A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER FIVE

Leo and Fitz were buzzed back into the ICU and were instructed to check with the nurse before going into Jane Doe’s room. Once there, they showed the nurse their identification.

“How is she doing?” Leo asked.

“Physically? Better. We took her off the vent a couple of hours ago. She’s breathing on her own.”

A weight lifted from Leo’s chest.

“You said ‘physically,’” Fitz pointed out.

“Her memory is taking some time to come back.”

“What do you mean?” Fitz asked.

“Transient amnesia. She doesn’t remember what happened that brought her here or even her own name,” Maureen, the nurse, reported.

“Transient? It won’t last?” Leo asked.

The nurse shrugged. “Most of these things resolve on their own. Could be a few hours or a couple of days. Dr. Lee ordered more tests for the morning to make sure there isn’t something else causing it.”

“This is from the head injury?”

“Appears that way.”

“This is normal?”

“I wouldn’t say normal, but it happens. You were with her when the shooting happened, right?” Maureen asked.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe seeing you will spark a memory.”

Somehow Leo doubted that. “Worth a try.”

Leo and Fitz followed Maureen into the room.

Once the curtain was pulled back, Leo took in the stranger. Her head was slightly elevated, eyes closed. Long brown hair splayed on the pillow, and a canula was fitted in her nose, delivering oxygen. The vibrant color of her skin the night before, before a bullet penetrated her body, was gone. Here she was drawn, pale. Evidence she’d lost enough blood to make a difference. Or maybe it was the stress of everything on her body.

“Hey, hon.” Maureen coaxed her awake. “You have visitors.”

Janie, which was how Leo had been referring to her in his head instead of Jane Doe, opened her eyes. Green eyes . . . not the blue he remembered. The sharpness of those eyes had lost some of the focus from the night before. But the beauty of them was still there.

“How is your pain?” Maureen asked.

“I’m okay.” Janie looked past Maureen toward Leo and Fitz, her stare blank.

“Do you remember my name?” Maureen asked.

Without words, she shook her head. “You’re a nurse.”

“I am.” She pointed to the wall opposite the bed. “My name is written up there.”

“Maureen.”

“Right. Do you know where you are?”

Janie tried to smile. “A hospital.”

“What city?”

“Atlantic City,” Janie said a little too quickly.

Leo heard Fitz sigh.

“Vegas. But I would guess they’re a lot alike.” Maureen looked at the two of them. “She keeps saying Atlantic City.”

“Is that where you live?” Fitz asked.

“I don’t think so.” Janie started blinking as if forcing away tears.

Maureen reached for the water at the bedside and helped her drink.

“Do I know you?”

Leo stepped closer, took a seat in the only chair in the room. “We met last night. My name is Leo. This is my partner, Kelsey. We’re federal agents.”

Janie’s eyes grew wide. “Agents?”

“Yes.”

She started breathing a little heavier. “I was shot?” It was a question.

“That’s right,” Maureen told her.

“Am I . . . did I do something?” Her hands fisted in her lap.

Leo placed a hand on her bed. “No, no . . . you didn’t do anything. That’s not why we’re here.”

Janie’s eyes tracked his and stayed there. “You’re sure.”

Leo found a smile, tried to calm her down. “I’m sure. I was there. We were talking. It just happened. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Maureen reached for the monitor that showed Janie’s pulse elevating. The blood pressure cuff on her arm started to inflate.

“Were you there?” Janie asked Fitz.

“Ah, no.” Leo knew she wanted to say more.

“What were we talking about?” Janie asked him.

Fitz started to laugh behind him.

Leo turned to stare her into silence.

She motioned out the door. “I’m going to call in, give Brackett an update.”

Leo nodded his agreement.

Another nurse popped her head into the room. “Maureen, your patient in five needs you.”

“Be right there.” She turned back to Leo. “She might ask you the same questions over and over and likely not remember what you said, so don’t press her for answers, it only frustrates her and causes her blood pressure to go up. We don’t need that.”

Leo smiled. “I won’t.”

When he turned back to Janie, she was smiling at him. “You’re a cop?”

“Federal agent.”

That smile faded. “I was shot.”

Leo nodded and started to see the repetition and surprise in her eyes with everything she said.

“You hit your head pretty hard.”

“What did I do?”

Leo patted the hand lying at her side. “Nothing.”

He looked around the room at a loss. There was no use in asking questions when she didn’t even know her own name.

His gaze landed on a white plastic bag that said “Patient Belongings” on the front.

Leo stood and walked to the bag, opened it up.

