Czytaj książkę: «Undercover Protector»

Chapter 1

All around Nadine Stuart, thick, black smoke pressed in. The scent of charred wood and plastic mingled in the air, making her choke. She could hear voices, too, and even if she couldn’t work out what they were saying, she knew they were urging her to run. But her feet were leaden, her mind sluggish. And the longer she stood still, the less motivated she felt to move.

It’s the lack of oxygen.

The thought made sense, but its cool logic seemed out of place in the chaos.

She drew in a breath and willed herself to go. To move. Before it was too late. But the only thing that sped up was her heart in her chest. It thundered so hard that it hurt. Above her head, a dangerous crack resounded, and she knew if she looked up, the ceiling would be crashing down.

She squeezed her lids shut.

A scream built up in her throat.

Her mouth dropped wide.

She threw back her head.

And with the exception of her pulse, everything around her went still. Ever so slowly, Nadine dragged her eyes open. Then she blinked, and reality came flooding in. There was no smoke, no scream and no paralyzing terror. Instead, there was disinfectant-scented air, soft white light and the steady hum of medical machinery.

The hospital, she thought.

Though to be more accurate, it was the Whispering Woods Acute Care Facility. The mountainside tourist town was too small to have a real hospital, but the influx of outsiders twice a year—summer and winter—necessitated something more formal than a simple clinic. Nadine wished she could be thankful for it, but she’d been stuck in the same bed for seven days. Being under lock and key for that long was more than enough. And the unpleasant icing on the unpleasant cake was that the nightmares—an off-and-on staple for nearly the last decade—seemed more frequent here in the yellow-walled room.

She sighed. If she’d been back home in Freemont City, she would’ve simply discharged herself.

Except Freemont’s not really home anymore, is it?

Nadine swallowed, wishing she could simply shove off the reminder. It wasn’t like she’d left anything behind. Her things were boxed up or sold. Her old job belonged to someone else. And her ex was probably in bed, his arms wrapped up around his current fling.

And you washed your hands of that life on purpose.

That much was true. For six months after her breakup with Grant, she’d walked around in a daze. She’d done her best to be there for her cherubic students with their sweet questions, but, really, she hadn’t been able to get into a proper teaching groove. So when a lawyer had shown up on her doorstep and informed her that she’d inherited her childhood home in Whispering Woods—a shock because she’d assumed that everything her mom owned had been spoken for a year prior when she passed—she hadn’t even hesitated. Kismet, she’d called it. Especially when the teaching position at Whispering Woods Elementary had fallen into her lap, too.

Except in the month or so since she’d arrived in town, she hadn’t accomplished much in the way of teaching. And she’d accomplished even less in regard to cleaning out her inherited apartment. Instead, she’d watched her half brother get shot. She’d been caught up in some decade-and-a-half-old crime that somehow also tied to the decade-old accident that she couldn’t remember. And, according to the few people who knew what was really going on, the police weren’t even aware of her brother’s murder. It was as chilling as it was concerning. Thankfully, the corrupt cop who’d killed him was also dead, and though she was responsible for the event that caused his death, the local authorities investigating had ruled it an accident. But now Nadine was stuck in a hospital bed with an IV in her hand and a generally bad taste in her mouth. And of course there was the wannabe guard at her door. A detective from Freemont with his own ties to the crimes in question.

Her eyes drifted to the narrow blinds of her interior window. She could just see the man’s slumped-over form on the bench in the hall. So far, Detective Anderson Somers hadn’t budged much from his spot. She was pretty sure he’d been living off vending-machine sandwiches. Maybe the same watery coffee dispensed there, as well.

Nadine let out a heavy breath and looked away. If his presence didn’t bother her so much, she might’ve felt a little sorry for him. She doubted that being her watchdog was as exciting as his usual day-to-day work.

He probably hates it here as much as I do.

But even with that acknowledgment, she could barely manage to drum up more than a trickle of empathy. Because Anderson Somers’s presence was the real reason she couldn’t discharge herself. It was he who’d insisted to the doctor that Nadine needed the extra recovery time. He’d said it all in a too-nice voice, reeling off some medical jargon about head injuries, smiling like he cared. He had a nice smile. Even teeth. And it always touched his eyes. So the doctor had bought it. Of course.

Nadine narrowed her own eyes at the window. What, exactly, had the detective said to the staff at the care facility about his relationship with her? she wondered. What would make them think he could speak on her behalf? She was truly curious, but she wouldn’t dare ask.

Like he could feel her eyes on him, Anderson shifted in his seat, his head lifting enough that Nadine could see his shaggy blond mop. She quickly sank back against her pillow and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he hadn’t caught her staring. A second later, she worried that maybe he had, for her door whooshed open and soft footfalls tapped along the floor, then stopped not far from the edge of her bed.

