Wolfe (2 page)

Kiara, Good Shepherd VA Rehabilitation Village.

The email came dressed as spam, just like they’d said. No doubt sent to a million other accounts so it didn’t alert the wrong people. The little symbol in the top right corner made me halt and not press delete. At least, not until I double-checked. There were five possible symbols and this was definitely one of them. A multipronged star with the top prongs filled in with black.

They wanted me.

Fuck.
My heart did flip flops and I bit down on the side of my hand to let the pain overwhelm my panic.

It took me some minutes to calm down.

Sure enough, a little flash drive the size of a thumbnail was stuck under a railing at the park.

Encrypted, of course.

After that it was just a matter of applying for the job at the rehab center. I was accepted, though I was never sure if that was luck, skill, or some outside influence.

The first day, I felt as if I had a sign plastered on me. They’d know – know I was some sort of spy. So laughable. Logically, who would think of a nurse as a spy?

For the best, I told myself. This was a paltry request and no one would ever find out. My parents would be safe. We’d all be happy.

I prayed I was correct. If they ever asked me to assassinate the president, I’d have a cardiac arrest.

I didn’t know what the purpose of this was to be. Watch one patient and warn my handlers if or when anything changed?

It was such a strange command.

Andy Carruthers had a big file that told me enough to figure out most of his past. The rest came down from scuttlebutt and hearsay, which was usually rooted in the truth.

He was a marine who’d gone missing in Afghanistan after a firefight with some Taliban. Presumed dead, until he’d turned up thousands of miles away in Thailand, riddled with gunshot wounds. No one knew how he’d gotten there. Whatever investigations had been done to check that journey weren’t showing on his medical file. He’d had bullets or bullet fragments in his brain, stomach, arm, and both legs. No one had expected him to survive, but he had. No one expected him to walk or see again, but he had.

Now he was here, a quiet, unassuming, if large, shaggy-haired man, who hated getting his hair cut. He talked with difficulty and had obvious residual brain damage. The number of pills he was prescribed was daunting and required us to watch him for five minutes, mornings and evenings, to make sure he swallowed them.

Grand mal seizures that’d resisted therapy and unstable behavior linked to PTSD – a catch-all phrase that doctors loved – had been the reason for those pills.

He swallowed them amiably.

The village had a duck pond where he liked to garden. I couldn’t watch him much more than any other patient, but at lunch hour I made it my habit to go out there and eat.

Was he too a spy? Some valuable font of information from overseas espionage? Had he stolen Russian military secrets? I had a great imagination and for a few months he seemed more fascinating than the latest GRR Martin or
The Princess Bride
book I had with me. I’d observe him, the ducks, and the letters on the page in equal proportions.

Twu love. Death cannot stop true love.
It was the best thing about
The Princess Bride
, even when read a hundred times over. I could read it and hear my favorite movie actors saying the words, every single time. Sometimes I’d shut my favorite book and instead I’d watch him.

“Hi, Andy.” Then I’d settle on the wooden bench with my sandwich and iced coffee.

“Hello, Kiara,” he’d reply in his slow monotone. Everyone called me that. It was too detached to be called nurse by men I’d come to know so well, yet somehow from him it was more personal.

Because he was my private project, I suppose.

I’d sit, eat my lunch and watch as his big hands wrapped around the small shovel and sank the blade into the earth. Those hands would tuck the seedlings into their home as carefully as a mother putting her children to bed. If he’d kissed the plants, I’d not have been surprised.

The scent of freshly turned loam and moisture-saturated air, as he watered the garden, became a comforting part of my routine. We reassured each other. I was doing my job, nursing, watching, keeping my parents back in Russia safe; he was doing his.

Though I really didn’t know what thoughts occupied him.

Every so often, he jolted me with this sharp, assessing look that made my toes curl in my regulation brown nurse shoes.
Danger
would blip up, all red and flashy, in my female sonar that registered bad men – as if I’d met him in a dark alley at night, alone, with my car keys dangling from my hand, my dress askew, and alcohol befuddling me.

My mouth would go dry, as if,
fuck
, he meant to pin me to a wall, yank down my underwear, and have his wicked way with me.

Scary yet titillating, crazy as hell, and the best imaginary fantasy ever, if only his brain wasn’t barely above vegetable status.

Getting turned on bothered me. So wrong.

Except, maybe inside there, he was still him? Maybe he was locked in there, his brain churning, even if his speech center wasn’t doing so well?

If that were true...

Fear would stir again, uncurling in my abdomen, reminding me that he was the subject of my observation. He was big and strong enough to do what he wanted with a woman. The other vets had convinced him to play a casual game of football once, until he’d accidentally flattened a couple of them and they’d sent him away.

Was my apprehension absurd? I had no clue. He was an enigma. No one at the center knew of my speculation about his past, or that a foreign country was
very
interested in him.

Other times, he exhibited the thousand yard stare veterans of war had made their own.

Perhaps he was thinking of evil he’d witnessed? Death, people blown apart, general carnage – it took its toll on such men. He was a soldier who’d been trained to kill. That must be the reason for my unease.

Apart from those weird, infrequent frissons nothing much happened for months. I helped with his rehabilitation – physiotherapy for his legs, exercises for the one eye that still functioned, and other things. He still spoke little, but he overcame most of those problems. His other eye, the useless one that’d been cut, he kept under an eye patch. The sunken scar on his temple above that eye filled in with tissue as did a place where some shrapnel had entered his head. His dark hair grew longer, since he growled at the hairdresser. I showed him how to tie his wavy hair back with a cord so he didn’t drag it in the dirt when he leaned over.

