Chapter One
The last thing Knox Quinn expected to hear was a gunshot. Two strides inside his kitchen, he slipped off his boots. Silence was of the utmost importance. Ciana’s sporadic amnesia made her unpredictable. He dared not wake her before he reached the bedroom.
Moonlight off Lake George speared between the drapes. Filtered light defined doorways along the hall. The door to his owner’s suite stood ajar.
Knox eased the door open.
Ciana scrambled off of the bed. A pistol held in a two-handed grip. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” She sidled toward the bathroom.
The moment Knox dreaded. Interrogation training taught him to exercise control over his emotions at black ops sites. “It’s me, Ciana.” He stepped into the room and dove to his right.
A muzzle flash and crack of a gunshot greeted him. The pistol thumped on the carpet. “I’m sorry.” Ciana’s hand flew to her mouth before she sank to her knees.
Knox sensed no impact from a shot striking him. He scrambled from across the bed, flipped on the bathroom light and embraced his fiancée. “It’s not your fault.” His gaze fell on the pistol. “Where did you get the gun?”
Her blank stare exuded uncertainty. “I don’t remember. What is happening to me?”
Four physicians had examined Ciana. They offered nothing more than conjectures for Ciana’s memory loss and chronic pain. “We’re going to find out when we see Dr. Novak this morning.”
“I have an appointment to see her?”
“Nine o’clock.”
Ciana threw her arms around his neck. “I thought you were an intruder. Are you hurt?”
He sensed no pain or burn associated with a gunshot injury and scanned the room. The bullet had struck the doorknob and furrowed a line on the door to the jamb. “I’m okay.” He picked up the pistol and looked at its markings. A Ruger LC9 was not a gun he owned.
“It’s Mother’s,” she said.
“Does she know you have it?”
“I took it from her nightstand. I was afraid of being alone while you were away.”
Knox dared not question her reason. Ciana had always proved fearless before her bouts of amnesia. He wanted to stay home with her, but his duties in human intelligence required travel outside the United States. He pressed the ejector button on the grip. The magazine spat out with a click. He pulled the slide. A chambered cartridge flipped out. He unloaded the magazine, shoved it back in stuffed the pistol in his waistband. “I’ll have to return it. Come on. We have to leave in an hour.”
Two hours later, Knox and Ciana waited in quietness more nerve-racking than an owl’s screech. A placard identified the office in Albany, New York—Maren Novak, Neurologist. Ciana shuddered as if the grip of unfamiliar turbulence shoved her off balance. The effect leached into him.
The unrest worsened upon Dr. Novak’s entry. Her micro expression cued Knox to expect doom. The doctor extended her hand across her desk. Ciana wiped her right hand on the thigh of her designer jeans and placed it in the doctor’s.
“The news is not good, Ciana. Your tests came back positive for a genetic subtype of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is usually detected in people in their sixties. This variant affects people in their twenties. CJD is a rare neurologic disorder. It explains your rapid cognitive deterioration, insomnia and tremors.”
Ciana hugged herself and sobbed at the petite physician’s diagnosis.
“What regimen will you rely on to combat this?” Knox asked.
Dr. Novak frowned before she spoke. “We can manage the disease, but no cure exists for CJD. And we have no way to slow its progression.”
Knox read Ciana’s body language as she tumbled across gloom’s threshold into despair. “Am I going to die? Our wedding is in three weeks.”
“I’m sure you will have a wonderful wedding and the honeymoon you have planned. Keep those images in the forefront.”
“What about afterward? How long do I have?”
Knox put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He studied Dr. Novak.
“I expect a few months,” Dr. Novak said. “Eight if you’re lucky. I wish there were more we could do. Feel free to call me if you need to talk.” She looked at Knox. “I’m calling in a prescription for pain and muscle spasms.” She handed off two pamphlets. “Take this. I’d like both of you to read them.”
He nodded and pushed the chair back with his legs. The doctor showed no signs of misdirection. He appreciated her candor coupled with the compassion transmitted in her tone. Knox took Ciana’s hands and helped her out of her chair. She sagged into his arms. His chest muffled her sobs while his chamois shirt absorbed her tears.
