Chapter One

She woke up drowning. Her lungs burned as she struggled to suck in a breath but got liquid instead. Warm liquid that burned like acid. Viscous, acrid liquid filling her lungs. She tried to flail her arms and legs, to get above the water. Something restrained her. She tried to scream but sucked in more liquid. More burning. Oh God, she was going to die.

And it would hurt like hell.

The restraints on her arms and legs popped free. Hands reached into the water to grasp her upper arms, lifting her out of the liquid. She coughed it up, hacking over and over, almost vomiting from the pain and effort. Then, with one long gasp, she breathed in clean, dry air. It tasted like salvation.

The hands that had rescued her let go, leaving her sitting up with her legs stretched out in front of her. She clung to the edge of the pool. Her entire body shook with a violence that rattled the glass.

She blinked rapidly. Glass? Her vision was blurred. She blinked some more, over and over, until enough of the bleariness cleared that she could make out her surroundings. She sat inside a glass coffin—at least, that’s what it looked like—with wires attached to her chest and head, held in place by sticky pads. Her head pounded. Her heart beat so fast it hurt. The lighting, though dim, seemed too bright for her eyes. She squinted and tried to make sense of what she saw.

The glass coffin was filled with a pale-blue liquid, the thick, acrid-tasting stuff that had nearly drowned her. The coffin squatted atop a table or dais. The wires attached to her body stretched down from the coffin, draped across the concrete floor, and snaked upward to a bank of electronic equipment along the nearest wall. Lights flashed on the equipment. Beeps echoed through the room. More equipment populated the rest of the space, including a video camera on a tripod that stood several feet from her glass coffin, its lens pointed directly at her. She felt it watching her, as if an evil spirit inhabited its circuits and chips.

Mirrors lined half of one wall of the room. An instinct told her those were two-way mirrors, designed to let people on the other side view this room without being viewed themselves. The mirrors revealed a wet, bedraggled young woman hunched inside a glass coffin. It was her, she realized. Long, dark-red hair hung limp and wet, stopping just short of her breasts. Her skin looked deathly pale in the sterile lighting, though she somehow thought her skin would have a more olive tone if she hadn’t almost drowned a minute ago. For some reason, her own image seemed unfamiliar. She was too far away from the mirrors to see the color of her eyes, yet she felt they must be hazel.

Now that the warm liquid had run off her arms and torso, a chill seeped into her flesh. Goosebumps prickled her skin. She shivered a little, rubbing her arms. That was when she noticed it.

She was naked. Not half-naked either. Completely, one hundred percent naked.

Before she had time to ponder that, she noticed him.

A man hunched beside her coffin, bent at the waist to gaze at her from her eye level. The liquid from her glass coffin dripped from his hands, which grasped the coffin’s lip. The man had light-brown hair, cinnamon-colored eyes, and light skin. His arms were wet—dripping, actually, with the pale-blue liquid from her coffin. His features were well proportioned and smooth, reminiscent of ancient statues of virile young men she’d seen…someplace. Couldn’t recall where. She could picture the statues, though. Men with trim bodies and angelic faces who held staffs in their hands and appeared to be walking with great purpose and confidence. She could picture this man as one of those statues. The only difference was his expression. His face was pale, his mouth open, eyes wide and tinged with red.

He leaned closer to her, fixing his gaze on hers. “Can you hear me?”

She tried to speak but wound up hacking again. Her throat burned. She wanted water but couldn’t say it. He repeated his query, and she nodded. She pointed at her throat, then gestured with her hand as if it held a cup.

He seemed to get the idea. The shock—or was it terror?—on his face softened into an expression more like concern. He trotted to a nearby table, grabbed a bottle of clear liquid, and brought it back to her. After unscrewing the cap, he offered her the bottle.

She took it in her trembling hands, lifted it to her lips, and tilted the bottle to spill cool, tasteless liquid into her mouth. The water felt so good on her throat that she took another sip, and then another, and another. The burning in her throat subsided.

She decided to test her voice with a simple word. “Thanks.”

It came out as part croak, part whisper.

The man gave her a tight-lipped smile, though his eyes widened even more, if only for a second. She took another, longer drink of the water.

Her savior raised a hand. “Take it easy. You don’t want to overdo it.”

