Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1) Read online

  Ethan looked away, shutting down that bright beam of connection between us. I struggled to find my voice.

  “No, that’s fine. We can go ahead with the appointment.”

  “Okay, good.” He motioned me into his office. Did I hear him take a deep breath?

  I lay down on the couch, my heart thumping in my chest. The room was cool, but I was sweating, and not because of the September afternoon heat outside. I tried hard to gain control while he puttered around with the machine, but it was no use. I was trembling by the time he came out of the kitchen with the herbal mixture and sat beside me to put the warm, scented cloth over my eyes.

  “You seem a little tense today.”

  Speak for yourself, buster. “Do I?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Guess after last time I’m a little nervous about what we’ll discover.” That wasn’t far from the truth. I’d spent most of the week with my memories and the edges of my hurt were only now beginning to blur.

  “I don’t blame you. Last session was difficult.”

  I blew out a frustrated breath. “I still don’t understand what all this has to do with those three hours I lost. Why doesn’t AL help me remember that?”

  Ethan was silent a moment. “I could try to direct the session a little more to answer that question specifically.”

  Well, hallelujah! Why didn’t we do that to begin with?

  “But, understand, Asia, we might not get the answer we want. The subconscious mind doesn’t work like the conscious mind; it likes symbolism, substitution of one thing for another. We may get some insights; we may just get confusion.”

  “Okay, I get it. This is like asking a Ouija Board for the answer. Let’s try anyway.”

  He chuckled, a low, sexy rumble I could only imagine would sound incredible in my ear as we—I turned my mind from that beguiling image as soft music started to play in the room and his voice began: “Think back to that night, Asia. You were driving in your truck on Deerhorn Road . . .”

  . . . I had the radio cranked up, the sweet, high wail of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s guitar lamenting that the floods down in Texas wouldn’t let him talk to his baby on the phone. It was just past midnight, but I was wide awake. I was a night owl by nature; even three kids hadn’t changed that. So I hadn’t copped my first yawn yet that night; I figured I had a few pages of the book I was reading still in me before bed.

  As I slowed down to take the curve before Dry Run Bridge, the radio started acting up. Static rose up out of nowhere to drown the signal and got so loud I had to turn the radio off. Strange. Usually I got a clear signal for that station, any time of day.

  I glanced down at the radio. “Wake up, boys. Your transmitter’s on the blink.”

  Then the truck started to cough, the engine sputtering like it was running out of gas. “What the hell?”

  I checked the gauge and confirmed what I already knew—the needle was resting close to FULL. I slipped the truck into neutral and gunned it and got nothing but a dying wheeze as the vehicle began to coast, powerless. I hauled on the dead weight of the steering wheel to get the truck off to the side of the road and slammed my palms down on the rim as she finally died.

  “Son of a bitch!” The only thing I knew that could kill a vehicle that quickly was a busted timing chain—and that was nothing that could be fixed in a hurry or on the cheap, either. I cursed again, louder and bluer.

  Suddenly the truck, the road, even the inside of my eyelids though I’d shut my eyes tight, were set aflame with a searing white light. My brain erupted with blinding, agonizing pain. I couldn’t move. I screamed . . .

  . . . and woke screaming in another place and time, one I couldn’t recognize at first. My eyes were open, but I saw nothing. My muscles were locked, frozen into immobility. The only sound I could hear was my own voice, distorted in a high-pitched, keening cry, wordless, terrorized.

  I felt warm hands on my face. I heard a voice calling me back. I blinked and saw Ethan, his face inches from mine, his eyes full of concern. I stopped screaming and took a breath. And I started to shake, tremors racking my body until I could do nothing but curl inward and try to hold on.

  “Asia, look at me. You’re okay. Do you hear me? You’re safe. Tell me you know where you are.”

  “Okay.” My throat spasmed. I swallowed. “Okay. I’m good.”

