The gentle knock sent a startled Perry Williams halfway out of his chair, gasping as he turned to find Rachel standing in the doorway of his office.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, slapping a hand to his chest.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were back.”
After a deep breath, the older man swiveled back around and nodded. “I was about to come relieve you. Was just reading up a little on our patient.”
Behind him, Rachel could see their patient’s headshot displayed on Williams’s computer screen, along with several lines of physical description followed by paragraphs of background information.
“That doesn’t seem like very much.”
“It’s not,” he replied. “And what we do have is not terribly helpful either. At least not for our purposes.”
Rachel squinted at the screen. “I remember he was born in the same city as my mom.”
Williams checked. “Your mom was born in Flint, Michigan?”
“Yep. Not the same year, though.” Still leaning against the doorframe, she added, “I wonder what he did in the army.”
“It doesn’t say.”
“Can you read it aloud again?”
Williams began rambling through the text. “Six foot one, a hundred and ninety pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, born in Flint in 1980.” He paused, scanning. “Enrolled in the army after high school. Served for about eight years, judging by his change of address. Had a job as a contractor in Ohio for several years before moving to Montana. The rest just covers where he was stationed in the army.”
“How can we have so little on him?”
“Beats me.” Williams scrolled down, revealing copies of two separate news articles. “We probably know more about his accident than his past. We also know more about him medically now than anything we would have gleaned from records.”
“Well, we’ve done enough workups on him.”
“Right.”
Falling silent, she took a deep breath and exhaled. “Maybe he knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Maybe he knows the secret of why him.”
Williams pondered the question from his chair.