She rested the bottle on the coffin’s wide rim. When she spoke this time, her voice sounded less scratchy. “Who are you?”

He arched his eyebrows. “The better question is, who are you?”

The question stopped her. She stared at him, her brain spinning in circles like a car’s wheels in deep mud. Her voice quavered as she said, “I don’t know who I am.”

He didn’t look at all surprised, which sent a shiver down her spine. Or maybe that was from the lukewarm air tickling her damp skin. Might’ve been a little of both. Questions bubbled in her mind, and she struggled to arrange her thoughts in some semblance of order. Hard to do when nothing around her made sense.

She took in more of her surroundings in an attempt to order the chaos within her. Tall ceilings with recessed lights cast a sterile glow on the room, while lots of lights flashed on lots of equipment, including the video camera and a row of wide-screen computer monitors on a table. The screens faced away from her, so she couldn’t tell what they showed.

A laboratory. This was a laboratory.

The realization came out of nowhere. She didn’t know how she knew this place’s function. Somehow she just did. Why the hell had she been drowning in a glass coffin inside a laboratory?

She focused on the man again. He must know.

Another shiver coursed through her. She was sitting here naked with a strange man who clearly knew more than she did about her situation.

The man glanced down at her body, blushed, and averted his gaze.

She guessed he’d finally realized she was au naturel.

He scurried away, retrieving a backpack from under one of the tables and snagging a long coat from a hook on the wall. The presence of other hooks indicated that more than one person used this room, someone other than the strange man with her now. Returning to her, he dropped the backpack at his feet and unzipped its main compartment. Digging out a pair of socks, he set both the coat and socks on the floor before offering her his hands.

She knew he was offering to help her out of the coffin. Still, she tried to stand on her own. Apparently, she was stubborn and suspicious. Good to know. Her feet slipped, and she almost tumbled over, taking the coffin with her.

The man caught her by the waist, hoisting her out of the glass box in one swift motion. The coffin teetered but stayed in place.

He set her down on her feet.

She teetered a little, like the coffin had, and grasped his forearms for support.

He held her elbows until she steadied, then plucked the electrode pads off her body one by one as fast, she imagined, as any human on earth could’ve managed. At the same time, he avoided looking at her naked flesh as much as possible. Once he’d finished his task, he picked up the socks and coat and thrust them toward her without glancing at her body or her face.

“It’s the best I can do,” he said, shrugging. His gaze stayed fixed on his own feet.

She took the items and slipped them on, feeling less than well-dressed. It was better than naked.

“Thank you, Jake,” she said.

His head jerked up. He gaped at her with a bug-eyed expression.

She scrunched her brow. “What?”

“How do you know my name?”

Her heart skipped a beat. She had called him by name. She had no answer for his question, and quite frankly, she didn’t know what to say. He seemed just as stumped. After several seconds she managed to form a single question. “Do you know my name?”

“Um…” He glanced around the room and refused to meet her gaze. “How are you feeling?”

“Headache. Otherwise okay, as far as I can tell.”

He retrieved a tablet computer from a nearby table and handed it to her.

She glanced down at the text displayed on the screen.

“Can you read this?” he asked.

“It’s a bunch of scientific gobbledygook, but yes, I can read it. I’m not illiterate.” Well, she did have amnesia. She couldn’t fault him for wondering if she could read. Yet an instinct warned her there was more to it than simple concern for her faculties. “Who are you?”

“Jake. Have you forgotten? You spoke my name—”

“I know that.” She frowned at him. “What’s your last name? Where are you from? What are you doing here? What am I doing here?”

“Long story.”

He checked his watch. As he stuffed the tablet inside his backpack, she glimpsed a small revolver tucked into a pocket sewn into the pack’s lining. He had a gun?

Before she could ask about it, he told her, “If you can walk, then we need to go. Quick.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later.”

He reached for her arm, to urge her to walk.

She shook free of his grasp.

“Explain now,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not moving until you tell me something that makes sense.”

Wow, she was plucky. She was starting to like herself.

Oh great. Was she also egotistical? Maybe she shouldn’t get too fond of herself after all.

Jake met her gaze as he took hold of her shoulders. “I know you’re scared. And confused. I will explain everything, I promise, but for now you have to come with me. If they find out you’re alive, they’ll kill you. Understand?”

