Sudden Recall. Lisa Phillips

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СКАЧАТЬ know my name.”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know anything. I didn’t even know my name until Aunt Karen told me.”

      “You don’t have an aunt Karen. You said you had an uncle Bill, but that was it. Or did you lie about that, too, along with everything else?”

      Her lip trembled. “Please just tell me your name.”

      Parker couldn’t believe he was actually going to placate her. “Jackson Parker. Most everyone calls me Parker.”

      Which she already knew. Only his dad had ever called him Jackson, and he remembered his mom calling him Jack. That was why he only ever told people his name was Parker. He wanted as much separation as possible between who he was now and that scared kid who never thought he’d get away from his lazy, drunk father still pining for a woman who hadn’t wanted either of them.

      She looked down at the badge on his belt. “A...US marshal?”

      He nodded. “Fugitive apprehension task force.”

      “Am I a criminal?”

      “No. Why would you think that?”

      “Because I don’t know who I am. I have amnesia. I don’t remember anything before a year ago, Parker. And the year before that I was in a coma.”

      Amnesia? Parker stared at her, dumbfounded.

      She was looking at him like maybe he could help her sort this out.

      The reality was, he probably could. He had to get them out of this first before he unraveled the loose threads in her stories. If she was lying—again—he’d find out sooner or later, and he’d know never to trust her or any other woman. Ever.

      If she wasn’t lying, Parker wouldn’t stop until he got to the bottom of what had happened to her. Something had turned the strong, capable woman he’d known into the scared and shaking one in front of him. And he was going to find out what.

      He took her hand again and started walking. The helicopter was overhead still. Parker cut right, then left, then right again, working his way back to the road. Why had he left his cell phone in the cup holder in his truck?

      He needed to call this in, get his whole team here to battle these guys. Making arrests, interrogating suspects and seeing justice done was his life now.

      As for Sienna, he didn’t know what her life entailed. None of this made any sense, except her not being able to remember who she was. Amnesia actually fit everything he’d seen so far, but how could that have happened? A year in a coma? Where was the CIA now? Even harmless and unable to go on missions, surely they kept tabs on an asset like her.

      Parker had a lot of questions. The first of which was where those two men had gone.

      He slowed his pace and listened as Sienna quieted her breaths. Some things were still there. The way she reacted, the way she scanned the vicinity around her. Training had been ingrained in her until it was muscle memory, even as freaked out as she was and with no past.

      His Sienna was still in there, and maybe she’d be able to tell him why she had left him standing by himself at the airport in Atlanta. Why she’d promised to be there and then hadn’t shown. He’d been fresh off that last mission and anxious to see her—to see where their relationship might go when they were both stateside with some time off.

      The timing of her no-show at the airport didn’t fit the “coma” she’d been in. If it’d lasted a year, it would have begun weeks, or even a month, after she stood him up. There had to be another reason she had never showed. Once Parker knew what it was, he’d be able to walk away without this twisting thing in his chest that wouldn’t let him rest. She’d torn him up inside, but he’d given her the power to do that first. No more. He wasn’t going to give his heart to another woman, ever. He was done with that.

      Sienna gasped, and the hot barrel end of a rifle touched Parker’s neck. He had to think quickly. In one maneuver he twisted and went for the rifle.

      The shot slammed into his chest.

TWO

      Sienna looked back at Parker, lying on the ground. Was he dead? She couldn’t see any blood, but it was dark. The air had chilled until her breath puffed out around her in white clouds. She was dragged by her arm back through the forest the way they came by a masked gunman.

      The helicopter had quit circling with that blinding light and landed, probably on the road. Were they going to chopper her out? They could certainly try. Sienna might be an amnesia patient who’d been in a coma for a year, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

      Where was all this bravado coming from? She hadn’t been completely idle this past year. She had a working knowledge of self-defense, more for the sake of meeting people and getting out of the house to attend classes. But otherwise, her life had been quiet. Pleasant.

      Yet now, fear seemed to have distilled inside her like some weird Frankenstein-type science experiment. In its purest element she was left with something rock hard and unwavering. Like the all-American hero’s forearms.

      Sienna glanced at the man on the other side of her, covering her with his Eastern European ex-military rifle and those Russian surplus thermal goggles hanging loose around his neck. Most of that was available to buy on the internet, which meant these guys could be anyone and not necessarily just hired guns of the nasty variety...and how did she know that? She grew vegetables and raised goats for milk. How did she know where those items had come from?

      The rifle was lifted for a second, just long enough for her to get the message. Apparently, trying to run was out of the question. So what was the new plan? And was Parker dead?

      “We figured sooner or later you’d go to him for help. Little obvious, don’t you think? Crying to the big bad SEAL in his cushy new job driving prisoners around. Too bad he can’t help you no more. Too, too bad.”

      Sienna swallowed. Tears filled her eyes, and that painful ache in her chest was back. It usually only surfaced after a bad dream—like the one she had of that little boy crying. She didn’t even know Parker, despite his apparently thinking they were best friends or something. Why would she shed a tear over the death of someone she barely knew?

      Still, it slipped down her face, and she didn’t wipe it away in case the gunmen were watching. They’d let down their guard if they thought she was as helpless as she looked.

      She kept up her act when the gunman’s grip on her arm tightened just enough that she could reasonably let off a whimper. They’d soon think she was surrendering, but her first order of business was getting out of his hold. Then she’d either have to steal their van or run down the street until she found someone willing to give her a ride into town.

      They stepped out of the trees and the helicopter’s rotors whipped her hair around her face, obstructing her view of the three vehicles and the man holding his arm. Parker had been right; he’d winged one of the gunmen.

      “I can’t believe you let him hit you.” The rifleman to her right lifted his weapon, his voice disappointed but in a hard way. There was no sympathy for his friend.

      “It СКАЧАТЬ