by Julie Miller
“In a minute, Dad.”
“Katherine.”
That meant trouble.
Party?
“How did you get in my…?” Rusty voice. Not Dad. Wide awake. Danger. Kit got her elbows beneath her and pushed herself up on the bed. “Helen!”
The pitch-dark world swirled around her head, and a sledgehammer pounded at her temples. Kit clutched at her stomach. Oh, God, she was going to be sick.
“Easy, champ.” Strong hands were on her shoulders, gently urging her back onto the pillows. “The acute sensitivity of the senses is normal. But that and the dizziness should wear off in another hour or so.”
Yes, she needed to lie down. She needed more sleep.
But the memory of Helen’s cold skin, and the strong, angry shadow that wanted her dead, fired adrenaline through Kit’s veins. She tugged at the arms that wanted her to rest. “He tried to kill her. Damon, we have to help her.”
She had no doubt who belonged to that ruined voice or to the enticingly familiar scents that clung to the shadows. Knowing she wasn’t alone should have been a comfort. But Damon Sinclair’s presence in the pitch-black room made her too edgy to relax. Maybe it was just the darkness that kept her struggling to sit up and assert her own strength. Maybe it was the knowledge that just because the man was in the room, it didn’t mean he was here by choice—or that he had any intention of staying.
“Helen’s fine.”
“But he was so angry. He’ll come back.”
“Not tonight. There’s a police officer posted at her door as well as one of my own security men. He won’t get to her again. I promise.”
Kit’s legs tangled in the covers. An IV tube wound around her arm. “Where am I? What time is it?”
“It’s 4:00 a.m. I found you just after midnight. I suppose you shamed me into risking another visit to Helen and—”
“Oh, God, 4:00 a.m.? Does my brother know where I am?” Kit tore at the tape holding the needle stuck into the back of her hand. She needed to get out of bed and find a phone. Her brain shifted inside her skull as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and staggered to her feet. “I get on his case about not checking in. And Matty hates hospit—”
Kit was sinking, falling, flying into the dark pit beneath her feet. But she never hit bottom.
Instead, she was captured in a cocoon that smelled deliciously of warm leather. She floated through the air, feeling weightless and warm and infinitely secure.
“Do you go through every moment of your life full steam ahead?” The rusty whisper tickled her ear like the purr of a cat, and Kit snuggled closer. But the heat went away and the purr became a growl of displeasure. “Stay put for a few more hours. The world can manage without you until morning.”
While the sharp words dragged her mind back from its half-conscious illusions, the rangy, pantherlike feline hovering over her took the shape of an all-too-human man.
“No.” He was back. The man from the shadows. With the needle. And the hate. “Get away from me.”
“Kit.”
She wedged her fists between them and tried to fight him off. But her arms were like jelly. “Leave me alone.”
“It’s Damon. I’m not going to hurt you. Now be still before you hurt yourself. Kit, stop!” She quieted at the sharp order—centered herself on the soft wool and leather clutched in her fists and found her way back to a conscious, coherent world as she listened to the calm voice in the darkness. “I called the number in your billfold and introduced myself to Matt. He’ll be here in the morning to take you home.”
Was she lying down again? How did that happen? “Is he okay? Did he sound worried?”
“He sounded like a grown man who could take care of himself for one night.” Matt Snow? Her brother? Grown man? “He also said G was staying with him, whatever that means.”
“G for Germane.” Like a second father. One thing in her life she could count on. Kit finally relaxed. “Matty’s in good hands, then.” Now she could feel the arms sliding out from behind her shoulders and knees. Pulling up the blanket and tucking her in again. She could also sense that one hand couldn’t quite hang on to the blanket with the same surety as the other.
“Do you know who I am?”
He’d held her. Cradled her against his chest. Tightly. Gently. He’d held her close until she knew herself again. Until she knew him.
Kit nodded. “Damon Sinclair. Did you just pick me up off the floor?”