No, she didn’t really understand, not in the broader context. In terms of what killing meant, oh yeah, she understood that all right.

She had two choices that she could see. Stay here in a creepy lab where unknown people had stuffed her in a glass coffin and tried to drown her for unknown, but surely terrifying, reasons. Or go with Jake, the attractive man who saved her from drowning but refused to explain anything—yet.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

Though he smiled, the expression was tight and seemed more relieved than cheerful.

An alarm buzzed.

She jumped.

Jake grabbed his backpack and ushered her across the room toward a large metal door that stood shut. She saw no knobs or levers for opening the portal. Jake pulled a badge out of his pocket and swiped it through a reader mounted beside the door. A mechanism clunked, and the door slid open with a grinding noise.

The alarm buzzed again.

“Hurry,” Jake said, shoving her through the doorway. “They’re coming.”

She had no time to ask who or why. He grabbed her arm and dragged her down a hallway toward a T intersection, where this hallway ended at a set of huge metal doors that must’ve reached ten feet in height and fifteen in width. Ignoring the doors, he swerved left. His hand still gripped her arm, a little too tightly. Grimacing, she tried to get her bearings as they rushed headlong toward an unknown destination. Doorways opened off the hallway here and there, each one labeled with an alphanumeric designation. Nothing gave any clue about what this place was. She knew only that she’d woken up in some kind of laboratory. Not comforting.

The alarm buzzed faster now, striking a rhythm almost as fast as her heartbeat.

Chapter Two

Jake hauled her around another corner, into a hallway identical to the previous ones. Despite her socks, the concrete floor chilled her feet as they ran. This hallway dead-ended at a single door, smaller than the others and equipped with a knob. A red exit sign glowed above the door.

The alarm fell silent.

Jake muttered a curse under his breath. The wall beside the door held a card reader like the one on the laboratory door. Jake swiped his badge, a mechanism chunked, and he twisted the knob, pushing the door outward.

“They’re almost here, let’s go,” Jake said, urging her to walk through the doorway.

She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Or maybe her subconscious simply wouldn’t allow it.

A scowl flashed across Jake’s face, then vanished. He pursed his lips, as if struggling not to yell at her. His frustration seemed to roil in the air, palpable on a psychic level. The emotion driving his frustration was not anger, she realized, but rather fear. This man was terrified. Of what? Or who?

“Please,” Jake said, his tone almost pleading. “Explanations later. Escape now.”

She fled through the doorway.

Jake followed her out, and then took the lead as they raced through pitch darkness toward a destination that, she hoped, he at least knew how to find.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she spotted a shape ahead of them. A large, boxy shape. A vehicle.

Jake halted beside the vehicle, an SUV, and flung open the driver’s door.

She noticed a logo etched onto the SUV’s door, a symbol that struck her as familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. For some reason, the word redeo popped into her brain. She had no idea what the word meant. It sounded like a foreign language.

Jake motioned for her to climb inside the vehicle. She crawled over the driver’s seat and center console onto the passenger seat, settling in as Jake slammed the door. He jammed a key in the ignition and cranked it. The engine grumbled to life. He shoved the gear shift lever into drive, floored the accelerator, and spun the car rightward. They rocketed through the night, the headlights cleaving the darkness ahead of them, revealing a gravel road.

She twisted around to look out the back window. The outline of a building was visible thanks to the moonlight that filtered through the thin clouds overhead. She could make out no details on the structure.

“Fasten your seatbelt,” Jake said.

She did as commanded. He’d already snapped his seatbelt into position and turned on the heater. After several long minutes, the tepid air turned into a warm current that blasted over her feet. It felt so good she wanted to cry, but that probably wouldn’t go over well with her scared and frustrated savior. She bit her lip to stave off the tears.

The car bounced over a pothole. Her teeth clacked together. Pain lanced through her jaw and straight into her brain. The headache she’d already had ratcheted up a couple notches, and she rubbed her temples. Maybe the headache stemmed from her brain’s attempt to catch up with events. She felt numb, in more than the physical sense. The warm air from the heater took care of her frozen flesh. The other numbness came from somewhere deep inside.

She glanced sideways at Jake. “Where are we going?”

“No talking. Not until we’re clear of the perimeter.”

“What perimeter?”

