Healed (The Found Book 3) (11 page)

“I’ll call the doctor immediately. However, she was here about an hour ago and just left to go home. You might not see her until tomorrow morning.”

“Wait a minute, where is here? I mean, where are we?” Sarah struggled, trying to bring up images. She shut her eyes tight and faces flashed in front of her eyelids, but try as she might she couldn’t put names to any of them.

She finally opened her eyes and looked at the nurse. “Is anyone here for me?”

“I don’t know. I just started work here two days ago. I was told you were brought in about five days ago and you’ve been unconscious most of the time I’ve been here. The doctor can tell you more.” Tears of frustration and panic begin to form, but she forced them down.

“You must be getting tired. This is a really big day for you. It’s the first time you’ve really been awake and coherent. Why don’t you get some rest and we’ll wake you when the doctor arrives.” The woman pulled a syringe out of her pocket and inserted it into the IV. “This should help.”

“When will I be able to move?”

“When you wake up.”

Sarah closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

****

“Honey, you need to wake up now. The doctor will be here in a moment.”

A petite woman and an Asian man walked into the room, both with pleasant smiles on their faces. Those expressions Sarah easily recognized, they were meant to put the patient at ease. Sarah relaxed. Despite her fatigue and fuzziness something was finally beginning to click. She was a doctor, that’s why she recognized their expressions so easily.

“It is good to see you are finally awake, Sarah. I’m sorry to hear you’re having some problems with your memory,” the woman said as she stepped up to Sarah’s bed.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, where are my manners? I’m Doctor Simms and this is my colleague Doctor Pheung. He’s a neurologist.”

“Is there something wrong with my brain? Was I in an accident?”

“You were. A car accident. You had significant brain swelling, and you’ve been in and out of consciousness for six days. You didn’t require surgery but we’ve been monitoring you closely.”

“Wasn’t the drug to keep me paralyzed a bit extreme?” Dr. Simms gave a small chuckle.

“I forget I’m dealing with a physician. We deemed it necessary. You were thrashing about, and having severe nightmares. It was the medication or restraints. We chose to medicate you.”

“Can I see my chart?”

“Maybe when you’re doing better, today is the first day you seem to be fully cognizant. Tell me what you remember.” Sarah had been trying but all attempts had been futile.

“Do I have amnesia? I know I’m a doctor. I know my first name but I don’t know my last name.”

“Hello Sarah,” Dr. Pheung said, as he held out his hand. “I’ve reviewed your chart, and looked over the CAT scan done the other day. I don’t see any issues we need to be worried about. Right now, I would say the only side effects you can expect are some problems with memory, dizziness and you’ll tire easily. It’s to be expected.”

“Other than the paralytic, what other drugs are you giving me? They seem to make me really tired and fuzzy. I don’t think I need them, and I think they’re having adverse effects on my ability to regain my memory. I really want to see my chart.” Sarah held out her hand.

“Tomorrow Sarah,” Dr. Simms promised. “But in the meantime, you need to trust us, it isn’t the drugs. We have some that are still helping to reduce the residual swelling and some to relax you so you can rest. Rest is the most important thing for your recovery.”

“Can’t you tell me about myself?”

“It’d be best if you remembered things on your own,” Dr. Simms said.

“Sarah, you need to be patient the more you stress about it the longer the recovery,” Dr. Pheung explained.

“Can you at least tell me what city I’m in? What hospital? Where my family is? If I have a family? Friends?”

“You’re getting agitated which is exactly what we didn’t want.” Dr. Simms held out her hand to the nurse who gave her another syringe. Sarah winced. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want to go back to sleep. But maybe they were right, at least when she was asleep she started to see faces in her mind and hear familiar voices.

Chapter Seven

Nate looked around his hotel suite near the Atlanta airport. Kota, Sierra, Cyrus, Kyle and Brayson were all looking at him, waiting for his update. It reminded him of another time when some of them were in a hotel room in Atlanta intent on rescuing Sarah.

“You know the the man I interrogated didn’t have any real information. He was hired help whose only job was to help get Sarah on the helicopter. He didn’t know where she was going to be taken.”

“Yeah, you gave us that information three days ago,” Kyle snarled.

