Guardian (The Protectors Series)

by Nancy Northcott

  When he touched Mel’s carotid pulse, it was thready. A quick magical scan showed a rising goose egg on her right temple and slight bleeding from her brain’s right temporal lobe. How hard had that thing hit her, to do this much damage through a magical shield?

  Stefan could heal her in minutes, but the waves of torment rolling off the other victim indicated urgent need. The scent of blood, too strong for a minor wound, wafted into his nose.

  That victim needed him more than Mel did. He had to go.

  Yet he ached to stay.

  Shit.

  He took two more seconds to focus his energy and stop the bleeding of the epidural hematoma, reducing the swelling, and gently brushed the hair out of her face.

  As Stefan rose, the deputy, whose name tag read GARNER, hurried through the door. “Two ambulances inbound,” she said, then stopped in her tracks. “Holy shit,” she breathed, surveying the room.

  “Stay with her. There’s another victim in the other room.”

  “On it.” Garner knelt beside Mel.

  The kitchen area lay to Stefan’s right, with what appeared to be two small bedrooms flanking a bath ahead. The life force he’d sensed was in the room to his right, the one with the door hanging at a crazy angle. A whimper came from there.

  Stefan hurried in and flipped on the light. A thin man with graying brown hair lay on his stomach, breathing irregularly. Blood pooled at the lower back of his faded brown pajama shirt and under his right shoulder. His abdomen, near the liver, looked untouched.

  The ammonia stench of ghoul venom burned Stefan’s nose and throat. He coughed, then swallowed hard. Best not to breathe deeply.

  The man moaned and made a feeble effort to turn over.

  “Lie still.” Kneeling, Stefan sent healing energy into the bony shoulder under his hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

  No matter what he and his fellow mages had to do to ensure that.

  * * *

  Mel had never been in a quieter ER. No beeping machines, no groans or conversations or sobs drifted into her curtained booth, just the occasional muted squeak of nurses’ shoes on the linoleum. Into the silence, memories crowded. Another ER, another night, her mother’s screams.

  Mel’s gut knotted. She had to get out of here.

  A petite, brown-haired nurse whisked the curtain aside and stepped in. “How are you doing, Special Agent Wray?”

  “I’m fine. Ready to leave, in fact.” Sitting up made her head throb, but there didn’t seem to be any other damage.

  “That’s good to hear. What do you remember about this evening?” The nurse looked down at her watch and put light fingers on Mel’s left wrist.

  Not much. She’d pulled into the yard, responding to the break-in, gotten out of the car…and everything after that was blank until she’d opened her eyes in the ambulance.

  “I’m sure everything will come back to me after a good night’s sleep. If you could sign me out, or whatever the procedure is here, I’ll get out of your way.”

  “We’ll have to see what your CT scan shows.” The woman gave her a stern look. “Don’t try to tell me your head doesn’t hurt.”

  CT scan? What CT scan? Mel shrugged, making her head throb harder, and barely managed not to wince. “Bumps and bruises are part of my job.”

  “Um-hmm, and making sure they don’t cause other problems is part of mine. Just relax. Dr. Harper will be in to see you in a minute.”

  Dr. Harper? Had Stefan treated her? Frowning, she rubbed next to the lump on her temple. The pressure didn’t help.

  “There was a man hurt in that house. How is he?”

  “I really couldn’t say.” The nurse gave her a bland, professional smile and whisked through the curtain again.

  Mel closed her eyes, trying to remember, but nothing came. She had no memory of Stefan at the scene, but…he’d been there when the EMTs wheeled her into the building, and she remembered snippets of conversation with the staff doctor on duty. That was spotty, too. At some point, she’d traded her shirt, bra, and jacket for a gown. She was glad to still have her slacks, but her guns were locked in the ER drug cabinet.

  Her head hurt like an overused kettledrum. Lying down had been better, but she needed to be upright to talk her way out of here.

  Footsteps came down the hall, not squeaky on the linoleum. Not a nurse. Familiar. God, how could she still recognize Stefan’s tread after nine years?

