by Mallory Kane
His jeans were on the floor. He grabbed them and fished the phone out of his pocket.
It was Kenner, the guard he’d placed to watch Craig Johnson.
“Mr. Majors.” Kenner sounded frantic. Sean heard shouting in the background.
Alarm knocked the haze of sleep and relaxation right out of him. “What is it?”
“Sir, something’s wrong with Johnson.”
“What? Kenner!”
“I just went to the bathroom. Two minutes, I swear. The doctors are in there now. They’re working on him.”
Sean cursed. “Stay there. Don’t let Johnson out of your sight. I’ll be right there.” He slammed the cell phone down on the bedside table and stood.
“What’s wrong?”
He froze.
Damn. Sophie.
He stood and slid the jeans up over his butt and fastened them.
She was sitting up in his bed, her hand clutching the sheet over her breasts, her wheat-colored hair loose and soft around her face.
Her eyes glistened. With excitement? The anticipation of danger? His stomach turned as he recalled how Cindy had always licked her lips and begged for the gory details of any exciting incident.
“Nothing. Get up,” he snapped. “I’ve got to go.”
Sophie’s eyes widened and her hand shook. The sheet slipped a bit, exposing the dark aureole of one nipple.
A flash of raw desire cut through him like lightning, but he clenched his jaw.
She’d distracted him from his job. He zipped the jeans and grabbed a short-sleeved pullover shirt from his closet. “I said get up.”
“Something’s happened to Craig Johnson.”
She’d distracted him, and he regretted it, just like he’d known he would. He should have gone back to the hospital last night.
Sean leveled his gaze on her. “Get out of here before my daughter wakes up.”
A deep shadow flickered in her eyes, but she blinked and turned away, reaching for her clothes.
Sean’s gaze lingered on her scarred back for a second as compassion gnawed into his heart, but he deliberately turned away. He had no time. Johnson could be dying.
“I’m going to the hospital with you.”
“Like hell you are. You get back to your little fancy wedding salon and stay the hell away from me.” He grabbed his cell phone and his keys and headed for the bedroom door.
When he flung it open, Rosita was standing there. Her quick black eyes darted from his face to the room behind him and back.
“Don’t even start, Rosita. I’ve got to go. Get her out of here.”
As he pushed past her, he couldn’t help but glance back at Sophie one more time. She looked small and stunned sitting in the middle of his bed—as if he’d hit her.
His heart twisted, but he clamped his jaw.
He didn’t care if he’d hurt her feelings.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t afford to.
While he’d been indulging himself, someone had gotten to Johnson. He’d promised Craig he’d take care of him, and he’d let him down.
SOPHIE FELT ROSITA’S EYES on her as she quickly dressed. Her face burned with mortification as she did her best to keep her back to the wall. She certainly didn’t want Rosita seeing the telltale scars. Sean’s housekeeper already thought little enough of her.
When she finally had everything on, including her stockings, she raised her gaze to Rosita’s. The woman hadn’t moved. She stood at the door like a sentry, her arms crossed across her bosom.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m leaving. Please, don’t think—”
Rosita waved a hand. “I do not know you. I have no thoughts about you.” The hand curled into a fist and she pointed her finger at Sophie. “But you can hurt my Sean, and if you do, you will answer to me.”
To her surprise and Rosita’s, Sophie smiled shakily. “He is so lucky to have you,” she said in Spanish.
Rosita’s dark brows shot up.
Sophie slipped her feet into her pumps, then she edged past the housekeeper and into the living room to find her purse and keys sitting on the coffee table.
“I didn’t mean to—” she started, but Rosita’s face discouraged talk. She propped her fists on her hips.
Shaking, fearful that any minute Rosita’s deceptive silence would explode into anger, Sophie stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “I know you love Michaela. Please be sweet to her. Protect her. And take care of him.”
Sophie called Rachel’s cell phone as she sped toward the hospital.
“Brennan.” True to form, the unflappable head of the Confidential Agency answered after one ring. She must have been asleep, but there was no indication of it in her voice.
“Rachel, it’s Sophie. Something has happened to Craig Johnson. There may have been another attempt on his life. I’m on my way to the hospital now.”
“Specifics?”
“I don’t know much.” Her face burned. She pulled into the right-hand lane and took the exit that led to the hospital. “Sean Majors just got a call from the guard he stationed at Johnson’s door.”
“Majors called you?”
Sophie’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“I see. I’ll call Rafe and alert him. Then I’ll speak with the hospital’s chief medical director. How much does Majors know about Confidential?”
It was a fair question. An important question.
“Nothing.” Sophie took a deep breath. “He’s suspicious, though. He saw me reach for my weapon when I hit the ground yesterday.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’d grown up in New York. He wasn’t convinced.”
“Sophie, just how involved are you with him?”
Sophie turned into the hospital’s parking lot and bit her lower lip. “Not at all,” she said, hearing the hesitancy in her voice. “He thinks I’m a bimbo who gets off on danger and excitement.”
“And yet he knows you’ve carried a weapon.”
