“You can’t see it,” he said. “But it’s there.” I didn’t ask him what he saw. I didn’t really want to know.

At least there had been no sign of Luka. Since we’d left Maine my pulse had quickened every time I saw anything resembling a Jeep Cherokee. But wherever he was, we had left him long behind. And for that, at least, I could be grateful.

*  *  *

I accelerate as we leave Lebanon. For two days we’ve consciously driven the speed limit in order to avoid notice, but now I’m antsy, ready to get on with this. Scared to death, too. And I only know one thing to do when I’m close to petrified: keep moving.

When I exit I-65 into Lafayette, I feel as though I’ve both come home and returned to some alien way station. The small houses, strip malls, and red-brick buildings of the university are familiar and aberrant. The kind of place that should not have progressive science nestled within its small-town Americana, weekend pep rallies, and burger joints.

“Rolan,” I say, my heart accelerating as I slow to a pained thirty-five miles per hour. He jerks instantly awake.

Five minutes later I turn off Creasy Lane into the parking lot of a small, nondescript medical building well away from the St. Elizabeth campus.

I come to a stop, turn off the engine. And find myself staring at the glass doors of the St. Francis Center for Memory Research.

For several seconds, I can’t move.

The last time I saw this building, I was leaving it in a wheelchair under a name that is not mine—mere hours after having known exactly who I was and everything I was running from or trying to hide.

Now here I am with a stranger who’s rescued me from an enemy I don’t remember. But he cannot save the people I’ve forgotten.

Only I can do that.

My name is Audra Ellison. I am twenty-one years old. And I am prepared, once again, to protect those I love . . .

Whoever they are.

8

The reception area is modern and clinically white, lit by a giant fluorescent disk on the ceiling. A man in a navy suit sits behind the high desk. He’s broad-shouldered and his beard is meticulously trimmed, and though he smiles politely when I approach, I can’t help but feel he is more security guard than medical center staff. The entrance to the rest of the clinic is armed with a security pad behind him. I assume the waiting area is past that metal door. And somewhere beyond even that is the room where I left the details of my life.