The Doctor's Mission

“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Cate said.

Nick said nothing. What was there to say? He had taken lives today for the first—and he hoped last—time. Right now, he was pretty revved up and the anger was still ruling. Later, he suspected the impact of what he’d done would hit him.

“You’re trained to save lives,” Cate said as if reading his mind. It was disconcerting. Hell, everything that had happened since she came back into his life had been disconcerting.

She had shot someone today, too, he remembered. “Did it bother you?” he asked.

“Yes, but there’s no choice. Well, there was one, but when it’s live or die, I’m gonna choose live every time.” There were tears in her eyes.

He eased out of traffic, turned down a dirt road and parked behind trees. “Come here,” he said gently. She slid her arms around his waist, laid her head on his shoulder and held him tight. For several long moments, he simply held her close.

Dear Reader,

What do people do when they can no longer work in their chosen profession? How do they totally reinvent themselves? I’ve seen this done, up close and personal, and it’s no easy task, giving up that in-the-know status, that feeling of being right in the middle of life-changing events, doing everything you can to fix them. And suddenly, you’re on the outside of it all.

As with any drastic upheaval in life, it helps to have a support system, but I wondered what would happen if that was also taken away. Here is the story of two individuals, dedicated to their jobs to the exclusion of all else, who are forced together by duty and circumstance. Can they help each other deal with the emotional trauma while dodging both danger and a passion they’ve denied for years?

Read on to see how COMPASS Special Agent Cate Olin and neurosurgeon Nick Sandro tackle their demons after the fall….

Enjoy!

Lyn Stone

The Doctor’s Mission
Lyn Stone

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYN STONE

A painter of historical events, Lyn decided to write about them. A canvas, however detailed, limits characters to only one moment in time. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the other ninety thousand have to show up somewhere!”

An avid reader, she admits, “At thirteen, I fell in love with Bronte’s Heathcliff and became Catherine. Next year, I fell for Rhett and became Scarlett. Then I fell for the hero I’d known most of my life and finally became myself.”

After living four years in Europe, Lyn and her husband, Allen, settled into a log house in north Alabama that is crammed to the rafters with antiques, artifacts and the stuff of future tales.

For my Al, master of reinvention, soul of inspiration and

forever the very heart of me.

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

Bernese Alps, Switzerland, November 6th

Sunlight sparkled off the perfectly powdered slope. Thin, crisp air added to the euphoria zinging through Cate Olin’s veins as she looked out over the awesome peaks surrounding her. “On top of the world,” she sighed.

Cate tossed her companion a smile. Werner looked almost as impressive as the scenery. Together, he and the Alps would make a terrific travel ad for winter fun and games. And she would spend no more time with him than she would with these mountains.

He had approached her in the bar last night and asked her to dance. They’d talked, laughed, danced some more and then he had suggested they ski together the next morning. So here she was, having some much-needed fun, her reward for a tough mission accomplished.

After a light breakfast at Le Chalet d’Adrien, they had caught a hop, then ridden the lift to the top of Col des Gentianes to ski off-piste. Werner said it was supposed to be a fun run. A friend of his had highly recommended it.

Werner adjusted his goggles, then his gloves. She would love to know what he was thinking right now, but telepathy did not work on this guy. That was okay, too. That skill required concentration and mental energy. Her last assignment had taken a lot out of her and she badly needed a couple of weeks of nothing but recreation.

He slid slowly to her side, their skis parallel as he leaned sideways to kiss her cheek. “Ready to rock and roll?”

His Austrian accent was cute and he knew it. Cate took a second simply to enjoy the way he looked. She toyed with the idea of sleeping with him later. She might. And she might not.

Sex without any deep emotional involvement would be a new experience for her and one she thought she might find more depressing than satisfying. She sensed Werner didn’t do deep.

“Give me a minute.” She adjusted the bright red cap she wore and determined not to worry about anything today.

Cate shook the tension out of her legs one at a time, lifting each ski as she relaxed her muscles. She shrugged her shoulders to loosen them, then set her poles and grinned at Werner. “Okay, let’s boogie!”

“Take the lead.” He gestured broadly for her to go ahead of him. “I would like to watch your derriere!”

