Chapter Four
Eneko stretched his back as he stood. The chair wheeled back from his desk and he checked the time. Crap, he had missed the kids’ dinners. Again. Jasmine had been working for him for a month now, and he had somehow managed to be home late nearly every day.
Of course, it wasn’t entirely his fault. The protestors had been at it again today, in greater numbers than before. This time they had been chanting that he should be locked up and waving around grainy images of the incident with Andy last month. It severely tried his patience, but fortunately Marcus had shown up and formed a perimeter around the clinic. Eneko had managed to get through the day more or less, although he had called up all his patients to warn them about the crowd.
One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to get another partner working at the clinic while this kept up.
Now, though, with dusk falling and the streets beyond his windows darkening, he couldn’t help but wonder if it would be better to just close for a few days. Maybe a couple weeks. Though he knew that it would fuel the protestor’s cries of wasted resources, it would at least help this frenzy die down. If there was nobody to harass they’d soon give up… at least, he hoped so.
A sudden pounding on the door made him jump. His bear rose, growling, and Eneko held it close to the surface in case he needed a defense. Was it more of those insane protestors? The pounding cut off. The windows rattled and then there was silence.
Eneko turned to his computer and pulled up the video feed from the cameras. There was something slumped on the front steps of the clinic. He cursed under his breath as he leaned in closer. Was that a person?
He turned on his heel and started for the door, then stopped. What if it was a trap? Jana or her boyfriend trying to lure him out so they could… what? Beat him up? He didn’t think that even Jana would go so far as to try to murder him. Perhaps one of the other protestors… But why would they escalate so quickly? He hadn’t even been receiving any threats lately. Well, other than ones he was already getting.
One thing was clear. There was a person out there that probably needed his help. And he wasn’t the kind of guy to let his fears overtake him.
As he got closer to the door. he could smell the cheap brand of perfume that Jana had always worn, even after he had asked her to stop due to people’s sensitivities. (“People are too sensitive then,” she had scoffed, completely missing the point). He’d have fired her for that if he had had someone to replace her…
He yanked open the door, tense in case it was a trap. The body on his doorstep groaned. Her head lolled back on the mat. Her face was covered in blood, the coppery scent hitting him hard. Even more intense than her perfume now that he was so close. Jana Adler, looking as though someone had put her through a stampede.
Eneko’s heart jumped to his throat and he dropped to one knee beside her. He checked for a pulse while listening intently. The beat was slow and irregular, her breathing shallow. Her lids fluttered. He grabbed his cellphone and called 911.
“I have a female, mid-thirties, unresponsive. It looks like she was beaten. Get here quickly.”
He rattled off the clinic’s address. The clinic wasn’t equipped to handle this sort of injury. He’d performed surgery on Marcus just a few weeks ago but the other man was a shifter, a bear like him. If he hadn’t been, the surgery would have killed him. Trying to do anything for Jana…
Well, there was something he could do. Eneko jumped back into the clinic and gathered some blankets and a neck brace. Returning to Jana, he covered her up before putting the neck brace in place, to stop her spine from receiving more damage than it might already have done. He didn’t dare move her, though.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Her stomach started to swell and her heartbeat grew weaker. Internal bleeding. Eneko called the ambulance again, but only received the same information he’d gotten before. His bear snarled as he ran down the possibilities of what to do here on his own.
The shallow breaths stopped. Eneko gripped her wrist. No pulse. Trying to do chest compressions could cause further internal damage. Her heart was stopped. He jumped to his feet and ran for the emergency defibrillator, cursing that he hadn’t already brought it out. Careful not to jostle her more than was necessary, Eneko laid the woman flat on her back and ripped open her shirt.
After five attempts with the defibrillator, Eneko threw caution to the wind and began chest compressions. Nothing. Jana’s face was white, pale as a corpse, and her skin was getting cold. She was gone.
Eneko sat beside her and wept.
The loss of life, any life, mattered. If he had moved quicker, been smarter… But there was no telling what might have been. All he knew was that she was dead. She had needed him and he hadn’t been able to save her.
The ambulance didn’t arrive until half an hour later. Eneko stared at the two paramedics as they walked over, jostling each other and laughing. Neither of them smelled of shifter.
One of them, a tall blond, looked at Eneko with a glance that could only be defined as a sneer. “Where’s the shifter that needs to go to the hospital?”
