Captor Mine
A Base Branch Novel
Megan Mitcham
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
1
“Katrin, my light.”
“Dad?” Kat whirled from her patient sprawled unconscious across the operating table to the opulently carved door her father pushed through. Had she been in her operating room in her hospital, he wouldn’t have gotten nearly this close to the sterile environment necessary for surgery. But here—in his makeshift operating room, in his house, and staffed with his people—so much was out of her hands. Another cubic centimeter of resentment syphoned itself to the already overflowing ventricles of her heart.
“You shouldn’t be in here.” Kat positioned herself between her patient and her father.
He waved away her concerns with his large hands. His skin, while always pale, held a waxy quality that gleamed in the bright lights. It struck a memory. She sat at a long oak table in the dining hall of her boarding school. Excitement brimmed her cheeks with the knowledge her father would join her for the first time since sending her away. Around her, parents embraced their children. None were the overly boisterous displays she’d recently observed in the States, but they’d been warm and endearing in their upper-crust modesty. Finally, her father strode confidently through the double doors. She reserved the urge to run to him, though her heart demanded it. Her feet tapped anxiously beneath her until he drew near, leaned down, and retrieved her hand. He placed it on the back of his cold, clammy hand, and patted it once. “My light, you’re looking as brilliant as ever. I’m delighted to see you.” His words, incongruous to his affections, echoed in her mind.
“Your care and abilities amaze me more than you know.” His voice and proximity jarred her to the present. Dark eyes glistened with appreciation.
Unbidden, a smile stretched her lips. She should have tossed him from the room on his ass. Her patient was far from out of the woods. One bacteria could end the life she’d worked so tirelessly to save. Instead, Kat snapped up the token he offered like the insecure little girl she was, throwing away years of intense therapy.
“You know I treasure you, right?” He cupped the tops of her shoulders. A chill from his fingertips seeped through the thin fabric of her scrubs.
Maybe she should check his circulation or, at least, draw a blood panel on him. It could be anemia or Raynaud’s disease.
“Do you have numbness in your fingertips or toes?”
The dark eyes that scared her as a child gleamed and narrowed. “Seems an odd answer to my question.”
He’d asked a question? Kat gritted her teeth and searched her synapses for his last comment. No wonder she had zero friends. People liked attention, conversation, care, and concern. She liked solving problems. Once the problem had a sufficient answer, her interest zipped along to the next issue.
“I’m sorry.” Kat peeled back her bloody gloves and folded them inside out, careful not to touch any bodily fluids. She clutched them in her hands like a talisman. If she could solo a seven-hour surgery, by all that was right in the world, then she could hold a proper conversation. “Occupational hazard.” She grinned and then realized her mask still covered her face. “Your hands are cold. I was concerned you might have anemia or suppressed circulation.”
“You’re too good to me.” He gave her shoulders the old one pat. “It’s time I returned the favor.” Her father turned her toward the door and carted her along with a robust frame that outweighed hers by a hundred pounds or more.
“What?” Her heartbeat soared in a mixture of excitement and dread. All she’d ever wanted was her father’s time and attention. At long last, she was getting it, but at whose expense? The man she’d just cut open, toyed with for hours, and sewn back together needed her. There was no hospital staff to check his vitals, much less change the reservoir on his wound drain or the dressing at the surgical site.
She craned her neck to grab one last glimpse of the massive black man before her father ushered her around the corner into a long hallway. The machine she’d hooked her patient to before the surgery was the best in the business. If any of his markers dropped below norms, it would alert her.
“I can’t go far. The most critical hours are those right after surgery.”
“Wouldn’t the most critical hours be during surgery?” Her father walked only as far as the next door on the same side of the hallway as the mock surgical wing and tossed the door wide.
“Well, yes.” She nearly choked.
A mirror image of the bedroom next door glittered in its grandeur. Sculpted and gold leafed vines crowded two massive windows across the room as well as the bed on the far-left wall. Thick draperies and bedding with handwoven designs anchored the room while the beveled walls and ceilings gave the illusion of unstoppable height.
None of this magnificence made her tongue knot in the back of her throat.
Her luggage sat on the chaise. Her luggage from her Dunbar, Maryland, apartment only five blocks from Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Her hospital. The hospital she’d been taking a sabbatical from to study at Charité in Berlin for two months, which was approximately four thousand miles from where she and her father stood in his home outside Stockholm, Sweden.
“You’ve worked so hard, my light. Please, make yourself at home.” He gently pushed her into the room and closed the door.
The echo of the heavy wood meeting its frame sent Kat into a spiral. Hadn’t he wanted to spend time with her? Sweat slicked her palms. Wasn’t that why she’d left her patient? The air inside her mask thickened to the consistency of syrup. Who was the man her father had fetched her all the way from Germany to save, and why did she have to be the one to save him?
