to catch its beams with her mirror and signal Asher, as she’d done yesterday.
She ducked onto the access road and pumped her legs up the hill as the terrain grew more challenging. A steep angle and a few bushes didn’t faze her. She’d hike through fire and brimstone to get to Asher.
The trees became denser, but Paige had marked her way the day before and those bits of blue yarn guided her back toward the compound perched on the hill.
She located her lookout tree and jumped to catch the lowest branch. She swung herself up and clambered from branch to branch like a clumsy monkey to reach her perch.
She shrugged off her pack and pulled out the binoculars. She scanned the desolate lawn. Maybe the action perked up in the warmer weather months...or maybe this retreat kept its patients drugged up and chained in the basement. Clenching her teeth, she shivered.
Fifteen minutes later Asher rewarded her patience by appearing on the porch, taking the same chair as yesterday. She focused the lenses on him, and her heart filled with joy. He looked healthy, if...lackadaisical.
As she reached into the inside pocket of her jacket, the door behind Asher opened and a nurse stepped onto the porch.
“Damn.” Paige’s whisper stirred the leaves on the branch hanging next to her face.
Were they watching him now? They must’ve been watching him yesterday to notice he’d left the porch and loped across the grass.
Her jaw ached with tension and disappointment. She might just have to go through the front door and demand to see him.
She refocused on Asher and the nurse and pressed her lips into a thin line. Was personal massage part of Asher’s recovery?
The nurse, standing behind him, had her hands on his shoulders, massaging and rubbing him. Each time she reached forward, her hands slid beneath his jacket and moved against his chest.
Either Asher liked it or he was too zoned out to care. Each time the nurse’s hands slid farther and farther down his chest, working toward the inevitable happy ending.
Asher turned his head and said something, and she stopped. Had he gotten the feeling his fiancée was watching?
When the nurse retreated inside, Paige grabbed the mirror and caught the weak sun. She tilted it back and forth, and Asher raised his head.
He’d seen it.
Paige’s soaring spirits crashed a minute later when Nurse Grabby-Hands returned to the scene, this time pushing a wheelchair ahead of her.
Paige held her breath as the nurse helped Asher from the chair to the wheelchair. He listed to the side, and the large woman wrapped both of her arms around his body to right him. She kept her arms around him, putting her face close to his while talking to him.
Paige growled. “Get out of his face.”
The nurse tucked a blanket around his legs and aimed the chair down the ramp.
If Asher needed a blanket on his lap, he’d be too weak to accompany her through the forest and down the hill. Squinting into the binoculars, Paige tracked their progress across the lawn. The nurse pushed the chair with one hand, her other resting on Asher’s shoulder.
They made it about midway and stopped. Paige swore when she noticed Asher’s attire. He did have a jacket on against the cold, but he wore it over a hospital gown. No wonder he had a blanket draped over his lower extremities. He was in bigger trouble than Paige imagined and a sob burst from her chest. She’d never get him out of here like that...especially with Nurse Ratched hovering over him.
Suddenly both of their heads jerked in unison. The nurse turned to face the building with the porch where Asher had been sitting.
Paige swept her binoculars toward the building and zeroed in on a doctor standing and waving. Paige tracked back to Asher and the nurse on the grass. The nurse jumped to her feet and waved back.
Leaning over Asher, the nurse smoothed the blanket across Asher’s lap and tucked it under his thighs. Then she ran her hands over his chest before pulling his jacket closed. Finally, she turned and scurried back to the building.
Paige watched the doctor and nurse team go inside and shut the door behind them. She jerked the binoculars back to Asher and held the mirror up to the sun again, tilting it back and forth.
But what could he do in a gown and a blanket? He didn’t even have shoes.
Asher sat quietly for several moments, and then Paige’s heart slammed against her chest as he rose from the wheelchair. The blanket fell from his lap and he bunched it up and stuffed it into the chair. Then he shrugged out of the jacket and wrapped it around the blanket. From behind and from a distance, it might just look like someone slumped over in the chair.
Without looking behind him once, Asher took off in a jog across the lawn.
Paige stashed the binoculars in her backpack and scrambled down the tree. She hit the thick carpet of mulch just as she heard Asher crash through the trees.
“Are you here? Are you here? Paige?”
Her heart took flight. He remembered her. All he needed was to see her once.
“Here! I’m here!”
He emerged through the trees, the hospital gown flapping around his bare legs, a pair of socks the only barrier between his feet and the sharp needles and twigs that formed the forest floor.
She rushed to him. “Asher. Oh my God, Asher.”
He grabbed her hands and held her off from throwing herself in his arms.
“You’ve gotta help me. You’ve gotta get me out of this place...whoever you are.”
His words chipped off a piece of her heart, but she squared her shoulders and stepped back from him. “We have to go through these woods and down a steep hill. Can you make it dressed like that?”
“I could make it naked with one arm tied behind my back to get out of here. Lead the way.”
“Let’s go. You should’ve kept that jacket though.”
“That jacket might buy me some time if someone happens to look out the window at the drugged-out invalid to make sure he’s still drooling in his chair.”
“You’re not drugged?”
“I’ve been spitting them out—and pretending.”
She held a branch to the side for him. “They still didn’t trust you enough to give you clothes.”
“They underestimated me.” He charged after her. “Don’t worry about clearing a path for me. Just go. I’ll follow you.”
“Your physical health is okay?”
“Strong as an ox.” He nudged her back. “Stop talking. You’re wasting energy.”
She scrabbled and stumbled her way to the forest’s edge. When they reached the path down to the access road, she made a half turn. “You can make it down?”
“I survived a tumble off a mountain in Afghanistan. I can traverse a wooded hill in Vermont.”
He didn’t need her to show him the way anymore, and he barreled past her into the descent, reaching back with one hand. “Keep up now.”
As his gown gaped open in the back, her eyebrows shot up. “You’re naked under that thing.”
“Their way of keeping me tame. Like I said. They underestimated me.” He craned his head over his shoulder. “If you’re really my fiancée like you said, my bare backside shouldn’t shock you.”
“I’m not shocked.” She twisted her fingers out of his grasp. “And