  He backed off a little, letting his hands drop from my face. I grabbed them in my own, unwilling to let him go. There was the tiniest shadow of movement in his body, as if he would have pulled me into his arms, then the slightest tensing of his jaw as he controlled the impulse. Or maybe there was nothing but a natural sympathy and professional interest as he watched me. God knows I was no longer in any shape to sort it out. I clung to his hands, which was all he would give me.

  “What do you remember, Asia?”

  I struggled to capture the details. “Not much more than I did before. Only the truck conking out. And the light. And my head—it still hurts like a sonofabitch.”

  He stared at me for a long, silent moment. Then he shook his head, defeated.

  “We can’t keep doing this.”

  I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Asia, I think we’ve gone as far as we can with AL. I doubt further sessions are likely to give us any new information. And they’re hurting you. We’ve hit a wall.”

  “So what do we do?”

  His gaze slid to the floor. “I’m still thinking about that.” He got up from his chair and headed for the kitchen. “How about some tea?”

  I turned to stare after him. “Is that all you have to say?”

  Aware I was crossing some kind of boundary, I got up to find him in the kitchen.

  His head snapped around to gape at me when I came in the door.

  “Well, is it?” I repeated.

  “What is it you want to hear?”

  “Do you have a theory?”

  He met my angry gaze. “Frankly, no.”

  “Really? Not alien abduction? That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? It’s why Claussen sent me to you. You’re the specialist on the subject.”

  “You think you were abducted by aliens?”

  “God damn it, Ethan!” I shouted at him. “You’re the fucking shrink here! You tell me. Am I crazy or not? Because from where I’m at it sure as hell feels like I’m crazy!”

  He stopped what he was doing at the kitchen counter and came to pull me into his arms. His breath was warm in my ear.

  “Shh. It’s all right. We’ll figure it out. Just take a minute and breathe.”

  Of their own accord, my arms snaked around his waist and held on to the strength he offered. It was a strength I needed, because in that moment I had begun to glimpse the true nature of the fear I’d been holding at bay with all my denial. I was scared to my soul, more frightened than any child in the dark of midnight. Because no explanation could avoid the truth of what I had seen and felt and knew in my heart to be so.

  “Come on,” Ethan said after a while. “Let’s go sit down and we’ll talk.”

  He led me to the couch and sat down close beside me. “Asia, you ask me if you’re crazy, and what you really want me to tell you is whether you’ve lost touch with reality.” His gaze was locked on my face, his voice as gentle as his embrace had been earlier. “Believe it or not, that’s not such an easy thing to do. Reality’s pretty subjective in the best of circumstances. And crazy’s not so easy to define. But it seems to me we have two paths we could take here.”

  He paused, and the struggle he was waging in his own mind was clear on his face. I waited, watching to see which side of him would emerge the victor.

  He took a breath and raised his eyes to mine. “There would be some doctors who would . . . suggest . . . that what you’ve told me is pure delusion—an elaborate paranoid fantasy or even schizophrenic hallucination. They would prescribe medication and intense therapy, maybe even a brief period of hospitalization to reorient you to reality.”

  It was hi
s turn to wait as he looked for my reaction to his words. My heart thudding in my chest, I could only nod, though my mind was shrieking NO!

  “I understand. Is that what you think?”

  He hung his head, shoulders slumping, his hands between his knees. For a long moment, he didn’t speak.

  “Ethan?”

  When he lifted his head again, his blue eyes were dark with determination. “No, Asia, that’s not what I think. By every criterion I know you are as sane and well-adjusted as anyone. You’ve overcome an incredible tragedy and moved on to lead a relatively productive and sociable life. You’re dealing openly with your remaining issues from that trauma. Damn it, there’s just no indication you’ve invented any of this out of a desire for attention or to mask other traumas or for any of the other reasons we usually look for.”

  He stopped and shook his head. “I can’t justify doping you up with powerful drugs to rid you of your delusions. And yet I can’t explain what you’ve told me.”