Cate hesitated, then experienced one of those uh-oh moments when he gave her a playful shove and shouted, “Go, you little chicken!”

Laughing, she wanted to glance back, but had to gain her balance and keep it. The bright morning sun had paved the powder with a slick-as-glass surface.

Cate flew, unable to control her speed the way she wished. The slopes she had experienced before had been bumpy with the tracks of others, offering a bit of traction. And not this steep. She slalomed, attempting to brake, tried to snow-plow to no avail, then considered falling down, just to stop her rapid descent.

After a harrowing run, the trail leveled out a little where it edged against a steep incline on her right. Suddenly she heard a distinctive crack, then another. A rifle!

Ten feet to her left, the slope dropped off like a cliff’s edge. To her right, the snow-covered wall. Above, the rumble of an avalanche. No accident of nature.

She dug in her poles, pushed hard and picked up speed, trying to outrun the fall, go perpendicular to it, get out of its way. To God knew what. But someone had skied this way earlier today. The trail led somewhere besides over the edge of an abyss. She hoped.

Snow pelted her head and shoulders, slid down, obliterated her path. There was nowhere to go but over the edge, where the descending rush of snow would take her anyway if it didn’t cover and smother her here.

Instinctively, Cate tucked her poles beneath her arms, squatted down and fell sideways. She snapped off her skis, scrambled for the cliff’s edge and looked over for a safe way down. A rolling crush of white shoved her from behind and took her with it.

As white blanked out the blue of the sky, Cate fought panic. She struggled to stay on the surface. Couldn’t let it bury her. The heat from her body would encase her in ice in less than half an hour. If the oxygen trapped with her lasted that long and the weight of the snow didn’t crush her.

Then she hit something really hard that broke her slide and she began to tumble head over heels.

She wanted to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t move. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, knowing it could be full of snow and the last one she would ever take.

Chapter 1

Martigny Hospital, Valais, Switzerland—November 27th

Nick Sandro swore under his breath. He knew what he had to do. His parents had put it to him like an order. Look after Cate. Friendship demanded it. He had no excuse not to. He had done it reluctantly during the greater parts of their childhood and adolescence. He would have to do it now.

Bracing himself, he pushed open the door of her hospital room. “Hi, Catie,” he said softly. “You awake?”

Her smile looked as forced as his felt. “Hey, Nick. They told me you were here. It was good of you to come.”

“Glad to,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, Mom and Dad would have my head if I didn’t come and see about you.”

“Like old times, huh? Trying to match us up.” Tears leaked from her right eye, but the smile stayed in place.

She looked frail. Her long, straight hair had been snipped close to her scalp in the area around her incision. The rest lay lank and lifeless around her pale, striking features. She had wide, dark-lashed eyes of the deepest blue imaginable, a straight no-nonsense nose and a luscious mouth that begged kissing. Even after all this time, he could still recall the feel of those lips and the taste of her as she’d kissed him. The sensation still raised guilt. He had been twenty. She had been jailbait.

“How are they?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice bright. “Dad’s in London at a seminar. Mom went along. They’ll stay for a vacation and return home in a few weeks.”

“Yeah, they sent me a card. Picture of the horse guards,” Cate said with a chuckle. “Inside, it said Giddyup.”

Nick laughed with her, losing a little of the wariness he felt. “Serious get-well wish.”

“Karen? How’s she?”

“Pregnant. Divorced again. She should have known better than to marry another doctor.” He grimaced automatically, but added a small laugh to show he wasn’t carrying a torch for his ex-wife.

Cate smiled at him. “She’s a real dunce, that girl.”

He nodded, smiling. “It was a mistake. We’re both wiser.”

She sighed heavily. Her smile remained, wistful but sincere. Nick wondered if Cate ever regretted passing on marriage. As far as he knew she had never shown the slightest interest in it. He had kept pretty close tabs over the years through their parents. “How about this Austrian you were with on the slopes? Important?”

The smile crooked a bit. “Mostly to himself. But he did save my bacon when he called for the rescue.”

“But the bastard didn’t try to dig you out. I’d like to break his neck.”