“Quiet.” He’d practically shouted the word. In a softer tone, he added, “Please. I need to concentrate. These roads are full of holes and channels carved out by the rains we had last week. I can’t risk slowing down, but I don’t want to flip the jeep either.”

She gulped against a tightness in her throat. Flipping the jeep sounded like a good thing to avoid. “Okay. No talking.”

He relaxed a smidgen, though enough tension remained to keep his entire body rigid. His fingers gripped the steering wheel with such force she half expected the wheel to pop off in his hands when they skimmed over a rock that lay in the road.

The headlights glanced off a metal barrier up ahead. It was a chain-link gate, set into a chain-link fence. And they were barreling toward it at high speed. She waited for Jake to hit the brakes, but he didn’t. The gate loomed closer and closer as her heart pounded faster and faster. She gripped the edges of her seat, squeezing her eyes shut. If she had to die, she supposed smashed to bits in a car wreck was better than drowning.

They hit the gate with an explosive thud. The car shimmied. Something—the gate, presumably—bounced over the car.

She cracked her eyes open to peek through her lashes. They were speeding down the gravel road again, across the desert landscape that she caught glimpses of in the headlights. The windshield was cracked on her side. Although the car must’ve suffered at least a few major dents, she couldn’t see any other damage in the darkness. They’d made it.

Twisting around in her seat, she stared out the back window. It revealed nothing but the gloom of night. Even the shape of the structure they’d fled from was no longer visible.

She faced the windshield. No lights. No sign of another living thing. She rotated her gaze toward Jake.

“If we’re in so much danger,” she said, “why don’t I see anyone chasing us?”

Although he kept his attention on the road ahead, his lips compressed into a line. He stayed silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t respond.

Finally, he did. “It’ll take at least ten minutes for them to get inside the lab and figure out you’re gone. After that, they’ll need some more time to check the security cameras and find out I helped you escape. At that point, they’ll mobilize the pursuit.”

“Are you in the military?” she asked.

“No, I’m a grad student. I used to be a Boy Scout, if that helps. Always be prepared. It’s a motto I’ve tried to live by.”

“Is that why you have a gun?”

“You saw it?”

“Uh-huh. Your bosses let you have a gun at work?”

He squirmed a little in his seat. “They don’t know about it. Most of the personnel at the lab have weapons provided by Redeo Biotech, the company we work for. I decided I should have one too. Since they don’t bother with metal detectors, because only authorized personnel are allowed inside the facility, I was able to sneak my contraband weapon inside.”

She studied his face for a few seconds, but she couldn’t glean any information from his impassive expression. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe nobody’s coming after us. Maybe you put me in that tank and tried to drown me because you have a sicko fetish thing about drowned girls. For all I know, you like to kidnap and torture women.”

He slammed on the brakes.

The car’s momentum thrust her forward against the seatbelt, making it dig into her flesh. She gasped and braced herself against the dashboard. The jeep fishtailed, then jerked to a stop.

Jake reached into his pants pocket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you’re leaving me no choice.”

“What—”

He jammed something into her neck. She felt the sharp stick of the needle and then…

Nothing.

*****

Jake stared straight ahead through the windshield as the Jeep hurtled down the gravel two-track. He avoided looking at the unconscious woman slumped in the passenger seat because it made his gut twist. Sedating her had seemed like his only option. She’d been too upset to handle. If he were totally honest with himself, though, he’d sedated her mainly because she wouldn’t stop asking questions. He couldn’t tell her certain things, no matter how much she pestered him. Things she wouldn’t understand. Things she wouldn’t believe. Soon he would have to reveal everything to her. For now, though, he simply couldn’t deal with it.

He was a coward. He knew this.

Before she’d woken up this evening, he’d spent hours just gazing at her and wondering what kind of person she had been before she became a test subject. He’d looked at her naked body, of course—he was a man, after all—but eventually, his attention had shifted to her face, and he no longer paid much attention to her lovely body. Her face captivated him. Those hazel eyes most of all. He got to see her beautiful irises only when one of the scientists pulled her lids open to examine her eyes, which they did once a week. He’d lived for those moments, when he spied those light brown rings flecked with green. He swore he’d seen a spark of life in those eyes, despite the scientists’ assurances that she would never awaken.

Everything had changed the moment she opened her eyes.

He’d had one choice—run. If they didn’t, they would both die.