by Dana Volney
“Claire.” He pulled her closer to him. Her features were so serene, like she was sleeping.
He patted her cheek a couple of times. “Claire.” His chest hollowed at her non-responsiveness.
Don’t do this to me. This wasn’t normal. She should’ve come to by now.
“Fuck.” He checked her pulse again—faint.
He gathered her in his arms, opened the passenger door, and laid her on the seat. When she was secure, he hustled back to grab the baton that had fallen out of her hand. She loved that dumb weapon. A gun was easier, but she’d always preferred the baton. Not that she couldn’t shoot. She was a helluva shot. Claire rarely needed violence to get what she wanted though. She had loads of charm-laced manipulation tactics that got the job done just fine.
He returned to his side, slammed his door, and stepped on the gas. The tires of the old truck screeched as he pulled out and headed left toward the nearest hospital. She was half lying on the seat, her knees bent and her body leaning toward him. Drops of sweat started to line his forehead. Claire hated hospitals, but there was no choice. None of the members of the team were doctors. Rife probably had field medic training. But Claire needed more.
His truck came to an abrupt halt outside the emergency room doors. He ran around to Claire’s side, gathered her in his arms again, not even sure if he closed her door as he took off for the first medical professional he spotted.
A guy in green scrubs and a woman wearing a white jacket were talking by a desk.
“My friend and I were attacked, and she got hit on the head really hard. She’s been out for about fifteen minutes now.” As the words tumbled from his mouth, his body started to buzz. They’d been in many hairy situations before, but neither of them had ever needed to go to the ER. Sure, he’d been shot, but Claire had always sewn him up. When her shoulder had been sliced open with a box cutter by a wily gypsy he’d done the same. They knew enough to get by. Going to the hospital brought questions. Questions they never wanted to answer.
“Put her here.” The male grabbed a gurney parked by the side of the wall.
Samson gently laid Claire on the white sheets. He brushed a blonde curl from her forehead as the nurse and doctor worked swiftly around them. Hopefully, she would wake up at any moment. Right now would be nice. “Come on, Claire,” he whispered. He slipped his hand down her arm and laced their fingers. “I’m here.”
The doctor went around him and took out a light that looked like a pen. She opened each of Claire’s eyes, shining it in her eyes quickly a couple of times. No reaction. “Where did she get hit?”
“The back of the head.” At least once that he’d seen. She’d fought off two men previously, so there could’ve been more trauma. Fuck. He should’ve just taken the gun from the asshole who pulled it and been done with their stakeout right away. Or stepped on the gas and got them the hell out of there. But of course bleeding heart Claire wanted to stay and not blow it by causing a scene. He had felt the energy from her body, coaxing him to just go along with it until they couldn’t anymore. That point came when those assholes started threatening Claire. Vile threats. No thug was going to get away with saying those types of things to her as long as he was around. Thank God she was ready for the fight. Claire Citare was always ready for the fight.
He gripped her hand tighter as they started to wheel her farther into the hall, making a right at the first bay cordoned off by white curtains. He was not leaving her side.
She didn’t wake. She didn’t even flinch at all the jostling. He clenched his fist instead of putting it through the wall. He was going to go back and kill every one of those motherfuckers with his bare hands.
“What’s her name?” The nurse glanced at him.
“Claire,” he found his voice, but it cracked. “Claire Citare.” He squeezed her hand tighter.
“Is she allergic to anything? Any medication?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Are you her husband?” The nurse glanced to Claire’s ringer finger and Samson followed the trail. Claire wore the ruby ring they’d stolen in Nepal three years ago. A flood of warmth filled his chest; she’d worn her red and orange scarf that night as they’d danced he night away with only the light of the little café around them. They’d been the only two people in the world.
“Partner.” A smile tightened his cheeks. He was not going to be cut out of her medical care. And no one had time for an explanation of their relationship. Claire didn’t have family. He was as close as it got.
“Intubate. Start an IV,” the doctor ordered. “I’ll call radiology.”
“What do you think is wrong?” he asked but kept his gaze fixed on Claire. This better not be the last time he saw her breathing.
“We need to make sure her brain isn’t swelling or bleeding. We’ll know more when we do some tests.”
He nodded, and her hand slipped from his as they pushed the gurney back out into the hallway.
“There’s paperwork for you to fill out at the desk.” The nurse waved his hand toward a blue-lined desk area where a handful of people in green scrubs milled around.
Samson slumped against the wall in the hallway as he watched them wheel her away. Taken for testing. Still not awake. Red caught his eyes—he looked down to his jacket and shirt. There was blood on him. Claire’s. His gaze blurred and he tilted his head back to get some air. To feel grounded.
She wasn’t awake. She was bleeding.
“Are you okay?”
He opened his eyes and focused on another nurse with a friendly smile and long, braided hair. “How long until we know something?”
“They took her up for a CT scan. They’ll do blood work, too, and go from there. It will be a while.” Her face fell to pity. “We have coffee in the waiting area.”
Hospital waiting room coffee at one in the morning. Swell. He rubbed a hand down his face as he pushed off the wall to find this treat. He was never going to hear the end of it when she found out he’d said they were partners. At least he hoped.
