“Where? How?”
“Diesel.”
“Is he still here? Can I thank him?”
Ranger shook his head. “He had to get back.”
The tension I’d seen when he walked in, the one he’d covered up when he kissed me, was evident again.
“Should we tell them now?” he asked.
It took me a second to figure out what he meant. “Oh. Right.” I turned the photo around so it faced my grandparents. “This was taken the night we were married.”
Grandma Mary gasped and reached for the frame. “You look so beautiful, Maisie.” She handed it to my grandfather. “Doesn’t she, Al?”
There were tears in his eyes. “She looks so much like you when we eloped. Even the dress is similar.”
She gasped a second time. “It is.”
“Ranger and I got married at the Love Lodge on Long Lake.”
Both of their heads shot up. “You did?” asked Grandpa Al.
“We did,” answered Ranger.
“Do you remember someone named Mabel from when you were married there?”
My grandmother looked confused.
“You did get married there, right?”
“We did.”
“Mabel’s parents owned the lodge back then. She said she remembers you.”
“I don’t recall.”
“It’s okay, Grandma. The important thing is that Ranger and I got married there too, but until Mabel told me, I hadn’t realized it was where you’d eloped.”
“You remember,” said my grandfather. “When we went back for our twentieth anniversary, she and her husband were running the place. They hadn’t been married that long. I can’t remember his name, though.”
“Charlie MacIntosh.”
“Dipper?” Ranger asked.
“That’s right. Mabel said his real name is Charlie.”
“Well, my goodness. This is quite the story, Maisie Ann. What a wonderful coincidence! And you say you didn’t realize that’s where we wed?”
“I didn’t, Grandma, but when we got there, it looked so familiar.”
She looked at the photo once more before handing it back to me. I saw her eyes were full with tears.
“We should all go there together,” I said, looking at Ranger.
“Definitely.” He ran his finger over the photo. “Most definitely.”
I rested my head on Ranger’s shoulder and closed my eyes.
“Al, we should head back to the camp now.”
While I was in no hurry for them to leave, I didn’t argue when they stood to go.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, sweetheart,” she said, patting my hand.
“Good night, Maisie Ann,” said my grandfather as they walked toward the door. “We love you so much. You too, Ranger.”
“That was sweet,” he said once they were gone.
“Thank you for my photo.”
“You’re welcome.”
I set it on the table beside the bed and turned my body so I could rest my head against my husband’s chest. “What happened when you were gone?” I felt him tense, but only for a second.
“Nothing important.”
I looked up at him. “I understand you may be trying to protect me, but don’t do it by lying to me.”
He stroked my hair. “Diesel told me some things about Edwards. It isn’t anything you need to know right now.”
“Something in particular upset you.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Maisie—”
“Please just tell me. It’ll be worse if you don’t.”
“I think he intended to try to take you out of the country.”
I raised my hand to my temple and pressed with my fingertip. It was as though there was a memory I could almost reach out and grasp, but then it would slip away.
“What is it?” Ranger asked.
“Something he said.”
“It’s okay, don’t…think about it.”
“No, I need to. What was it?” I closed my eyes. They were the last words he spoke to me. “He said, ‘It’ll be enough money for us to disappear forever.’”
Ranger tightened his arms around me. “I can’t believe how close I came to losing you.”
“But you didn’t. You found me.”
He wiped away a tear. “I’m supposed to be comforting you, not the other way around.”
I shook my head. “We’re supposed to comfort each other.”
When the nurse came in the next morning, she woke both Ranger and me and told him he couldn’t sleep in the hospital bed with me. Evidently, the night nurse hadn’t thought it was a big deal.
He got up to use the restroom, and when he came out, she was gone.
“She said the doctor is making rounds and should be here soon.”
He climbed in next to me. “Then, I have a few more minutes.”
I know I woke both of us several times throughout the night with my nightmares, but afterwards, I couldn’t remember much about them. The psychologist said they would diminish quickly since most of what I dreamed was what my subconscious “invented” rather than an actual memory, since I’d been kept drugged the majority of the time Maxim held me captive. It made sense, given when I was awake, I remembered very little.
It took Ranger’s prompt of saying he believed Maxim had intended to take me out of the country for me to remember what he’d said about “us” disappearing together. I wondered how many other memories would be jarred loose with prompts. I hoped none at all.
When the door opened, Ranger got off the bed and sat in the chair next to it.
He looked groggy but sexy, like he had when we’d wake up and make love in the middle of the night while on our trip. The sexy part surprised me, but then, rape wasn’t sex. It was a violent assault that, thankfully, I couldn’t recall much of.
“How are you feeling this morning?” the doctor I’d first seen in the emergency room asked.
“Tired, and I still have a headache.”
He checked my heart rate and breathing with a stethoscope even though there were machines attached to me, doing the same thing.
“The toxicology report came back this morning. You were given mistanprodol. It’s a relatively new drug. To humans anyway. It’s similar to Rohypnol, also known as the date-rape drug, but much more powerful in that it will render a victim unconscious rather than just take away decision-making skills and short-term memory.”
“What kind of side effects do we need to be watching for?” Ranger asked.
“Headaches primarily and nightmares. It leaves the system relatively quickly, which often makes it difficult to detect since it doesn’t show up in most tox screens.” He looked at me. “In your case, you were injected with it not too long before you were brought in, so there was still enough in your system for us to identify it.”
“When do you think my wife can be released?”
“As long as the headache doesn’t get worse, later this morning. Upon discharge, you’ll be given a watch list. If anything on it occurs, you’ll have to come back to the hospital.” He looked from me to Ranger. “Any other questions?”