Yes, he expected our relationship to restart after all these years.
I would tell him it was impossible, but not right now.
Not when he needed to investigate what’d happened with the pilot.
He might use the situation to engineer reasons to question me.
“Those two can be quite a handful at times,” he said. “Don’t worry, Isabella. I’ll protect you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need protecting.”
He raised his hands in surrender.
“Hey, we’re on the same side, remember? We’re just doing our jobs and upholding the law.”
I folded my arms.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know you didn’t. How could you? You’ve only been back ninety-three days.”
Ninety-three days…
Somebody’s been counting…
“But this all does seem very fishy to me,” Liam said.
My ears perked up.
“What does?”
“The pilot. Falling out of the sky like that.”
“So maybe his plane suffered a malfunction.”
“It’s not the crash that smells fishy. Sometimes these things happen. It’s that no one seems interested in finding him.”
I blinked at this revelation.
“What do you mean? Surely the Air Force has records of their guys going off the radar?”
“You would have thought so. I certainly did. I’m pretty sure the Air Force would be here by now if it was anything of a… sensitive nature.”
He smirked at me as if he’d told me enough to understand what he was going on about.
“I’m not following you,” I said.
Liam glanced one way and then the other, checking to make sure no one could overhear us.
He needn’t have worried.
I couldn’t imagine a single person wanting to know what was on his mind right now, and by the way his eyes drifted down the front of my dress, I didn’t either.
I wanted to know where his logic was taking him.
He might be a fool when it came to our relationship and where it was heading, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t learned a thing or two on his way to becoming the town’s sheriff.
“What do you think happened?” I pressed.
His eyes lingered on my bare knee and the thought alone of what was passing through his mind made me shiver, but I let him look.
A girl needed to use what she had.
Liam’s eyes darted left to right, checking again to ensure no one was listening.
Who would ever want to listen to what this asshole has to say? I wondered.
I blinked in surprise when I realized I did want to know.
“The way I look at it is this,” he said in a hushed whisper. “The plane crashed and no one has come to claim it or the pilot. So that leads me to think maybe they want this whole thing to disappear, for no one to take any notice. For it all to be forgotten.”
“Why would anyone want that?”
“Maybe this pilot has some kind of link to secret research. There are plenty of bases around here—those we know about and those we don’t know about.”
I leaned back in my chair and rolled my eyes.
“Area 51 is a loooong way from here, Liam.”
“Sure. But Area 51 is a tourist attraction. They aren’t going to do their most sensitive research where just anybody can see it. And if they’re working on something top secret, they wouldn’t come to claim ownership of it. If you ask me, they would pretend like they don’t want the pilot or the plane. But they’ll come to pick up both in the dead of night.”
He leaned back, pleased with himself.
He might be content with his theory, but that was all it was, wasn’t it?
A theory.
Where was the hard evidence?
It did seem strange he didn’t have any ID on him.
How many people carried no form of ID around with them these days?
Even if it was fake, he should have something on him.
His plane had come down, so why wouldn’t the Air Force claim it?
Why wouldn’t they admit a pilot had gone down in the area?
“And check out the news,” Liam said, pointing to the monitor over my shoulder. “There’s nothing at all about the crash. You would have thought a local news station would have covered it. Instead, nothing.”
Could I have been the only person to witness the plane crash?
It didn’t seem likely, but it was an explanation.
I’d been in the hospital ever since I climbed aboard the ambulance so I hadn’t seen any of the coverage… or lack of coverage as the case may be.
“Isabella?”
Having someone call out my name made me hop in my seat.
The nurse who’d given me the Coke earlier peered up from the clipboard she carried.
“I’m Isabella.”
“We’ve conducted the tests and the results have come back. The patient has amnesia.”
Okay, so I wasn’t expecting that.
“Amnesia?”
Who had amnesia in this day and age except for characters in bad daytime TV shows?
I didn’t know amnesia was something people really suffered from these days.
I mean, I knew people suffered from it but it wasn’t exactly a common ailment.
I wondered if the tropes I recalled from movies and TV shows were right.
Could the patient really not remember anything from their past?
Or was it more like a single painful event that acted as a dam and held back the memories from a specific time and place?
I was as ignorant on the subject as the next person.
“Amnesia?” I repeated out loud.
I took a seat and tried to make sense of what she’d told me.
Amnesia.
I still couldn’t quite believe it.
“As in forever or only parts of his memory is missing?”
“As far as we can tell, he can’t recall a single thing about his past,” the nurse said. “Are you his family?”
“No. I’m the person who found him.”
“Found him?” Liam interjected. “She did more than find him! She rescued him!”
The nurse focused her attention on me.
“I’ve been tasked with finding him somewhere to stay. He needs to recuperate and rediscover the pathways in his mind. With any luck, he’ll recall what happened to him and where he comes from.”
I felt an unfamiliar strum across my chest that made my heart skip several beats.
“If you know of anyone who could help him—” the nurse began.
“I can,” I found myself saying.
Liam’s head snapped toward me.
“What? You don’t even know him! He might be dangerous!”
The nurse peered at me intently.
“It