“Second time tonight.” His scratchy voice retreated into the darkness. “Do you know where you are?”
“Truman Medical Center?”
“One floor above Helen’s room, to be exact.” He paused long enough that she turned her head to where she’d last heard him speak. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Do I have to?” Kit sank into the pillows and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she could pretend she wasn’t surrounded by darkness if she couldn’t see it. But the shadows inside her head weren’t any more peaceful. Jigsaw-puzzle pieces of memory tried to fall into some kind of logical order, but she could only recall flashes of fear and fighting, ice-cold hands and pure, unfiltered anger. And pain.
Her upper arm pulsated with the memory of the drug burning through her blood. Kit rubbed at the swollen, feverish lump where she’d been injected. It was easier to focus on the least of her problems instead of trying to make sense of everything else. “It itches.”
The hands that belonged to that unseen face batted her fingers away and probed the injury. “That’s normal for an allergic reaction. I suspect that’s why you’re still alive. Your body fought like hell to reject the drug.” He pulled the sleeve of her hospital gown back into place. “Unfortunately, it’s also having a hard time processing the antidote I gave you.”
“Antidote? What’s wrong with me? Did you give Helen the antidote, too?”
“Didn’t need to. Your quick thinking saved her before any of the paralytic compound got into her bloodstream.”
“Paralytic compound?” Kit could echo the words, but understanding wouldn’t come. She felt as though she was in one of her graduate biology classes—only, she’d studied the wrong lesson the night before, and the professor wasn’t making much sense.
“No more talking. You need your rest.” She heard footsteps crossing the room and knew he was leaving. “I’ve posted security outside your door, as well. You can throw my money back in my face, but you won’t say no to my protection. My man’s been instructed to stay the night and escort you and your brother home in the morning when you’re released.”
“Wait. Damon.” She reached out into the darkness, needing a hand to hold on to. She needed the reassuring touch of another human being. Needed to know she wasn’t alone. “Please. Stay with me.”
Her ragged plea hung in the silence. For an endless moment, she half believed that the mysterious Dr. Sinclair had been swallowed up by the very shadows from which he’d appeared.
His answering sigh was measured and deep and chased by an inaudible curse.
Hope fluttered in her chest as she heard him approach. Her pulse quickened in anticipation of the electric contact that had hummed between them yesterday in that hidden corridor.
This time when he touched her, she wouldn’t be afraid. She wouldn’t be unconscious or delirious, either. She wanted to feel that sizzling pull of curious attraction that made her heart beat stronger—that refilled the well of emotional stamina that had been tapped out.
But he ignored her outstretched fingers, captured her wrist and poked it back beneath the covers. He pulled the blanket up to her chin and smoothed it along either side of her from shoulder to knee. It was an embarrassing rejection that left her feeling more like a swaddled infant than a grown woman who was drawn to the strength of the man in the room with her.
“If you rest quietly, I’ll stay for a minute.”
Meager as it was, she’d take the offer. “Who is Helen to you?”
“My housekeeper.”
“She’s more than tha
t.”
Damon’s heavy sigh stirred the air. She heard him circling the bed. “She’s also my former governess. My mother died of cancer when I was young, and Helen was there to fill the role. She kept house for my father, who never remarried. Then she ran the household for me. Now that she’s retired I keep her around because she bakes my favorite cookies.”
Even in his perpetually gruff tone, she could hear the truth. “You keep her around because you love her.”
“I love her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.”
Couldn’t he say the words? She opened her eyes, mistakenly thinking she could read some kind of affection in his expression. “Would it kill you to turn on a light? I feel I can hardly breathe, it’s so dark in here.”
“The degree or absence of light has no bearing on your respiratory system.”
