by Riley Ashby
Contents
Copyright
Also By Riley Ashby
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
About the Author
Playlist
Sneak Peek
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Riley Ashby
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:
[email protected]
Cover design by James, GoOnWrite.com
Editing by Editing4Indies.com
This book contains themes that may not be appropriate for those sensitive to sexual assault or suicide.
www.rileyashby.com
Also by Riley Ashby
King
Rook
Happened So Fast
I probably should have been angrier that I was assigned to bedside duty for a suicide risk, but in reality, I was glad I was getting paid for something. It had been less than a week since I had been abruptly placed on leave from the FBI, and my pride was still smarting. I tried to be grateful I wasn’t being charged with anything criminal—a small miracle—but it still hurt. I had poured my entire life into being the perfect agent, and now it was gone. I had no backup plan and no savings I could fall back on.
Thankfully, I had still been able to arrange everything to make Vail King more comfortable at her grand jury hearing, but it was even more embarrassing that I hadn’t been able to hide my new employment status from Castel. The small blessing was that he had been so eager to take off with his girl, he didn’t have time to grill me properly on what had brought about my suspension in the first place.
It was Vail’s idea for me to hang around with the injured girl, and I couldn’t argue when I heard how much her brother was willing to pay me because I needed a paycheck.
Josie was one of Chase Reilly’s slaves that he’d kept on his property in LA, much as Vail had been a part of his property out East. Josie had been brought to New York to help us prepare the case against Chase and had been very helpful up until the point she tried to shoot herself on the steps of the New York courthouse in front of the man who had kidnapped and abused her for months. The gun misfired and nearly took her hand with it. She would be able to use her hand again after some therapy, but the hearing in her right ear was nearly gone, and probably for good.
She didn’t know any of this, however, because she had been in and out of consciousness for several days. When she was rushed to the hospital, she was barely coherent, and the doctors gave her narcotics to keep her sedated through surgery and the worst of the pain from having her hand nearly blown off, and two fingers reattached. But when they finally brought her out of it a few days later, effects no one had anticipated came to light.
“What did you give me?” she demanded, tugging at the tubes leading from various IVs to the veins in her arms and hands. I thought back to the notes in her file, what I knew about the other girls, and cursed myself mentally. I was an idiot for not remembering it sooner. She was an addict, though not her fault; Vail had told us about the forced drug consumption while she was captive. Josie was clearly already feeling the effects of having been thrown back on the drugs. The shockingly incompetent nurse moved to dose her with morphine once more as she became agitated, and I ran across the room to pinch off the line.
“You’ll make her withdrawal worse if you dose her again,” I growled. Josie was already shaking and slightly green with limp brown hair plastered to the sides of her face and the back of her head from so many hours of lying down. She didn’t even seem to notice her hand wrapped in a cloud of cotton gauze. She looked so fragile, so frail, and all I wanted to do was keep her from getting hurt any more.
The nurse frowned. “There was nothing about drug restrictions in her chart.”
“Because she’s been in protective custody.” Had no one told the hospital the truth of her situation? “Look at her. She’s already in withdrawal. We need to get this out of her system.”
The nurse finally took a second to really look at Josie, then nodded once as she unhooked the morphine drip. “I’ll have a counselor come talk to you.”
“Thank you,” Josie breathed as the nurse ran out of the room.
Glaring at the nurse’s back as she left the room, I took my place in the corner. Had I been the only one looking out for this girl? I hadn’t even met her before.
“Thank you,” she whispered again.
“The nurse is gone.”
“I was talking to you.”
I crossed one ankle over my knee and pulled out my phone. I had beat my last Sudoku in five minutes, down from seven earlier this week. I was going for three now. “I know an addict when I see one.”
It was a cruel thing to say, but if my words stung, she didn’t show it. She took stock of her injured hand for the first time.
“What happened?”
“You tried to kill yourself in front of the courthouse, but the gun misfired. It ended up in pieces, and you almost lost two fingers. It’s kind of impressive, really. You were lucky they were able to re-attach them.”
She gave a caustic laugh that matched her pained expression. “Lucky. Yeah.”
I frowned. Ungrateful …
Patience, Bryce. She’s been through a lot.
I gentled my tone. “A lot of people have put a lot of time and money into making sure you’ll get the use of your hand back.”
“And who are you?”
“Bryce Archer. You can call me Archer. I’m here to protect you.”
She snorted. “I’m not going to do anything to myself in here. There’s too much of a chance they’d resuscitate me.”
“Well, Ellery King is paying me to sit here, so that’s what I’ll be doing until he tells me otherwise.”
