“Yes,” she said but didn’t take his hand. “Are you?”
“Yeah.”
Jade gripped her red purse in her lap, her brain racing as fast as their getaway. Her mind, body, and soul swirled as one jarring shock after another landed like a slap. Chase expertly navigated the twists and turns down the unfamiliar hill, and within minutes, they passed The Broadmoor Hotel and turned onto Lake Avenue. Lake.
“Lake Pueblo,” Jade heard herself say out loud.
“What about it?” Chase asked, slowing the Hummer down a little.
“We were there. Right?”
“Right. Why?”
“I’m having trouble with my memory,” she admitted.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Chase gave her a questioning, sidelong glance.
“No.”
“Okay.” Chase didn’t say anything more as he focused on getting them into downtown Colorado Springs.
When they passed by Southside Suzy’s, Jade said, “I think I saw your motorcycle parked here yesterday morning.”
“You could have. I went to your office looking for you. Katy said I’d just missed you. I stopped at Suzy’s next. Some friends connected to Suzy’s place helped me find you.”
“What friends could possibly do that?”
“Sons of Steel Motorcycle Club.”
Jade nodded, absorbing what he was saying along with other crashing memories. She had so many questions she didn’t know where to start. How soon did he know she’d been abducted? How on earth did he and a motorcycle club find out where the Spatafores lived? She hadn’t even known where the Spatafores lived because she’d always refused Franco’s invitations to visit. Was Katy okay? Had Chase been back to the house on Foote Avenue? Did Bill and Carol know she was missing? Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her anxiety. Her fear.
“Where are we going, Chase?” The present seemed like a good place to begin.
“My ranch.” He looked at her. “Okay?” When she shrugged, he asked, “Where else would we go, Jade?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where would you like to go? At the crack of dawn?” he asked. Charming and funny, even after a life-threatening experience. But again, she didn’t answer. Serious once more, he said, “Not safe to go to the house on Foote Avenue. Right?”
“Right.”
“Would you rather go to a hotel than my ranch?”
“No!” She couldn’t imagine being in another strange bedroom. In her mind’s eye, she began seeing flashes of his ranch. Triple C Ranch-Central. “Your ranch.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you for the rescue,” she mumbled and then stared at her lap.
“Sorry it was later than sooner,” he said as the sun continued rising in the east. “From Tuesday afternoon—when I knew you were missing—until now, was thirty-six hours.”
“That seems pretty fast,” Jade said with a glance at him. “Franco wasn’t expecting me to be found at all because he said I’d be up on that hill through the weekend.”
“Then what? Hide you forever? I guarantee you he had a plan in place.”
In thirty-six hours, had Franco somehow hidden Chase Cooper from her memory? “I don’t know,” Jade said again and shrugged in confusion.
Chase frowned. Jade could tell he knew something was wrong. She knew something was wrong too. But she didn’t have the answer as to what. It wasn’t with Chase. It was with her. But continuing to head out of the darkness and into the sun, before she knew it, they were on the northeastern edge of town well past the always busy Powers Boulevard. It would take close to thirty minutes to reach his ranch. She assumed he was letting her collect her thoughts, but she couldn’t sit in awkward silence as her brain screamed for sensible answers.
