Enigma

Leaving the kitchen, she raced into her bedroom and pulled a pair of jeans from her dresser drawer. She tugged them on, then grabbed her bra and a light blue sweatshirt and pulled them on, as well.

She had seven hundred dollars tucked into a sock in her drawer. Her mother had always told her to keep a little mad money in the house in case of an emergency.

“Losing your mind is definitely an emergency,” Willa muttered as she pulled the bills from her sock and shoved them into the back pocket of her jeans.

As she grabbed her keys from the table and headed outside she wondered if he was dying. She’d heard of strange stories like this, people appearing to other people in visions or dreams just before they passed away. Of course, she’d never heard of one of those apparitions making wild, passionate love to somebody.

The only other explanation was that she really had truly lost her mind.

The night air was chilly and she was grateful for the warmth of the sweatshirt as she got into her car and started the engine.

Hurry! Please hurry.

“I’m doing the best I can,” she muttered as she backed out of the driveway. Maybe she should just hurry and check into a psych ward because if she told anybody about this they would definitely think she was nuts. At the moment she would probably agree with them.

Jared. In her dream he’d said his name was Jared. How had her imagination come up with that name? She’d never met anyone named Jared in her life.

She pulled in to the hospital parking lot and the urgency that she’d felt before screamed inside her. She parked and ran for the hospital entrance.

At this time of night the hallways were silent and dim. She hoped she didn’t run in to anyone. She didn’t want to try to explain what she was doing here.

With each step she took she felt more ridiculous. What was she doing? She was an intelligent, rational human being following a phantom voice in her head in the middle of the night.

Her footsteps slowed as the reality of what she was doing sank in. This was insane. John Doe was in a coma. He couldn’t be asking for her help. She’d had a dream and somehow her mind had gotten all scrambled.

Willa! Hurry!

Once again the voice exploded in her head. Urgent. Frantic. And Willa couldn’t ignore the sense of alarm that raced through her blood.

She ran to his room and stopped short in the doorway. He lay on the bed just as he had been when she’d left earlier. His eyes were closed, his breathing regular, and aside from feeling like a fool, she felt ridiculously disappointed.

She drew a deep breath to still the race of her heart and moved to his side. His eyes snapped open and she gasped as he grabbed her hand with a firm grip.

“Willa.” His deep voice whispered her name as his intense blue eyes bored into hers. “You have to get me out of here. They’re going to kill me if you don’t.”

Chapter Two (#ulink_00565172-3a0a-5110-a349-19c577ad3c8b)

Willa’s face was as pale as the sheet that covered him and her eyes were wide and a curious blend of gray and green as she stared at him.

Jared Maddox knew he’d shocked her, first by the fact that he was conscious and second by his intense plea, but he didn’t have time to explain. He had to get out of here immediately.

He would have walked out on his own, but after six months in a hospital bed he knew he was as weak as a newborn and he desperately needed Willa’s help.

“Please,” he said as he tightened his fingers around her slender forearm. “You have to help me get out of here. There are people who are hunting me, men who want to destroy me, and they’re very near.”

He released his grip on her arm and sat up to swing his legs over the side of the bed. That simple movement half exhausted him.

Willa remained frozen at the side of the bed, her pretty features still radiating shock. “Willa, for God’s sake, please help me. It’s a matter of my life and death.”

As he said the words he began to rip out all the wires and tubes that had been connected to him.

“This is a bad idea,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “You shouldn’t be leaving the hospital like this.”

“Willa, with or without your help, even if I have to crawl out of here, I have to go. Otherwise I’m a dead man.”

He wasn’t sure if it was his actions or the urgency in his voice that finally snapped her inertia. He was only grateful when she hurried to his side and helped him get the last of the wires unattached from his body.

They were getting closer—the hunters—and Jared knew if he and Willa didn’t get out of here immediately he’d be lost.

He got to his feet and would have fallen if she hadn’t supported him. His weakness shocked him. It was far worse than he’d anticipated.

“Take me anywhere,” he murmured, unmindful of the flap of the hospital gown at his back. “Just get me out of here as quickly as possible.” He threw his arm around her shoulder, hating that he had to depend on anyone, but knowing without her help he was definitely a dead man.

Even though he was focused on the danger of the moment, he couldn’t help but pick up her thoughts. They screamed in his head.

She was afraid, not so much of him but rather of what she was about to do in taking him out of the hospital. She had questions, too, about who he was and who might be after him. Was he telling the truth or was this some sort of a result of brain injury?

Now wasn’t the time for him to answer those questions and he wasn’t sure he’d ever tell her the whole truth. The last thing he wanted to do was bring danger to the woman who had been his emotional lifeline while he’d been comatose.

She didn’t say a word as she helped him to the hospital-room door. She peeked around the corner and then they left the room and entered the long, dimly lit hallway.

He could smell her, a faint floral scent that was as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat. It was a scent he associated with compassion and tenderness, qualities that had been absent for all of his twenty-eight years except for the past six months.

Neither of them said a word as they slowly made their way toward the exit in the distance. Until the moment when she’d walked in to his hospital room minutes earlier, he’d had no idea what she looked like, but he knew her scent, the gentle touch of her hands, and he also knew many of her innermost thoughts.

Thankfully they encountered nobody else in the hallways. By the time they left the building Jared was beyond exhaustion. It was only sheer determination and desperation that drove him to put one foot in front of the other.

She led him to a car and helped him into the passenger seat and then he watched as she hurried around the front of the car to the other side.

He liked the way she looked. She was tall and slender with light blond hair she’d pulled back into a low ponytail. He suspected he would have thought her beautiful even if she’d been bald and weighed eight hundred pounds because he knew the beauty of her soul.

She slid behind the steering wheel and a cacophony of voices suddenly resounded in his head, the familiar voices of dangerous men. Close. They were so close and getting closer every minute.

“Please, we have to hurry,” he urged her. “We have to get away from here.”

“I must be out of my mind,” she murmured as she jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. “Buckle up,” she demanded as she backed out of the parking space and then changed gears and raced for the hospital exit.

He fumbled with the seat belt and finally managed to get it secured around him as she wheeled out of the parking lot and onto a main road.

Within seconds the voices in his head had faded away and the urgency that had filled him since the moment he’d regained consciousness began to ebb.

He was left with an overwhelming exhaustion. It didn’t matter where she took him, at least for now he knew he was safe.

The men who hunted him would find his hospital bed empty and nobody would be able to tell them what had happened to him. If nothing else he’d bought himself some time.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked.

“My house,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s only about five minutes from here. You can’t be by yourself right now. You shouldn’t even be out of the hospital.” There was more than a little censure in her voice.