Chapter Two
Samson sat in the single bed room they’d assigned Claire after hours of testing. Daylight was starting to stream through the closed curtains. There was good news: no brain bleed, no extensive trauma, vitals strong again. And then the bad: she hadn’t woken up yet.
“We are never helping people you find in a police station again,” he said into the silent room, less the bleeping from a machine she was hooked to.
If he’d just said no and stayed firm. If he’d made her wait until Sabene had run the club through her system and they’d known more about it. If he’d done a lot of things differently maybe he wouldn’t be sitting at the side of her hospital bed as she lay unconscious.
The ER doctor had told him the basics of Claire’s condition when she’d been assigned a room and handed off to the third floor for care. Every time a nurse came in, it was like a broken record: her vitals are good. So fucking what? She was healthy. He got it. Then why the fuck weren’t her eyes open and her strong opinion about hating hospitals loud in his ear? The new fucking doctor better not yank him around and damn well be open about what the hell was going on, because Samson was done with this monkey circus of no answers.
He pulled his hand away from Claire’s and sat back in the uncomfortable simple chair that had been in the corner of the room. He grabbed his cell phone from his pocket. He hadn’t let the team know what had happened last night. A call like this made it real.
He pulled up his foster brother’s name. His thumb hovered over “call Able” and then he pulled back. Able and Teagan were off enjoying some much-needed R&R. If the doctor came in and said Claire was dying, he’d call and disturb them. Otherwise, there was nothing they could do but sit here with Samson, and, frankly, he didn’t need people around him right now. Claire wouldn’t want to pull the two lovebirds back from vacation for a bump to her head anyway. He dialed Sabene Walter instead.
“My searches are almost done,” she answered on the first
ring.
“Anything good?” He glanced to Claire, who was laying on her back at a slight incline. Between his growing angst and the shit coffee in the ER, his gut was torn up.
“It’s not your average club. I’ll have it all put together for the briefing later today. Wait, why are you calling so early?”
He let out a breath then ripped off the Band-Aid. “Claire and I ran into trouble last night while we were staking out the club. We got into it with some of the members that run the place. Claire got hit in the head and was knocked out. I took her to the ER, and we’ve been here all night.”
“Oh. My. God. Why didn’t you call before? Is she okay? Are you okay? Put me on speaker.”
“She’s unconscious and they’ve ran tests. The doctor hasn’t come in yet.” If that damn doctor knew what was good for him, he’d walk his ass through that door right now.
“Holy shit. She’s in a coma?”
Coma. The word he’d been avoiding. “Yeah.” A frown pulled the ends of his lips down and he reached for Claire’s soft hand again. He needed to feel her warmth, her life, on his skin.
“Did you kill the fuckers?”
“Yeah.” There was more pain on the way for those four who lived through last night.
“I’m on my way.”
“There really isn’t anything you can do here. Finish up your research first. Call Rife. Leave Able and Milo out of it for now.” He disconnected and tossed his phone on the bed next to Claire’s legs.
Shit. He and Claire never should’ve ended up like this—at odds constantly. If there was one thing he’d learned in his thirty years on this planet, it was that communication was life or death. They’d had everything. Until they didn’t. And it was all because of bad communication. That, and trust. He hadn’t talked and she hadn’t trusted him. Not enough anyway. And now here they were, relentlessly at each other’s throats. It was probably better than not talking at all. But it was getting tiring. Fighting with her, always being on guard with her, was becoming too much.
Right now all he wanted was for her to open her eyes and tell him how she could’ve handled it herself if she hadn’t been trying to babysit him.
Open your eyes and say something.
He laid his forehead on the hand he had over Claire’s. He’d never entertained the thought of her getting hurt on a job. She was more than able to take care of herself. And he’d never thought about it because even the slightest notion made him want to kill someone. She had caught the butt of a gun to the head, and he couldn’t think straight. There were too many emotions to process, too many regrets to speak of, too many what-ifs calling out to him.
“Knock, knock.” There was a quick, simultaneous rap of knuckles on the door.
Samson blinked at the bright room. He must’ve dozed off. He checked his watch. Claire had been out for going on ten hours.
A new doctor, an older woman with her gray hair in a bun, entered holding a chart. “I’m Dr. Caffey.” She extended her hand when she reached the opposite side of the bed.
“Samson.” He stood to shake her hand and then crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’ll be taking over your wife’s care.”
“We’re not married.”
Dr. Caffey smiled tightly, and for a moment he regretted the three words that’d rolled off his tongue automatically. If that admission excluded him from knowing what was going on with Claire, he was going to have to start kidnapping doctors and waving his gun around to get answers.
“Claire suffered trauma to the back of her skull.” The doctor checked the monitors and nodded with an approving gaze. “That blow must’ve been hard.”
“They certainly weren’t playing around.” The boys at the club had come at them hard; he and Claire had been careless on their approach. They shouldn’t have sat there for that long. They shouldn’t have showed up not knowing who they were dealing with. They weren’t amateurs and he shouldn’t have let her persuade him to act like anything other than the fucking professionals they were. Shit, he needed better defenses against Claire.
