Read Found Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #14): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel for Free Online Page B

machinery, it had been hard to stay in the real world. She’d kept slipping back into the artificial environment against her will. Then she’d have to send her mind back to her own body all over again. Each time she’d thought she might have missed the transfer of the new patient, and each time nothing had happened with the new man.
    Now finally, it looked like it was really going to happen. She tensed her muscles as she watched the preparations.
    The staff were all busy with the new guy. Then she saw Terry Montrose start to check the other patients, and she drew in a quick breath. Was he going to screw this up for her?
    She let herself drift back, away from the surface. Still she was aware of Montrose stopping to check the readouts on her bed. Apparently he was satisfied because he moved on after only a few minutes.
    oOo
    While Grant sat down at the desk with the VR monitor, Lily and Mack went into the dressing room and donned the standard medical gowns that the patients were wearing. Then she hooked Mack up to an IV line and put him under.
    Watching the monitor over Grant’s shoulder, she saw him wake up in the room she’d prepared off the hotel lobby in the Hotel Mirador. Involuntarily, she glanced back toward the bed in the lab where he was lying. It was always strange to see someone in two places—lying still and silent in a special hospital bed and animated in the artificial environment.
    On the screen, he sat up, looked at the monitor and gave her and his brother a thumbs up. She waved back, then walked to Corker’s bed. He was already hooked up to an IV line. All she had to do was send him into the room where Mack was waiting. He arrived on the sofa, still sleeping. And the way she’d set things up, he shouldn’t awaken until she joined him and gave him a stimulant.
    Still, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling a small jolt of anxiety as she climbed into her own bed. She’d acted confident in front of Mack and Grant, but this was only the second time she’d brought anyone beyond the initial patient population into the VR. The first new inductee had been her sister, Shelly, who had been comatose since an auto accident when she was a child. But technically she’d been in the VR already, brought in by the hacker hired to find a criminal hiding there.  That was the first time she’d been “awake” in years. Now she was living happily in the artificial environment, watched over by a nursemaid who was like the woman behind the desk—only designed with the attributes of a caring nursery school teacher.
    “Ready?”
    Grant’s voice brought her back to the present.
    “Yes.” She looked over at Terry Montrose. As he stepped forward, ready to put her under, she closed her eyes and ordered herself to relax. When she opened them again, she was in the anteroom with Mack and Corker.
                  oOo
    Jenny had tried to stay aware of what was going on in the patient facility. Hoping she wasn’t jumping the gun, she opened her eyes fully, blinking in the light from the overhead fluorescents. Turning her head, she could see Grant hovering over the monitor across the room, watching the action in the VR anteroom. The orderly, Terry Montrose, was also facing the screen. Apparently this moment was too compelling for him to take his attention away from the induction process.
    Jenny’s heart was pounding now. She’d planned something like this for weeks, trying to think of all the angles. But here was her best chance, and she wasn’t sure she could pull it off.
    What if she failed? Would she be any worse off than she was now? 
    Could this totally backfire? Like could she kill herself—or set back her recovery for months? Those were legitimate questions, and logically she should have discussed them with Lily, her physician. But she’d been determined to keep Lily and everybody else out of the loop.
    Before she could change her mind, she moved her hand, reaching up to detach the IV line hooked to