“Shut the fuck up, you
still
don’t get to talk. You’re lucky to even be here.” Cyrus looked ready to kill his youngest brother. Deadly silence filled the room.

When Amy told Nate Kyle revealed confidential information about Sarah to Chris Jeffries he’d been ready to murder the little shit. But it had been nothing compared to the rage Cyrus expressed. The only thing that saved Kyle when Cyrus had made it to Atlanta was Lila Johnson. She stepped in when Cyrus had gone after Kyle.

Nate watched the whole thing, but he’d seen something that hurt Kyle even worse than his brother’s anger—his mother’s disappointment.

“Sierra, tell them what you discovered,” Nate asked quietly.

“We already know it was Jeffries who contacted Rixitron. Hell, he made twenty calls to the company two days before the kidnapping.” Everyone nodded. “I finally hacked into their headquarters’ security cameras and discovered out who he met. It was a guy named Lee Stovers. He’s a junior VP in Pharmaceuticals. He’s relatively new only been there two years. He wasn’t on our radar.”

“Where is he? Where’s Jeffries?” Cyrus’s questions were rapid fire.

“Stovers is up in Vancouver meeting with a group of executives in the nanotech division of Rixitron,” Sierra said.

“Fuck, I was supposed to be on that detail.”

“Brice is there,” Nate reassured Cyrus, referring to another team mate who was on leave from the SAS and was
found
as well.

“That’s good,” Cyrus said giving a grim smile.

“What about Chris?” Kyle asked quietly. Nate and Cyrus both glared at him. Finally Sierra answered.

“We think he’s dead. We saw him go down in the elevators with two men when he left Stover’s office. He got into a Town Car with them and hasn’t been spotted since.”

“Good. I hope the bastard suffered,” Brayson said.

“So Stovers is our best bet in finding Sarah. We leave for Vancouver in three hours.”

“Great, I’ll go pack and meet you at the airport,” Brayson said, as he stood up.

“Not you or Kyle. I’ve never worked with you on an assignment. This is too important to have newbies working with us,” Nate kept his voice even.

“But…” Brayson started.

“He’s right,” Kyle interrupted his brother. “They need the best team possible. They’ve worked together for almost a year some of them longer. We’d be a liability. We need to do what’s best for Sarah.”

Brayson turned to his older brother, who nodded. “Okay Cyrus, but please, you’ve got to find her.”

“We will Bray. , I promise you, we’ll find her,” Cyrus said in the confident tone of a big brother.

“Brayson, I know this seems like a lifetime but it’s only been five days.” The lie almost choked Nate, it really seemed like an eternity, but he needed to calm the troops, it was his job as the leader.

Nate continued. “We have to remember they wanted her alive and unharmed. These are very good signs. Let us track Stovers and then we can get to Sarah, I’m sure of it.” Nate was satisfied when the young man sat down beside his brother, Kyle. “Okay, I’ve arranged for someone to meet us when we get off the plane. They’ll have everything we need for the operation. Sierra, if you can get us some sort of cover at the hotel where the executives are still booked, that’d be great.”

“Kota, it looks like you and I are going to be married again,” she said grinning at her silent naval team mate. He nodded. “Did you see the enthusiasm everyone? I’m going to wear him down yet.” Sierra gave a sideways smile to Kota.

Cyrus gave a weary chuckle at her antics and even Kota grinned a bit. Kyle and Brayson just looked confused. Nate appreciated her effort to lighten the mood, but there was no way he was going to be able to smile about a damn thing until he had Sarah safely back in his arms.

****

Sarah woke to the sound of voices outside her room. They’d been right to give her the paralytic, she’d been thrashing around and no fucking wonder. She remembered everything. She kept her eyes closed and listened.

“I’m the one who helped develop this drug. She won’t regain her memory.” It was Dr. Simms talking.

“You don’t know how a member of the
found
will react to it,” a man’s voice responded.

“Oh for God’s sake, Stovers makes them sound like the second coming. They’re people just like us. Now shut up and let me give her a dose before she wakes up.” That was Simms again.

“Do you think you’re giving her too much?” The man sounded worried.

“Jesus Pheung, which way do you want it? Am I giving her too much, or not enough?” Simm’s sounded pissed.

