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She was crying. Thinking of Noah. She prayed her call to the emergency department and 911 about Noah’s injury and the shots fired got help to Noah in time and no one else was hurt. When one of her fellow physicians pressed her for information, she’d disconnected the call.
Ashley’s thoughts spun. Adrenaline-fueled blood rushed through her head and there was a faint pitched whine ringing in her ears that masked Casper’s voice. She looked at him, barely able to see through her tears, wondering if she’d have to resort to reading lips because she couldn’t discern what his words conveyed. Gibberish. What she did see was the surprise and apprehension that covered his face.
It was the worry that concerned her the most. Who were these people?
This is exactly why patients can’t talk when I tell them bad news. Why they can’t process any information. What is this insanity?
Clenching her teeth, she wiped the tears from her face.
I have to pull myself together. Crying isn’t going to help either one of us right now.
She gripped the steering wheel so hard her hands ached. Casper glanced behind them, his movements stilted. “They’re coming.” A simple statement filled with so much danger.
Ashley glanced up in her rearview mirror. A black SUV was quickly closing the distance. Perhaps two blocks behind. A crack of metal jolted the car.
A gunshot punctured her tailgate. Ashley pressed her foot into the accelerator.
Casper narrowed his eyes. “Nearest highway?”
Ashley tried to think. First thing, she needed to shake them off their tail. She whipped the steering wheel right—so tight was the turn that the car lifted up briefly on two wheels. Ashley’s heart climbed into her throat.
After a series of three Z-turns, their pursuers remained right on their tail.
“That’s not going to work. They’re more experienced at this than you,” Casper said.
“Who is ‘they’?” Ashley yelled, briefly glancing Casper’s way. Her hands were slick with sweat.
“Get to the highway.”
Fine. What sense did it make to let the confused, amnesiac patient determine their course of action? Not much, but there hadn’t been a med school class on outrunning thugs who intended to kill innocent people, so she gave him this one suggestion.
Two more turns and Ashley sped up the entrance ramp onto the highway. She merged quickly into traffic.
“Fast lane,” Casper said.
No, that wasn’t going to work. If driving was their skill, these delinquents would simply follow them until she ran out of gas. Somehow, she had to shake them.
There was a semi in the slow lane. Ashley began to position herself next to it...slowing their vehicle down.
“What are you doing?” Casper asked.
The black SUV sidled up next to them. The windows were tinted so dark she couldn’t discern the shape of any of the men inside.
The window of the SUV cracked open. Ashley hedged up until she and the semi were nose to nose. There was perhaps half a mile to the next exit.
Quickly, she looked left. The tip of a gun showed through the small gap in the window. The back passenger window on Casper’s side shattered. Air waffled noisily through the car so hard that her eardrums ached with the pressure. Ashley veered right. Casper turned his head her way reflexively, his head hunched down, expecting to impact against the tractor trailer’s side.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Casper yelled.
Ashley stomped on the accelerator, pulling ahead of the semi, and at the last possible moment jerked the steering wheel hard right, careening in front of the sixteen-wheeler and onto the exit ramp.
In her wake, she heard the blare of the truck’s horn in complaint. Ashley shook so badly she could hardly grip the steering wheel. Her legs quivered.
Casper laid a reassuring hand over hers. “Nice job.”
His touch had a surprising calming effect. Her father hadn’t been the touchy-feely type. She could count the number of hugs she’d received from him growing up on one hand. One of her regrets after her father disappeared was not having had a closer relationship with him.
Ashley made several more turns, attempting to put a confusing amount of distance between them and their attackers.
Casper pointed at the twenty-four hour grocery store coming up on their right. Perhaps thirty minutes had passed without evidence of them being followed. He motioned his finger up and down. “Turn in here. Park close to the front.”
Ashley’s body felt like a tangle of nerves on fire. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”
One of Casper’s hands gripped the dashboard. He looked as lost as he no doubt felt. This wasn’t good in any measure. They were being hunted. This was something both of them understood. How could an amnesiac man and a healer ward off armed gunmen?
Since Ashley’s mind remained a muddled mess and she couldn’t think of any alternative argument, she did as Casper asked and parked her car among the other vehicles, but not directly under a parking light, hoping the darkness would offer some disguise. She turned the car off and killed the lights and looked at the world in front of her.
It was that peaceful seasonal lull. Just after the holidays but before all the outdoor lights were taken down. The hubbub of the holidays was over and the spirit of Christmas could be enjoyed without the accompanying stress.
Casper scanned the road that ran past the grocery store. He was sitting up and forward in his seat, a guard dog on alert. His continuously roving eyes narrowed and Ashley’s chest ached as she held her breath.
A black SUV was turning into the lot. How was it possible for them to be found so quickly? Her mouth dried. Did they duck down? Get out? Stay as still as statues?
Ashley looked for some direction from Casper, but he remained pensive and silent next to her. They both watched the vehicle turn into the lot and park a few rows away, and then a mother with two teen daughters emerged.
“We need a different car,” Casper said.
“As in steal one?”
“Unless you have another spare vehicle that’s perhaps not registered to you or anyone you know. What I know is that this Jared Fleming is going to know who you are now. It looks like he has some resources at his disposal that maybe fly under the letter of the law. We need to disappear.”
Her mouth gaped open. Casper was serious.
Is that what her father had done? Gone into hiding because of Jared?