  He stumbled to a halt, at a complete loss for words, and gave me the faintest of smiles. “I guess that means we’re both crazy.”

  I’m not sure, but I think that’s the moment I fell in love with Ethan Roberts.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Okay, you’ve been working like a freaking demon all day. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but what the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Dan Parker threw the log he was carrying into the back of his battered pickup truck and paused to wipe the sweat streaming off his face with the sleeve of his tee-shirt.

  Before he answered, Ethan tossed his own slab of wood into the truck and trudged back to where the fallen pine lay in pieces in the yard to grab another one. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

  Dan watched him with one elbow propped up on the side of the truck. “We’ve been working pretty steadily since noon, and I bet I’ve heard three words out of you.”

  “You’ve been running the chain saw.” Ethan dumped another piece of wood in the truck. “We’re supposed to chat about the latest journal articles over that noise?”

  Dan started moving again and picked up more of the downed pine, one of several casualties of the last big thunderstorms of summer littering his suburban Nashville yard. “Okay, so I’m done with the chain saw. What’s bothering you?”

  Ethan scowled, squatting to pull a particularly heavy chunk of the tree into his arms. “Nothing.” He grunted as he stood and wrestled the piece to the truck, where he released it with a bang into the metal bed.

  “Uh-huh.” Dan tossed in a lighter piece. “It’s the nightmares again, isn’t it? Can’t sleep?”

  Ethan stopped, sweat running down his chest and back despite the thin breeze that had kicked up to relieve the afternoon heat. He stared up at the vibrant robin’s egg blue of the sky through the trees of Dan’s front yard, and wished for the cool of New York at this time of year.

  “No,” he said at last. “I haven’t dreamt about the accident in a long time.”

  Dan was suddenly standing right next to him. “If I didn’t know you better I’d say there was a woman getting under your skin.”

  He couldn’t control the split-second of shocked reaction that crossed his face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Come on. You’re showing all the signs of a man on testosterone overload. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Ethan growled and threw another log in the truck. “Fuck off, Dan.”

  His friend’s eyes grew wide. “Jesus, man, don’t tell me I’m right. You’ve found a girlfriend at last?”

  Ethan forced a huge grin, as if Dan had fallen for it big time. “Yeah. Twins. They’re stewardesses on Swedish Air Lines.”

  “Fuck you, too, Roberts. So what is it, really?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Work. It’s nothing.”

  “Work?” His friend tilted his head to squint at him. “One of your Trekkies has you stumped?”

  “Hey, not funny!” He went back to work, hoping Dan would let it go at that. “They may be eccentric, but they’re all mine.”

  “And welcome to them.” Dan looked like he would have said more, but a cranberry-colored minivan pulling in the driveway caught his attention.

  The van pulled even with them and stopped. Dan’s wife Lisa leaned out the window to flirt with her husband.

  “All this sweaty work got you feeling pretty manly there, hon?”

  Dan grinned, his face lighting up when he saw her. Ethan swallowed a smile. Dan had been a confirmed bachelor for years until he’d fallen hard for Lisa. Now he was just as confirmed as a family man and swore he’d never been anything else.

  Close up to the van, Dan said something to Lisa that made her laugh out loud. Ethan heard the kids—three-year-old Kayla and six-year-old Michael—telling Dad all about their afternoon. Ethan rubbed at his chest, that hollow feeling somewhere between loneliness and envy creating an ache he wished he could massage away.

  The van drove on to the rear of the house, and Dan turned back to him. “Come on. Let’s get this truckload around back, then we’ll call it a day. I’m ready for a beer and something to eat.”

  They made short work of the wood in the truck, stacking it behind the more seasoned oak in the woodpile in the backyard. They washed up and were out on the deck with their feet up and a cold longneck in hand in less than half an hour.

  “Okay, so you’ve got a patient giving you fits.” Dan studied him. “Can you talk about it?”

