Josh
You do not get involved with your mission, Sentinel. That is a direct order. Remove your emotional component from this immediately! Otherwise Valen is quite literally going to kill you.
He gritted his teeth, pulling his eyes away from her as they sat patiently in the waiting room, waiting for her brother to finish getting a cast on his leg. Stark white lighting glared overhead, illuminating the ugly beige walls around him. A woman nearing her fifties sat at the counter behind a pane of glass, smacking on some gum. She looked bored while processing the newcomers through as quickly as possible so she could go back to the gossip magazine he had seen on her desk.
The waiting room was full of a wide assortment of people. The man in the far corner who looked around nervously was a drug addict. The young teenaged girl and fidgety, uncomfortable boy next to her were there because of the bulging bump in her stomach, and the old man in a motorized chair was complaining about everything under the sun. Everyone else fell somewhere in between.
Josh hated hospitals.
After explaining to the paramedics that he was a shifter and he would be fine, and then having to resort to showing them the already healing wound, Josh had called Jared and told him what happened. The team was now looking into the man who had crashed into them. It seemed entirely accidental. The man who had emerged unscathed from the whole ordeal had been terrified and apologized nonstop until Josh had been forced to snap at him to run him off. If he was acting, it was an award-winning performance.
Then there was Hannah. She had caught his eye the moment he saw the picture in the information brief Madison had sent him. Tall, light, almost sandy-brown hair, and a set of hips that sent blood flowing to all the places it shouldn’t. He swallowed again, flexing his leg to draw blood into it, and away from elsewhere.
The little button nose and a full set of freckles across a face he could stare at for days was a dangerous combination. One that he was already having trouble resisting, despite knowing her for only a few hours. The surreptitious glances she sent his way didn’t help, nor did the time he had looked back only to see her biting her lip in that way women did that drove every man crazy.
But there was more than that. Josh just wasn’t sure what it was yet. There was something about her and the way she carried herself, about her attitude toward danger, and the way she had managed to have very few cuts on her body needing attention. Oh, and the way she smelled.
It wasn’t a stink. Hannah didn’t smell bad. In fact, quite the opposite. She smelled so damned good he couldn’t help but draw deep breaths when he was near her. But there was something under that scent, something…different. He didn’t know what it was, what it meant, or even how to describe it. Neither did his bear, so for now he was just chalking it up to a human scent he had never encountered before.
His eyes, despite a frantic mental effort, strayed back toward Hannah. The morning, and now afternoon, that they were going through would have been enough to leave anyone frazzled. Yet somehow she still managed to look gorgeous, even with her hair disheveled and her minimal makeup smeared from the tears she had shed earlier.
“Yes?” she asked.
Josh started, looking away rapidly. Shit. He had been staring at her for far too long to just ignore it now.
“Just thankful that we managed to come out of that unhurt, for the most part,” he said, nodding at her slowly.
Hannah’s eyebrows furrowed slightly, and he thought she was going to call him out on his obvious bullshit line, but then she relaxed slightly. “Yeah, seriously, it could have been so much worse. But that poor driver…” she trailed off, her eyes taking on a faraway look.
Once more, Josh felt his curiosity stir. His life had exposed him to death time and time again. It was a constant companion of his now. Though he hadn’t gone through the same personal struggles that Justin had with accepting the fact that he had killed before, it was still not something that Josh liked. He was good at it, and accepted that role, but he would never enjoy being the harbinger of doom that he was.
So when he had found out that one of the drivers today had been killed, he felt sadness and guilt. If it weren’t for him, that man would still be alive. It looked like a freak incident so far, at least, and Josh was able to accept the fact that he could never have predicted something like this would happen.
His curiosity was piqued, however, by the reaction from Hannah. More accurately, the lack of reaction. She had cried, true, and he could tell that she was upset by it. It was the calmness about it all that was throwing him off. Most people, when confronted with a dead body, would freak out. They would be in an unnatural state of hyperactivity, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, go into an almost comatose state.
Not Hannah. She had shown emotion over it, but the shock of exposure to death was lacking in her attitude. That told him something interesting that he never would have expected.
Hannah had seen death firsthand before, enough times that she had become used to it.
He leaned back in his chair, trying to figure out what he was missing. What wasn’t he being told? It was doubtful that Hannah would share with him. Not yet at least, and if Valen had wanted him to know, he would have included the information in the briefing sent to Madison.
Interesting. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open both in front and behind me. Something else is going on here.
Josh was still racking his brain, trying to come up with a question that would give him some more insight into Hannah and who she was, when a nurse emerged from a room just down the hall.
“Ms. Terrik?” she asked, coming up to stand in front of Hannah.
“Yes?”
“Your brother is resting now. You may see him if you wish.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said graciously and climbed to her feet.
He prepared to follow her, but something about the rushed way she took off for the room told him that he would be better off giving them a few minutes alone.
Instead he relaxed back into the chair and prepared to wait until Chad was discharged from the hospital, at which point he would escort them back to the hotel.
It was going to be a long day.