“Judging by the tracks, they think he did try after he called in. One of his skis was found near where I was buried. Apparently, he fell on the way or was caught in a secondary slide. They probably won’t find him until spring thaw.”

“So he wasn’t involved in trying to kill you.”

“Somebody probably paid him to ski that particular slope. He was pretty insistent we do that one. Jack said Werner made a cash deposit in his account the day before, but it wasn’t enough to hire someone to conspire in a murder. True, Werner was a little vain, but I know he was no killer.”

Nick saw a tear trickle down her cheek, but she didn’t seem to be really grieving over the man, just sad that he’d been lost.

Even without makeup, hair a mess and dressed in a wrinkled, faded hospital gown, Cate was the most beautiful woman he knew. She was tall, nearly six feet; her body was angular, yet very graceful. He noted her nails were clipped to the quick with no polish, making her supple, long-fingered hands look smaller than he remembered.

The need to hold and reassure her hit him like a fist every time he looked at her. He hadn’t worried enough about his own reactions before taking this on. Maybe he should have examined his reasons a little more carefully. No way could he let them seclude her in some safe house without the kind of help she would need, though, no matter how hard this got for him. The government might furnish doctors to check on her, but who was to say what sort and whether they would be concerned about anything other than her vital signs.

Cate was observing him closely. “You’re looking good, Nick. Still plundering around in people’s gray matter?” she asked as a brave attempt at being chipper.

He looked away from her direct blue gaze. “I’m taking some time off.”

“Knocking around Florence, Jack says. Working vacation?”

“Sort of. I came over a few months ago. Attending some seminars at the Johns Hopkins campus there.”

“Teaching them how to cut?” she asked, blunt as ever.

“No, not teaching.” So she didn’t know what had happened. Hadn’t heard. What had proved a life-changing event for him hadn’t even warranted a paragraph in the local paper. No one had died, after all. He hadn’t really been on duty when it had happened, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents would not have mentioned the incident to her except to relate how lucky he was to have escaped death.

No, he was the only one who felt the full impact of his injury. He could no longer operate. His career was over. No reason Cate should have heard about it. Oddly enough, she was probably the only one who would fully understand. Eventually she would, but he couldn’t dump that on her now. She had enough problems of her own.

“Odd that you’d choose Florence,” she said. “I would have thought Rome. Isn’t that where your grandparents were from?”

He nodded. Her parents came in just then and he turned to greet them. “See you later,” he said to Cate. “I’ll leave you to your visit.”

Jack Mercier, Cate’s boss, was waiting for Nick in the lounge across the hall. “Did you tell her?” he asked, frowning.

“Not yet,” Nick said. “I’m still not sure…”

“She’ll be safe with you in Florence. Safer than anywhere else she could go. I’ll station eyes there in case you run into trouble.”

Eyes? Agents that surveilled, no doubt. That whole business was foreign to him, the terminology as strange as medical terms would be to Cate. Yet another barrier between them. Good. He could use more of those.

Mercier headed up the elite counter-terrorist organization Cate had been working as an undercover operative for these past couple of years. Nick thought Cate had been working as an intelligence analyst at a desk somewhere in Washington. God only knew what her duties had entailed. Had being the key word. She was finished.

Mercier’s voice dropped to a confidential tone. “I have to ask, Sandro. Are you physically capable of firing a weapon if you need to?” He glanced pointedly at Nick’s right hand, permanently damaged in an E.R. confrontation with a crackhead nearly a year ago when he had stopped in on an informal consult. Mercier pressed. “You are left-handed, right?”

Nick flexed his fingers out of habit. “I used to shoot skeet and I could still pull a trigger, but there’s no way I’m qualified to give Cate the protection you say she might need.”

“I only ask as a precaution. You’ll have bodyguards keeping a close watch.” He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Take her to Florence, help with her rehab and give me an evaluation. That’s all you have to do.”

“That’s all?” Nick gave a wry huff. “Right.”

“We have a good protection program, as I told you before, but I really think she’ll have a better chance of recovery with the help of someone she knows. She needs that with what she’ll be facing. You spoke to Dr. Ganz. You know what she’s up against. Want her to do that with strangers who are just doing their jobs?”