Ashley shook her head. “What do we do after that? Where do we go? I don’t think going to my mother’s is a good idea anymore. We don’t know who these men are or what they want. I won’t put her life in danger.”
“Well, we do know what they want...at least partially.”
He was right. “They want you, but why?”
Casper shrugged. “And is it connected to your father? I’m not one to believe in coincidences. I don’t know the meaning behind these events and I don’t know why I was attacked or by whom, but I think we’re together for a reason and that’s been orchestrated.”
By God. Those were the two words he didn’t end with but meant wholeheartedly. That was what she felt like he was saying to her. Her view on God? That He was a disconnected, distant being that cared little for the everyday affairs of humans. Just like her father was currently and had been from her earliest memories. It’s not that she didn’t believe in God, it’s just that she didn’t think He orchestrated the minutiae of her life.
Thoughts tousled through her mind, looking for a way to connect with one another. Was the thumb drive she’d received important to the events that just happened? Should she tell Casper about it? What did she know about this drifter sitting next to her? Her father might be missing for nefarious reasons. Nothing said that her father wasn’t involved in some criminal undertaking. Who was to say that he and Casper weren’t part of some criminal underbelly and she’d just tethered herself to him from one assumption—that her father had told her never to trust Jared Fleming and that man had wanted her patient.
But could she trust her father?
Ashley shook the thoughts away. She’d keep the thumb drive a secret...for now. She needed more data to make an informed decision.
Casper wanting to steal a car boiled down to her doing it. What condition was he in to go searching through a bustling parking lot looking for a vehicle to abscond? Breaking the law could lead to repercussions by the Board of Healing Arts. She could lose her medical license. What was stopping her from just calling the police? Wouldn’t that be a wiser choice?
Her instincts told her not to. What help had the police been to her and her family after her father’s disappearance? Not a scrap of evidence, a lead or hint that he was even still alive had been given to them from law enforcement. The packages were the only evidence she clung to, but receiving them didn’t mean he was alive. The first sense of promise that she might discover answers was from this stranger who possessed the same unusual tattoo and had landed in her ER as if gifted from desperation.
Her heart sank. Her cell phone...was it already being traced? Probably. Or was she being paranoid? Probably not. She pulled the device from her back pocket, but before she could power it down, maybe even destroy it, she had to do one thing.
Mom, I’m okay. You may not hear from me for a while. I love you. Please, don’t worry.
Immediately after the message showed delivered she turned the phone off. Casper nodded approvingly. Weird thing was, his assent meant something to her. An alliance, though tenuous, was forming.
Was turning the phone off enough? Could they trace it powered down? She didn’t have any experience in evading the law—or the lawless. Casper unlocked his seat belt and began sifting through his pockets and removed the wadded piece of paper.
“We need to go here,” he said, pointing to the slip that held the penned address.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Do you know exactly where it is?”
“In Colorado. We’ll need a map. You can buy one in there.”
“No credit cards I’m assuming.”
“Right.”
Ashley reached for her seat belt. Her heart pounded against her moral conviction of what he’d asked her to do. Did she not have a say? In fact, there could be an easy argument that she was of sounder mind and body than he was.
“I’m not doing what you ask.” Ashley turned and faced him. “I can’t steal a car. Whatever is happening here, I’ve already done enough to put my medical career at risk. Taking a patient from the hospital, if you corroborate my story that you came willingly...”
“You didn’t take me from the hospital without my permission,” Casper said. “That’s not a lie. I could have stopped you.”
She raised an eyebrow at the unlikeliness of that statement. Truly, he was in little condition to stop her from doing much. “Then that charge I can survive. The hospital won’t be happy that I drove a patient home, but a slap on the wrist might be punishment enough in their eyes.”
“I sense a rebuttal coming.”
“I just won’t steal a car. I’m willing to go on this...adventure with you to a certain point, but I can’t break the law.”
“Fine. I understand. This is all very confusing to me, as well—”
“I can only imagine.”
“Then what is your plan?”
She reached behind her, grabbed her purse and reached into its depths for her wallet. She opened it up and pushed her finger into the gap, a place she opened in the lining, for one of the last things her father ever gave her.
“My dad told me that if I was ever in trouble—‘weird trouble’ was the phrase he used, then I was to call this person and ask for help.” She opened the paper and traced her father’s blocky penmanship. “Horace Longbottom.”
She jolted as Casper laughed. “Seriously?”
In fact, he laughed so hard, he had to use the corners of the blanket to dab the tears from his eyes.
Heat flushed Ashley’s face. “Like you have room to laugh at a name... Casper? As in the friendly ghost? What sane parent names their kid something they know will be an automatic reason to bully their child?”
Casper raised his hand at her as his laughter died. “Point taken. I’m sorry. It’s just...sometimes you need to laugh when things get dark.”
True. That was one thing she could agree with. Black humor was a mechanism she used in the ER all the time to get through hectic shifts. It was a salve she and her coworkers depended on.
“You’re forgiven.” She opened her wallet again. Only about seventy-five dollars in cash. Enough to make a phone call, and buy some items for Casper. He was still shivering intermittently beside her. A slight wintery breeze drifted through the shot-out windows. Something hot to drink would help while they waited. “Stay here,” she instructed.
Ashley stepped from the vehicle and began to walk into the store, wondering if she’d be shot on sight just like her friend Noah.
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