  Ethan finished the debate he’d been having with himself since Dan had broached the subject of his silence. If he’d been honest, he’d have just admitted he’d wanted to talk to Dan about Asia from the beginning. It was one reason he’d been so ready to give up his Sunday to help Dan with his yard work.

  “Do you remember the woman Arthur Claussen referred to me last spring, who’d lost her kids in a fire?”

  “Yeah. Jesus.” He shifted in his lawn chair. “Her?”

  Ethan nodded.

  “For God’s sake, E. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her. Of course it’s a tough case.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the problem. She’s come out of that trauma in good shape emotionally.” Ethan’s lips softened into a brief smile. “She’s incredibly strong. She doesn’t need me for that.”

  A frown drew Dan’s brows together. “What, then?”

  He thought for a second, careful not to divulge too many details of Asia’s case. “She’s missing time from that night—three hours that she can’t account for. It’s why Claussen referred her to me.”

  “You’re using Claussen’s protocol to help people deal with blackouts, hysterical amnesia, that kind of thing, I know.” Dan nodded. “So, it’s not working on this woman?”

  “That’s the thing. It’s working too well. It’s revealed a story that can’t possibly be true, but that can’t possibly be a lie, either. We’ve been at this for weeks now and . . .” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to help her, Dan.”

  “All right, hold on.” Dan used one hand and the beer bottle to frame the question. “You say she’s apparently moved on from her trauma, but she’s still having trouble dealing with this blackout.”

  Ethan started to explain that it was probably something more than a blackout, but thought better of it. He simply nodded.

  “None of the standard explanations apply?”

  “Explanations? For the lost time, you mean?” Ethan shook his head. “No.”

  “Just her word on that?”

  “Testimony at the inquiry into the fire. Fire and rescue and sheriff’s deputies at the scene swore she was sober. No underlying physical or mental conditions, unless you want to call the anemia and possible anorexia I saw in one doctor’s file contributory.”

  “Huh. No wonder she’s a little obsessed.” Dan took a drink from his beer, thinking. “So, okay, you run the AL thing on her and what? Something weird comes up?”

  Ethan let his gaze rest on his friend’s open fa
ce, wondering how much to tell him, wondering how much he would believe, how quick he would be to pick up the phone to order the ambulance to Happy Acres for a sadly distraught Dr. Ethan Roberts.

  “Dan, I can’t tell you what she’s told me,” he said after a while. “I can only tell you that if it came from anyone else it would be a lot easier to label complete fantasy. But this story—it’s like an intact memory. It has narrative form and cohesion far beyond what we usually see in these cases. It makes sense, in its own way—much more sense than the typical paranoid delusion. And coming from this woman, who in every other way is very practical, down-to-earth, intelligent and not the least bit delusional, I just don’t know what to make of it.”

  Dan took another long pull on his beer, swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes at Ethan. “What exactly is it about her story that is so easy to believe? I mean, without going into the details—you don’t have to tell me the details. You know, a lot of paranoid schizophrenics can sound really convincing until you start picking their stories apart. Or worse, if someone’s just trying to manipulate you, they can have you believing just about anything. It’s a real problem for us working with teenagers, trust me.”

  Ethan shot him a glare and started to respond that he wasn’t a complete idiot, but he clamped down on the impulse and gave a more considered answer instead. “First of all, the story is emerging under the equivalent of hypnosis. It’s virtually impossible for someone to lie or embellish the truth under the influence of AL.”

  “Really? You’ve never had an instance of that happening?”

  “Never,” Ethan said firmly. “You’re accessing levels of consciousness that are without filters of any kind. It can be a little voyeuristic sometimes, frankly.”

  “Weird. Okay. What else?”

  “Secondly, the level of detail is downright scary. It’s full of sensory input. I can practically see, feel and smell this place as she’s describing it.”

  “Place? There’s a place involved?”