She moved her head back and forth a tiny bit. “I don’t want any charity.”
I laughed under my breath. I’d said something very similar when Castel said he wanted to hire me to stay in New York with this girl. But I couldn’t turn down that paycheck being financed by Vail’s brother. I was going to make as much in a few months here as I did in a year with the FBI.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about me bothering you. I’ll keep an eye on you until you’re healthy enough to leave, and then you never have to see me again.”
She breathed deep, held it, then released it in a loud gust of air. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you here.”
&n
bsp; I looked up and met her eyes across the space that looked more like a hotel suite than a hospital room. Ellery had shelled out big bucks to make sure she was comfortable. She could barely hold eye contact with me, choosing to look down and away.
Ah. One of those.
“You’re not uncomfortable with me here? Sometimes women in your … situation don’t like having men around.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. I sensed she was struggling to speak to me, to overcome the block in her head that told her she shouldn’t speak to anyone, much less a man, without permission. If I hadn’t been so desperate for money, I would have told Castel it was a horrible idea for me to be alone in a room with this girl. She didn’t need a gruff, tattooed, bearded former Army officer who couldn’t show emotions to save his life. She needed someone who actually possessed compassion and wasn’t jaded and depressed and looking for something to fill the gap until his real job took him back.
But that person wasn’t available, so that left me.
She released a shuddering breath. “It makes me feel safe. No one’s going to come to try to get me with you around.” When she opened her eyes again, I could see the tears on her lashes even from across the room. “It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to go anywhere on my own. Every time I’m out, all I see is him. Around every fucking corner, he’s waiting to snatch me up again. If I had managed to kill myself, I wouldn’t have to worry anymore.”
The numbers on the screen next to her bed jumped; it wasn’t good for her to get all worked up while she was in so much pain. I stood and walked to her bedside.
“He’s gone, Josie.” She snapped her eyes to mine as the tears finally spilled down her cheeks. “He’s not leaving jail anytime soon. I’ll keep you safe.”
She shut her eyes again and swallowed. “Thanks for being here. It’s nice not to be alone.” The words came out in a rush as if she were trying to force them out before she thought better of speaking. Her heart rate dipped a little as her breathing returned to normal, but it was still a little high. Whatever painkillers were left in her system were wearing off quickly. She was uncomfortable, and she would be for a long time. The least I could do was not make it worse. I placed one hand lightly on her shoulder, expecting her to jump, but she gave a little whimper and relaxed under my touch. Her skin was warm through the hospital gown.
“Don’t mention it.”
*
She bore the pain like a champ. She never asked for more drugs or rolled around moaning for attention. Thank God, she never asked me to spoon-feed her Jell-O or help her to the bathroom. But her breathing was labored even during the rare moments she was able to sleep.
“Talk to me,” she begged. “Take my mind off it.”
I heard that voice in my dreams.
“We had a soccer league in Afghanistan,” I said without thinking, not realizing she had commanded me to speak and I obeyed without a second thought. “Some of the kids, they can be good friends if you treat them right. We saw them kicking around this old-ass ball. One of my mates gave them his, a ball he’d gotten in a care package. They’d clearly never seen anything so new.”
She smiled across the room, though her eyes were closed, and my lips mirrored hers.
“We’d sit on rocks on the side of the field and watch them play. When we got some scrap wood, we built goals and spread tarps over the back for nets. Painted lines on the ground with spray paint. Some of them cried when they saw it. A space of their own.”
“Did you ever play?”
I pulled my chair a little closer to her bed. “Me? Hell no. I’m not coordinated enough to dribble, but a few of the other men did. We had to be careful since their parents were always suspicious of us. But it was always fun to watch them.”
“I bet they still play.”
I opened my mouth to tell her what came next: the influx of insurgents set on destroying people friendly to the US troops. We got most of the people out and into refugee camps, but the field was obliterated. We found the ball a few days later in the aftermath, burned and flattened.
Then I looked at her hand, still wrapped in layers of gauze and bandage, the IV drip in her arm delivering antibiotics to make sure she didn’t lose the whole arm.
I could skip that part of the story.
“My mom always sent balls whenever she made me a care package after that.” It didn’t matter how many times I told her there weren’t kids around to play with them, not anymore. “I think it made her feel like they were her kids, too.”
“Your mom sounds nice.” She opened her eyes and looked at me, expecting me to continue. Everyone liked to talk about their mom, right?
I leaned back in my chair and pulled out my phone again, ending the conversation. “You should try to sleep. You have therapy starting tomorrow.”
There was no point in sharing any of these personal details with her.