Logical bastard. “No, but it affects my mental state. And unless I can get this panicked feeling under control…”
“You? Panic?” Was that a compliment? Or teasing? Intriguing as it might be, the rasp in his tone made it difficult to distinguish any nuances of meaning. But then she heard the supple whisper of leather moving. The lamp beside her bed blazed on, allowing her a millisecond glimpse of a strong, marbled hand before the brightness of the light seared through her retinas and into her brain, forcing her to turn away.
Kit groaned. “Your bedside manner needs some serious work.”
“I should have warned you about that.” He flipped a towel over the top of the light, muting it and easing the strain on her eyes. “Better?”
Kit nodded, breathing easier as the pain passed. She rolled back to a supine position on the bed and rubbed at her aching skull. “Warned me about what?”
“The side effects of the drug you were given. If it’s the stimulant I suspect, it targeted your nerves and left them oversensitized. But the effects should wear off by morning.”
“What you suspect?” Though Kit squinted to bring him into focus, he pulled the chair away from the bed and sat. Between the glow of the lamp and the shadows beyond, his face was rendered invisible to her. But his long legs, clad in black jeans and crossed at the ankles, bisected the circle of light and extended beneath her bed, reminding her that Damon Sinclair was a very real man—not just shadows and scent and fevered imagination. “Do you think you could give me an answer in plain English? There’s a lot to process right now, and my brain doesn’t seem to be cooperating.”
“I believe you were injected with an experimental drug that attacks the nervous system and commands it to perform a specific function. In your case, to tell specific parts of your body—muscles, heart, lungs and so on—to go to sleep.”
Like euthanizing a pet. Though from her perspective, there didn’t seem to be anything merciful about dying that way. “So why didn’t it kill me?”
“Something in your body seemed to reject, even reverse the effects. Of course, I’d have to study your bloodwork further to verify my suspicions, but—”
“You studied my blood?” He wouldn’t hold her hand, but he had no problem manhandling her in a blackout or playing with her corpuscles? “That’s either very intimate or very disturbing.”
“I wouldn’t have given you anything if I hadn’t verified what I was treating first.” She’d go with disturbing. The man was too damn clinical to feel any sort of compassion.
“What’s the purpose of a drug like that? Manipulating nerves and normal body functions? I mean, who would create something like that?”
“I would.”
A DOZEN QUESTIONS bubbled up in Kit’s throat. Why would you make such a poison? How do you know its effects will wear off? Have your drugs killed anyone else? Is that why you hole up in your penthouse? How can I be attracted to such a serious head case like you?
Just what kind of crazy doctor are you, anyway?
But a soft knock at the door intruded and she never got the chance to ask them.
A male nurse cracked the door open and stuck his head in to announce that a pair of detectives from KCPD were outside, waiting to ask Kit some questions of their own.
Kit shrank to the far side of her bed. A glimmer of recognition tried to connect with one of the jumbled impressions she had of the attack in Helen’s room. This nurse was as tall as she remembered. His shoulders were broader, but that could be a skewed memory of them charging toward her out of the darkness. This nurse, waiting patiently in the ribbon of light shining from the hallway, seemed genial enough. Good-looking in a boyish way. His black hair was mussed, spiking out in haphazard directions as though he’d just woken up from a nap.
Or had quickly changed his clothes.
Kit squirmed beneath her covers. It was hard to catch a deep breath.
The man who’d attacked her had tackled her. He’d had her pinned before she could really get a good sense of what he looked like.
Hell, she had no idea if that man had been old or young, brunet or blond.
She only knew that an uncomfortable sense of familiarity had her breathing harder and clutching at the metal railing on the bed.
“Miss Snow?” The young man cocked an eyebrow, waiting.
Blue. Hospital scrubs. Her attacker wore blue. That was what seemed familiar.
Kit stilled. “Do all the nurses dress like you?”
He shrugged at the odd question. “Some departments have individual color coding, but it’s a pretty standard uniform at Truman.”
“Who wears blue?”
