Chapter 29
Jada
My stomach rolled before I even opened my eyes.
I swallowed hard, blinked once, and then again, forcing my eyes open. A ceiling with wooden beams. Walls with faded pine paneling. A hardwood floor that needed to be swept. Light leaked in through curtains pulled over a large window.
I rolled to my side, and the world tilted hard. Nausea slammed into me, and I shut my eyes. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from gagging.
Think. Think.
But once it all came back to me, I wished it hadn’t.
Johnson. Kelly.
Their faces popped into my head—their suits, smug smiles, their questions at the station, barging into my cabin, how they’d looked at me, like I wasn’t even a person, just a means to an end.
“Oh God,” I whispered silently.
They’d taken me. Drugged me. Brought me here. My chest tightened as I remembered more— that note . What was Hunter going to think?
I squeezed my eyes tighter, breathing through my nose as another wave of nausea hit.
He’d think I left. Walked away without a second thought. No warning. No explanation. Just…gone. Like the nights we’d spent holed up together hadn’t meant a damn thing. Like I wasn’t falling for him harder than I knew how to handle.
He’d see that stupid note—short, cold, impersonal—and he’d believe it. Of course he would. Because who writes a goodbye like that unless they mean it? Especially after my freak-out at the family dinner.
He wouldn’t be looking for me. Nobody would be looking for me because they would think I didn’t want to be found.
I heard voices just outside the door. Muffled but close. A second later, the door opened. I kept my eyes shut.
“I’m telling you, she looked like she was waking up,” Johnson muttered, low and tense. “Things are going to hell, man.”
“Relax.” Kelly’s voice had that oily smugness that made my skin crawl. “Lachlan Calloway is a nosy, small-town deputy. Of course he called to confirm who we were. Standard practice. Doesn’t mean anything. He’s nosy, not psychic.”
“I don’t know, man.”
“You have got to calm the fuck down.” A pause. “We went back into the office today. Everyone saw us. We’re golden—alibi airtight. We can do whatever we need to with her, and it won’t come back on us.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“Even if someone asks why we stopped by to see her, what’s it prove? We had questions about Ard. It was reasonable we’d want to talk to her.” Kelly kept talking, calm and bored, like they were discussing a sandwich order. “Deputy Dumbass forcing us to come to the station to question her just adds another layer of authenticity.”
“I just don’t like it. Too many people have seen us with her,” Johnson responded.
“But we had reason for it. That’s why it works. We’ll get the money then hide the body where nobody will ever find it.”
My pulse thundered in my ears and I wanted to get up and run, but I didn’t move. Just kept breathing. Shallow but even. I couldn’t let them know I was awake.
Johnson was pacing. “I guess so.”
“As far as everyone else is concerned, she was just someone with memory trauma who ran off and was never heard from again. And besides, who would think to look for her here anyway?”
Here ? Where was here ? I blinked slowly, careful not to move my head, and forced myself to look around more.
A couch, a table and chairs, a door.
One thing about not having a lot of memories is that it crystallized the ones you did have. I knew this place. It was where I—the new me—had been born.
We were back in the cabin where Alan had injected me with the memory drug. Where Hunter had saved me. Where everything had started and, evidently, would end—if I didn’t find a way out of this.
“You awake, sweetheart?” Kelly’s voice slid like grease down my spine. “I think you are.”
I stayed still. Maybe if I didn’t breathe, didn’t flinch?—
A fist tangled in my hair and yanked me upright so fast my vision whited out.
“Let’s find out,” Kelly growled, dragging me across the floor by my hair. My feet scrambled uselessly for traction, but I couldn’t stop him.
He hauled me across the room and slammed me down in a wooden chair at the table. My body pitched forward. I tried to suck in a breath but instead gagged. Violently.
Dry heaves tore through me. Nothing came up—there was nothing to come up—but my stomach kept spasming, my throat burning like acid. Behind me, Kelly laughed.
“Damn, she’s a mess.”
“Thought you were gonna puke on my boots.” Johnson sounded almost disappointed. “That’d be rude.”
I forced myself upright, swallowing against the bile that still clawed at the back of my throat. My hands shook against the tabletop, but I made myself meet his eyes.
“Where is the money?” Kelly asked, stepping into view. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Alan gave you the five hundred thousand. You were supposed to keep it safe. So, where is it?”
“I don’t—I don’t have it.” My voice cracked. “Alan never gave me money. He took money from me. Cleared out the only bank account we shared. He never mentioned half a million dollars to me, much less gave it to me—I don’t have many memories, but I know that. I don’t have anything.”
Johnson’s hand moved so fast I didn’t see it coming. The backhand snapped my head to the side, pain blooming across my cheek like fire. My split lip cracked open, and I tasted blood.
I blinked against the tears blurring my vision. I would not cry for them.