We would be strangers again soon enough.
I waited until Archer was asleep one night to unwrap my hand. The couch in the hospital room folded out into a queen-sized bed; his feet hung off the edge, but he didn’t seem to mind. I had a feeling he was used to spending a lot of time in beds too short for him.
He was frustratingly difficult to read. He definitely didn’t enjoy being here, but he didn’t outright complain. It was more in the way he sighed at me, the reluctance to help me if I needed something when there wasn’t a nurse nearby. I imagined the job felt rather beneath him. I knew he had been recently let go from the FBI but not why, and wondered if that was the reason behind his reserve.
I liked it when he got close to me. If I could get him talking, he’d usually come over from across the room. He got so animated talking about his time in the service, he’d pull his chair closer to the bed and lean forward as he recounted a prank he pulled on his bunkmate or a mission where they had to sleep overnight in a hole in the ground. Sometimes, a shadow would pass over his eyes as he talked, betraying the pain he was hiding. It made my soul ache, but it was nice to hurt for someone else for a change. I could have listened to him talk forever as long as it kept my mind off the pain of my hand or the aching emptiness on the right side of my head. The nurses and doctors would often forget I couldn’t hear anything out of that ear, but Archer never did. He was always on my left side or making extra noise if he approached from the right.
No one had let me see my hand. Whenever the doctors unwrapped it, they put up a sheet to block my view. Archer stayed on the far side of the room, arms crossed with a scowl on his face while this was done. Most of the time, he guarded his expression, but the first time he was caught off guard by what he saw. The despair in his face was unmistakable. His eyes snapped to mine when he heard my gasp, and his face became unreadable once more.
There was no more avoiding what I’d done to myself. They could baby me all they wanted; I was taking things into my own hands. Metaphorically speaking.
I paused several times as the bandage unwound, checking to make sure Archer’s breathing remained even. No need for him to wake up and run for the doctor or hold me down and re-wrap me. The dressing fell into a growing pile on my lap, the trembling in my hand growing as my skin came into view. My breath caught in my throat as a sob.
The skin of my right hand and wrist was mottled from surgery scars and skin grafts. Some of the skin had been blown right off my hand, almost like a burn, in addition to nearly losing my index finger—the one that had pulled the trigger—and completely blowing off my middle finger. The remaining fingers were attached but still damaged. Weakened tendons, eviscerated muscles, bones with spiderweb fractures. The doctors had to skewer them with pins in order to force the shards back in place.
The scars where my fingers reattached were going to be nasty red snakes winding around my palm and knuckles. My index finger was pockmarked and misshapen where the muscle and skin had melted away on the concrete steps of the courthouse. No matter how many skin grafts I had or how much physical therapy I did, it would never look the sam
e again.
I tried to make a fist and cried out from pain; the sound was out of my mouth before I even knew what I was doing. Even bending my uninjured fingers was impossible. I gasped in a combination of pain and shame as tears fell from my chin onto my palm. Would I ever be able to hold a pen or open a door with this hand again? What did it matter if I could? My hand was mangled and grotesque, a dead giveaway to anyone who saw it that something horrific had happened. The additional damage couldn’t be seen, the lack of hearing in my right ear from when I pulled the trigger against my head or the way I couldn’t fall asleep without another person in the room. I craved a nightlight like a child.
It was my ear’s fault I didn’t hear him come up to the side of my bed, too distracted by my pain to notice the warnings he gave me. I jumped when he sat near my legs. Archer took my injured hand in his and held it so gently in one of his palms, tracing the fingers of his other hand across my scars and up each finger to the tip. I couldn’t feel his finger over a large part of my palm, but where I could, goose bumps crept up my spine and over my head.
“There’s a Japanese practice … well, I guess I don’t know if it’s really Japanese. I saw it on a meme. But it says there’s an ancient practice of repairing broken things with gold to show they’re all that more beautiful for being cracked.”
I sniffed and wiped my face with my free hand. “That’s not gold in my stitches.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not graceful.”
I had to bite back a sob. “I can’t even make a fist. I didn’t hear you sneak up on me a moment ago. I’m broken for the rest of my life.”
His index finger continued its meandering trail around my hand. The sensation wove in and out like a light breeze. I looked at him with tears streaming down my face, but he held no judgment in his eyes, only the deepest compassion and longing. A desire to help me?
“You’re not broken. You’re a little injured, and you’ll have to to work hard in PT, but you’ll be able to use this hand again. You’ll learn to compensate for your ear. You’ll struggle, and you’ll suffer some more, but you’ll live a normal life again. It’s a learning curve, nothing more.”
