I remember about being in custody? Anything? Presumably, the Swiss police had arrested me, but when and how had that happened?
In the bright light of the hospital room, nothing was obvious, but behind my lids, there were shards of potential clarity. Slivers of what might have been memories darted in my mind’s eye, my hand tightening on the blankets as a partial scene was finally revealed.
In the center of the disturbing picture was me, on my knees in a tiny hallway, surrounded by multiple armed officers.
I couldn’t have said I remembered the event, yet there were fragments of the experience buried in my psyche, as though I had lived through the deed before my brain had decided to bury it away from plain sight.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “What the hell happened to me?”
I didn’t recognize the hallway I was kneeling in, and, as the extent of my awareness expanded, I realized there was a brunette wrapped in what looked like a bed sheet standing beside me. Her expression spoke of concern as my rights were read, and she stepped closer to hold my shoulder.
Eyes fluttering open, I glanced to that same shoulder. It was covered with an unsightly hospital gown, but in the mental image, I’d been topless, the touch of her caress by the staircase almost tangible on my skin as I thought of her.
“Who are you?”
My eyelids closed again, my focus trying to draw the image back into my mind. Relief reverberated through me when the scene reappeared, and the ease with which it came reassured me that the experience was indeed a real recollection, and not just a figment of my imagination.
Freezing the frame in my mind, I focused on the brown-haired woman with her hand on my shoulder, taking in as much detail about her as I could recall.
Long brown hair that almost reached her shoulders created a veil around her face, and she had a sympathetic smile and a body that seemed almost too slim to be healthy.
How do I know her?
When no answer bubbled to the surface, I relaxed, allowing the memory to move forward. Some of the details of the place and the police were sketchy, but my attention was so fixated on the brunette that it hardly mattered.
She meant something.
I didn’t know how I knew, but I did, and focusing on her seemed entirely natural.
She’d stayed by my side in that hallway, and while I couldn’t remember what the charges against me had been, I did recall how upset she’d seemed, and the way my heart had pounded when she’d slipped past the officers with the guns to stand in front of me.
Face to face with her, I’d stared straight into her compelling gaze, and even though I’d known we only had a few seconds before the police took me away, every fiber of my being was engrossed in what she was about to say.
Holding my breath, I concentrated, sensing that if I just paid enough attention, I could recall those precious words and piece together another part of the puzzle of my identity.
She leaned closer then, the scent of her hair catching in my nostrils. I remembered how badly I wanted to reach for her, but my hands had been cuffed behind my back, preventing the deed.
“Tell me.” I blew out a breath in the hospital bed, trying not to lose my patience at the fragmented memories. “Just tell me what she said.”
I knew instinctively that whatever those words had been, they were vital.
Then, just as I was about to ball my hands in frustration and give up, the words she’d whispered resounded in my head, bouncing around until they were all I could hear in the world.
“I love you.”