Rachel’s voice was tinged with faint disapproval. Sophie waited, holding her breath.
“Sophie, I know this probably isn’t the time or place, but I feel I need to warn you about something.”
“Yes?” Sophie pulled into a parking place in front of the main entrance of the hospital, her pulse drumming in her temple.
She’d built her whole life, such as it was, around Rachel’s Confidential Agency. The other members of the team seemed to like her.
Rafe worried about her. Isabelle and Julia and the others teased her about how she dressed. No one had ever teased her before.
If she lost her job with Confidential, she didn’t know what she’d do.
“I’m quite familiar with your background.”
Sophie gasped. She’d expected a lecture about the dangers of personal involvement during a case. Rachel had never mentioned Sophie’s personal life, not even when she interviewed her for the job. She’d been delighted with Sophie’s background in the CIA.
“I also know that you haven’t had a relationship since you came to Miami.”
“You know—?” Sophie had a comic vision of Rachel sitting at a bank of monitors, watching each member of her team. “I don’t understand what—”
“Sophie, I’m trying to give you some advice. Some—personal advice.”
Sophie clamped her mouth and eyes shut and waited. For the second time in twenty-four hours she was being stripped bare. After years of hiding behind her sophisticated clothes and cool demeanor, she was suddenly raw and exposed. Without defenses.
“Sean Majors had a bad marriage. His wife did drugs. Still does. She’s infamous around Miami for her dangerous stunts and wild antics. She abandoned her own child.”
Each word cut deeper into Sophie’s heart. No wonder Sean had looked at her with such disgust when she’d told him she loved the danger. She couldn’t imagine how he’d look at her if he knew everything about her. One thing was certain—h
e’d never want her around his child, ever again.
“I think he’s very bitter, very closed off. Lives only for his child. Be careful, Sophie. He’s probably not—a good choice for you.”
Sophie pushed a hand through her hair. Rachel sounded embarrassed. “Don’t worry Rachel. I have no illusions.”
Michaela’s beautiful little face rose in her vision. And Sean’s wide, crooked smile as he lifted his little girl and kissed her.
“None,” she said firmly. “I’m here, at the hospital. I’d better see what’s going on.”
“Right.” Rachel’s voice turned crisp and professional. “Keep me informed.”
“Rachel, thank you.”
Dead air greeted her last remark. Rachel had disconnected.
Sophie forced herself to concentrate on her mission as she walked in through the front entrance of the hospital and took the main elevators to Johnson’s floor.
But her brain couldn’t block out Rachel’s words. They echoed down the empty corridors.
His wife did drugs. She abandoned her child.
Suddenly Sophie’s knees shook so badly she had to put a hand out to the wall to steady herself. Why had she gone to Sean’s apartment? Why hadn’t she just driven away?
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the elevator wall. If she had, she’d have missed the most awful, most wonderful night of her life. She’d have never met Sean’s precious child. She’d have never seen the beautiful smile he reserved just for his daughter. She’d have never known such a deep love existed.
Now she did. And she knew more, too. She knew how tender, how loving he was. How fierce and focused. How strong. How protective.
Rachel’s voice echoed in her ears.
Not a good choice. She laughed shortly. She didn’t need Rachel to tell her that Sean Majors was out of her league. She’d known that from the start.
A man like Sean would never be a good choice for her. He was a good man, a family man. He was surrounded by people who loved him. She couldn’t be a part of that, and she certainly couldn’t compete with it.
The elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor amid chaos.
Three young men with sleepy eyes, their white coats identifying them as medical students, straightened and got on the elevator as she exited. A woman rolled a portable EKG machine around the corner and called out for them to hold the door.
Sophie stepped from the elevator lobby into the hall, where several nurses were scurrying with charts and IV bags and packages of tubing.
A couple of patients stood at the doors to their rooms, holding on to IV poles or shuffling their bedroom slippers. A male nurse guided one old man back into his room and closed the door.
A nurse pushed a red crash cart into a corner beside the nurse’s station and picked up a phone. Sophie heard her request for a replacement cart as, beyond the bustle, a familiar figure caught her eye.
It was Sean. He was walking toward the other end of the hall beside a bowed-shouldered physician. In front of them, an orderly pushed a gurney covered by a sheet. Sean rubbed the back of his neck and nodded solemnly as the doctor talked.
At the end of the hall, the orderly pressed the call button for the service elevators and turned the gurney toward the doors.
Sophie’s fears were realized. There was no doubt—the sheet covered a body.
Craig Johnson was dead.
Chapter Six
Sonya Botero’s limo driver and bodyguard, whom everyone had suspected of faking a head injury to avoid questions, was dead.
A lump rose in Sophie’s throat. He’d been so young, probably no more than twenty-five or so. As the orderly pushed the gurney onto the elevator, she turned her attention to Sean.
He ground one fist into the other palm as he watched the gurney being rolled into the elevator. Even from her vantage point at the other end of the hall, Sophie saw the tension in his shoulders, the hard muscle of his jaw. She could see his grief. She knew he blamed himself. And her.
