Chapter Five
Caroline
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ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER door, except that time, the thin piece of wood preventing me from entering the room was based at the hospital instead of the police station. Fatigue gnawed at my brain, the tiredness combining with my boredom to goad me, but there was nothing I could do save for wait.
Wait for Kaspar, wait for Michel, wait for news about Harper.
“Another coffee, Miss Craness?”
Michel sounded even more exhausted than I felt, the bags under his eyes heavier than the night before. For a split second, a twinge of culpable guilt stabbed at me for those bags. Michel was only doing his job, and I knew I was, at least in part, the reason for his over-tiredness.
“No, thank you.” I dismissed the idea with a flick of my hand. “Any more caffeine and I’ll be flying around Zurich.”
He smiled wearily. “I understand.”
“You grab one, though,” I told him. “I know you didn’t get much sleep, either.”
I’d managed to achieve about four hours of rest in the end before adrenaline at the thought of seeing Harper again had splintered my sleep and woken me. I suspected Michel had gotten even less rest.
“You will wait here?” His tone was more imploring than commanding, a timbre that resonated with me from the months of my captivity I’d endured.
During that time, I’d had no choice but to comply, but in the white-washed hospital hallway, I did have a choice.
Even as a refugee, I could leave the corridor if I chose to.
“I’ll wait.” I had nowhere else to go, and I wasn’t leaving until I’d seen Harper.
“Okay.” He rose from his chair and blew out a breath. “I shall be back as soon as I can.”
“Take your time.” I yawned as he wandered away.
We seemed to have been waiting outside the room for hours already, but predictably, I’d lost track of time and had no way of knowing how long we’d been there. At any rate, there was nowhere else in the universe I wanted to be than back with the man I loved.
Harper was my anchor, and without him, I could sense myself drifting. I needed his calm authority to soothe me, and his caress to keep me strong. I didn’t feel whole without him.
I startled as the door swung open, leaping to my feet to greet the women who had left the room. The one Kaspar had told me was Harper’s doctor swept past me without so much as a word, but the other—a nurse—paused with a sympathetic smile.
“Miss Craness?” Her voice was quiet.
“Y-yes.”
I had no idea how she knew who I was, but I had to trust that her stopping to speak was a positive sign. Perhaps Harper had mentioned me. I certainly hoped so.
“Be gentle with Mr. Harper.” She looked me up and down, though I couldn’t tell what her expression conveyed. “He still needs to recover.”
“Is he okay?” I peered at the partially open doorway. No one had given me an update on Harper’s condition, and all I knew was that he’d woken up. The lack of information was absurdly frustrating.
“Miss Craness.” Kaspar’s harder tone drew my attention from the nurse’s warning, and I took a step toward the officer as she closed the door.
“You can see him now.” She signaled to the room. “But I must tell you, he’s suffering from a bout of amnesia and doesn’t appear to remember much about you.”
“What?” In that moment, the Earth beneath my feet shifted.
Amnesia?
Why had no one mentioned that to me before?
My focus flitted between the two women in disbelief, as though the answers would come from gawping alone. “What do you mean, he can’t remember?”
I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Harper—the man who’d saved me and put his entire career on the line in the process—had lost his memory. How could he not remember me? The way we’d fled and everything that had happened to us since we left Britain?
He wouldn’t know our shared history, what we’d sacrificed for the other to get to that point, and critically, that we adored each other. Without that bedrock of understanding, there was nowhere for me to go and no means with which to go anywhere.
I was, quite literally, nothing without him.
“His memories are coming back slowly.” The nurse threw Kaspar a disparaging look as she joined our conversation. “We all just need to be patient. He needs time.”
“Oh, God.” Panic surged through my body, prodding at my disbelief and morphing it into despair.
I’d been so fucking relieved when I’d heard that Harper was okay, yet it appeared that the original diagnosis was relative. If he couldn’t remember me, then was he even the same man I recalled?
“Come on.” It was the nurse who wrapped a supportive arm around my shoulder and guided me toward the door. “I’ll take you to him. He wants to see you.”