“Most of the nursing staff. ICU. Long-term care. Maternity wears pink. That’s one reason I’m not working there.” He grinned at the notion and excused himself. “I’ll let the detectives know you’re awake.”
“What was that about?”
Kit jumped inside her skin. That voice. She’d forgotten. She wasn’t alone.
“Something about him seemed familiar. It’s probably…” Kit turned her head. He’d slipped into the shadows again. “…nothing.”
Detectives Velasquez and Means could have been interchangeable if not for their ethnic differences in coloring. They were both in their forties, both pushing the heavy side of being fit, both losing a battle with receding hairlines. And both Ric Velasquez and David Means seemed to be at the weary end of a long double shift.
Detective Means scratched at his blond beard stubble and asked her to clarify her description of her attacker. “Can you even tell us if it was a man or woman?”
Kit closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, but the memories weren’t there. She shook her head as she opened her eyes. “The last face I remember clearly is the blond nurse who came in to check on Helen as I was leaving.”
“Before you returned to get your book? And this guy was already in the room?”
Kit nodded. “I couldn’t see his face. It’s like it wasn’t there.”
“Your attacker had no face?”
“I know that doesn’t make sense.” She couldn’t help but let her gaze slide over to the shadowed side of the room where she knew Damon was waiting. As a man who didn’t like to show his face, would he qualify as a suspect in KCPD’s book?
Damon held himself so perfectly still, breathed so quietly, that she wondered if the two detectives had even sensed his presence. Velasquez’s gaze was searching for something, but if Damon didn’t want to be a part of this interrogation, then she wouldn’t give him away. She waited for Means to stop scribbling in his notebook before going on. “I do know he wore blue scrub pants and hospital shoes. You know, the ones with the cloth bags over them? Like they wear in surgery to protect their shoes.”
Detective Means started writing again. “So you think your attacker was a surgical nurse?”
No. The man wasn’t getting the details. “I said he was dressed like a surgical nurse.”
“That describes most of the staff in this hospital,” Velasquez suggested. “We could run background checks. Get some work IDs for Miss Snow to look at.”
Means countered. “We need to find out how easy it is for someone to get
his hands on one of those surgical outfits.”
“I can get a list of laundry companies and supply stores.”
“That grows our access list exponentially, Ric.”
“Maybe Miss Snow can narrow our search with a more accurate description of the man who gave her that shot.”
The detectives’ banter ended abruptly. Both turned and nailed Kit with an expectant look.
Her grip on the bed rail tightened.
“Tell us what your attacker looked like one more time.” Detective Means held his pen at the ready.
If Kit ever got back to grad school and found the job she’d wanted in forensic science, she knew she’d have to deal with curt police officers who had their emotions turned off and their doubts cranked up like these two. But as a witness with a fuzzy memory and throbbing headache, facing off against their repetitive questions made her feel as though she were the clue underneath the microscope.
“I don’t remember.” Maybe if she sat up, she wouldn’t feel like the two men were standing over her, passing judgment and determining she was just as useless to their investigation as Helen’s inability to testify was. But moving made her world spin. Though her stomach protested, she propped herself on one elbow and tried to pull out one useful thought. “He was tall. Maybe on the lanky side. But he was so strong. I fought him off for a while. But then…” She surrendered to the pillows again, squeezing her eyes shut. “There was something about his hands. They seemed small for a man.”
Kit raked her fingers into her hair, rubbing her palms against her temples. “No. I’m sorry. That’s probably just the memory of Helen’s hand hanging off the edge of her bed.”
Everything was getting mixed up in her head. Kit dragged her hand down to her throat, hating this feeling of incompetence. “He never said anything. He was just so…so…”
“So your attacker didn’t have small hands?” Detective Means tried to clarify what she could not.
“I don’t know.”
“I understand you’re a little upset. But are there any details you are sure of?”
She was sure the hand that had choked her into nearly passing out had had plenty of strength behind it. “He wore blue hospital—”