He expected to see the clothes she was wearing the night before. All he found was a wallet and a cell phone.

The phone he couldn’t get to work.

“Have you tried to open this?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He pressed the power button. It still had enough juice to turn on.

“Maybe we can find someone who knows who you are.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Leo moved closer, swiped at the screen, and held the camera close enough to her face to pick up the features that would open it.

It took three times for it to work.

“Okay . . . good. Do you mind?” he asked before he started prying.

“No.”

Good.He sat down and clicked into contacts.

Only it came up blank.

Not one contact. How was that possible? “Interesting.” Leo glanced at the patient, saw her eyes drifting shut. He noticed the collection bag hanging from the side of the bed. Inside showed a small amount of blood he assumed was from the chest tube inside her lung.

He pushed her condition out of his head and moved around the contents of her phone.

Pictures . . .

Empty.

Internet searches?

No history. Though he knew those could be erased.

None of this made sense. Why would a cell phone be completely void of anything?

He fished around to see what apps were on the phone.

Every one he clicked into acted as if it were being opened for the first time.

He moved back to the phone calls. One number showed up in recent calls.

He pressed the number and put the phone to his ear.

Leo looked over, saw Janie fast asleep. Her pulse on the monitor a slow, steady beat.

The telling sound of a call being connected shot Leo’s hopes high.

“What the hell, Olivia. Where are you?”

Olivia. Her name was Olivia. He liked it.

“Olivia?” The voice was male, deep . . . and pissed.

And familiar.

Leo cleared his throat. “I’m sorry . . . I’m calling—”

“Who is this?” The question was slow and measured.

The hair on Leo’s neck stood on end.

“Who is this?” Leo asked back.

Silence suggested the person on the other end might not answer.

“You hurt one hair on her head and I’ll—”

The voice triggered in Leo’s head and he turned stone cold. “Neil?”

A pause.

“Grant?”

Their earlier conversation came back to him.

“If my contact was compromised, you need to go underground.”

“Why?”

“If they’re gone, then you don’t stand a chance.”

“Your guy is that good, huh?”

“Yes. She is.”

Leo stared at the woman in the bed.

“Ah, fuck.”

“What the hell are you doing with Olivia’s phone?”

Voices outside the door brought Leo’s attention behind him.

“I’ll call you back.” Without anything else, Leo disconnected the call and slipped the phone into his pocket.

Fitz walked in, and Leo placed a finger over his pursed lips before pointing to the sleeping patient.

“There isn’t a reason for us to stay,” Fitz told him a few minutes after Leo discovered the name of the patient.

For reasons he couldn’t identify, Leo kept the new information to himself. His people knew Neil and his team were watching the trial and doing what they could to keep the victim safe from any foul play. But so far, Neil was the only visible member of the team. Everyone else was in the shadows. And from the sound of it, Olivia was deep undercover.

Leo knew a thing or two about being invisible to those around him. Hell, he’d spent nearly a year of his life acting as a high school teacher in an effort to flush out a bad cop responsible for girls like Marie Nickerson.

All things considered, Leo made a decision to hold off on the truth until talking with Neil.

“What are the chances of Navi being the one behind this?” Leo indicated Olivia, who was asleep. The two of them stood at the far end of the room talking in hushed tones.

“Him or someone associated with the case.”

“Right. These are professional dirtbags. They missed the shot because she saw the gun and grabbed me. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the people responsible for this might conclude that and come around and eliminate an eyewitness.”

“She doesn’t remember anything,” Fitz said.

“They don’t know that.”

Fitz looked around the room, took a peek beyond the curtain. “You’re right.”

“And considering she doesn’t know who she is, anyone could come in here pretending to be family and . . .”

Fitz blew out a breath and made a grand gesture, while she pulled out her cell phone and walked out of the room.

The second she left, Leo removed his phone and called Neil.

He picked up on the first ring. “What room is she in?”

“ICU bed four.”

“We’re parking now. Don’t leave her side.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Olivia moaned, taking Leo’s attention away from his phone.

Her eyes fluttered open, and her hand reached for her side.

For a moment Leo thought she was going to pull at the tube sticking out of her lung.

“Hey,” he said, distracting her.

Their eyes met and held. She smiled, at first, and then those green eyes clouded and her smile fell. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“We met earlier,” he informed her.

“Why don’t I remember?”

“The doctors say it’s temporary.” And maybe when Neil walked in the room something would click into place.

Fitz returned, offered a nod to Olivia, then turned to Leo. “Brackett is calling the locals for around-the-clock protection.”