“Why do I have to die?”
Knox squeezed his eyes to stave off tears and kissed the top of her head. “Come on. Let’s go home.” The former safe house was the best place he knew to take her. He had no clue what fate awaited them beyond despair. He didn’t want to think about it.
Ciana pushed away. “No. Call another specialist. I want another opinion.”
Dr. Novak frowned. “Any other neurologist—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Ciana marched out.
Knox caught the door before it banged the wall. “I’ll talk to her.”
Dr. Novak said, “Let’s hope she will listen. She needs therapy. It will help her cope.”
He envisioned Ciana’s date with death in eight months circled on a calendar. Neither he nor anyone else possessed any power to delay or defeat it. “I know someone who will help.”
Knox caught up to Ciana at his black Chevrolet crew cab. The sky growled in the west. Although his heart felt similar to the dark clouds headed their way, he knew he must exhibit positivity for Ciana’s sake. He embraced her and opened the truck door. He helped her up on the seat and buckled the seat belt around her.
Ciana jolted when the buckle clicked. “Where are we?”
“We’re still in Albany.” He stuffed the pamphlets in the compartment attached to her seat back.
“Why are we in Albany? Did I get to see Dr. Novak?”
He touched Ciana’s cheek. His forefinger trailed to her chin. “You had a good visit with her. She called in a prescription. I’ll pick it up on our way home.”
He closed the door, marched around to the driver’s side and climbed in. Ciana reclined the back of her seat to forty-five degrees and closed her eyes. She opened them near the end of their ninety-minute drive when he pulled up to the drive-through window at the pharmacy in Lake George.
She looked around. “What are we doing here? I thought I had an appointment with Dr. Novak … Oh, I did, didn’t I? What did she tell us? Am I going to get through whatever this is that is wrong with me?”
Knox laid his hand on Ciana’s forearm. He forced a smile. Heaviness rebooted in his chest. “Dr. Novak assured me this medicine will help you.” He opened the bottle, shook a capsule onto Ciana’s palm and handed a bottle of water to her.
She placed the pill on her tongue and took three sips.
Knox capped the bottle. He climbed onto the driver’s seat and stared through the windshield. What happens in a month? Two months?
Twenty minutes later, Knox parked his truck in front of their bungalow off 9L. An ominous cloud formation towered over land west of the lake.
“Hurry,” Ciana said. “I want to take pictures of that thunderhead before it gets too close.”
He rounded the front and opened the passenger door. Ciana slid off the seat. She darted to the steps as if the prescription had stimulated an adrenalin release. He entered his code on a stainless-steel keypad recessed in the wall. The time stamp above the pad displayed green. He unlocked the side door, pulled it open and stepped aside.
While Ciana dashed to their bedroom for her camera, Knox pulled the pamphlets out of the truck and stashed them in a tool drawer in the garage. The sliding glass door to the back deck stood open by the time he entered the kitchen. He put the prescription bottle and water on the counter. A flash lit the den before he crossed halfway to the door. A sonic boom shook the house. Knox got to the door in time to see Ciana collapse and flop to her back twenty feet from the water’s edge.
Chapter Two
Knox leapt over a lounge chair on the patio and sprinted to Ciana. Rain blurred his vision. He sank to his knees at her left side. Her eyes shifted to look at him. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Red tree-like branch patterns traversed from the back of her right hand to her right shoulder. He pulled out his phone at the moment the clouds released a deluge. He called nine-one-one, touched the speaker icon and shielded the phone.
“Nine-one-one what’s your emergency?”
“I need an ambulance. I think lightning struck my fiancée.” He gibbered out their address and described Ciana’s injuries.
“Please, sir, tell me your location again.”
Ciana spluttered while he repeated the address. The dispatcher assured him that emergency responders were on their way.
