Obsession by Karen Robards Page A

pretty obvious, but still it was good to know that her shell-shocked brain hadn’t totally deserted her.
    Instead of going with the flow of the crowd and walking on across the busy lobby and out the twin revolving doors, she was going out a side entrance: the one promised by the small black sign affixed to the wall that offered restrooms and exit, and included a helpful arrow pointing the way.
    It might be pure paranoia, she thought as she headed in the direction indicated by the arrow, but she had a pulse-pounding fear that they might already be watching the exits. She hoped there were not enough of them yet to cover all the ways out. In that case, the front of the hospital would be the most obvious place to wait and watch.
    The question that gnawed away at her brain was, Who, exactly, were “they”? Ed’s people? The men from last night? Someone else? And was there even really still a threat to her at all? She wasn’t sure—she didn’t know. She just had this overwhelming sense that she was in terrible peril.
    That being the case, she was going to go with it.
    The hospital wasn’t a building, it was a complex, she saw as she left it. Tall, gleaming towers of industrial gray steel and glass were linked by a pair of glassed-in sky-walks maybe eight stories up. Long, low buildings the size and general appearance of airplane hangars clustered at the base of the towers, and it was through the side of one of these that she exited. Emerging onto a sidewalk that ran alongside a small, nearly full parking lot, she stopped, momentarily blinded by the glare of the sun bouncing off dozens of windshields. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the worst of it, she tried to get her bearings. The steady sound of stop-and-go traffic told her that there was a busy road nearby. The sky was a beautiful cerulean blue dotted with a handful of white clouds that looked like fluffy sheep. The sun, round and yellow as a tennis ball, hung just above the scalloped tree line that marked where the parking lot ended. The heat was palpable, wrapping itself around her like a thick, moist blanket. Already, at what she guessed couldn’t be much past eight a.m., D.C. was sweating.
    My hair’ll be in ringlets by noon.
    Oh, wait, it wasn’t her hair anymore. She was now the possessor of an up-to-the-minute blond bob, and she had no idea what it did when confronted with steamy summer heat.
    At the realization, her stomach cramped.
    Steady, she ordered her rapidly unraveling nerves. Don’t panic. It’s some kind of weird amnesia. It’ll go away.
    If she lived long enough.
    On that comforting note, she almost panicked again.
    Okay, this whole amnesia thing has got to go on the back burner. First things first: Before you go to pieces, you gotta get somewhere safe.
    Like where? The question twisted like a snake through her already holey brain even as she walked as rapidly as she could manage away from the hospital. Balancing on the sides of her feet to save her scrunched-up toes, she tottered across the glistening black macadam of the parking lot toward the narrow, quiet, tree-lined street beyond it. Home, was her instinctive answer, but then it occurred to her with a renewed sensation of disorientation that she didn’t even know where “home” was.
    A picture of the town house shimmered to life in her mind’s eye. That was home. She knew it. But it just didn’t feel right.
    So what else is new? she asked herself in despair. Nothing feels right.
    In any case, she couldn’t go back there. Last night Lisa had been murdered there. She had nearly died there herself. The memories would be overwhelming. The police might still be there, investigating. The place had been torn up. There would be blood. . . .
    Sooner or later, Ed’s people would almost certainly come looking for her there. And for all she knew, they weren’t the only people interested in her whereabouts. But no matter who was looking, that would be the first place anybody would