Mission: Memory Recall. Virginia Vaughan
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his head as he tried to concentrate. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He saw the doubt on her face. “I’m not lying to you, Bethany. My past is a blank slate. You have no idea how frustrating that is. I remember how to walk, talk, drive a car, shoot a gun, but when I try to recall who I am or where I come from or what I’ve done, there’s nothing.”
“We’ll see. The CIA has methods to obtain information.”
“I’m sure they do.”
She waved her hand at the camera and the electronic lock released. “I have a few of my own methods right now. Will you follow me to the interview room?”
He allowed her to cuff him and lead him down the long hallway then turn right into an interrogation room. When they entered, Marcus saw what looked to be the content from the shooter’s nest.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
She motioned toward the weapon. “You tell me. Everything has been unloaded, of course.”
“Of course.” He picked up the rifle and checked the mag. “This is a .300 Win Mag sniper rifle with long-range scope. The most accurate sniper’s rifle on the market.” He glanced at the other equipment on the table. It was all top-quality gear. “Aside from the working on his own part, I’d say our sniper is a professional assassin.”
She nodded. “I agree. And you let him get away. Who’s after you, Marcus?”
He sighed, already weary of her not believing him, and sank into a chair. “Why do you think he was after me? You were in that diner, too, as were a handful of patrons. Any one of them could have been the target.”
“That’s highly unlikely. You’re a fugitive on the run. I feel certain you were the mark. Besides, he didn’t target anyone else as they were fleeing the building, only you.”
“Well, I haven’t been targeted until today. Believe me, nothing like this has happened to me before you arrived in town. I was hoping you could provide me answers, but it seems you provided a lot more than that.”
Anger flashed on her face. “Are you implying that I led someone to you who wanted you dead?”
She stood and walked to him, opening a folder. “Are you aware that all but six of your army ranger team died in an ambush in Afghanistan two years ago? All including you...or so everyone believed.” She leaned over him, speaking directly into his ear. “You had us all fooled, Marcus. They all thought you’d died that night on that mountain. These men were your teammates, your friends.”
He glanced at the file. “I didn’t lie to anyone,” he insisted.
“Then tell me what happened over there.”
He dug through his memory, but only flashes came. Firefights. Cries of pain. And the soft skin of lips caressing his. She was all jumbled up in there, but even those fragments didn’t provide the answers he needed. “I—I don’t know. All I know is I was injured. The first thing I remember clearly was waking up in a hut. The villagers took care of me and treated my wounds. They sheltered me. But they kept saying I was in danger, that someone was hunting me, that someone in the CIA was after me.”
“Why weren’t they afraid of you? The CIA was the good guy.”
“They didn’t think so. They seemed frightened, so I was frightened, as well. I figured they were the ones who knew the good guys from the bad guys.”
“Why didn’t you report to a US military base? You would have been safe there.”
“I had no idea who I was. For all I knew, I was on the run from the US government. I thought I would be arrested, or worse, killed.”
She gave him a disgusted look and shook her head. “You have a US army ranger’s tattoo on your left shoulder. No one could mistake that. You had a duty to return to the base when you were able and let someone know you were alive.”
He pulled up his sleeve and showed her his shoulder. There was no army ranger tattoo, but the scarred flesh suggested that something had once been there. He’d never thought about it being a tattoo of any kind. Had just chalked the scarred flesh up to his injuries. Had someone burned off his tattoo to keep him safe? “I depended on those people to keep me alive. I did as I was told. Besides, they were right. The CIA was after me.”
She stood and gathered the items, placing them back into an evidence container. “Tomorrow, the US Marshals will arrive to transport you back to CIA headquarters, where you’ll be fully briefed about what happened the night of the ambush. There will be a lot of questions about how you survived and why you haven’t come forward. I suggest you come up with a better story than this amnesia one.”
“I can’t tell you anything that isn’t the truth, Beth.”
She stopped, turned and glared at him. “You don’t get to call me that.”
Her words held a bite that chilled him. He’d hurt her. Badly. In his heart, he knew it hadn’t been on purpose, but how could he prove it? How could he exonerate himself from a jail cell?
“I’m sorry.” He spoke softly. “I don’t mean to cause you more pain. I don’t know how to prove to you that I’m not lying, but I promise you I’m not.”
She folded her arms and gave him a stern look. “You may have made a fool of me, but don’t worry, Marcus, you never hurt me.”
She opened the door and called to a guard who grabbed him by the arm. He couldn’t miss the pain simmering behind her eyes as he was led out of the room and back to lockup.
* * *
She was in her hotel room when her phone rang and she looked at the screen. It was Dillon Montgomery, her former partner in the CIA. They’d worked many operations together, including the one they’d been on when the ambush occurred. Dillon was one of the few agents in her division who hadn’t forgotten about her when she’d accepted a desk job and he was the only one who still called her regularly and tried to encourage her back to field work.
She noticed she’d had several missed calls from him. She pressed the on button. “Dillon, hi.”
“Where are you? I’ve been phoning you all day. I was starting to get worried.”
These days, it was nothing for her to wake up to a text or email from Dillon that he was going on assignment. He could be called to a mission at a moment’s notice and be gone for days or weeks. Bethany knew the routine well—she used to live it. But since she’d stopped doing field work, her job kept her closer to home, so her disappearing without a word was considered unusual by Dillon.
“I’m in Texas,” she told him. “I decided to take a few days off.”
The hesitation before he responded meant he knew why. Her obsession with finding Marcus was a constant source of tension between the two of them. Dillon had been the only one in the department to encourage her to follow her gut when it came to her investigation into Marcus. Everyone else had considered her obsession with finding him nothing more than a hopeless pursuit. But even Dillon’s encouragement had waned recently.
“When are you going to give this up, Bethany?”
“I’m not giving up, Dillon. In fact, I found who I came looking for.”
“What do you mean you found him?” His voice perked up. “Are you serious? Marcus Allen? You found him? Are you sure?”
“I am. It’s definitely him.”
He gave a low whistle. “Unbelievable. You always believed it, Bethany, even when the rest of us tried to dissuade you. Impressive. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you, Dillon. I still can’t believe I found him after all this time.”
“A soldier presumed killed in action discovered alive? I, for one, can’t wait to hear his story.”
“Well, there won’t be much of a story. He has amnesia.”