Every instinct of self-preservation within Nick warned against it. Not because someone might still be gunning for Cate. If anything, that was the most compelling argument Mercier had for convincing Nick to agree.

He had been living in Florence the last few months, attending the seminars. After Cate’s injury, the Olins had contacted his parents and asked them to plead their case. They wanted someone they knew to see that Cate was getting the best medical help available. They had obviously spoken with Mercier, who had roped him in to helping her with therapy.

“Do you have any idea who tried to kill her?” he asked. What had happened had been no accident. Mercier had stationed guards outside her door since she’d been admitted. “What about the man she was with that day?”

“He called for rescue and was pinpointing Cate’s location when he was cut off midsentence. He’s still missing. He said he heard the shots that caused the avalanche. When Cate regained consciousness, she verified there was gunfire, definitely a rifle. We think maybe he was going to dig her out and got buried in a drift. One way or another, we’ll find him.”

“Any new suspects?”

Jack nodded. “Yes. Two of our operatives coordinating with the Police Nationale have someone under surveillance now, a known assassin who was spotted in the area. It’s a matter of time before they make an arrest, maybe only hours. But even if he is our shooter, somebody hired him for it. I’d like to have Cate stashed somewhere she can’t be found.”

“Why would someone want to kill her? And why that way?”

“We’ll have some answers soon. Sam Jakes, a freelance reporter from D.C., blew her cover the week before this happened. He must have had an inside track at the White House. That was a very private ceremony with only our teams, the president and a couple of staff present. Jakes reported the commendation she received and explained her part in the investigation. Unfortunately, he gave her name, a recent photo and some background material on her.”

“So she was outed and you think some wacko read that and is after her? Did you arrest the bastard who did the article?”

“Of course. The point is, that put Cate at great risk.”

“So she would no longer be good for covert work anyway?”

“I’d planned to have her doing backup or mop up, not as primary. At least not for a while. Now, because of this injury, any type of field work is out of the question. Whatever she does for us, we’ll have to keep her under wraps. She’s made enemies. We’ll get whoever is after her. In the meantime, all you need to do is keep her with you and take care of her health.”

“And have a gun handy, of course,” Nick added, his words laced with irony.

Mercier nodded. “That would be wise, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll need it. Do you have one?”

Nick coughed a laugh. “Are you kidding? I’m a physician, an American residing in a foreign country. How the devil would I get a gun?”

“We’ve got you one,” Mercier assured him. “That, plus some other things Cate might need will be in the trunk of your car.”

“Well, I’ve shot snakes and targets, but never anything with legs. I’m not sure I could take a life.” He frowned at Mercier. “Just so you know.”

“Trust me, if someone starts shooting, you’ll be damned glad to have the means to return fire.”

“What if she refuses to go with me?” Nick asked. That was a distinct possibility. She had always resented his “hovering” as she called it. Hated it when he cautioned her about taking risks.

“She’ll go,” Mercier declared. “We can’t take her home yet. Ganz says she shouldn’t fly for that long in her condition. For her safety, we’re creating a diversion to make everyone think she’s on a plane back to the States.”

Mercier’s wife, Solange, joined them in the waiting room just as Cate’s parents came in. After greeting them, the Merciers excused themselves and went in to speak with Cate.

Cate’s mother, Tess Olin, an Amazon who looked scarcely older than her daughter, approached Nick. “I know this is an imposition, dear. It’s not fair to ask it of you.”

Yeah, but Nick knew he really had no choice. “Dr. Ganz and Cate’s supervisor agree it’s the best thing. I know what to watch for, can prescribe whatever she needs and conduct her therapy.”

“It’s the perfect solution,” Rolph Olin said. He shot a look at his wife, one that warned her to stop protesting.

“I guess it does make sense,” Tess said, obviously relieved. Cate’s younger brother, Anderson, nodded in agreement, looking from one parent to the other, taking his cue from them as usual.

Nick could only imagine how Cate would fare if these three took over her care. The best she could hope for would be benign neglect. The worst would be another attempt on her life when she was at her most vulnerable and unprotected.

Sending Cate into whatever kind of protection program they offered would be even worse. She would probably get very little medical attention since all the damage was virtually invisible. Her condition could deteriorate in either case.

