Partner-Protector

by Julie Miller

  When the room flooded with light, she turned.

  And screamed.

  One startled yelp. She clutched her good hand over her thudding heart and backed against the doorjamb. “Doc. I’m sorry.” Her irregular breathing seemed to get in the way of coherent speech. “I knocked. It was dark. I didn’t know. Sorry.”

  As her heart rate slowed toward normal, her startled senses cleared and details registered. Doc Siegel, sitting at his desk in the dark. A black-labeled, half-empty whiskey bottle in one hand. A sleek, black, powerful-looking gun in the other.

  For one wild, crazy moment, she thought he was dead. His dark eyes stared deep into nothing. His stringy, shoulder-length hair fell across his gaunt face. “Doc?”

  But then he blinked. His eyes closed slowly, and when they opened again, he moved. He bolted back a long swallow of the golden-brown liquid, screwed the white plastic lid back on, then opened a drawer and placed both the gun and the bottle inside.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll come back at a better time.” That was a lie. She was creeped out enough to know she never wanted to come back to this room. Kelsey turned for the door. She’d wear the towel home and strap it on with shipping tape if she had to.

  “What do you need?” A chair scraped across the floor behind her.

  “I cut myself. I was just looking for some first-aid supplies. But I’m disturbing you. Good night.”

  For a man who looked half drunk and twice deranged, Doc Siegel could move surprisingly fast. And he wasn’t any ninety-eight pound weakling, despite his Ichabod Crane-like build.

  An arm reached past her and shut the door, and five bony fingers closed around her wrist and pulled her wounded hand up toward the overhead light to view. “You’re bleeding.”

  You think? She idly wondered what kind of test he had to pass in med school before he could make that in-depth diagnosis.

  She kept her sarcasm to herself, though, and tugged against him. “I’m sure it’s stopped by now. It’s nothing you need to worry your time with.”

  But the skeletal grip didn’t budge. “You’re here. I’m here. We might as well check.”

  “Doc—”

  “Can’t be too careful. Might need sutures or a tetanus shot.”

  Oh, no. No cutting, no poking. Not by Dr. Personality, especially after half a bottle of whiskey. And she was sure he’d downed it all tonight. The bitter tang of alcohol burned her sinuses with every word he spoke.

  “I need to go. T…Detective Banning will be looking for me.”

  But the doctor wasn’t intimidated.

  He dragged Kelsey across the room and pushed her into a seat on the edge of a long white hospital cot that looked like something cast off from a 1940s war movie. Ho, boy, she didn’t want to be here.

  The doc released her just long enough to pull up a stool and a rolling tray. Kelsey leaped to her feet at the first sign of freedom. But his hand clamped around her wrist again before she could escape. He tipped his face up to hers and the greasy strings of his hair fell back to reveal every line cruelly carved by life and years of alcohol abuse. As quickly as he moved, his speech was agonizingly slow. “Is there some reason you don’t want me to look at your hand, Ms. Ryan?”

  Because you’re drunk? Mad? Scaring the hell out of me?

  “I just needed a bandage,” she explained evenly. “I feel guilty about wasting your time on such a little thing.”

  Doc Siegel smiled. At least she thought that’s what that crooked line across the middle of his face was supposed to be. He pulled her back to her seat, unwrapping the towel before she could voice another protest.

  “We don’t get anybody pretty in here. Or anybody young and clean.” He pulled the tray beneath her hand and adjusted the lamp to inspect her wound. “It’ll be a treat to doctor something that isn’t transmitted by sex or gang violence or destitution.”

  The bleak cynicism in his tone almost tugged at her heartstrings. Almost. Kelsey pulled her hand away and tugged her sleeves as far down her wrists as they would go. “Aren’t you going to wash your hands first?”

  When he got up to go to the sink, she’d run for the door. But the doctor didn’t get up. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from a box on his tray and slipped them on, all the while watching her. He might be smiling at his oversight, but his bleary black eyes didn’t seem amused that she’d pointed out the mistake. “Now let’s see what we have.”

