Savior in the Saddle (10 page)

“I’m staying,” Brandon insisted.

Cash said the same, and after staring at them, the doctor finally showed some emotion. She made a sound of mild annoyance and turned away from them.

Despite the little lecture Willa had just given herself about not leaning on Brandon, she was thankful that he would be nearby. After all, it was his name and his name only that she’d written on her hand.

“Should I lie down or something?” Willa asked.

Dr. Farris shook her head and started the DVD. “Just stay seated and focus on what you’re seeing and hearing.”

That sounded simple enough. Well, simple unless her short-term memory decided to take a hike. Since it’d been weeks since that had happened, Willa thought that part of this ordeal might be over, but she’d been wrong before.

The images started to appear on the screen. Someone was holding a video camera and recording their walk through the double automatic doors.

“We know from the exterior surveillance cameras that this is how you entered the building,” the doctor explained. “Once you reach the fourth floor, your movements and what happens there are reenactments based on eyewitnesses.” She kept her voice at a whisper and lowered the lights so that the only illumination came from the TV.

Willa forced herself to imagine that she was the one walking into the San Antonio Maternity Hospital. The greeting area didn’t look familiar, but they quickly went through it and to the elevators. She pretended that it was her hand that pushed the button to take her to the fourth floor. When
she
stepped into the elevator and the doors closed, Willa heard the music. There was nothing unusual about it, but it seemed familiar. The elevator seemed familiar, too. There were posters of mothers holding their newborns.

She felt her heart speed up a little when the doors swished open and she saw the fourth floor. Again, there was nothing unusual about it, and she guessed wrong about which direction she would take. The camera went to the left, past an empty waiting area. She saw the signs on the wall leading to the lab.

Why was she going there?

Because she was supposed to have some lab tests and then an ultrasound. That wasn’t an actual memory, but she’d been told that by the police. Someone had called and told her she needed lab tests, but that had been a ruse to get her to the hospital.

The ruse had worked.

When the camera reached the lab desk, it stopped. Willa glanced around the corridor spread out in front of her and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. She saw the ski-mask-wearing man racing toward her. He was armed.

“Don’t close your eyes,” the doctor insisted when Willa started to do just that.

It was a challenge, but she forced herself to watch as the man came closer and closer to the camera.

“Come with me,” the man demanded, and he jammed the gun at her.

Willa didn’t want to go with him. She wanted to run out of the hotel suite, far away from the camera and the nightmarish images, but she forced herself to stay put.

The gunman led her into the lab, past the cubicles where the techs drew blood. They went about twenty yards farther to a door with a sign that read: Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point. The man pressed in a code to get the door to open and led her into a room with computers and refrigerated storage containers.

They stopped moving, so Willa looked around as far as the camera angle would allow. She took in as many details as she could manage. The glossy gray tile floor. The sterile white walls and ceiling. The way everything was arranged in precise order. The smell.

She froze.

The smell?

Did she really remember that?

Yes, she did. It wasn’t the disinfectant odor like the rest of the hospital. This particular area smelled like some kind of lab chemical.

She felt the air-conditioning spill out from the overhead vents. The room was too cold, and she shivered. Willa waited for more sensations to come, and they did. They came at her hard and fast.

Willa gasped and pressed her fingers to her mouth. “Oh, God. I remember.”

Chapter Eight

Brandon wasn’t sure which of them looked more surprised, but he thought he might be the winner. When Dr. Farris had started that DVD, and Willa had started to watch, the last thing he expected was for Willa to remember anything.

But she apparently had.

She kept her gaze fastened to the screen where the hostage situation continued to play out. It seemed like such a simple exercise. Visual cues of a nightmare. But Willa kept repeating those two words as if it were a mantra. Or a warning.

I remember.

“What do you remember?” Dr. Farris asked, taking the words right out of Brandon’s mouth.

Willa pressed her fingertips to both sides of her head and began to rock. Brandon went and sat beside her, then put his arm around her.

“It’s okay.” He tried to assure her, but he had no way of knowing if that was true.