“Good.”

Fitz addressed Olivia. “How are you feeling?”

“I can’t seem to stay awake.”

Leo looked around the sterile space. “It’s not like there’s a lot of excitement going on in here.”

For the first time since he’d run into her, she offered a true smile. Amused.

“Excuse me.” Maureen poked her head in the room. “There’s a Neil MacBain asking to come back.”

“What’s he doing here?” Fitz asked.

Leo shrugged and got to his feet. “Maybe he came to the same conclusion we did.”

Leo followed the path to the locked door of the ICU and opened it. Neil stood on the other side, a stony mirror of the man that had been in the courtroom only hours before. Instead of escorting him directly back, Leo stepped outside to talk first.

“My partner is in there.”

Neil seemed to accept the need to delay his trip to the bedside. “How is she?”

Leo smiled. “Recovering. Off the ventilator, awake . . . only she doesn’t remember anything.”

Neil looked away as if not believing Leo’s words.

“Anything. Even her name,” Leo reiterated.

“Olivia would never tell you her name,” Neil informed him, reaching for the door.

Leo stopped him. “She has to be reminded that she’s in Vegas. She has some type of amnesia.” Leo removed her cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Neil. “When I asked if I could use her phone to try and find someone who knows her, the only number on it was yours.”

Neil took it and stared. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Right . . . well, she did. I didn’t tell Fitz that you know her.” He sighed. “I’m not sure that was the right call.”

“No one in your department needs to know who she is.”

“Not sure that’s possible,” Leo told him. “If her memory comes back and she can ID the people holding the gun . . .”

“She won’t do that.”

“Someone nearly killed her,” Leo reminded him.

Neil fixed him with a cold stare.

Leo felt the chill down to his toes.

Neil tucked her phone in his pocket. “Keep this silent. I’ll explain more later.”

Leo hoped he could.

Neil followed him through the doors, past the nurses’ station, and into Olivia’s room.

Leo kept his eyes on the woman in the bed when Neil came into view.

She looked at him and then past him as if he might be there to empty the trash.

The only visible change in Neil was a muscle twitching in his jaw.

Fitz stood and put out her hand for Neil to shake. “What brings you here?”

“I know Leo didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I thought my team and I could help with backup.” Neil shook her hand, and then moved his eyes back to Olivia.

“That’s thoughtful, but we should have help here within the hour,” Fitz said.

Neil didn’t comment and walked to the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Olivia narrowed her eyes. “I was shot.”

Leo smiled. “That’s an improvement. An hour ago, she needed to be told that over and over again.”

“Do I know you?” she asked Neil.

“I’m hard to forget.”

Leo heard Fitz laugh under her breath.

Leo asked the same questions the nurse had. “Do you know where you are?”

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. “Atlantic City.”

He looked at Neil as if to say, See . . . she doesn’t remember a thing.

“Wait.”

Leo turned back to her.

Olivia’s features twisted in pain. “That’s not right. Not Atlantic City.” She brought a hand to her face and pressed her fingers to her temples. “Why is this so hard?”

The monitor over the bed started to ping.

“It’s going to be okay.” Leo dropped into the chair beside the bed, placed a hand over hers.

Her eyes welled with tears. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t. And you didn’t before either.”

The nurse walked back in, took one look at Olivia, and glared her disapproval. “My patient needs her rest, not this overstimulation. You’re not getting your answers tonight. You might as well come back in the morning.”

“We’ve scheduled continual security,” Fitz told her.

Maureen wasn’t amused. “In here, I’m the boss. If one of you needs to stay, I’ll put a chair outside the door of her room.”

“Completely fair,” Neil spoke up. “A chair would be appreciated.”

The three of them filed out while Maureen spoke in soft tones to Olivia.

“I’ve got this,” Neil told them both.

“We’re bringing in local PD,” Fitz said.

“Police officers who haven’t been vetted? Rookies who wouldn’t know to stop a housekeeper from walking in the room.” Neil shook his head. “I got this. I have resources. Save the taxpayers their money.”

Neil’s argument was solid.

“Why?” Fitz questioned him.

Neil didn’t miss a beat. “A bad cop kidnapped one of mine trying to bury what Mykonos and his family were doing. Now there’s a woman in the ICU without a memory. I take that personally. If she remembers the shooter, she’s going to need more than a local anything to keep her safe.”

Leo placed a hand on Fitz’s arm. “I think Brackett will agree.”

Fitz put both hands in the air. “It’s your aching back,” she said.

Leo shook Neil’s hand. “I’ll be in touch.”