She wondered if he still lived on Shadow Rock Island. That green-eyed cop who’d breathed life into her all those years go. That long-haired cop she’d never seen again, but hadn’t gone a single day without thinking of at least once.
When the surgeon on the opposite side of the operating table spoke, Veda’s eyes snapped up to him. “I’m sorry, Dr. Britler. Did you say something?”
“Before we begin, I’d like to get one thing superbly clear, uh….” Dr. Britler faltered as a nurse wrapped a blue surgical mask around his nose and mouth, so all Veda saw was the widening of his cold gray eyes as he motioned to her with a gloved hand.
Her spine straightened and she pointed to herself. “It’s Veda. Veda Vandyke.”
“Veda….” Dr. Britler, who she’d only just met a few moments ago, took another unnecessarily long pause. LED lamps blazed from overhead as nurses milled all around him, preparing the room and the patient on the table for the upcoming procedure. A nurse slipped a pair of operating goggles onto Dr. Britler’s nose, slapped a plastic cap over his graying hair and helped him into his surgical gown. He held out his arms, showing his scrawny frame, his mask wobbling as he spoke. “Veda, I’d like to make one thing superbly clear. I couldn’t care less what they taught you during your time in med school at Stanford, nor do I need you to regale me on what I’m doing right or wrong in my operating room. In fact, I don’t care to hear from you, at all. This is not a team effort, nor is it a democracy.”
Veda’s eyes expanded.
“Push comes to shove, if a decision needs to be made about a patient on my table, I have the final say, regardless of whether or not it falls under the realm of anesthesia. You just sit there and look pretty, okay, doll?”
Good lord. Insulted, minimalized and sexually harassed, all in under a minute. Veda and the young black nurse lining up the blades next to him shared a look. “Well, with all due respect—”
“I’m so glad we agree,” he interrupted before she could interject, his eyes smiling.
“O… kay…” She clutched the edge of her machine.
Not even halfway into her first day of residency and she’d already found the hospital’s resident asshole.
It was always the surgeons.
—
“God, I hate surgeons,” Veda grumbled around the cherry-flavored sucker lodged in the corner of her cheek.
The young nursing assistant who’d helped Veda wheel the patient into a post-op recovery room frowned from the other side of the hospital bed. The patient still snoozed between them but was set to wake up any moment, and the assistant was ready with a red Popsicle the moment she opened her eyes.
“Yeah, me too,” the nursing assistant said. “Surgeons? Blech. The worst.” Her eyebrows pinched together, but it only made her look ten times younger. It was more adorable than scary, the frown on her face. She’d pulled her long black hair into a high ponytail and curled the ends into spirals. Wisps of it had escaped at her cocoa-colored forehead. With full lips, a straight nose that was just a touch too wide for her face, thin eyebrows, and big, expressive almond-colored eyes, she reminded Veda of an infant trapped in a teenage girl’s body. In the short time she’d been observing her, Veda already knew this girl never stopped smiling, loved to wave at strangers, and was way too excited about changing bedpans. An all-around ray of damn sunshine.
Veda couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow. It was always strange to her, finding young girls who hadn’t yet been destroyed, tainted, mauled by the monstrosities of the ugly world they lived in. A world just waiting to tear a pretty young black girl like her limb from limb.
She tilted her head, wondering when this one’s day would come. The day when some man walked into her life and tore it to pieces.
Veda’s mind wandered, curling her lip as her thoughts raced back to Dr. Britler, who had breezed through the appendectomy that morning like it was nothing. She took the sucker from her mouth with a pop, gazing blankly ahead.
“Is it terrible that I almost wanted something to go wrong with this patient’s airway, breathing, or circulation?” Veda asked. “Just so I could save the day and prove that asshole wrong?”
The assistant giggled. “Kind of. But no one in this hospital would blame you. We don’t call him Dr. Bitler for nothing. You know. Britler… Hitler… Drop the r. Dr. Bitler….”
“Not the greatest play on words, but I’m onboard.”
