body. And as much as she wanted to stop and take in the grand vista of trees and forest surrounding the cabin, she was hyperfocused on that shower and a bed. One she could collapse in and sleep for a year. Maybe then her memory would come back, and her life could return to normal.
Inside, Sasha and AJ were talking with two other men, both of whom stopped when she stepped inside the spacious room.
Big furniture, leather accents, with massive logs holding the whole thing together. Huge windows shot up twenty feet taking in the view, with a vast porch that stretched the length of the house. The living room opened to a kitchen and dining area that looked like it seated eight. “This is crazy,” she said softly.
“There are enough rooms for everyone,” Neil pointed out.
She turned away from the windows and found everyone staring at her.
“Hello,” she said to the new faces.
“I’m Lars,” the older of the two said with a slight wave across the room.
“Isaac,” the shorter one wearing glasses added.
“I’m . . .” This was getting old. “Jane Doe, happy to meet you.”
Both men seemed to wince at her introduction.
Sasha stepped around the giant sofa and tilted her head to one side. “You remind me of someone I went to school with.” Sasha glanced at Neil, then back. “Her name was Olivia.”
Olivia blinked a few times, noticed all those eyes on her . . . the microscope dialed in.
“I like it,” Leo said. “It’s better than Jane Doe.”
“You don’t look like a Jane,” Lars told her.
“Olivia,” she said aloud for the first time. Then she shrugged. “You have to call me something. Might as well be Olivia.”
Again, everyone seemed to hang on whatever she was going to say next. “Which room is mine?”
The question had everyone moving.
Heavy footsteps preceded a woman half jogging down the stairs from the floor above. “Is our patient here?”
Olivia turned toward the woman. “That’s me.”
“You look haggard.”
“Great.” What was she supposed to say to that?
“Sorry . . . I’m Pam, the nurse.” She had to be in her sixties, short gray hair, wiry . . . thin.
“I’m a . . . Olivia, I guess. They all just named me,” she told her.
Pam narrowed her eyes, looked around the room. “Are you okay with that?”
“It’s a name.” Just a name.
“Well, Olivia . . . you’ve got to be tired.”
“It’s been a long day.”
Pam nodded toward the stairs. “Let’s get you settled. You up for a shower?”
Olivia sighed. “I’d kill for a shower.”
Someone behind her laughed.
CHAPTER NINE
“Holy shit . . . not one spark of recognition. How is that possible?” Isaac asked. “The woman tied me up and put me in a cell . . . How can she forget that?”
Leo turned to Isaac. “She what?”
Neil stared at his colleague.
Isaac closed his lips. “It was a case. A joke.”
AJ sat in one of the overstuffed chairs. Sasha took up position on the armrest with his hand on her leg. “Not even her name. It’s hard to believe.”
Sasha sighed. “It was only a matter of time before one of us slipped and called her Olivia.”
The close-knit group would keep anything Leo wasn’t supposed to know to themselves. He’d just have to whittle away at them, one at a time. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked, looking at Neil.
“We work in shifts,” he said, lifting himself up from the couch and walking away. Everyone stood and followed. They took a back stairway down to what looked like in-laws’ quarters. The living room furniture had been pushed back, and a set of portable monitors were set up like a workstation.
Cameras had been placed around the inside and outside of the house, and all the feeds funneled into the monitors.
Isaac sat at the chair and started typing. “I’ll show you a shortcut of commands,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Leo. The feed from the living room brightened and then faded when Isaac moved to another one. The camera he was highlighting was one just outside the door of a bedroom.
Leo saw a shadow, then Isaac turned on the audio.
“You’re sure you don’t want something for the pain?” It was Pam’s voice.
“There are cameras in every room except Olivia’s and this one.” He pointed to the bedroom off the living space where they were standing. “And all the bathrooms.”
“I would think Olivia’s room would be the most important,” Leo said.
Lars started to laugh. “Yeah, well . . . when she gets her memory back, I don’t