Sudden Recall Read Free

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.”
    â€œAm I a criminal?”
    â€œNo. Why would you think that?”
    â€œBecause 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
    S ienna 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