Knox grasped futility when he cradled Ciana in his arms. “Please, stay with me.” The few to eight months the doctor surmised for Ciana shortened to seconds when Death’s tug snapped her last wisp of life. Finality anchored in the depths of his soul. Ciana’s head lolled in the crook of his arm. Her pupils became black pits. He focused on Ciana’s eyes lost in their severed continuity. Chest compressions resulted in no response.
Someone tapped his shoulder. “Please back away. I need to assess her.”
Knox identified the voice above the rain’s white noise before he saw her face and lifted his head. “Felice.”
“Knox? Oh, my God.” His twin, Felice Quinn, dressed in firefighter gear, slumped to her knees. She put a hand to his cheek.
“She’s gone,” he said.
Felice pressed two fingers to Ciana’s neck. “Weren’t you away on a mission? Dispatch made it sound like the call was for someone docked at the lake. I never expected to see either of you here.”
He gazed into his sister’s eyes. Kinesics’ verbal indicator alerted him to her last statement. It sounded somewhere between truth and a lie. Felice knew where he and Ciana lived. Whom did she expect to discover at his lakefront home?
“I returned early this morning.”
Felice removed a penlight from a small black case and aimed the beam at Ciana’s eyes. The look on Felice’s face confirmed Knox’s dread. She studied Ciana’s right hand. Her palm and fingers exhibited third-degree burns. She lifted her head.
“Did you see what happened?”
Two medics jogged around the corner of the house on their way to them.
“I saw a flash and heard a clap of thunder. By the time I looked out, she was down. How did you get here so quickly?”
“We were in the area when dispatch notified us. Let’s go to the house, okay?”
He looked around, nodded. He kissed Ciana, lowered her to the ground and pushed to his feet. “We saw the oncologist today.” Hot tears mixed with cold rain on his face.
One of the medics assessed Ciana. She turned to Felice and shook her head. The other one got on the phone to the coroner’s office. They flinched at lightning’s sonic boom. The first medic gathered up her gear. She dashed to the rescue vehicle parked beyond sight. She returned clutching a white sheet.
Knox watched the medics spread the sheet over Ciana. Rain molded the fabric to her lifeless form.
Anguish forced Knox to a knee. Felice laid her right hand on the back of his head. Knox latched onto her arm and buried his face against her side. After two minutes, he pushed to his feet. Together, they slogged through the torrent to the house. Neither spoke until he perched on the front edge of the sofa’s cushion and let his head sag above his knees. Water dripped to the cerulean rug.
“I’ll get a towel.”
“Why, Felice? Why did God take her away from me? The doctor told us she still had months to live.” The question churned inside him.
Felice paused at the corner. “I don’t have an answer, Knox. I wish I did.”
He flailed his arms. “First, she gets an incurable cancer. Now this. Why did it have to be her and not some vile low-life menace to society? It’s. Not. Fair.” He pounded his right knee in tempo with his cadence.
“Knox?”
“What?”
“Take a deep breath.”
“I need to vent.”
“Breathe.”
After Felice waited through his three deep inhales and long exhales, she said, “I’m going to call Mom. Do you want me to call Ciana’s parents?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t mind.”
Knox tensed. “I said I’ll call.”
Felice disappeared down the hall. She returned holding a blue bath towel and a brown blanket. She dangled the towel in front of him. After he snatched the towel, she draped the blanket around his back, crimped it around his shoulders and hunched next to him.
He leaned on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
“Let me have your phone and I’ll call them for you.”
Knox dabbed his face and dried his hands. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and entered his passcode. He buried his face in the towel while Felice talked to Ciana’s mother, Jillian. The cry heard on the other end gouged his chest. Death claimed a soul at their expense. He lost the woman he was about to marry. Douglas and Jillian Nye lost their only daughter.
Knox looked at the sliding door. The mist on the glass and deluge beyond prevented him from seeing more than the three shadow images hovered around Ciana. Chaperons of death wearing coveralls lifted her on a backboard and strapped her to a gurney before they slogged out of sight. The third, an investigator out of Warren County Sheriff’s Office, paused beneath an umbrella and looked toward the house. She took two strides toward the house before she veered and followed the medics.