  With the last of the towel peeled away in the trash can beside him, Doc Siegel grasped Kelsey’s hand and examined it. She swallowed hard, bracing herself for a bombardment of sensations. The doctor’s gloves muted his impressions. But the gloves themselves carried images that distracted her.

  He’d used the gloves before. On another patient. While the conscious side of Kelsey’s brain cringed, the intuitive side worked to process what she felt.

  When the doctor wore the gloves, he thought of money—how much he needed for his clinic, how much he wanted for himself. Regret and contempt were equally strong emotions. The gloves had been worn by a man who wanted escape. A man whose reality was worse than the nothingness he found at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

  He pulled out a pair of tiny scissors and trimmed a ragged flap of skin on her pinkie. Kelsey wanted to pull away. Her breathing quickened as panic sparked in her veins. His nothingness, his dire emptiness tried to work its way into her psyche and consume her.

  “I heard that that woman who got murdered—Delilah—came to see you Christmas Eve.” It was the first thing she could think of, the first that could distract her from the depressing emotions.

  The doctor nodded as he worked. “Got herself beat up on the job. Nearly got her arm twisted off because her latest sugar daddy didn’t treat her right. You know, if you stay with one man, he’ll take care of you. You go selling yourself to everything in pants, you’re bound to get beat up—or murdered—somewhere along the way.”

  What a morbid, depressing philosophy. It triggered painful memories of her own.

  She’d tried to stay with Jeb. But the verbal abuse only got worse. And when she finally called him on it, when she threatened to leave, he’d slapped her. Her ears still rang with the memory of that smack. But she’d made good on her word. She’d left. She moved to Kansas City and never looked back.

  “Sometimes, the man you’re with is the man who hurts you.”

  Wrong. Why did she choose now to play devil’s advocate? How did she think disagreeing with the doctor would accomplish anything? The man had scissors in his hand, for God’s sake. He had a gun in his desk. She had…

  “Just soak it here for a few minutes. Make sure we get out all the glass fragments before I wrap it up.” He pushed her fingers into a small bowl of saline and got up to go to the supply cabinet.

  Kelsey breathed deeply, using the brief respite to debate whether sneaking out now and possibly incurring the doctor’s wrath was a safer alternative than sitting here and letting him finish his unsanitary work.

  Again, the man moved quickly. He’d already turned around with the gauze and tape he needed before she could decide.

  “I can do that part,” she offered.

  “Like I said. My treat.” He wavered as he sat down, but there was nothing tentative about his touch when he placed the gauze on her fingers. “Besides, it’s hard to doctor your own hands.”

  Figuring cooperation would be the quickest way to get herself out of there, Kelsey merely nodded. She closed her eyes against the revisit of such dreary depressive thoughts and rested her free hand on the mattress beside her thigh.

  The pain crept in first. Not the pain in her fingers, the sting of pressure on her raw skin. Pain. Bone deep.

  Her lungs felt deprived of oxygen and the pressure around her heart swelled, squeezed, crushed.

  “No.” She breathed a word that might have been another’s protest, might have been her own.

  The pain buffeted her and Kelsey shook. She grabbed on to the metal frame of the bed to pull herse
lf away from the encroaching nightmare. “No.” Louder this time. Her voice.

  “Is that too tight?”

  Doc Siegel’s voice slurred against her ear. But was it real? Or remembered?

  Fear overrode the pain. “No. Why?”

  Kelsey cried. Someone else’s tears became her own.

  All was lost. All was lost. Her trust was shattered. Her heart broken. It hurt too much to consider how she’d been betrayed. It hurt too much to know she would never be free of this hole. Never leave no-man’s land. Never see her son again.

  “No!”

  The scream was real. Inside her. All around her.

  “Hey. Stop it. You’re all right. You ain’t hurt bad. You’re all right.” Real? Dream?

  Didn’t matter.

  “No! Let me go. Please, let me go.”

  He stood in front of her, looming over her. A shadow amongst the shadows.

  She sat up in the bed. Screamed.