Giggling, the girl offered her hand across the still-sleeping patient. “I’m Coco. I student nurse here every summer.”
Veda returned the lollipop to her mouth and shook her hand. “Veda Vandyke.”
“Are you from Shadow Rock?”
“I was born here. Left when I was eighteen and never looked back.”
“You look really young to be a doctor.”
“I’m 28.”
“An anesthesiologist,” Coco dragged on. “That’s like a legit-ass job.”
“I’d like to think so.”
“Why anesthesia?”
The real answer—that she wanted to learn how to kill without actually having to touch anyone—would only corrupt the wide-eyed angel sitting across from her, so Veda racked her brain for a more appropriate answer. “I wanted to be a clinician, but I don’t like ruining my nails. Nothing destroys a manicure faster than blood and guts. Not crazy about talking to people, so that ruled out psychiatry. X-rays bore me to tears, so adios radiology. Anesthesiology became the natural choice.”
“Where did you go to med school?”
Yep. This one liked to talk. Veda took one last taste of her lollipop before throwing it in the nearest trash bin, sick of talking around the stick. “Stanford.”
Coco threw her head back, then let it fall dramatically forward. “That is my dream school. I have to wait until senior year to start sending in my applications, but I want to be a cardiovascular surgeon one day.”
“I thought we hated surgeons.”
Coco’s eyes widened and her smile vanished. She yanked the arms of her long-sleeve white top, which she wore under her pink scrubs, pulling them down until they covered most of her hands. “No, I totally hate surgeons too. I don’t know why I said I wanted to be one. That was stupid.”
“I’m joking. If you want to be a surgeon, be a surgeon. It takes brains and balls. I talk shit about Dr. Bitler because I don’t like arrogant men, but I’d rather have an arrogant man cutting me open than an unsure one.”
“Totally….” Coco frowned, her voice breaking away, eyes falling. “I totally agree.”
Veda squinted at her. So someone had damaged this one. She was way too agreeable to be fully intact.
“Hey!” Coco’s eyes lit up. “Do you want to hang out tonight?”
“I don’t hang out.”
“Oh, totally. I don’t hang out, either. It’s just that my brother, Todd, is having a get-together tonight for his birthday. I have to go because he’s my brother, but his friends are the worst. I can’t stand being alone with them.”
“Todd Lockwood.” Veda’s heartbeat sped up.
Coco faltered. “Yeah….”
“Todd Lockwood is your brother? The blond white guy?” The asshole, the pervert, the rapist? The man who’ll soon be breathing his last breath at my hand? Veda managed to bite her tongue before the real questions left her lips.
“Well, Todd’s my half-brother on my dad’s side. It’s hard to tell because I have dark skin, but my dad is white. And I have another half-brother, on my mom’s side, Dante. Dante owns the bar where Todd’s having the party tonight. Long story short, my parents really got around back in the day. God only knows how many half-siblings I have scattered all over the country.”
“What’s the name of the bar?”
Coco’s smile widened and she shifted in her seat. “It’s called Dante’s. It’s at the bottom of the hill, right on the edge of the water. So, you’re coming?”
“Todd Lockwood is having a party on the hill?” It had been over ten years since she’d been bac
k to Shadow Rock, but Veda knew the sprawling hill nestled into the farthest corner of the island was still drenched in poverty and degradation. Having grown up there herself, the colorful shacks stacked on the hill had always reminded her of the slums in Rio de Janeiro. So many treacherous dips and curves, dark corners and back alleys, hazards lurking around every bend. Most of the children born on the hill never grew old enough or smart enough to leave it. Veda had been one of the lucky few who’d escaped.
“Oh right, you haven’t been back here in a while. Yeah, it’s gentrifying like crazy,” Coco said. “Most of the poor people have been pushed farther up the hill. Everything on the water, except Dante’s bar, belongs to the Blackwaters now. They even bought the marina and built a country club. You need a membership just to fish there now.”