“I remember the gunman taking me into the lab,” Willa said. Her voice was barely a whisper, and he could feel her trembling.

Brandon tightened his grip, and her hands dropped to her lap. “What else?” he pressed.

Both the doctor and Cash moved closer, probably hoping they were all finally about to get answers. Brandon wanted those answers, too, but he hated that Willa was having to go through this all over again.

“The gunman took me into a secure area,” she continued. “He pressed in some numbers on a key pad.”

“Did he have the code written down?” Cash asked.

Willa nodded. “On a piece of paper he took from his pocket. He opened the door and pushed me inside. ‘Go to the computer,’ he told me. And I did. I went to the one where he pointed. It was on the far side of the room, sitting on a desk.”

Cash leaned down so that he’d be eye level with Willa. “What did he want you to do?”

Before Willa could answer, Dr. Farris eased Cash out of the way. “No more questions, please. This will work best if Willa lets the memories come to her. And sometimes, these bits and pieces are all we’ll get. To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure it would even work this well.”

Willa stared up at the doctor. “These aren’t bits and pieces,” she mumbled, her voice catching. “The gunman wanted me to hack into some secure files.” She paused. “I did it because he put a gun to my head and said he would kill me and the baby if I didn’t.”

Brandon ignored the punch of anger he felt over what Willa had been through. He also ignored the doctor’s no-question warning. “What files?”

“Ones that were being outsourced to the hospital,” Willa readily answered. “The files belonged to the San Antonio Police Department, and they were biological samples that were to be used in several active cases. He wanted me to hack into the files and alter the data.”

Definitely not bits and pieces. This was the sort of information that could blow this case wide open.

Brandon met Cash’s stare. “Is it routine for SAPD to outsource tests to the hospital?”

Cash shook his head. “No. We usually use the Ranger lab in Austin, but there was a fire, and they got backlogged. I heard we were using some local hospitals to do some of the tests, but I didn’t know it was this specific hospital.”

“Dean Quinlan,” Willa said out of the blue. “It was his name on the files. He was listed as the file manager. Do you know him?” she asked Cash.

“Yeah.” Cash propped his hands on his hips and mumbled some profanity. “He’s one of our CSIs. Well, he used to be anyway. He resigned shortly after the hostage incident to take a job elsewhere.”

The doctor turned off the DVD and looked at Willa. “What else do you remember?”

Willa opened her mouth, hesitated, then closed it. “Nothing. That’s all.”

“You don’t remember what specific files the gunman wanted you to hack into?” Cash demanded.

She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I remember sitting down at the computer, and I remember seeing Dean Quinlan’s name as the file custodian, but that’s it. Everything else after that is a blank.” She started to tremble again, and Brandon pulled her closer to him.

Cash checked his watch. “I need to talk to Dean Quinlan and anyone else who knew about those files being processed at the maternity hospital. I’ll let you know what I find out.” He took out his phone and headed into one of the suite’s bedrooms.

“Your memory might continue to return,” Dr. Farris told her. She paused to take Willa’s pulse. “Sometimes, when you recall portions of the traumatic events, other details soon follow.”

Willa nodded and pulled in a long breath. While that was good news for the investigation, Brandon knew this would be hell for Willa. After all, the gunman had likely been trying to kill her when she fell and injured her head.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Farris asked.

“Exhausted.” Willa adjusted her position and placed her head against Brandon’s shoulder. “Could you give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts?”

Dr. Farris nodded, but she didn’t look at all certain about leaving Willa. Finally, though, she walked toward the second bedroom, went inside and shut the door.

The moment the doctor was out of sight, Willa’s head swooshed off his shoulder, and she stood. “I remembered some other things,” she whispered.

Brandon froze. He didn’t think her memory had returned just this instant. No. It had probably come with the other memories, but Willa had been smart not to tell all to the doctor. While Brandon still trusted Cash, he didn’t know Dr. Farris and was glad Willa had withheld something that might put her in even more danger.

If that was possible.