  A hand clamped over her mouth. Smelly. Filthy. Hard. “I said I’d take care of you. Why are you making me do this?”

  She screamed beneath the hand. Fought.

  “I tried to help you.”

  “No!” Get away. Run. Fight.

  “Stop it, bitch!

  The hand pressed her down into the bed, cut her mouth with its cruel pressure.

  “I wanted to treat you right. I wanted to be nice.” He whipped a long yellow scarf from his pocket. Looped it around her neck. Once. Twice. He released her mouth but pulled the scarf tight, turning her scream into a helpless gurgle. “I said I’d take care of you.”

  She twisted, her hips jerking in the bed. She clawed at his wrists, but her hand was too weak.

  She had to get out. She had to escape. She had to make it stop.

  Kelsey screamed. “T!”

  She clawed at the hands that covered her mouth and cupped the back of her neck. “What are you doing? You stop it.” The hands shook her. “Stop it!”

  Memories blurred with reality, but the panic remained.

  “T!” She was on her feet. Her hip hit something hard. Metal scraped against metal and crashed to the floor.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “T!”

  The clinic door burst open. She saw a flash of gray and white. Something wrenched against her arm, but then she was free.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Is she all right? Ms. Ryan?”

  Kelsey blinked her savior into focus. Golden hair. Broad shoulders. Precise hands pinning Doc Siegel to the floor.

  T. Merle Banning to the rescue. Again.

  She squeezed his shoulder to see if he was real. Solid. Warm. “T?”

  He angled his head up to hers. Clear, moss-green eyes, pinpoint in focus and dark with concern, looked up at her. “Are you all right, Kels? Did he hurt you?”

  “I didn’t do anything to her!” Stringy brown hair. Doctor on the floor. Protesting. “All of a sudden she just wigged out on me. I was trying to subdue her.”

  The green eyes looked away. “You had your hands around her neck.”

  “She fought me. Look at these scratches on me. I was just trying to help.”

  Kelsey recognized reality clearly now. But the past was still with her, just as strong.

  The death had been here. Right here in this room.

  The woman had come in alive, battered, afraid. She’d expected help, comfort, caring.

  She found death.

  Two more hands touched her arm, gently this time. A gruff, fatherly voice spoke. “Are you all right, Ms. Ryan? Whatever happened, I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

  Reverend Wingate. She brushed her fingertips along the edge of his beard. Curly. Prickly. Real.

  As real as the cold imprint of death on her soul.

  Kelsey withdrew. She pulled her hands to her stomach, felt for the pendant against her chest and clutched it tight.

  “I can’t do this anymore.” She backed away from the three men, with variations of shock, anger and concern etched on their faces. She turned for the door and ran. “I can’t do this.”

  She ran down the long hall, past the curious onlookers gathered in doorways and arches. She stripped off her apron and ran out the door into the Arctic blast of the night.

  “KELSEY!”

  What was T supposed to do? The cop in him wanted to stay here and grill Marlon Siegel. Read him his rights and book him for drunk and disorderly, maybe assault, maybe something more—something Kelsey had seen. But, hell, he had no proof.

  The man in him needed to go after her. Bring her out of the cold. Find out about the stark white bandage on her hand. Rekindle the warmth and life in her terror-blanked eyes.

  “I swear to God, man. I didn’t hurt her. She cut herself. I fixed her up.” The doctor’s pleas babbled like white noise inside his ears. “She’s the one who freaked out. Not me.”

  T looked at the scratches on Siegel’s neck, the turned-over lamp and cart, the rumpled bed. Good. Whatever had happened, she’d gotten her licks in against the creep. But she’d been scared. When he’d dumped out his coffee, he’d seen the blood in the sink where she’d been working. A chill had gripped him. When she’d screamed for him, he thought he might be too late.

  T tightened his hold and Siegel moaned. “If I find out you hurt her in any way—”

  “I didn’t. I swear.”

  “And she’s not a freak.” T shook him loose and pushed to his feet. The twinge in his knee was nominal, an annoyance he could overlook.