“Her brain isn’t swelling. That’s a good sign. Her vitals are strong. It’s just a matter of her body healing and then she should come out of the coma.”
“How long could that take?” He breathed through his nose, taking it all in, not letting himself go to a dark place. There was good news mixed in with the word coma. Focus on the good news. She’s strong.
“It’s hard to tell. Everyone heals at their own pace. We’ll keep monitoring.” She made notes on the sheet in front of her. “I’ll come by during my afternoon rounds. The nurses will call if there’s any change.”
Samson’s gaze dropped to Claire. Her makeup was gone. How had that happened? She wouldn’t want anyone to see her without her mascara. She always called it her shield to the world, and yet she’d gone many makeup-free days with him. And she’d been absolutely radiant. She said she could let her guard down with him.
That’s what she’d said. That hadn’t been the truth.
* * *
Claire started to open her eyes, but pain shot around her skull and cascaded down her spine. She forced them open, but the sunlight streaming though the break in the plain cream curtains made her squint. She was in a hospital. Someone had clearly put her in a gown, too. Worry spread over her chest. Had she been in that bad of condition last night?
She blinked a couple of times to take in her scenery: TV on the far wall in front of her, below it a whiteboard of technical care information and her doctor and nurses’ names, and Samson’s name and number written down as her contact. That sonuvabitch. He knew better than to bring her to one of these places. Unless she’d lost most of her blood or been dead, there was no reason to bring her in. The smell of sterile death crept into her nostrils and the beeping noises of the monitors she was hooked up to were suddenly deafening. She moved her legs then arms, trying to brace herself to sit up. Every inch of her was stiff. How long had she been out?
“What in the hell?” Her voice was stronger. So was her confusion about the events of last night. Her breaths came faster at the pain, but her head throbbed harder with each influx. She gingerly laid back down. The urge to rip out the IV, find her clothes, and get the hell out was strong. But so was the sheer pain beating down on her skull.
Ugh, one of those punk-ass bitches from the club had gotten the drop on her and clocked her good. She remembered now. Still, a hospital seemed a bit extreme for a knock to the head. Since Samson had checked her into this place, he could help get her out, and on the ride home she’d gladly let him know how much she disapproved of all of it: the club fight, the hospital … hell, she might even throw in his need to plan and control everything.
Voices wafted in through her room door. It was only half shut, but she could hear Rife, Sabene, and Samson.
She was just about to call out to them when Samson’s voice boomed, “We are done with this.”
Done with what—the hospital, the job, the team? There was no way she was walking away from Club Alegria now. Grace was in trouble. Some bad activity was going on at that place. She could feel it in the marrow of her bones.
“They are into a lot of things, but the big one,” Sabene paused, “and we’re talking 90 percent big, is sex trafficking.”
Sex trafficking. The worst of the worst dealt in selling humans. It was a bad business that tore its victims apart. And their families. She knew firsthand all about that.
“Let’s go take the bastards out and be done.” Rife Kais was always one to be counted on for going to the extreme. “We’ll show them who they messed with.”
She rarely minded Rife’s take on how to solve problems, and in this case would follow him into battle. Whoever was in charge over at Club Alegria needed to die. The entire operation needed to be killed. It was bad enough that sex slavery was a thing; she was absolutely not going to stand for it happening in the town she called home.
“There’s word out there that they just received a shipment,
” Rife continued. “And more are on the way.”
“It’s not our problem. We’re short team members and now even more.” Samson’s voice was hard. He was stressed. She could practically see his one dimple on permanent display.
“They are new to the area but fierce.” Sabene kept going in that briefing mode they’d all become accustomed to from her. “The SL-40s have a solid operation in California and are basically just following that model out here.”
“No. We are not proceeding on this.” Samson’s emphatic head shake was implied.
“What about Grace Kaye?” Sabene asked.
“What about Claire?” Samson shot back.
“She’s tough, man, she’ll pull through.” Rife’s encouraging words made her smile. The big guy had a bit of a soft side now and then.
“We’ll talk about this later when Claire wakes up.” Samson’s tone meant that was the end of it. He hadn’t wanted to look for Grace last night and he didn’t now.
Able March was basically the unelected head of the group, with Samson being a very close second. If Samson said no, that’s how it would stand and she’d lose precious time convincing them all to join her cause. She needed an easier way, a short cut to get Samson to lead the investigation instead of being a hindrance.
“I’m going to get us drinks,” Sabene said.
“I’ll come with.” Rife sounded a little stressed. Probably he thought it best to go in pairs for the moment.
Claire pushed her head into the pillow before realizing the mistake. Bursts of light filled her vision. Okay, so she had suffered a head injury last night. If that’d happened to Samson, she probably would’ve taken him to the hospital, too.
Samson came through the door then jogged over when they made eye contact, concern making his features seem darker. Relief filled her lungs and the pain in her body lessened. She had a plan. She rubbed her lips together. Samson wasn’t going to like it. Good thing he wasn’t going to know about her con until it was too late, if ever.