Nadine feigned sleep, inhaling and exhaling at a carefully measured pace. At a count of ten, the steps receded, and then the door shut. When she lifted her lids and peered through her lashes, she saw that the bench outside was now empty.

Hmm. So he’s been sneaking away when I sleep.

For some inexplicable reason, the idea bothered her as much as the fact that he’d been watching her around the clock. She narrowed her eyes again. Then pursed her lips. And finally smiled as a realization occurred to her. This was the perfect opportunity to free herself. From both the detective’s scrutiny and the doctor’s.

Nadine slid her legs out from under her covers, then swung them over the side of the bed. She waited for a reaction of some kind. A yell from the nurses station, or for Anderson to suddenly pop his head in and shoot her one of his too-sympathetic smiles. But there was just the same silence as there had been when she was tucked nicely under the blankets.

So she took it a step further. She reached over to her automatic IV unit and pressed the off button. Then she waited some more. No alarm sounded. No one came running.

“All right, then,” she murmured to herself.

With her eyes on the door, she took ahold of the tape that held the plastic tubing to her hand and pulled it off. Then she pressed her pinky finger firmly against the port and tugged out the tube itself. It came free with ease—no mess, no pain. It was almost too easy.

Nadine breathed out. Maybe she should’ve felt a bit of guilt as she shouldered into her sweatshirt. Or as she grabbed her shoulder bag. Maybe she should’ve admitted that it was a bit unreasonable to go running out of the care facility like she was doing. But she wasn’t going to let either thing stop her. No way would being stuck where she was get her any closer to getting justice for her brother. Or any closer to filling in the gaps in her memory. She needed to be moving. Looking. And in order to do those things, she couldn’t be kept under guard in a hospital bed.

She cast a final look over the room, slid her feet into her slippers and slipped out into the hall.

* * *

As Detective Anderson Somers rounded the corner in the hall that led to ward 3B, he just about dropped his coffee. A woman who looked an awful lot like Nadine Stuart was moving very quickly in the other direction.

Blond hair, almost shaved up one side and a shock of bluntly straight locks on the other. Yep. Brown eyes, a little guarded and a lot defiant. Uh-huh. Then she turned her head just enough that he could see the distinctive scar along the line of her cheek. It was her. No doubt. Complete from the rosebud mouth to the sheep-print pajama bottoms.

For a second, Anderson was too startled to do much more than stare. What was she even doing awake, let alone scurrying through the hall? It was two in the morning. He’d barely seen her out of the bed since she’d been admitted the week before, and less than five minutes earlier, he’d checked in on her to make sure she was asleep before he took off to grab some coffee that wasn’t vending-machine swill.

“Were you faking it, princess?” he wondered aloud.

She must’ve been. It wasn’t like she’d made it a secret that she wasn’t happy being cooped up. Imprisoned, she’d called it at one point. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that she would—

“Dammit,” Anderson muttered, his brain catching up to the fact that she was on the run just as she disappeared into one of the elevators at the end of the hall. “You were faking it.”

He took a final, irritated sip of his coffee, then set it down on the lip of a nearby trash bin and strode after her. When he reached the elevators, though, his mood grew even sourer. The lights over the first set of doors—the ones that had swallowed Nadine—were burned out, so he couldn’t tell if she’d headed for the lobby or the underground exit or some other escape route entirely. The second set of doors had been hung with an out-of-service sign. To top it all off, as Anderson turned to the final set, a team of frantic nurses pushed by him, wheeling a gurney and a crash cart. He jumped out of their way. Even if it wouldn’t have been tacky to join them in the elevator, there wasn’t room.

With a frustrated grumble, he spun toward the stairs. At least shoving the heavy door open provided a much-needed release of annoyance. Slamming his feet into the concrete steps was pretty good, too. As he moved down them as quickly as he could, he tried to calm his mind. He considered himself to be a patient man. More than reasonable. Since the moment his partners had asked him to keep tabs on Nadine Stuart, however, both his patience and reason had been sorely tested. From her snippy comments and looks full of distaste to her need to call him by his title—Detective with a capital D—every time no one else was in earshot, yeah, she was definitely putting him about as close to the edge as he ever got. It was the whole reason he’d moved from keeping vigil inside her room to acting a glorified bodyguard outside of it instead.

He kept reminding himself that she’d been through some tough things in the last little while. Things that could break a person. Losing her brother violently. Being thrust under the very dark microscope of Jesse Garibaldi—the same man who was responsible for his own father’s death fifteen years earlier.

Jesse Garibaldi.

Just thinking that man’s name was enough to make Anderson grit his teeth.

Fifteen years, he and his three partners had been chasing the man. They’d finally found him holed up here in Whispering Woods.

Holed up? No. That’s not quite right.

The evil man wasn’t in hiding. He was in plain sight. Ruling the town through money. Using the people in it to further his own agenda.