I could barely tell where his injuries had been, if it wasn’t for the thin slash that swept over his eyelids. The man healed well.

Then a new doctor arrived to oversee the wards, Dr. Leroy Hass.

I was there when he came into Andy’s room. It’d been my turn to supervise the pills.

Dr. Hass was tall, lean, with crewcut gray hair that’d please a marine sergeant. He snapped out orders too – quietly, but I could hear the assertiveness.

“I see Mr. Carruthers hasn’t had a change in his medications for months?”

“No, sir.”

The sir was a natural with me. My father had drummed manners into all of his children, boy and girl alike. With my hand still wrapped about the first clear tub of pills, I waited.

“We need to do that. Reassess.” He glanced up. “No seizures for three months. Doses high enough to make a horse fall over?”

“The blood levels of the drugs and enzymes were –”

“I know. Even so. Sit on the bed, Andy.” He examined Andy thoroughly – stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, palpation of all the old wound sites as well as a visual inspection. Then he straightened and grimaced. On the mobile computer station, he reread the summarized records then shook his head.

“Andy, I’m going to have a series of new tests done. MRI, blood tests, and so on. It won’t hurt, but I want to be thorough.”

“Sure, doc.” Andy smiled and pulled on his T-shirt.

I thought nothing of this until the doctor beckoned me to follow him outside the room. The door shut pneumatically behind us.

“Nurse, I didn’t want to alarm Andy, but...” He flicked a finger at the screen. “None of this makes sense. If the MRI confirms what I saw, his injuries do not parallel those in his history. In which case, I’m having the DNA analysis repeated.”

“Oh?” I frowned. We migrated to the nurses’s station.

Without looking up as he scribbled a signature on some forms, he added, “The best disconcerting fact? The injured eye is almost perfect.”

I blinked. I’d seen the damage, though it had been a while since then.

“I believe the man has perfect vision, despite him keeping that eye hidden.”

I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows this time. “What should I tell him?”

“Nothing. Yet. But I am wondering if this is the man described in his history. That man had a serious brain injury and an eye damaged beyond healing. How can this be Andy Carruthers? Only one relative verified his ID. They’ve never visited him since and the ID was done soon after brain surgery. It doesn’t add up. I’m not even sure that man was him.”

If he wasn’t Andy, who was he? And which man did my handlers want me to watch?

A few days later, Dr. Hass began lowering the dose of some of Andy’s drugs. We nurses discussed this course of action with trepidation among ourselves. Having a man of Andy’s size collapse in seizures, or worse, a psychotic episode, wasn’t our favorite scenario.

But nothing seemed to happen. Nothing obvious, apart from Andy becoming more alert, quicker on his feet, less likely to fumble or trip. The DNA test came back as verified correct. The MRI showed Andy had never had the brain injuries his records stated he’d suffered.

Dr. Leroy muttered a few swear words and I decided I should tell my handlers. Any change, they’d said. This was one.

The state couldn’t declare Andy to not be Andy...without other evidence. The bulldog mascot tattoo on his back suggested marine. I had a feeling the doctor was reaching out to people higher up the chain to see if someone else had the same DNA. It was possible, if rare.

If they did, what might that precipitate? Maybe he’d be snatched away by the CIA and my job would be over? I’d like that, though I’d be sad to see him go, whoever he was. We’d begun to have small, halted conversations and made other progress.

The man liked watching birds and several species visited the garden, so I showed him, or rather reminded him, how to look them up on a computer. That led to him sketching them. We had watercolors. I showed him those too. Now the birds gained color. My god, he was such an artist. The birds came to life on the page.

A sparrow was today’s focus. He sat beside me on the bench, using the pencil deftly then adding color. This was the best place to sit and draw. The bench was set back from the pond and partly shaded by trees and shrubs. When the breeze picked up, the light flitting through the swaying greenery must make the page hard to see.

“Like this one?” He handed me the book with the completed painting.

“This is amazing.” I smiled. There was such pleasure in seeing art made before your eyes. Miraculous. “I don’t know how you do this.”

Beneath the perfectly rendered bird, he’d written in tiny, precise letters the species name and other details, including that I was next to him when he drew it. I handed back the little painting.

“Thank
you
, Kiara.” He nodded then took my fingers and swiftly kissed the back of them, like some reawakened southern gentleman. “You gave me the paints, so I credit you with helping me do this.”

“It was nothing. My job.” I shrugged, feeling stupid to dismiss his thanks. A blush warmed my face then the tingle of remembered skin contact in my hand, where it now rested on my lap. I was intrigued by his words also. His little speech of thanks was as much a miracle as his art.

A spam email came in on my opened iPad. I stared, horrified. It signified that a new drop had arrived for me to pick up. A new thumb drive. What would it say?

Nervously, I looked sideways at Andy...or rather, at whoever it was who sat beside me. I’d not asked, ever.

“Can you tell me, please...”

“Yes?” One brow quirked upward and I couldn’t help but notice the strength of that mark above his eye. Though he was tanned, the darkness of his hair contrasted severely with his skin. “What is it, Kiara?”

My heart fluttered. This was one of those frisson moments. Caught almost tongue-tied, I stuttered then recovered, swallowed. Asking this seemed, somehow, momentous. “What is your name? Is it really Andy?”

His mouth tightened and he observed me. Was he deciding whether to lie?

“No. I told them long ago when they found me. They didn’t listen. My name is Wolfe.”

I inhaled sharply.
F. U. C. K.
Truth it was then. “Last or first?”

“Both? I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Maybe it will come to you.”