  The footsteps stopped at her booth. Stefan tugged the curtain aside and smiled at her. “You’re awake. Good.”

  Despite everything, seeing him made her feel safer, and that smile of his made her lips curve and her heart flutter. Ignoring the unfortunate kick in her pulse, she said, “I’m ready to go.”

  “I figured you would be, but let’s check a couple of things first.”

  He might be coming across like Dr. Easy and Relaxed, but there’d been steel under his words. Authority rang in every line of his body, an impression of power that owed nothing to his starched, white coat.

  “How’s that man, Boone, from the house?”

  “I can tell you he’s stable since that’ll be in the Oracle tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s lucky you arrived when you did.” Stefan drew a penlight from the pocket of his lab coat and aimed it at her right eye. “Look at me.” Watching her face, he clicked the light on.

  It glared in Mel’s eye, but she knew better than to move.

  After a moment, he repeated the process with her left eye. Frowning, he said, “Your pupils are still a little slow to react.”

  “But better, right? I could go?” Despite the ka-thud, ka-thud rolling through her skull.

  “We’ll see.” He gave her arm a quick, encouraging squeeze that raised heat between her legs. Damn it. Mel pressed her thighs together and took a slow breath.

  Stefan raised his right index finger in front of his face. “Keep your head still and watch my finger.” He moved it slowly from left to right and back again, then up and down.

  “You’re tracking well,” he said. “Now—”

  “Can’t you just sign me out? Or maybe I can sign myself out.”

  “Not a great idea. You took a blow to the head. Your CT scan is more or less normal, but you weren’t entirely lucid in the ambulance or for a while after admission. You also didn’t know what month it was when you arrived here, though you answered the nurse’s questions correctly after the scan.”

  The CT scan was still a memory blank. Shit.

  Her confusion must’ve shown, for Stefan frowned. “You don’t remember.” His flat tone left no room for her to maneuver. “That’s a sign of post-concussion syndrome.”

  “That’ll pass, right?” Mel said over the cold stab of panic in her chest. She couldn’t have a serious concussion, not with Cinda’s murder unsolved.

  “It’ll pass, yes, but not quickly. It’s also nothing to screw around with. I’d like to keep you for observation.”

  “No.” The word escaped, fear-laden, before she could think. Judging by Stefan’s raised eyebrows, he’d noted the tone. Mel took a deep breath and fought to level her voice. “I’d rather go back to my room.”

  “At a motel.” He shook his head. “You could be cloudy-headed for a few days. Someone should check you at intervals to be sure you’re lucid.”

  “I’ll set my phone alarm. If I feel funny, I’ll come back.”

  Her gaze locked with his stern one. At last, he said, “That’s not good enough, Mel. Part of post-concussion confusion is failure to realize the confusion.”

  He was going to try to keep her. That meant professional sympathy, a sterile room, just like the night her mom’s delusions had finally snapped into full-time psychosis. Mel shuddered. If she stayed here, the memories would swamp her. I can’t do this.

  “If there’s a fellow agent here,” Stefan began. He paused, studying her. “There isn’t, though. Is there?”

  Her face must’ve given her away. Blast it, she contro
lled her expression around dope dealers and embezzlers. Why the hell could he see through her after all this time? Why couldn’t she lie to him? He’d had no trouble deceiving her when they were together. A wave of remembered pain swamped the warm feeling she’d been having toward him, but still the words she needed simply would not come.

  Stefan nodded. “I know you law enforcement types hate being fussed over, but if there’s something wrong and we don’t catch it in time—”

  “I can’t stay here,” she blurted.

  Only the dregs of her pride stopped the rest, You know why I can’t stay. Once, he’d known. He probably had forgotten.

  Stefan’s head lifted a fraction. She saw the memory click in the softening around his eyes. He was one of the few people she had told about her mother’s slow progression to insanity and subsequent institutionalization. At least he didn’t say what was on her mind, that an FBI agent should have more grit. Shame burned in her throat, but she could live with that.