Anderson knew just what it felt like to be on the losing end of that particular stick. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Smart-mouthed Nadine Stuart included.

Somehow, though, being forced to chase the woman through the medical center dulled his ability to be quite as sympathetic as he should be. What kind of person ran from help? She had to know unequivocally that Anderson wasn’t a threat. Hell. She was the only person in all of Whispering Woods who was fully aware of his agenda. It made little sense to buck against his protection. All the stubbornness in the world wouldn’t keep her safe if Garibaldi got ahold of her.

Anderson had reached the landing that led to the lobby then and paused in his run. Going out that way was the straightest shot to freedom. It meant going past the information and intake desk, but it was still the quickest route out. Would Nadine be most interested in speed, or would she try to do something trickier? If he had to guess, he’d say she was the kind of woman who’d go for clever. Of course, she’d also probably assume that Anderson wouldn’t be far behind. He weighed the options, then eyed the door and made his decision.

“Lobby it is,” he said, his voice echoing through the stairwell.

He pushed through and found the wide space almost empty. The only person in sight was a solitary woman sitting behind the desk with her nose buried in a book, and she didn’t even glance up as Anderson walked straight up to her. He fought a need to grit his teeth at the lack of security and told himself that a care facility like this one wasn’t supposed to be under lock and key. It was the reason his own presence was a necessity. Still, he would’ve felt a little better if he thought that Nadine had met with a bit of a challenge.

He cleared his throat and fixed a polite smile onto his face. “Excuse me?”

The woman lifted her eyes and aimed a bored stare his way. “Yes?”

“Sorry for the interruption, but did you happen to see a blonde woman come by in the last minute or two?”

“People come and go all the time.”

“This one would’ve been in pajamas.”

“Pajamas?”

“With a sheep theme.”

“Are we talking about a patient?”

Anderson pressed his lips together for a moment before answering. Sounding the alarm about a patient on the run seemed a bit over the top. He somehow doubted it would help Nadine want him around, too.

“Just a woman with a strong love of casual wear,” he said.

“And casual wear is now sheep-themed pajamas?” The woman lifted a dubious eyebrow.

“Guess it is.”

“Then, no.”

“No?”

“I haven’t seen a blonde woman in casual wear come by in the last one or two minutes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Every person who comes in or out has to walk right past me.”

“True enough. Thanks anyway.”

Fighting a need to curse, he turned back toward the stairs and stopped. From where he stood, he could hardly see the first set of elevator doors. He was standing up. If he’d been sitting down like the woman behind the desk, he doubted he’d be able to see them at all. It’d be easy enough to exit the elevator and veer to the right instead of the left.

“What’s at the other end of the hall?” he asked.

The woman let out a sigh. “What?”

Anderson pointed. “If I went down there instead of past you.”

“Staff lounge.”

“Any way to get out?”

“Are you sure this isn’t about a patient?”

“Yes,” he lied.

She sighed again. “There’s an exit. But in order to get to the exit, you need to get into the staff lounge. And in order to get into the staff lounge, you need a passkey. So unless your friend in the pajamas is a staff member, she couldn’t have gone that way.”

Anderson forced another smile. “Thanks again.”

His cop’s gut was rearing its head, telling him that Nadine would’ve found a way. He didn’t waste time questioning his instincts. Moving quickly, he took long, decisive steps across the linoleum. In seconds, he reached a door clearly labeled with a Staff Lounge sign. There he stopped and studied the locking mechanism. It was a simple, magnetic swipe system. With a quick glance around, he yanked his wallet from his pocket and chose a card at random, then jammed it into the slot. The light above the handle flickered but stayed red. He yanked his card free and threw the door a glare.

“Card get demagnetized?” said a voice from over his shoulder.

Anderson turned and nodded at the man who’d appeared behind him. “Guess so.”

The man smiled. “Happens to me about twice a week. Gotta love overpriced technology that only works a quarter of the time. Here, I’ll let you in with mine.”

“Thanks.”

A heartbeat later, he was standing inside the supposedly secure staff lounge, his eyes on the glass door at the rear of the room. Through it, he could see just what he needed to.

Nadine Stuart.

She was planted on the edge of the sidewalk in the taxi zone, her head down, her cell phone pressed to her ear. Anderson walked toward the door, watching as she hung up, stuck the phone into her bag, then fixed her eyes straight ahead. When she started to cross the narrow strip of pavement in front of her—presumably toward the bench she had in her sights—a navy-colored car on the same side of the road started to move, too. First at a crawl. Then a little faster.

Worry hit Anderson like a truck.

He threw himself against the door, slamming it open so hard that he half expected it to shatter or at least crack. He didn’t stop to check if it did. He dived forward. He wrapped his arms around Nadine’s waist. And he pulled her out of sight and out of harm’s way a heartbeat before the navy car screeched through the spot where she’d just been standing.