"Sarah!" Wayne said, trying in vain to stand. She was in danger. She needed him.

His attention shifted to his surroundings, and thoughts of Sarah slipped from his mind like ice in boiling water. He opened his eyes and searched the face of the pretty young woman sitting across the table from him. He knew her. She was the prison psychiatrist who had helped him overcome his blackouts. Wayne believed she had also been instrumental in his early parole, though he hadn't spoken with her since his release a week ago.

With her help, his final three months behind bars had been free of the blackouts that had plagued him for years. But a week of freedom had brought them back with a vengeance. The last twelve hours alone had been a string of shocked awakenings in unexpected places and situations, just like this one.

This time, he found himself in familiar territory: a police interview room. A camera mounted over the door stared at him rudely with its red, blinking eye. Anyone sitting in the not-so-secret observation room behind the smoky one-way mirror could choose to watch the camera feed on a monitor, or simply look at him through the glass.

Before going to prison, Wayne had been a police detective. He had spent plenty of time on the other side of tables like this, trying to see into his subjects' minds through the window of their body language and biometrics. Sitting on the wrong side of this table was a completely different, and thoroughly unpleasant experience.

They had cuffed his ankles to a metal ring in the floor, and his wrists to an ancient, steel-framed chair, ostensibly for Elaine's safety. He must have been pretty aggressive during that last blackout.

Wayne figured Elaine was near to his daughter's age, barely old enough to be out of college. Short, brown curls peeked out from beneath a small vintage hat that made him think of the 1920's. Her tailored skirt-suit was the same one she had always worn on her visits to see him in prison. Despite her serious demeanor, he could have cried from relief to see her.

"What about Sarah?" she asked with unexpected tenderness. Her voice soothed him--reassured him that things would be all right. If anyone could help him, she could.

"He has her, Elaine. I know it. The man in the video." The words seemed right, but his memory was Swiss cheese. "I don't care about the jobs. I don't care if I go back to prison. If that's what it takes to save her, you know I'll do it."

A rare trace of emotion flashed across Elaine's flawless face. Sorrow? Disappointment? Did she know something?

"Let's come back to that in a moment," Elaine began. "The police have some questions for you, but I went to a lot of trouble to get you first. Do you know what they want to ask you?"

He shook his head, starting to feel afraid. "Did I... hurt someone?"

He had. She didn't answer in words, but the hint of a raised eyebrow, a barely perceptible tilt of her head, and the suggestion of a shrug spoke for her.

"Someone has identified a credible threat to a certain state congresswoman and the President. Can you tell them anything about that?"

"I think I see what they're doing," Wayne said. "They need my help, but they can't officially come to me for it. So, they arrested me on charges that won't stick, and if I cooperate I might find those charges dropped. Is it something like that?"

Her smile was both amused and sympathetic. "You were a good detective before the crash. But now? A convicted killer. A parolee who's lost two jobs in a week—fired by your best friend, no less. A drunk. A shell of a man with severe psychiatric problems and holes in your memory a Cadillac could drive through. The police don't want your help, Wayne. They want your confession. If you can't convince them you aren't involved, you'll disappear into the bowels of some secret government agency, and they will find out what you know."

"I don't drink." It was the best he could do. The rest was technically accurate, except for the terrorist part. Being true didn't make hearing those cursory assessments of his identity any less painful or humiliating.

"I know," Elaine continued. "All of that aside, I want to help you. Partly because I need your help in return. You won't be able to give me that help from prison or a secret jail cell in a foreign embassy."

He nodded and started to speak, but she cut him off. "I don't know how much time I have right now. I need you to answer my questions honestly and thoroughly. I'm going to help you remember, just like I did in prison. Even if my questions seem strange or unimportant, just answer them. When we finish, I'll pull my strongest strings to get you out of here. Okay?"

"Yes, of course," he said. "I'll do whatever you ask. You know that."

"That's good, Wayne," she said. Her voice was warm velvet. It slipped between the rough places in his head and soothed his nerves. His mind still felt a little off, but she had always been able to help him before, even when the sand started pouring in.

She pulled a tablet computer and a phone from her bag and set them on the table between them. He recognized the phone as his.

"It's 2:32 AM. Time to remember."

A dim blue light began glowing in the corner by the door, drawing Wayne's attention. It was the glow of a digital wristwatch on the arm of a man Wayne hadn't noticed until that moment. Even after the guy moved, Wayne had a hard time keeping his eyes on him. The shadowy corner worked with his darke clothes so that Wayne's eyes slid right over him. With a bit of effort and some help from his softly glowing wrist-watch, he got a decent look at the man's face.

His rich brown skin didn't make it any easier. Certain other attributes stood out to Wayne, though. Short hair. A close, scruffy beard. A thin, diagonal scar across his chin. Small eyes. A mean mouth. Wayne knew the type. A man of action.

"That's Chandler," Elaine said. "Most people just ignore him. He prefers it that way." 

Despite her easy, conversational tone, she radiated urgency. She tapped her index finger on the table beside his phone. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. 

"We're going to talk about what happened to you today. But let's begin with something easy. When we get to the parts you don't remember, just pause for a second, take that deep, calming breath and then keep going. I promise it will all come back to you.

"You'll remember better if you close your eyes, so close them now. Yesterday afternoon, you blacked out for the first time since leaving prison. What happened? You were at work. Your shift had ended. You just left a meeting with Ryan Wilchins, the human resources manager."

Wayne closed his eyes and relaxed, just as she suggested. He had just left the HR office.