“I can manage,” Kaspar added indignantly.
“I’d say you have managed enough, Officer.” The nurse offered Kaspar another withering expression. “What these people need is compassion.”
I didn’t fight as she steered me past Kaspar and opened the door, but my belly clenched with concern when we finally entered the room. The small, clinical space was just as I’d expected, but my focus fell immediately to the man in the bed at the center of it.
“Adam.” The nurse employed the same soft tone as she coaxed me close to the edge of his bed. “This is Miss Craness.”
“Caroline.” My voice was croaky as I corrected her. “I’m Caroline.”
“Caroline.” His brow rose as he tried my name for size, the tiny tug at his lips the only sign that he recognized me at all.
“I shall leave you.” The nurse looked from one of us to the other. “Press the button if you need me, Adam.”
“Danke.” His gaze followed her out of the door before it landed back on me. “You were with me when I was arrested, Caroline.”
“Yes.” I wanted to reach for his hand and feel the weight of those long, graceful fingers on mine, but somehow, I didn’t dare. If he hardly knew me, what would he make of such an overt sign of affection?
“And the officer tells me that we love each other.” He nodded toward the end of the bed, and I turned to find Kaspar waiting sheepishly by the closed door.
Catching her eyes briefly, I glanced back to the man who’d systematically turned my entire life upside down. From his part in the architecture of Jackson’s evil plans, to the way he’d plucked me from Mitchell’s clutches, everything he’d touched had irrefutably changed me.
“Do you often need other people to tell you when you love someone?” Sir.
I bit back on the final word, knowing its ramifications would be meaningless on a man who didn’t fully know who I was to him. Instead, I took his signature gesture and used it against him, arching my eyebrow at him until he responded.
“No.” The chuckle I’d heard a thousand times reverberated over me, reminding me that the man I loved was still there, even if he’d taken a temporary hiatus. “This is the first time. Sit down.”
He motioned to the edge of his bed, the authority in his voice making my feet move even before my brain had time to engage.
In that one simple request, he reminded me of the man I’d first fallen into the orbit of; the one who’d captured me in more ways than one.
The man in the bed was still the Adam Harper I loved.
Perching beside him, I swallowed down my anxiety. “So, aside from your arrest, you don’t remember me?”
“I hadn’t,” he hesitated, an uncharacteristic show of self-doubt glinting in his fabulous blue eyes. “But having you here is helping. I do remember more.”
“What do you remember?”
My heart hammered at both the reality of his memory loss and the prospect of helping him to regain the precious recollections.
In that moment, all of our prior challenges seemed less serious; being on the run, being taken into Swiss custody, and even our uncertain future.
All that mattered was helping him to connect the dots and know me again.
His lips curled. “I recall what I called you.”
The racing organ in my chest skipped a beat and, reflexively, I leaned in closer. “Really?”
“What was that?” His voice was softer than usual, but it held the same domineering resonance I remembered, the prompt accelerating my already galloping pulse.
“Ah, so you remember what I call you, as well, Sir?”
Mirroring his smile, I was shocked at how little embarrassment there was about using the title in Kaspar’s presence.
In the face of the dizzying dynamic Harper and I had created, her judgment about us was meaningless.
So long as she kept her word and expedited his impunity from prosecution, nothing except cajoling him back from oblivion was important.
“I remember.” His lips stretched wider. “Looking at your face has brought a whole lot of memories crashing back, little girl.”
“What memories?” Buoyed by his immediate progress, I gave in to my need and grasped his nearest hand. “Tell me.”
“So demanding.” His laughter was heartier that time. “You aren’t like that at Fortorus.”
“No, I wasn’t.” My tone was more reticent that time, something about the way he’d expressed his memory jarring in my mind.
He’d referred to Fortorus in the present tense, which was an exceptionally strange way to talk about a place we’d both fled from with little more than only the clothes on our backs. “Life was different then, Sir.”
“Then?” His brow creased. “When?”
“When we were at Fortorus.” I slowed down my words, wanting to ensure he grasped what I was saying. “We left there, remember? You asked Macmillan to meet us, but he didn’t make it, so we drove to Felixstowe in the middle of the night to meet Andrew.”