Kat gripped the corner of the wall. The raised edges of beautifully stained wood threatened to close in on her. She ripped the mask from her face and teetered across the room and around her bags to an ornate mirror. Staring back was the face of a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman.
“You are no longer a girl. You are a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman worthy of love and devotion.” As she spoke, the brilliant blue eyes staring back brimmed with tears. The woman’s lips shook. A frown broke the façade.
Her well-constructed exterior shattered, hit the floor, and disintegrated as if never there.
Kat covered her face and sobbed silently as she had every day under her father’s care. No matter how many times she told herself she was no longer the girl he’d ignored for so many years, when faced with the man on his own turf, the self-affirmations were a bald-faced lie. It wasn’t her petite stature or his gigantic one that gave her pause. It wasn’t that he’d ever beaten or abused her in any way.
For as long as she could remember, he simply, painfully dismissed her.
Tears rolled steadily down her cheeks. She wiped them away and glared at the woman she’d become. Her curly blonde hair held itself together in a knot atop her head beneath
a surgical cap. One good tug and the disposable material and curls tumbled onto her shoulders. After years of taunts about her frizzy mane and no feminine help to speak of, she’d learned through much trial and error how to tame the mess. She’d picked her career of choice and the proper colleges to attend, which would aid in her success, at age ten. All without the guidance of a parent or guardian.
She looked past the reflection and addressed the terrified, lonely girl. “Above all that, you’ve succeeded.”
Sure, she’d succeeded. Talking to herself in the mirror. It wasn’t quite the landmark for achievement she’d hoped for, but she could get it if she refused to quit.
Kat turned away from her image more determined than ever to talk to her father and make him listen for the first time in her life. She dropped the gloves, which needed to be disposed of properly, the mask, and the cap onto the foot of the bed and hurried to the door. Her fingers wrapped around the gold lever and twisted. The metal gave way, bottoming out when it faced the intricately designed wood floor, but it didn’t release the latch. Thinking that the latch hadn’t caught in the first place, she pulled. The door remained closed. She pushed the lever up and pulled out. No change.
She stepped back and assessed the door. There were no obvious buttons, catches, or bolts. Her fingers balled into a fist and struck the door three times. “Hello? My door isn’t opening. Hello? I need help, please.”
No one answered.
Tamping down her irritation and confusion, Kat moved methodically through the room of seemingly endless doors. The first between the main entrance and the bed’s sconced headboard gave freely into a palatial bathroom that echoed like a tomb. She backtracked and assessed the five remaining doors. “Don’t know why I bother, but…” She rounded the bed and yanked on the handle between the bed and far wall of windows and French doors. It gave way to a cavernous closet.
Irritation mounted a horse and galloped hard and fast toward an unacknowledged fear. A fear she refused to voice.
She ran to the wall of windows and doors and pried at each without success. Her feet pounded faster through the room to the last door that stood opposite the foot of the bed. Both her hands gripped the handle and heaved. The door flew backward, knocking her off balance…in more ways than one.
Her patient lay on the operating table as she’d left him only minutes ago.
“I don’t understand.” She held tight to the handle to keep from hitting the ground physically. Metaphorically, she crashed into it from a much greater height. Her heart raced ahead of her feet and mind.
This room, like hers, had five doors. She tried the windows and French doors first. Kat burst through the closet door, expecting it to be empty like the one in “her” room, only this one had clothes. They didn’t take up one tenth of the available space. She snatched a shirt from the nearest hanger and assessed the soft cotton. It could wrap around her twice and her father once, but he wouldn’t be caught in the gym in such a casual ensemble. Next, she pulled a pair of pants off a hanger. The long tag swung wildly about. It was a size too short for her father. He towered over most men.
Kat turned and peered into the room at the man she’d been given no background information about—even after she’d asked repeatedly—yet ordered to save.
“What the hell?” Kat held the jeans to her chest but ripped a hanger from the nearest rack and slung it through the wide space. “What the hell?”
She bit back tears and debilitating fear and walked to the last door. The door she’d walked out of with her father not more than ten minutes ago. Her steady hands shook as she reached for the lever and twisted.
No change.
Panic threatened to rip free from her insides. Years of training in the field of trauma forced her to bank them. She walked to the man on the table. His large hands hung off either side of it. Thick forearms braced the rest of his muscular arms from dangling over the edge.
“Who are you?” She begged him to wake and answer, knowing he wouldn’t. The swelling in his brain had forced her to place him in a medically induced coma. He’d been unconscious since she’d first seen him this morning. She wondered, not for the first time, how long he’d been in this state before she arrived.
“How were you hurt?” Had her father accidentally hurt the man and trusted only her to revive him without reprisal? Would he survive?
He didn’t answer.
Neither did he code, which left her in this unfathomable predicament.
