Sudden Recall. Lisa Phillips

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

      Sienna 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 been completely idle this past year. She had a working knowledge of self-defense, more for the sake of meeting people and getting out of the house to attend classes. But otherwise, her life had been quiet. Pleasant.

      Yet now, fear seemed to have distilled inside her like some weird Frankenstein-type science experiment. In its purest element she was left with something rock hard and unwavering. Like the all-American hero’s forearms.

      Sienna glanced at the man on the other side of her, covering her with his Eastern European ex-military rifle and those Russian surplus thermal goggles hanging loose around his neck. Most of that was available to buy on the internet, which meant these guys could be anyone and not necessarily just hired guns of the nasty variety...and how did she know that? She grew vegetables and raised goats for milk. How did she know where those items had come from?

      The rifle was lifted for a second, just long enough for her to get the message. Apparently, trying to run was out of the question. So what was the new plan? And was Parker dead?

      “We figured sooner or later you’d go to him for help. Little obvious, don’t you think? Crying to the big bad SEAL in his cushy new job driving prisoners around. Too bad he can’t help you no more. Too, too bad.”

      Sienna swallowed. Tears filled her eyes, and that painful ache in her chest was back. It usually only surfaced after a bad dream—like the one she had of that little boy crying. She didn’t even know Parker, despite his apparently thinking they were best friends or something. Why would she shed a tear over the death of someone she barely knew?

      Still, it slipped down her face, and she didn’t wipe it away in case the gunmen were watching. They’d let down their guard if they thought she was as helpless as she looked.

      She kept up her act when the gunman’s grip on her arm tightened just enough that she could reasonably let off a whimper. They’d soon think she was surrendering, but her first order of business was getting out of his hold. Then she’d either have to steal their van or run down the street until she found someone willing to give her a ride into town.

      They stepped out of the trees and the helicopter’s rotors whipped her hair around her face, obstructing her view of the three vehicles and the man holding his arm. Parker had been right; he’d winged one of the gunmen.

      “I can’t believe you let him hit you.” The rifleman to her right lifted his weapon, his voice disappointed but in a hard way. There was no sympathy for his friend.

      “It was a mistake. I won’t let it happen again.” The injured man spoke in broken English.

      “You’re right, you won’t.” The rifle popped off one shot, and the injured man fell to the ground.

      Sienna looked away from the carnage while the rifleman chuckled.

      “Let’s go.” The man holding her stepped over the dead guy, which forced her to do the same. “You have an appointment with the boss.”

      “I think you have the wrong person. This must be some mistake. I run a tiny ranch and I take care of my sick aunt. What could you possibly want with me?”

      “Not us, just the boss.” He chuckled. “Nice try, though. This whole ‘I don’t remember’ act is cute and all. I nearly busted a gut when I heard about that. But it’s not going to fly. The boss has ways of making people remember things.”

      Dread crested over her like an ice cold wave. She wasn’t going to suddenly get her memories back, not even with whatever horrifying method their “boss” came up with. The doctors couldn’t do anything about her amnesia, which was why she’d checked out of the hospital.

      A year later and she still didn’t recall one iota of her past. Aunt Karen asked her about it every few weeks, but other than that she just let Sienna go about her business.

      The whole thing was bizarre. And not just the situation she was in now.

      Aunt Karen was like an acquaintance living in her house. Sienna had figured she’d develop familial affection for the older woman at some point, but it hadn’t happened yet. What kind of niece didn’t even love her own aunt? And what had Parker said, about her not even having an aunt, just an uncle? How strange was that?

      It was like everyone knew more about her life than she did. Sienna wanted to grab her hair at the roots. All the tiptoeing around, all the side glances and making sure she hadn’t snapped. It was infuriating. She wanted to just get in her truck—if it actually worked—and drive off into the sunset. But every time she got ready to leave, it was like her aunt got needier.

      Now she was about to get a ride out of town when she really didn’t want to go.

      The gunman shook her arm. “Move. Now.”

      * * *

      Parker was pretty sure his rib was broken. He lay on the ground listening to the men walking Sienna to the van, then rolled over and did a push-up, getting his legs under him. Oh, that hurt. He jogged after them in time to see her struggle against the man holding her, desperate not to be put on the waiting chopper. Good girl.

      She was giving the fight a valiant effort, further proof that what she’d said was true. In fight-or-flight mode no one was good enough to keep up the pretense. She’d have done even better in this situation had she retained all of her previous skills, which meant they likely truly had been forgotten.

      At least these men didn’t seem to want her dead, or she’d have been killed already. No, they only wanted him dead—which was pretty much the story of his life.

      Since the single gunman had his back to him, Parker cracked the door on his truck and grabbed his phone, hoping they wouldn’t see the dome light. He sent a text to the duty phone at the marshal’s office that was manned 24/7, a code that meant, “Get everyone here. I’m in serious trouble,” along