“Because the Blackwaters don’t have enough fish of their own? They have to siphon the fish that feed the poor kids too?”
“Totally. But don’t say that too loudly in here.” Coco motioned to the ceilings of the hospital room. “Swear to God, Gage has cameras in the walls. Plus, he’s here today, doing rounds with the attending physician, and he has ears like a bat.”
“Gage?” Veda asked, her heart falling to her feet as she thought of the spit-shined man from the party the other night. The spit-shined man who’d caught her red-handed telling the bold-faced lie that had forced her to leave the party much earlier than she’d anticipated.
“Blackwater.” Coco nodded. When Veda just gaped at her, she continued. “The CEO of this hospital? The son of the man who owns this hospital, as well as the cruise line that’s single-handedly keeping this entire island afloat?”
“No, I know who Gage Blackwater is.” Veda jumped up from her chair. “I just had no idea that he was going to be here today.”
“He’s not usually. Every couple months he likes to drop in to spy on us….” Coco’s words trailed away when Veda turned and hurried for the door. “Okay, bye! Don’t worry about the patient.” She raised the Popsicle in her hand and waved it. “I got it! So I’ll see you at the party tonight?”
But Veda had already turned the corner and left the room, disappearing out of sight.
—
Veda had no idea why she felt so on edge, so off-kilter, so terrified at the idea of Gage being in that hospital. It was her first day of residency, after all; surely she had better things to worry about than that spit-shined rich boy.
Regardless, she couldn’t shake the butterflies in her stomach, the wobble in her knees, and her rapidly drying lips, which she wet with her tongue. Zooming through the hospital’s bright corridors, she tried to stop thinking of his brown eyes the night before, gleaming with amusement as she lied right to his face. She tried to stop thinking of the thick hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial, the jawline that could cut glass, the smile that had thawed parts of her that she’d been convinced would be frozen forever.
The parts of her that still fantasized about Todd Lockwood dead. The parts of her that yearned to give the other nine the same fate. The parts of her that she’d been convinced weren’t capable of melting anymore….
She needed air. She needed to think. She needed to mentally prepare herself for if and when she ran into Gage.
She turned a corner in the bustling corridor—doctors napping on gurneys, residents filling out paperwork, nurses zooming patients by in wheel chairs and gurneys—and came to an immediate stop.
There he was, Gage Blackwater, leaning on the large circular welcome desk that faced the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hospital entryway, wearing a flawless navy suit and black tie. Patients and doctors entered and exited the building and the breeze from outside whooshed in, making his hair dance. Somehow his jet-black hair remained perfect, even as it moved. She stabbed her nails into her palms when her fingers itched to touch the silky strands.
Oblivious to her stare, Gage smiled at the woman behind the welcome desk, the head nurse, while turning his head in Veda’s direction.
Veda’s heart leapt and so did her feet, taking her so high off the shiny floors that her head nearly hit the ceiling. She turned away from Gage just before their eyes met, cursing under her breath and hurrying around the corner and out of sight.
“God, Veda, how old are you?” Had she really just run away from a man because he’d thrown her a passing glance? She ran her hand over her tightly pulled bun, stunned that her hairline was sweating a little.
She moved through the hallways at top speed in her quest to get as far away from those brown eyes, that tawny skin, those big arms pushing against the fabric of his expensive navy suit as humanly possible.
Attempting to distract herself, she peeked into the open door of each hospital room as she moved, trying to remind herself that she was there to do a job. In less than an hour, she’d have to prep another patient for her third surgery of the day, number three of five, and she needed to pull herself together before that time came.
As she passed another room, Veda tripped over her feet at what she saw, reversing quickly, sure her eyes had deceived her.
Sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, bare legs swinging back and forth under a paper gown, was the brunette from the night before. The woman who’d declined to go with Veda when she’d offered to drive her home. Who’d barely been able to stand on her own two legs as Todd Lockwood dragged her through the sand and eventually put her in his car, racing away.
Veda’s heart leapt up to her throat, and she didn’t even have to read the patient’s chart to know what was going on.