“The gunman tried to call Dean Quinlan while we were in that secure area of the lab,” Willa continued. “He had Quinlan’s name and number written on the back of the paper with the codes he used to get past the door.”

“Did he actually speak to Quinlan?” Brandon, too, kept his voice at a whisper and stood so he could be closer to her.

She shook her head. “His cell phone couldn’t get a signal in that part of the lab.”

Probably because the walls had been reinforced for safety reasons, he thought. Labs and X-ray areas often have metal barriers to stop the harmful rays from getting into other parts of the building.

“The gunman was frustrated because he couldn’t seem to read his notes,” Willa explained. “He finally showed them to me, and that’s when I saw the names of the files I was supposed to access. There were three of them—the first was Baby Martinez.”

“That makes sense,” Brandon concluded. “Misty Martinez was a San Antonio woman who was murdered, and her newborn was missing. Since Misty had stored the baby’s umbilical cord at the maternity hospital, SAPD requested a DNA test so they could identify the biological father, who turned out to be her killer.”

Willa’s eyes widened. “Please tell me I didn’t do anything to that DNA sample that allowed a killer to get away.”

“No. The biological father, Gavin Cunningham, was arrested and got a life sentence.”

She nodded but didn’t relax. “The second name on the list was Jessie Beecham…” She paused, shook her head. “And Wes-somebody.”

“Dunbar,” Brandon provided. And he cursed.

Willa blinked. “You know these people?”

“I know
of
them. Jessie Beecham was a wealthy club owner with ties to the mob. He was murdered earlier this year, and the prime suspect was a rival club owner named Wes Dunbar.”

SAPD had sent Brandon the initial reports of the investigation because Wes Dunbar had a country estate in Crockett Creek, Brandon’s own town. At the time he’d read those reports, Brandon had no idea just how personal that case would become. Of course, the question was did the investigation into Jessie Beecham’s murder have anything to do with Willa’s situation?

Maybe not.

Maybe the culprit who’d hired Shore was simply someone who was tying up loose ends for the now-dead gunman who’d held her hostage. Maybe an unknown accomplice. What Brandon needed was more information, and that included a case update on Jessie Beecham’s murder.

He glanced at the room where Cash had gone to make his call about the former CSI, Dean Quinlan. He looked at the room where the doctor was as well. And he got a really bad feeling about all of this. God knows who Dr. Farris had already told about Willa’s regained memory, and Cash’s calls and questions would almost certainly alert the wrong people.

“We need to get out of here?” Willa asked, obviously noticing the alarm on his face.

“Yeah.” He grabbed her bag and her arm.

Brandon hoped to hell it wasn’t too late.

WILLA WAS BEYOND TIRED of being on the run, but she knew Brandon was right to get them out of there. Maybe both Cash and Dr. Farris were on the up-and-up, but that didn’t mean someone, including Martin Shore, would get word that she had remembered what had gone on in the lab the day the maternity hostages were taken.

Brandon eased the suite door shut behind them and got them moving to the elevator. He had her bag slung over his shoulder and kept one hand on her and the other within easy reach of his gun. Willa held her breath until they were in the elevator and the doors slid shut. They weren’t out of danger yet, not by a long shot, but she wanted to put as much distance as possible between the suite and them.

“What do we do now?” she asked and mentally cursed the fatigue and fog in her head.

She should have already figured that out for herself, but here she was again relying on Brandon. Once they were safely away from the hotel, she had to find some time to come up with a new plan—and a couple of backup ones.

“We need a vehicle and some cash,” Brandon answered. “I have to get you to a safe place, and we can’t get there on foot with Shore this close and every cop in San Antonio looking for us.”

That “safe place” part certainly sounded good to her, but was it even doable?

“I have some cash in the bag,” Willa let him know. “About five hundred dollars.”

But she would need a lot more than that if she had to go into hiding for any length of time. Which she probably would. That meant making a trip to the banks in Austin or San Antonio, so she could get to one of her safety deposit boxes where she’d stashed more money.