“So you’ll be flying home with her?” her mother asked.

“Of course.” Nick figured it wasn’t exactly a lie. They would fly home eventually. “Go ahead and do whatever you have to do. I’ll take good care of Cate,” he assured the Olins and was somewhat mollified by Tess’s tears of relief and Rolph’s obvious gratitude.

They did care about her, but they were definitely not equipped to be caregivers. All their focus was on her little brother’s career. Sport freaks, to the exclusion of everything else. “I promise to call you and give you progress reports.”

Tess smiled up at him and gave him a motherly hug. Rolph and Anderson shook his hand. He couldn’t miss the renewed hope for a love match in their eyes, a hope both he and Cate had always resented. Even his own parents had pushed that.

Their families had been friends since he and Cate were kids. His own father was a big name in sports medicine, Cate’s was a world-class coach. That common interest, and living in the same town, had cemented a friendship that had grown over the years. Their folks had entertained each other frequently and even traveled together on family vacations.

Cate was three years his junior and back then it seemed to Nick that he was the only one who cared whether she reached adulthood. Totally unsupervised and absolutely fearless, Cate had dragged him into more life-threatening scrapes than he could count. Apparently, her adventurous nature hadn’t changed.

He had been relieved when he finally graduated and left home for college. While still in medical school, he had married Karen, who was the antithesis of Cate in every way imaginable. The marriage had proved a serious lapse in judgment.

Though he’d continued to worry about Cate over the years, she probably hadn’t given him a second thought. According to Mercier, she loved her work battling terrorism around the world. Nick shuddered to think of the danger she had faced in her job, but he did admire her for channeling all that daredevil energy into something positive. She would not take it well when she learned that outlet was now closed to her.

He knew from experience what it was like to lose the work that defined you. His left hand clenched automatically while his right barely made a fist. Even after surgery and extensive therapy, it had taken him nearly a year to accept the permanent nerve damage and resulting changes in his life.

Maybe helping Cate come to terms with this injury would give new meaning to what he had endured and accomplished. It would be better if she didn’t have to face this catastrophe alone, as he had.

Tess was speaking again, her hand on his arm. “We’ve already told her goodbye. We didn’t mention all that we discussed about you looking after her. She’ll listen to you, Nick. She always did.”

No, she rarely had listened. But Nick nodded anyway.

The Olins were not bad people. They simply didn’t know how to manage anyone who wasn’t in top form physically. When one of the skiers they trained suffered an injury or illness, they passed him or her off to someone who could fix it. If there was no complete comeback in the offing—and sometimes even if there was—the individual was quickly replaced by someone else to train. Right now their hopes were pinned on getting their own son, Anderson, prepared for jumping and freestyling his way through the next Winter Olympics.

No doubt they’d be off to the nearest slopes as soon as they could make arrangements. He heard them mention Austria as they turned to leave.

Nick sat in the waiting room. Mercier and Solange, a physician who worked at the hospital in Georgetown, were still in with Cate.

When he saw them exit, he joined them in the hall. “How is she?” he asked.

Solange replied, “Restless. Attempting to cope, mostly with denial. Dr. Ganz said he would release her today, but we didn’t mention that. I wonder if she should stay another day or so.”

There was no reason to prolong the inevitable. “So, she’s aware of Ganz’s prognosis?” Nick asked. They had operated to relieve the pressure on her brain from the bleeding, but the damage had been done. She had hit a rock. In addition to that, she had been deprived of oxygen a few minutes too long before they could dig her out. It was unlikely that Cate would ever fully overcome the results of her injuries. Her vision was impaired. So were her voluntary reflexes and her equilibrium. Her thought processes had been slow at first, but that had improved fairly rapidly. It was a good sign, but not good enough.

“Yes, she has been told,” Solange said with a grimace.

Mercier put an arm around her shoulders as he met Nick’s gaze. “I want to thank you personally for doing this, Sandro. I imagine Cate won’t be easy to live with these next few months.”

“I know.” Boy, did he know it. Cate had not been easy to be with when she was well and happy.