  Mel swallowed hard. “I’ll sign myself out against medical advice if I have to.”

  “Then go back into the field, investigate and patrol?” His expression hardened. “No.”

  Considering how chummy he and Dan Burton were, Stefan could enforce that. The burn now came from gut-level frustration and pure hatred of being trapped.

  Holding her gaze, he said, “You can’t tell me your head doesn’t hurt. You’re about the color of the sheet on that gurney, and the pinched look around your mouth is a dead giveaway.”

  “You know the old saying, ‘If you can’t play hurt, you can’t play.’ I can.” She had to convince him, or he’d stymie her efforts to work Cinda’s case. If he decided she wasn’t lucid, he could refuse to release her weapons to her.

  “I know,” he said gently. “The whole business isn’t fair, but you don’t want to risk brain damage.”

  His sympathy grated far more than his opposition. “There has to be another choice.”

  He hesitated. “We need to run those questions again.”

  “I’ve answered them twice now.”

  “But only once correctly.” Stefan raised an eyebrow. “Do you never go back over something with a witness?”

  “Sometimes.” Damn it.

  As she’d expected, he said, “There’s a purpose here, too. So I’ll ask again, and if your answers are okay, I’ll make you a deal. You let me wake you up every three hours, and I’ll take a room at the motel.”

  Talk to him in her motel room? In the intimate darkness of the night? She and Stefan had shared a motel room once, when they’d gone to see the London Symphony on tour in Richmond, Virginia. Memory washed over her, of him rolling her beneath him, sliding into her, touching her everywhere while she’d reveled in the passion surging between them.

  Mel’s cheeks heated. Before she could shove the memory away, his eyebrow shot up.

  Cheeks still burning, she managed to shrug. He hadn’t meant anything by the offer. The conk on the head had stirred up ideas she didn’t need.

  “No,” she said, staring at the wall above his head. “Thanks.”

  “You have limited choices. Refuse that one, and you’re left with signing out AMA, and without the medical clearance Dan Burton will want before he puts you back in the field. Or you can stay tonight and maybe tomorrow night.” He raised an eyebrow, his face stony. “What’ll it be?”

  Damn it. She took a deep breath and made herself meet his gaze. Stefan went all cold and grim like that when he was angry or hurt. Maybe he still resented her for calling him on his lies and bailing. Regardless, there was no point in the two of them spending more time together than they had to.

  “Do you truly think,” he asked softly, “you can’t trust me in your motel room?”

  Mel sighed. He’d taken her refusal personally, but why would he care what she thought? “Of course not. I just don’t see why you’d offer.”

  “Because I understand how you feel. Because…” He hesitated, frowning. Slowly, he finished, “You aren’t just another patient. No matter how things ended for us.”

  Not just another patient? Her pulse kicked again, and that was silly. He was invoking old times, not old feelings. His grave eyes stayed on her face, with nothing loverlike or remotely tender in them. Maybe he felt he owed her for cheating on her way back when.

  But she didn’t want to dig into that old mess, hated that this situation kept taking her back and bringing up the ugly waves of hurt. Getting to the point of not thinking about Stefan every day had taken her two years, and now here he was again. Merely being around him seemed to stir up the pain she’d locked away.

  Whatever his reason, she had little choice about his offer. She needed out of here. Once she was in her motel room, alone, she could straighten out her head.

  “Okay, then.” Mel blew out a breath that did little to ease her frustration or the new tension between her and Stefan. “I’ll take the deal. Thanks.”

  It was only for one night. She could handle that.

  Chapter 5

  The brrrrp, brrrrp of a phone jolted Mel awake. She grabbed her cell. “Wray. Go ahead.”

  The phone rang again, louder and shriller than her cell. Grabbing the receiver, she came to full alertness. This would be Stefan calling to check on her.

  Her breath hitched. So not good. “Hello.”

  “Sounds like I woke you, but you answered fast. That’s a good sign.”

  He sounded extremely chipper for a man who’d rolled out of bed to make a four a.m. phone call.