As a doctor, a surgeon, she was invested in a patient’s health through duty and honor. Never before had she been a prisoner to a patient’s prognosis. She stared at the large African American man whose pulse registered weakly through the beeping spikes of a monitor. A metaphorical chain linked her existence to every peak and valley, and she needed to know why.
Kat leaned over and secured her palm to his left palm. The warmth of his skin seared hers. His temperature was up, but it didn’t surprise her. She’d measured it before and after the procedure, but the heat it generated shocked her. Everything else in her life was cold and unfeeling. Though his calm face didn’t show it, this man was warm and frantic in his fight for life. She lifted his heavy arm and crossed it over his torso, moved to the other side and repeated the measure. Then she checked the monitor one more time, stalked to the door, and beat on it with all her might.
Seconds bled into minutes, which threatened to congeal into a half an hour. Before she knew it, her fight had decimated a significant chunk of time. Her knuckles cried with each additional strike. Her hands pulsed. Sweat dripped down her forehead and nape, soaking the collar of her scrubs. Still, no one answered.
Sadness and fear morphed into an uncontrollable rage. How dare her own blood keep her locked away like some misbegotten fairy-tale princess? By Maud Mary Chadburn, her surgical idol, someone would open the door and tend to her one way or the other. “Cover your ears, Maud,” she whispered.
“If this man’s life is in any way important to you, you will open this door and speak to me.”
She hadn’t threatened to harm her patient. Not exactly, but the impetus was there more than she was comfortable with. Kat couldn’t be expected to become a prisoner on her father’s whim. She’d done it before, but she’d had no choice. Now she had choices; too bad all of them sucked.
Kat ceased her tirade on the thick wood and waited silently.
The beeps of the monitor grew as with each passing second someone refused to answer her call. It reached a fevered pitch, pinging off her amygdala and forcing her to respond the only way she could to get her father’s attention. She stopped next to the monitor.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and pulled the leads from the device.
Flatline sang loudly enough that it tried to wake its failing patient, at least in her mind. In reality, it only alerted medical professionals of their failures for the patient. In this case, neither scenario applied.
Twenty seconds after the call began, the door swung wide. Her father consumed the space in the threshold. “What’s wrong?”
Gee, where to start? Um, how about imprisonment? That tact wouldn’t work with her father. His emotions were so few as to be nonexistent. She’d have to speak in a way in which he could relate.
Kat plugged the lead back into the machine. Silence suffocated the room for three heartbeats. The monitor caught up to her patient’s vitals and beeped in time.
Her father’s wide chest puffed.
She stepped forward. “If I’m going to save this man’s life, I need access to more medical equipment.”
He gave her his back.
The triumph of moments ago plummeted. She couldn’t be locked in this room with a man she knew nothing about—except the physical makeup of his impressive body and just as extraordinary injuries—until he died or reached recovery.
Kat moved to the end of the operating table and took two steps toward the door. When her father turned back and stepped into the room, she stalled. A man with a large gun strapped t
o his chest stepped into the space her father had occupied.
“Tell Aron what you need, and he’ll get it for you.” He pointed at the armed man who looked more clear-eyed sentinel than errand boy. Honestly, she’d never seen eyes such a light, translucent blue. They were eerie as hell.
“Do you understand?” her father asked.
“Not much of the past two days.” Her teeth ground.
“I know you have questions. As do I, which is why you need to do everything in your power to make sure this man makes a full recovery.”
What the hell did that mean?
“Who is he? How did he receive his injuries? Did you hit him while you were driving?” Her voice pitched higher with each unanswered question.
“My light.” He sighed and stepped forward.
She’d always loved his pet name for her. It showed that, maybe more than anything else, he cared for her. As she grew up, though, Kat saw it as the placating tool he used before he handled her.
“All you need to know is that he is a very dangerous man. I need him alive to answer my questions.” Kat opened her mouth, but her father lifted his hand. “Now, I must go away for a while. I trust my men to take care of you. I trust you to take care of him.” His index finger stabbed in the direction of her patient. “When he wakes, let Aron know immediately.” He patted her shoulder once and turned.
“I’m a prisoner.” She couldn’t keep the word from forming nor the hysterics from rattling her vocal cords.
“Hardly, my light. You’re in the finest estate in the countryside with the most competent security and staff sworn to keep you safe so that you may fulfill your calling and heal this man.”
Aron moved into the hallway and out of sight, allowing her father to exit. His hand rested on the handle. He looked at her, really examined her features, while she sneered at his sharp face and cool visage. “I know you’ll make me proud.”
“When will you be back?” She didn’t know why she asked the insane question. After all, she was a scientist at heart. There were so many more important things to know. She was also the young, scared girl she’d tried time and again to leave behind.
Captor Mine (Base Branch Series Book 13) Page 1