After Sean and the doctor followed the gurney onto the elevators, Sophie turned her attention back to the people in the hall. The floor was clearing, now that the excitement was over. The patients went back to their beds. Personnel who had responded to the code were gathering up their equipment.
Sophie picked up a patient’s chart that was lying on the counter and cradled it against her chest, hiding her slim purse. She approached a doctor in blue scrubs with a surgical cap and a mask over his face who was standing beside the nurse’s station.
“That was the young man in—?” She paused.
The doctor started. He hadn’t heard her come up beside him. Barely glancing at her, he nodded and crossed his arms.
Sophie pretended to consult something on the chart. “Cardiac arrest?”
The doctor grunted and sidled away from her. He glanced toward the patient room where a housekeeping employee was mopping the floor.
The nurse who seemed to be in charge was inventorying the contents of the crash cart. An obviously shaken middle-aged man was standing beside her and talking to her.
Sophie stood quietly, contemplating the blank front of the chart she held.
“—on my watch. That poor kid. Majors will probably fire me for this.”
The nurse clucked in sympathy. “These things happen. I can’t tell you how many times a loved one will sit for hours, then when they finally go for coffee, the patient passes.” She opened a drawer in the crash cart and counted the contents, then made a note. “That’s life.”
“No,” the man said. “Not when you work for Carlos Botero. Not when Sean Majors is your boss. Mr. Majors ordered me to protect him. I was only gone for two minutes. Did you say he coded?”
“Right. I was at the other end of the hall, giving meds, and I heard the heart monitor go off. Cardiac arrest.”
“But he was just a kid.”
“He’d already had a shock to his system earlier in the week.”
“Yeah. I heard somebody tried to stab him with a needle. That’s when Mr. Majors assigned me to protect him.”
“It happened before I was scheduled up here. I saw a note in his chart, but there were no specifics. He was classified as a VIP.”
Sophie moved smoothly toward the nurse’s station and slid the chart onto a small cart as she eavesdropped.
“VIP?”
“Very Important Patient. The specific chart information is locked up, available only to the staff physician and the chief nurse, not to us mere mortals, but I heard—” She stopped talking as she realized Sophie was standing there.
The guard turned toward her. “Help you, ma’am?”
Sophie flashed a smile. “I’m looking for my cousin. She was transferred to Orthopedics.”
The nurse peered over her reading glasses at Sophie. “That’s second floor. Visiting hours don’t start until seven.”
Sophie nodded eagerly. “I have to be at work by then, and she really wanted me to bring her some—gum.” She indicated her purse.
“Second floor.”
Sophie thanked her and headed back toward the main elevator lobby. She punched the call button, then stood just behind the angle of the wall, straining to hear.
The guard and the nurse didn’t speak until the elevator bell rang. Sophie stood quietly as the doors opened and closed.
“Okay.” The nurse lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “I heard that someone tried to kill him with a whopping dose of potassium. That’s why he lapsed into a coma.”
“You think that’s what happened this time?”
“Potassium can stop the heart like that.” The nurse snapped her fingers.
The guard whistled.
“But who could have done it? You didn’t see anybody? I swear I wasn’t gone but two minutes.”
“Hey, we’re shorthanded on the midnight shift. I’ve got seventeen patients. Some of the doctors like to make their rounds before surgery and interrupt my five o’clock medication rounds. Of course they can never find
a chart by themselves. I had a doctor this morning who asked me for a chart that was right in front of him. Housekeeping was late tonight, too. Usually they’re through by 3:00 a.m.”
“Housekeeping? Was it the guy who was mopping Johnson’s room a few minutes ago?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t keep up with Housekeeping.”
The elevator bell rang and a woman dressed in white rolled a bright red crash cart out.
With a sigh, Sophie stepped into the elevator. Just as the doors slid shut, someone stopped them.
It was the doctor she’d tried to talk to. He entered the elevator and stood next to her.
Sophie watched the lighted numbers change, observing the unspoken elevator etiquette that required passengers to avoid eye contact. But the doctor folded his arms and watched her.
She felt his eyes on her. She dared a glance at him. His heavy black brows were knitted together in a frown. Was he going to ask her what she’d been doing on the fourth floor?
She swallowed and stared up at the lighted numbers, feeling his black gaze boring into her. He unnerved her. She didn’t think most physicians walked around with their masks over their faces. She looked down at his folded arms, dark and hairy, then on to his shoes, which were encased in disposable blue shoe covers.
When she got off the elevator, he stepped off close behind her—too close. A woman passed in front of her and she stopped. He bumped into her from behind.
He grunted and pushed her aside roughly and nearly ran an older man down as he took off down a side hall.
Sophie righted herself.
“What’s his hurry? Are you all right?”
Sophie nodded at the helpful man and took off after the doctor.
He was almost at the end of the hall, jogging. Visitors and employees got out of his way—he was a doctor in a hurry. Lives could be at stake.
At the end of the hall, he slapped a metal disk labeled Authorized Personnel Only and slipped through double automatic doors.
By the time Sophie reached the doors and put out her hand to press the disk, a large man dressed in green scrubs materialized beside her.