  “Thanks. So can I go back to sleep now?”

  “Not yet. I’m outside your door. You want to let me in?”

  The mere idea of talking to him in her bedroom was generating eager little quivers deep within her. Her body remembered too well what he could do in bed. She wanted to ignore him, but she’d promised to cooperate. “Okay. Hanging up now.”

  With a sigh, she rolled to her feet. The pale blue camisole she wore as a pajama top was too revealing without a bra. Mel grabbed a hoodie from a dresser drawer and tugged it on. The loose, blue drawstring pants qualified as decent.

  Despite light from the exterior walkway filtering between the curtains, the room was dark. Snapping on the dresser lamp fixed that but left her blinking against the brightness. She slid the chain off, flipped the bolt, and opened the door.

  Stefan smiled at her and stuck his phone in his jeans pocket. A navy blue Atlanta Braves T-shirt stretched across his chest and emphasized the muscles of his shoulders and arms. Barefoot, with his hair rumpled, he reminded her so much of the man she’d known that her heart twisted with longing.

  “Not having trouble with the locks is another good sign,” he said in a low voice probably intended to keep from disturbing her neighbors.

  His soft tones sent shivers through her belly. Silently, Mel stepped back for Stefan to enter.

  Closing the door behind him, she said, “Have a seat.”

  “Thanks, but I figure you want to get this done as soon as we can. Tell me today’s date?”

  “Thursday, September twenty-seventh.” She jammed her hands in the hoodie pockets. Sleepiness had fled. With him here, she felt alert. Happy.

  And that was so completely pointless.

  “Good.” Stefan nodded. With his thumbs hooked into his pockets and his stance relaxed, he seemed completely at ease.

  That was so not fair when she felt fidgety.

  He thought for a moment before asking, “What famous piece of classical music comes from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony?”

  “The ‘Ode to Joy.’” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “You’re tossing me easy ones, Stefan.”

  His grin made her mouth go dry and heat simmer deep inside her. That damned knock on the head had her overreacting.

  At least he didn’t seem to notice. “What’s your favorite sport?”

  “For watching, college basketball. For exercise, running.” When he frowned, she added, “Used to be swimming.”

  They’d gone swimm
ing together, finding excuses to brush against each other in the water. Was he remembering that, too? His face gave no sign either way.

  “Okay,” he said. “Can you recite the Miranda warning?”

  “Yes, but if I screw it up, how will you know?”

  “You’d be surprised what I know.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a teasing half-smile that pinched her heart. “Let’s hear it.”

  Mel rolled her eyes to cover her unwelcome reaction. “You have the right to remain silent,” she began. The rest of it came easily, and she concluded, “I’ve said it often enough.”

  He shrugged. “Probably true. Anyway, you nailed it, and before you ask, I know it because my sister’s a lawyer and married to a prosecutor.”

  “Annie,” Mel remembered. Stefan’s sister had never liked her, but ingrained manners prompted her to ask, “How is she?”

  “She’s good, thanks. They live in Colorado Springs and have two great kids. Boy and girl twins.” He hesitated. “Your folks—”

  “They’re the same.” He knew how tense her relationship with her family was. He shouldn’t have asked.

  Of course, she’d opened the door with her question about his sister. Wincing inwardly, she added, “Mom is still at Dix Hospital in Raleigh. I doubt they’ll ever release her.” Thanks to her delusions about paranormal powers. “Dad works the farm, though Lily and her husband take care of the heavy jobs.”

  “I’m sorry your mom isn’t better.” He hesitated, as though he meant to say something else, but shut his mouth firmly.

  They stared at each other, tension crackling between them. Did he remember, as she did, how painful she’d found telling him about her family? Did the memory rake his heart as it did hers? He couldn’t have faked everything, even though she’d told herself otherwise in the aftermath of the breakup. In hindsight, she realized he probably had cared, at some point. Just not enough to fight for her, fight for what they had.

  At last, he said, “We’ve done enough of this for now. I should let you get back to bed.”