Shifter? Of course. Eneko’s bear roared and his hands clenched. That was why they had taken so long to arrive. Because they thought it was a shifter who was laying unresponsive here. A shifter called from a shifter clinic about someone needing help–these guys thought it was probably a shifter looking to ‘steal’ resources from non-shifters who apparently deserved it more.
Eneko got to his feet from where he had been sitting outside the clinic door. “She wasn’t a shifter,” he said blankly. Fury burned in his gut but none of it made it into his voice. “If you had come on time, she might have been able to be saved.”
The paramedics glanced at each other with horror in their eyes and Eneko had to fight down the desire to punch the wall. That was right. A non-shifter had died and now they were going to catch hell. But if Jana had been a shifter?
He pushed past them, standing in the light snowfall, trying not to think about anything at all.
***
The police arrived much, much quicker than the paramedics had. They took pictures and statements before allowing Jana’s body to be taken away. The detectives all were hostile towards him, and he wondered how many of them saw Jana’s video about him ‘attacking’ Andy and how many just hated shifters. They even made him come to the station and rehash, over and over, what had happened. It wasn’t until Eneko demanded a lawyer that they even let him phone Jasmine and explain to her why he wasn’t home yet. The interrogation lasted hours, even after one of the matriarch’s lawyers arrived to give him legal aid.
Eventually, they released him. Exhaustion dragged at his limbs and he was in such a state that he wasn’t certain if he could drive home by himself. In the end, though, he had no choice. His mind whirled over the events of the night as he drove, and when he made it to his house, he sat in the car for a few minutes, gathering himself.
The clinic. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, breathing deeply. The clinic will be closed until the police open it up again.
Which was not going to help his case against the protestors… But then, neither was Jana’s death. Things were going to reach a frenzy, that was clear. So, he needed to figure out what he was going to do with his patients and his children, to protect them from the fallout that was certain to come raging towards him.
Would Jasmine want to stay working for him with all this happening? She had stuck it out with Adela when a drug lord was after her, but in this case… well, Jasmine deserved to have some peace, right? And, so did Maite and Luken.
He needed someone to take care of them in case the police called him down to the station again. He’d ask Jasmine. Maybe even see if she could move in with him for the time being… no, that was too much.
Eneko stopped the car just outside his house. He’d ask Jasmine to stay working for him, but that was it. He wasn’t going to make any overtures that might be taken as romantic.
Decided, Eneko stepped from his car. Only to have to jump back as another car came careening down the street. It stopped haphazardly in the center of the road and a familiar figure tumbled out of the driver’s seat. Andy stumbled towards him. Even at this distance Eneko could smell the alcohol and see his bloodshot eyes. The man stumbled and weaved as he came at the bear, fists in the air.
“You… you animal!” Andy’s voice carried and Eneko glanced around. This late at night it was doubtful that many, if any at all, of his neighbors were awake. He hoped this wouldn’t wake them up. “You killed her. You killed the love of my life. I’ll destroy you for this. I loved her. I loved her!”
“I didn’t touch her,” Eneko said, his voice low, trying to be soothing. “You’re clearly drunk. I’m going to call you a cab and—"
“You killed her!” Andy stumbled at him swinging. It was quite pathetic, and he nearly fell to the ground when Eneko sidestepped. “You have had it out for her since she refused to sleep with you. Don’t think I don’t know! She told me how you harassed her and threatened her and fired her.”
After the day he’d had, Eneko couldn’t deal with this. He shook his head and started back for his car–he didn’t know how Andy had found him here, but he wasn’t going to lead the angry drunk right to his house and his children.
“You’re going to lose everything,” Andy spat at him. “I’ll make sure that you go to jail and never see the light of day again. And as for those brats of yours—”
Eneko whirled. He had the man by the throat before he could stop himself. Andy’s eyes widened and Eneko shoved him into the car, a growl rumbling in his throat. His lips pulled back and he could feel the change starting in him. By now he’d have a set of terrifying fangs.
“Never threaten my children,” the bear snarled. His instincts rode him hard, the shift seconds from happening.
Andy turned and fled. Eneko stayed where he was, breathing deeply. After a long moment he glanced at his house. Then he got into his car and drove away again, unable to face Jasmine after what he had just done.