“I remember Macmillan.” His tone was contemplative. “I like him.”
“Yes, you trusted him.” I squeezed his fingers, encouraging him to go on. “That’s why you worried so much when he didn’t turn up at the meeting point.”
“I don’t know an Andrew, though.” He looked to me for clarification.
“He was Macmillan’s contact, Sir. That’s why you believed he’d help us, and he did. He let us board his trawler boat, Carla, and she took us across the Channel to the Netherlands.”
He took a deep breath. “I would trust someone Macmillan endorsed, but I don’t remember the journey.” The crease in his brow deepened. “I’m sorry, little girl.”
“It’s okay.” Emotion rose at his admission, burning tears in my eyes. I could tell how hard he was trying to recall and could only imagine how frustrating it must have been for him not to remember.
“If we landed in the Netherlands, then why are we in Zurich?” He peered around the small white room.
“You wanted to come here,” I reminded him. “Zurich is where you stored your—”
“Deposit box.” He finished the sentence for me with a smile. “Now that, I recall. That has all my—”
I grasped his hand harder, abruptly cutting him off.
“Hey!” Wounded eyes met mine. “What was that?”
“They don’t know.” I mouthed the words, tipping my head back lightly to convey who I was talking about.
His expression softened, his gaze darting briefly in Kaspar’s direction. “Oh, okay.”
“Is everything all right?” Kaspar spoke up for the first time since I’d entered the room.
“Yes.” Harper nodded. “I’m just remembering more.”
“That is good.” Kaspar sounded superficially pleased, but I had to wonder what she’d caught of our exchange.
“Has the officer told you why you’re in custody?” I glanced back to meet her knowing gaze.
“Not yet,” Harper answered.
Stepping forward, Kaspar cleared her throat. “I arrested you on behalf of the ICC for international human rights violations.”
“Shit.” His eyes were wide as I turned back to him.
“Shit, indeed,” I concurred. “But the two of you struck a deal. Your impunity from prosecution in return for your full cooperation. Isn’t that right, Officer?”
“That is right.” She nodded. “We are waiting for The Hague to confirm that status.”
“So,” he paused, as though his mind was trying to keep up with the unraveling information. “You and I are on the run, little girl.”
“We were.” My thumb grazed the back of his hand. “Before the police caught up with us.”
His free hand rose to capture mine, and when he gazed my way, there was a warmth in his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. “Officer, do you think Caroline and I can have a moment alone?”
“Well.” Kaspar shook her head. “Until the ICC confirm, you are still in my custody, Commander General.”
“I understand.” He straightened in the bed. “But I am going nowhere in the short-term. You can wait outside the door and still have custody of me.”
Following his lead, I twisted to face her. “Please,” I begged. “Just a few minutes. There are so many things Adam doesn’t yet remember, and I’m sure I can help him.”
“Hmmm.” Her tone remained unconvinced. “I do not like the idea of you two plotting.”
“Not plotting,” I implored. “I love him, and I want to make sure he’s okay. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Well, ja...”
“And you don’t need to worry about us absconding. Hasn’t Adam cooperated fully with your investigation?” I went on, sensing I might have her on the back foot. “Even if he could run—which he clearly can’t—there’s no reason for him to, is there?”
“That is true.” Her shoulders fell. “But as I recall, the last time I gave you five minutes with Mr. Harper, he ended up almost dying.”
“The doctor tells me my blood pressure is much steadier now,” Harper intervened.
“And I promise not to over-excite him.” I bit back on the chuckle that threatened to escape at the thought. I hadn’t even considered doing anything untoward since entering the room, but the gleam in Harper’s blue eyes then spoke of other possibilities.
“I should hope not.” She tutted as though she were an exasperated schoolmistress. “Okay, Miss Craness. I will give you five minutes, but after that, I will ask that you give Mr. Harper some rest.”
“Okay.” I didn’t much love her terms, but I’d agree to them if it got us what we wanted.
Nodding, Kaspar sighed. “I shall be right outside.”