“Thirsty,” she croaked.
The doctor—yes, that’s what he is—nodded to her and pushed an ice chip against her lips. She opened her mouth slightly and felt the coldness slip into her mouth and dissolve. The moisture felt heavenly, and she felt an immediate sense of relief flood her body.
“More,” she whispered.
The doctor nodded again and pressed several more chips of ice into her mouth to gradually reintroduce water into her system. She was finding it easier to keep her eyes open and looked away from the doctor’s face to examine the rest of the interior. A few words written on pieces of equipment provided more clues that she was no longer being held by the Chinese.
She startled when another man stepped into view. Thick, dark hair framed his tired eyes, but his face was calm and oddly familiar. He wasn’t a doctor, but Lisa had the vague impression she had met him before.
“Hello, Lisa,” the man said. “My name is Connor. Do you remember me?”
Connor.
The name sounded familiar, and she dug into the recesses of her mind to recall from where she had known the dark-haired man. Even his voice had a lyrical quality she knew she had heard before. But the man’s appearance and voice filled her with a sense of dread, as if her body knew there was a reason to be afraid, but the memory remained hidden from her.
She shook her head.
“You are on an Agency plane,” Connor said in a carefully measured cadence. “We are flying you back to California.”
Lisa blinked and felt tears begin to roll away from the corners of her eyes. She didn’t understand how she had come to be strapped to such a comfortable bed inside a jet flying to America, but she felt grateful. And relieved. And another feeling she couldn’t quite place.
Connor shot a questioning look at the doctor, who had stopped feeding her ice chips. The doctor smiled down at Lisa and said, “The sedative is wearing off, but we’ve given her something for the pain. It may take a little while for her to remember what’s happened.”
“How long?” Connor asked.
Lisa looked up into Connor’s brown eyes and felt the need to tell him… What? What am I supposed to tell him? It frustrated her that her addled mind wouldn’t cooperate.
“An hour or two, at most,” the doctor said.
Lisa cleared her throat and asked, “What day is it?”
She knew that wasn’t quite right. Day seemed somehow too insignificant to warrant the effort from her curious mind. But it was close.
Connor shared a look with the doctor before answering, “It’s Tuesday.”
Tuesday.
No, that wasn’t what she needed to know, but she was on the right track. She peeled back another cobweb from her mind and felt it become clearer with each passing second.
“What month is it?”
Yes, that’s the question.
There was no shared look this time before Connor answered. “It’s October, Lisa. You’ve been in captivity for a week.”
The last of the cobwebs fell away, and every horrible memory of the past week suddenly flooded her mind. Nothing was spared as she recalled every brutal beating, every humiliating act. She felt phantom ropes digging into her chafed skin, and she struggled against the bed’s restraints to free herself from bondage. Her body reacted on instinct alone, but her eyes filled with tears of relief.
“What happened?” Lisa asked, blinking them away.
Connor darted in close, and Lisa flinched. Even though she knew the man wasn’t a threat to her, she suspected she would be skittish for some time. As if sensing her unease, Connor took a half step back but held her gaze.
“Do you remember me now?”
Lisa stared hard into his brown eyes but couldn’t place where she had seen them before. She shook her head.
“Do you remember anything?”
She pinched her eyes shut against the torrent of memories flooding her mind. She shook her head to clear them away, then opened her eyes and looked up at Connor.
“Too much,” she said.
Connor placed a gentle hand on her arm, and Lisa recoiled. Human touch had meant only pain and humiliation. But this touch was different. Slowly, she relaxed against Connor’s hand and gave him a weak smile, hoping he wouldn’t pull his hand away.
He didn’t.
“Do you remember being captured?”
Lisa couldn’t prevent the memory of being taken from overpowering every other thought, and she opened her eyes. Swallowing hard against the sour taste of fear, she nodded.
The hand on her arm squeezed softly. “You’re safe now, Lisa.”
“Thank you,” she croaked. “Did you stop it?”
Connor looked over his shoulder at someone out of view. When he turned back, he asked, “Stop what?”
Maybe it’s not too late!
“The attack. Did you stop the attack?”
Connor lowered himself to one knee. “There hasn’t been an attack. What do you know about it? Do you know the target? Do you know when?”
Lisa’s eyes fluttered as she tried processing the rapid-fire questions. “That doesn’t make sense. It should have happened by now.” Her conversation with Shen Yu flashed through her mind, followed immediately by the image of his head exploding in front of her. She choked back a sob.
“What should have happened by now?” Connor asked in a softer tone.
Lisa tried recalling specifics, but chunks of her memory were still missing. She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know exactly. Only that they were targeting an aircraft carrier with a synthetic bioweapon.”
“What do you know about this bioweapon?” Connor asked.
Lisa took a deep breath. “Shen Yu…”
Connor nodded. “You were meeting with him in Shanghai.”
“Shen Yu said it was too late…” She trailed off.
“What did he tell you?”
The more questions Connor asked, the more Lisa remembered. She remembered the look of sadness on Shen Yu’s face as he told her of what his country had done. And she remembered the strange proverb: One day, three autumns.
“Lisa?”
“Yaoshi,” she muttered.
“What?”
“It was the last thing he said to me.”
Connor cocked his head. “What does it mean?”
“If?” Lisa closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What did Shen Yu tell you before that?”
“He told me they had deployed a synthetic bioweapon against an aircraft carrier.”
“Why?”
Lisa opened her eyes. “He didn’t say. But I can only guess that eliminating a strategic asset like an aircraft carrier would make an invasion that much easier.”
“Invasion?”
“Of Taiwan.”
Connor gritted his teeth but remained silent.
“What is it?” Lisa asked, sensing his hesitation.
“The USS Ronald Reagan is in quarantine right now because of an outbreak on the ship.”
“An outbreak of what?” Lisa asked, suddenly wishing she had pressed Shen Yu for more details.
“They don’t know.”
Lisa winced as a bolt of pain radiated through her body. Connor rose from his knee and said, “Doc.”
The doctor walked over and leaned down to look at his patient. He looked at the readings on the monitor over the bed and nodded as if satisfied she was in stable condition. “How are you feeling, Lisa?”
“In pain,” she replied. It had been hidden just below the threshold of the narcotics they had given her, but the opiates were wearing off.
“I’m going to give you—”
“No,” she said. “No drugs.” It wasn’t unbearable yet, and the fog was just beginning to lift. She needed to honor Shen Yu’s sacrifice and finish her mission. She fixed her gaze on Connor again. The pain was becoming more intense, and she needed to tell him what she knew before the doctor stepped in. “Shen Yu gave me something.”