  Siegel got up, walked straight to his desk and pulled out a flask of whiskey.

  Was he a cop? Or a man?

  “You’d better go find her, Detective.” Reverend Wingate sounded concerned. “Make sure she’s okay. After that murder on Christmas, I imagine it’s easy for any of us to get spooked.” He nodded toward Siegel, who was taking his second drink. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “He doesn’t leave the premises,” T warned.

  The reverend nodded. “At the rate he’s going, he’ll pass out in his bed before midnight. Go.”

  T was already on his way out the door. The man in him had already made the choice.

  “Kelsey?”

  He checked the hall. No fire-red hair.

  A few helpful points from the staring crowd and an apron on the floor by the front door sent him running.

  He shoved open the door. “Kelsey!”

  Squinting against the bitter wind, he rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and searched up and down the street for her. As cold as it was, this wasn’t just a matter of finding her to comfort her. If she got lost, if she got stopped… He refused to think about exposure to the elements or getting mugged or raped or… “Kelsey!”

  “That way, man.” His gaze connected with Zero’s across the street. He couldn’t make out the black man’s expression. But the jewelry glistening in the pool of streetlight pointed east. “Toward The Underground.”

  T spared a nod for the man who had been his nemesis earlier in the day and prayed the pimp was trying to get on his good side.

  Dashing down the steps, he jogged to the east, scanning ahead as far as he could see. He spotted a woman, with spiky hair, silhouetted up ahead. “Kelsey!”

  She didn’t answer. The cold air constricted his lungs and stiffened his knee. That had to be her, huddled up against the cold, walking so fast. Her hand shook as she raised her arm to flag down a cab two blocks away. “Taxi!”

  Bingo.

  “Kelsey.” Ignoring the pounding on his knee, he broke into a run. “Kels!” He was closing in on her. She wouldn’t stop. Twenty feet. Ten. He could hear her crying now, sniffing back tears. Five. “Kelsey.”

  “Go away.”

  “Kelsey. Sweetheart. Stop. It’s me.” He latched onto her sweater, blocked her with his chest, wrapped her up in his arms and crushed her against him. “It’s me, Kels.” He buried his nose in her hair and held her shaking body as tightly as he could. “It’s me.”

  “I can’
t do this anymore.” Her half-frozen tears soaked into the front of his shirt. Her fists bunched between them. “My head hurts and I want to go home.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” He glanced up and down the street, made sure they were safe. Then he pressed his lips against her temple and rubbed deep, warming circles against her back. She was so cold. Shivering. He wondered how much was from winter, and how much was from the mystical, amazing stuff that went on inside her head. “I’ll take you.”

  She sniffed and he thought maybe she breathed a little easier. “Your mother’s going to get on your case. You don’t have your coat.”

  T smiled. She was going to be okay. “I have you. You feel better.”

  Kelsey’s heavy sigh vibrated through them both. Then her arms reached around his waist and she moved closer. Those full, heavy breasts pillowed against his harder chest and T felt a calming, masculine power seep through him, blotting out the cold, strengthening him.

  He needed his strength.

  “I saw Delilah’s death. In Doc Siegel’s clinic.”

  His arms tightened convulsively around her, absorbing some of her pain and terror. He’d let the bastard go. “You saw him kill her?”

  She shook her head, rubbing her cheek against him. “I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t want to. But he had to be the one, T. Delilah went to him for help that night. She trusted the man who killed her. She thought he was going to make everything all right for her. But he…he…”

  “Shh.” He rocked her gently, back and forth. “You don’t have to go to that mission ever again. You never have to see him again. He can’t hurt you.” When the tears were done, he turned her toward his car. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his side. “I’m going to take you home now.”

  “I can take a cab,” she insisted, though she fell into step beside him. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can. But you don’t have to.”

  He stopped, hesitating a moment, remembering those sexually charged minutes in Reverend Wingate’s office when he’d been dying to taste her lips, and she’d informed him that kissing her wasn’t what he’d really wanted to do. But he was a man who learned from his mistakes. He just hoped she was a woman who could learn, too.