Life around her had been a roller-coaster ride. Cate embraced risk. A thrill a minute and damn the danger. All that energy. That strength. Those mercurial moods and sheer physicality. One thing he had to admit, he had never felt so alive before or since being with Cate. He had tried to hold on to that zest for life she had revealed in him. Secretly, he had envied her natural exuberance and tried to embrace it.

The trick would be to turn the force and strength of Cate’s energy into something that would get her through the worst of this. And to focus whatever drive he had left on her recovery.

“No one knows your address in Florence but your parents, right?”

“I moved to a larger apartment recently, so even they don’t have my exact address,” Nick assured him.

Mercier nodded, obviously satisfied. “We’ll make certain you aren’t followed when you leave here. Two of our Italian assets are already in Florence checking out your apartment and the surrounding area. They’ll identify themselves when you arrive. Here’s the information on them.” He tucked a card into Nick’s breast pocket.

“That’s assuming I can persuade her to go,” Nick said with a wry smile.

“I just told her she has to,” Mercier declared. “Cate’s practical. She understands that.”

Mercier cleared his throat and glanced at the closed door to Cate’s room. “Well, Good luck, Sandro.”

“Thanks.” Nick sighed. He would need it.

Mercier had told him earlier that he had three months, at which time he needed to know whether Cate could function in a training capacity or at a desk job with the agency. That time frame closely coincided with the date Nick had to report for the fellowship he’d decided to take.

Psychiatry was a far cry from neurosurgery, but it was one of the possibilities open to him now that he lacked the strength and fine motor skills necessary for delicate operations. So they had three short months for Cate to reinvent herself.

He took leave of the Merciers and went back in to speak with Cate. She looked exhausted, barely able to stay awake. “Hey, girl. Did they wear you out?”

“God, this is the longest day ever,” she groaned. “What are my chances of getting out of this place so I can get some rest?”

“Pretty good, actually. You’ll be staying with me for a while,” Nick said, reaching for her hand and clasping it with his left. “Don’t you dare say no. I’m looking forward to making you my famous spaghetti.”

“Oh, please,” she groaned, and made a face. “Not with the olives?”

“Black olives now,” he replied with a grin. “I’ve gone exotic.”

She wriggled around, withdrawing her hand from his and pulling up the sheet to cover her breasts, clearly outlined by the soft cotton print.

Her gaze fastened on the window. “They shouldn’t expect you to babysit me, Nick. I told them that.”

“We are doing this,” he declared. “It’s all settled. No arguments.”

She brushed a hand over her face. “Jack made my alternative pretty clear, but it’s so not fair to you. Gives new meaning to the word imposition.”

“Your mom said that, too, but it’s not imposing. I volunteered for it.” He managed another grin to cover the lie and flashed her the Boy Scout pledge.

“You did no such thing and we both know it.” She sighed. “And what if I don’t choose to be your good deed for the day?”

“I’ll carry you off like the caveman I can be when you strip me down to essentials. You know I’ll do it.”

She laughed. “Caveman stripped down, huh?”

Nick didn’t miss that fleeting expression that said she did recall him stripped. Her awareness of him as a man had always made him feel primal. Again, the old guilt over that surfaced, but he dismissed it. He made up his mind to view her as a grown woman from now on, not as the precocious kid who hit on him regularly and delighted in making him uncomfortable.

She had burst into the bathroom and seen him naked in the shower once. And stared, fascinated, amused and aroused, too, if those little breasts of hers had been any indication. It had not been his fault.

Her gaze shifted from heated to frustrated in the space of a heartbeat. “So when do we blow this joint? I’m sick to death of it.”

Nick released the pent-up breath he’d been holding. “This afternoon looks good for me.”

Her blue eyes flew wide. “Seriously? Today?”

She had been here for three weeks, conscious for two of them, ambulatory for one.

“They’ve done about all they can do here. Now comes the real work.” He shot her a warning look. “You know I’ll be a slave driver, don’t you?”

Cate exhaled, looking incredibly weary. All the visitors today hadn’t helped. Maybe she was too tired to make the trip. “If you want to wait until tomorrow, Cate, it’s okay,” he said.

“Not on your life. If I have to sneak out the back door dressed in this backless wonder and mooning the locals, I’ll do it. You said today.”