She knew Todd Lockwood.
And that was all the information she needed.
Still, she snatched the woman’s file from the acrylic chart holder bolted next to the door, flipping through it. A quick cursory glance of the doctor’s scribbled handwriting split Veda’s heart in two.
Her name was Sarah Adams, and she’d been admitted early that morning for tears in her anal and vaginal cavities. The tears had been caused by a lack of lubrication during sexual intercourse.
Holding the chart to her thundering chest, Veda snuck into the room, hiding behind a blue curtain and peeking around.
Sarah Adams’s blue eyes were no longer filled with the drunken jolly they had been the night before, when she’d been giggling under Todd Lockwood’s arm on the beach. No, now her eyes remained wide as saucers, as if they were being held open by two invisible strings in the ceiling. Those eyes were filled with tears, the left one black as night and swollen to the size of her hand as she spoke to the broad-backed man standing in front of her. He had his back turned to Veda.
The man was tall, at least six-five, and wide. Definitely over two hundred pounds. He wore street clothes, jeans and a black T-shirt, and the authority in his voice screamed cop. That deep voice filled the room like warm cocoa, a perfect complement to his bulging arms. His manliness dominated so succinctly that even his long hair, which he had tied in a messy bun at the nape of his neck, wasn’t enough to calm the storm. His very presence—his voice, his attitude, and his sheer size—simply screamed danger.
“There’s no reason to decline to do a rape kit when you’re already here at the hospital,” the man said, his buttery voice growing in fervor as he crossed his bulky arms, making them swell.
Tears plummeted from Sarah’s lowered eyelashes, long and soaked with her pain. “I already told you,” she whispered. “He didn’t rape me.”
“Five hours after you leave the party with Todd Lockwood, you show up at the hospital bleeding from anal tears and fissures that doctors insist can only be generated with extreme, unwelcome force, and you’re telling me he didn’t rape you?”
She kept her eyes down, wheezing, “Yes.”
“At the very least, we should do a tox screen to rule out roofies and GHB.”
“I told you.” Her voice lowered even more, a soft whimper breaking it in midsentence. “He didn’t force me. I like it rough, okay? I liked it.”
“The hell you did.” He tried to soften his voice,
but the force behind it was still present. “Listen, I don’t tell a lot of people this, all right? But….” He had to pause, as if he were considering whether or not to finish. He took a deep breath and powered through, covering his heart with his hand. “I’m a product of rape. Some asshole took a look at my mother, thirty-two years ago, and decided her body didn’t belong to her anymore.”
Sarah sniffled, lifting her eyes to his.
He jabbed his fingers to his chest. “I know how hard it can be on a woman. I saw it with my own two eyes. My mother was an addict the first eight years of my life because it was the only way she knew how to deal. But it’s not the only way to deal. You can deal by taking down the animal that did this to you. You can deal by putting him behind bars so he can’t do it to anyone else. Why isn’t anyone in this town willing to speak out against these people? Don’t let them get away with this.” He reached out and seized Sarah’s forearm, his solid bicep expanding as he tightened his fingers and shook her.
Veda jolted seeing his bicep flex, displaying the force he was using.
Sarah’s whimpers moved to sobs, and a moment later she’d burst into full-on tears, yanking at her arm, trying to reclaim it.
He released her, his fingers splayed wide as he watched her bury her tear-filled face in her hands. He froze, as if he’d stunned himself by touching her that way. A silver wedding band gleamed from his ring finger.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you—”
“Just leave me alone!” Sarah screamed into her hands.
He took one step back, and then another, before turning away from Sarah. A gold detective badge swung from a long chain around his neck as he charged for the door.
Veda straightened when he locked eyes with her. Something told her to run, but she realized it was too late. The chart clutched to her chest nearly went tumbling to the floor—not because he’d caught her spying, but because his green eyes had lanced through hers, entering her veins and burning them up like boiling hot water.
Quiver (Revenge Book 1) Page 3