“I’m telling the truth,” I said through clenched teeth, even though I didn’t know if that was accurate. “Even if he had given me anything…I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember.”
Kelly leaned forward. “Try harder.”
“He injected me with that drug,” I spat. “I don’t remember anything before this cabin about a month ago. Nothing. Do you get it? Nothing. If he gave me money, he took away my ability to remember where it is.”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “Good thing we have the antidote then, isn’t it?”
Shit. In everything else going on, I’d forgotten about the vial they had.
“That’s how we found you, you know. I was watching at Dr. Beckett’s place. Saw you show up there. If you hadn’t been with Hunter Everett, we would’ve grabbed you right then. This way worked out better anyway.”
Johnson pulled out the vial. “Let’s quit fucking around and do this.”
“Wait.” I held out a hand. “If you met Dr. Beckett, you know that the antidote doesn’t always work. It could kill me or make me mentally unstable like him. It’s not worth it.”
Kelly’s grin widened, cruel and calm. “I think we’re willing to take the risk.”
Of course they were. They weren’t the ones who had everything to lose.
Johnson clamped his hand around my wrist like a vise, dragging my arm up to the table. Then he yanked my sleeve up past my elbow.
“No,” I rasped. “Wait—just wait a second.”
Kelly was already crouched beside a duffel bag. I heard the soft clink of glass, the hiss of a seal breaking. He was prepping the antidote.
“You got sixty seconds,” Johnson growled.
“I’m just—just trying to understand,” I said, my breath coming in short, panicked bursts. “Why would Alan give me five hundred thousand dollars?”
Kelly stood and flicked the syringe with his finger. Bubbles rose. He looked almost pleased.
“Because that was the deal.”
I blinked. “What deal?”
Johnson leaned in, mouth too close to my ear. “We got him out of prison.”
“Early parole,” Kelly added, strolling closer, the syringe steady in his hand. “He wasn’t supposed to get out for another two years. We greased the wheels. Worked some angles. Made things happen. He was supposed to hand it over the night he drugged you. But dumbass got rearrested instead. Screwed the whole timeline.”
I didn’t have any memory of it myself, but one thing I’d found out about Alan Ard—he was a liar and a manipulator. There probably had never actually been any money.
But these men weren’t going to believe me even if I told them that. If anything, knowing they’d been so openly duped was just going to make them angrier.
Kelly crouched in front of me, his face inches from mine, waving the syringe in my face. “We paid Alan a visit the day before he died. He told us everything. Said he’d given you the money but then panicked. Thought you might run off with it. So he used the memory drug. Said it was safer that way. Said once we got him out again, he’d make sure we got our payment.”
Johnson squeezed my arm until I cried out. “Then he up and got himself killed.”
Kelly straightened, the syringe glinting in the dusty light. “Lucky for us, we didn’t need him anymore. We just needed you and a way to get you your memory back.”
I didn’t know if Alan had scammed them or not. Everything I’d found out about him over the past few weeks said he had. But maybe… maybe it was true. Maybe I had five hundred thousand dollars tucked away somewhere and didn’t even know it.
Either way, I was screwed. If the drug didn’t work, they’d kill me sooner. If it did work, and I had the money—a big if—they’d kill me after they got it.
Either way, the result was going to be the same. I would be dead.
“Please,” I whispered, my voice raw. “You don’t know what that stuff’ll do to me.”
Kelly stared at the syringe still poised in his hand like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t about to rip through whatever fragile grip I had left on myself. Johnson’s hand on my arm was unyielding. A clamp of heat and bruising pressure.
“Dr. Beckett,” I went on, more desperate now. “He warned us. He said the antidote doesn’t always work. It might bring the memories back, or it might kill me. It might make me worse. Brain damage. Coma. You could turn me into a vegetable.”
Kelly shrugged. “Not our problem.” He was close now. Too close.
I squirmed, bucked hard in the chair, but Johnson didn’t so much as flinch. His grip only tightened. His other arm snaked around my chest, pinning me in place.
“No,” I begged. “Don’t—don’t do this. Please?—”
Kelly grabbed my wrist. Strong, sure, practiced. I whimpered as the needle pierced my skin. The sharp sting made me jerk, but it was already too late. I felt the cool push of liquid flooding into my bloodstream. Cold. Unnatural. Wrong.
Terror clawed its way up my throat. I didn’t care if my old memories came back. I didn’t want them. Whatever life I had before this cabin, before Hunter, it was already gone. Dead and buried.
But my new memories?
The nights I’d spent wrapped in Hunter’s arms. His gravel-rough voice in the dark. Watching him work with the animals. His silly smirk when he said something just to make me smile.
I didn’t want to lose any of that. God, I couldn’t lose that.
I held on to his face in my mind like a lifeline, the green of his eyes burned into my skull, the memory of his hand on my jaw just before he kissed me for the first time.
I clung to it.
And then everything went black.