“Lower your voice.”

“Let me do my job. I’m the scientist, you’re nothing more than my goddamn assistant who is only playing the part of a neurologist so you better listen to me.” Yep she sounded really pissed.

“Well Miss High and Mighty Scientist, have you thought about how this will interact with the fertility drugs?” Interesting, it sounded like the man wasn’t afraid of Simms after all.

“If you talk to me like I’m stupid once more, I’m going to have you thrown off this project. Of course I’ve thought about it and tested for it.”

“Well so did I. I’m showing some anomalies I’m going to bring to Stovers attention.”

Sarah waited.

“Pheung, let’s go back to the lab and you can show me your findings. There’s no need to bring Stovers into this.”

They walked away from her door. She’d been holding perfectly still during the entire conversation, praying they wouldn’t come in. Now she opened her eyes and really took in her environment for the first time. It was supposed to look like a hospital room but some of the things were wrong.

No hospital room she’d ever been in had this nice of a TV mounted on the wall. The sheets were a dead giveaway too. What were they five hundred thread count? If they told her she was in some sort of private clinic she could buy this shit, but they’d told her she was in a hospital.

Where was she really? Why the elaborate ruse? Why not just throw her in a cell and pump her full of hormones and take her ovum? It’s what they really wanted. They wanted to breed her. Sarah gritted her teeth, fighting down the tears of anger and fear. Where was everybody? Nate had to be coming to get her, she’d seen his face when she’d been pulled onto the helicopter. He was going to come for her. But in the meantime, she better start thinking of a way to save herself.

Looking down, she started to slip the shunt out of the vein in the back of her hand, then she looked back up at the television. Dammit, she’d bet money there were cameras in the room, and nobody offered to turn on the television, and no TV remote control in sight. Great, there was a camera in the TV.

It was a good bet it was mostly just saline in the drip at the moment but the next time they inserted drugs into the IV, she should be able to dislodge the needle from her vein without being too obvious. If she did it now, there’d be a puddle on the floor to explain. She’d have to wait until she had a plan of escape.

She rested her head on the too soft pillow. Closed her eyes and imagined Nate’s face as she last saw it. Where was he?

****

Nate and his team were in a private room in a downtown restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was in the same complex of office buildings with the hotel where they and the Rixitron executives were staying.

Sierra had given an update explaining how Lee Stovers was planning on leaving two days before all the meetings were done. He was due to take the corporate jet straight to Atlanta, and to her mind they had nothing to lose by taking him and questioning him.

Nate looked across the table at Sierra and every fiber of his being wanted to do exactly what she suggested. But years of leading teams told him it was the wrong move, and Sarah needed his head leading this team not his heart.

“What are your thoughts?” he asked, nodding to Kota and Cyrus.

“Fuck, I’m sure I’m with you on this. I want to do exactly what Sierra is saying, but my training says no. We have to finesse this guy. I just don’t know how,” Cyrus sounded tired and worried, he knew the feeling.

“Kota?” Nate asked.

“You’re asking me? You know I like the direct approach.” Nate smiled at the lie. The only time Dakota Blackthorne liked the direct approach was when there was a woman involved.

“Sierra, you don’t really think grabbing him is the right way to go, do you?” Nate asked.

“Do you know what they’re going to do to her? They’re going to be breeding her. They are going to be implanting babies in her. Fuck yes, I think grabbing him is the right thing to do. I want her out of their hands yesterday.” For the first time ever, Nate saw a sheen of tears in Sierra’s blue eyes, before she turned away from the table.

Kota put an arm around her, and she shoved against him but he held on. Nate heard him whisper, “Pretend I have a Scottish accent,” and finally Sierra relented, taking comfort from her team mate.

Cyrus and Nate just stared at one another. No words were necessary.

“So finesse. You’re talking about a con. What do you have in mind?” Cyrus asked.

“Seems to me that Rixitron had its sights on another
found
baby not so long ago,” Nate said slowly, “What if we were to get good ol’ Lee to think he had a shot at the baby again? Do you think he might change his plans? Do you think he might lead us to where Sarah is?” Nate shook his head the same time Cyrus shook his.