Chapter 1

Heavy clouds hung over San Antonio, but the chance of rain did little to deter Kiley. Her nerves fried, she couldn’t sit in her cramped hotel room all day long debating her next move. With her sneakers on and tied, she scooped up her cell to tuck it in the pocket of her tight running pants, shoved her thin running wallet in the same pocket, hooked up her music, and headed out the door. She wasn’t terribly far from the Riverwalk so she made her way there, joining many early morning runners, and men and women rushing to their jobs.

You have no job. You have nothing.

The voice repeated the mantra with each pounding step against the pavement. Her music only caused her adrenaline to pump, and she sped up, not paying attention to where she ran and not caring.

Drops of rain dotted her face and arms, but she pushed harder. The negative voice refused to dissipate, and she replayed the past two years in her mind. Meeting the man of her dreams, learning six months into the relationship he was a two-faced bastard. Learning a few months after that what he was really involved in and how he made his money. Her saying she would leave him before he dragged her any deeper into the world of drug dealers in the city. She flinched, making a sharp turn down a random street. The first hit had been a slap when she threatened to leave, though it didn’t leave a mark.

The ones after that, those bruises were still healing, along with the cut over her brow from his ring when he’d struck her. He’d disappeared for three days, and Kiley wasn’t there if or when he came back. She packed what little she had, dug out her stash of cash for emergencies, and took a bit extra from the stash Ned, her ex, thought he was so clever to hide in the freezer. And she left, never looking back.

For three days, she’d wandered the city, moving to a new place each night. She had no one and had lost her only decent job a month ago when Ned refused to let her go to the office. She couldn’t even call and had received notice of her termination the next day.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ned had told her with a leer. “You’re my baby girl, and I’ll take care of you.” He’d kissed her and she’d shoved him off, earning another loud slap.

Kiley Innis didn’t come from a line of abused women. She shook her head, annoyed with that line of thinking. She had no idea what line of women she came from because she’d grown up an orphan, but she liked to think she was stronger than this. She’d read about warrior queens when she was little, women who fought back and helped others. She had tried to do that, getting her degree in social work and doing her part to help those in difficult situations.

And then Ned. He’d ruined her life. He’d ruined everything.

He made her do things, help him do things—she shook just thinking about. He’d promised no one would ever know, but she knew. She saw what he’d done to those who crossed him, and it haunted her every night when she closed her eyes. She’d stood by and done nothing.

She was a coward.

She slowed to a stop near an older part of the city, bending over to catch her breath. Her legs felt tight, so she gripped her right ankle and stretched her leg, counting off the seconds in her mind. She switched to her other leg when a hand grabbed the back of her shirt. She screamed, but another hand clamped down over her mouth. She kicked and punched, unable to see who was behind her. The earbuds were torn from her ears and a knife appeared at her throat. She froze at the feel of the cold steel on her skin.

“Your boyfriend should’ve known better than to steal from us,” a man grated in her ear.

Another stepped around in front of Kiley, his face covered with a bushy black beard and mustache, his black hair buzzed, and tattoos littering his neck and arms.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she whispered, but the knife pressed harder and she fell silent.

“Don’t lie, sweetheart, we know all about you and Ned. Too bad for you, we have to leave the old boy a message, and you’re going to help us.”

She gulped as he pinched her chin hard enough to make her wince. “Please. We’re not together… I’m not with him anymore. I left.”

“Sure you did,” he murmured. The malicious grin on his face almost made Kiley lose her minimal breakfast on his shoes. “Make it look good, but be sure she can still talk. We need Ned to know what happens when he fucks with us.”

Kiley struggled as the man stomped out of the alley and the other dragged her further back. She tried to scream or bite, but one of them whacked her over the head. Her limbs went limp at her sides. Her knees buckled, and she barely felt the next few blows as they rained down on her body. Her head flew back with a kick and blood spattered from her nose. With what little strength she had left, she curled into a ball, desperate to protect her head.

When the blows finally stopped, she drew in a ragged breath, but they weren’t finished. The one with the knife, who had a jagged scar running down the right side of his face, dug the blade into her thigh. Kiley screamed as the point bit into her flesh, but the other kicked her again and everything went black.

***

Dr. Charlie Devons breathed in the morning air from the ambulance bays outside the ER. The night had been long but not too busy. In the ER, a slow night was a good night. He had been a surgeon for a few years before he switched to working in the ER, where he could help more people, get them prepped and stabilized so they would hopefully make it through the night. With only ten minutes left on his shift, he needed a break from the beeping machines and gossiping nurses.

No matter how long he had been employed at Baptist Medical Center, the nurses persisted in flirting with him and talking about him behind his back. He turned down every offer for a date or early morning fling. Mixing business with pleasure wasn’t a good idea, and he wouldn’t risk ruining the environment with his nurses and the rest of the staff.

The sun tried to break through the heavy clouds as raindrops spattered his upturned face, and he shoved back his shaggy brown hair and rubbed his hands down his tired face. In a few days, he would be on vacation—a forced one, really. The ER director had gotten on his case again about not taking more time off, so Charlie planned a month-long vacation doing absolutely nothing. He might take a trip around Texas. His motorcycle could use a long road trip, and as much as he hated to admit it, he could too. This place wore on him.

A few nights ago, he’d lost a patient. Each death was hard, but this one got to him. The kid was barely fourteen and died because of a car wreck. The internal bleeding was too much to stop, and he died on Charlie’s table.

“A vacation will be good,” he whispered to himself. His parents lived in Maine. If he had enough time, he could visit them before winter set in.

His watch beeped and he turned to go back inside, but the wind ruffled his hair in a sudden gust and he frowned, turning back to stare at the drive. His eyes narrowed as he walked towards the street, listening intently. It sounded like footsteps and someone wheezing. Charlie’s instincts kicked in, and he rushed around the corner as the woman collapsed to the sidewalk.

“Shit.” He fell to his knees beside her, checking her pupils while he noted her other injuries. Her face was badly beaten and her clothes were torn. Blood, still damp, spotted her tight tank and pants clinging to her like a second skin. “Help! I need some help out here,” he bellowed.

She reached out a hand blindly and he caught it. “You’re safe. I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Help!”

Running steps headed his way as the two paramedics he’d seen earlier standing by their rig raced towards him. “Where did she come from?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know. Get a gurney. She’s in bad shape,” Charlie ordered.

The woman’s breathing was ragged and hollow. He worried she had broken ribs, or worse, but he wouldn’t know until she was inside and he could get a few X-rays. He stayed by her side as the paramedics wheeled the gurney over.

Charlie checked her neck, but it felt intact. Not wanting to take chances, he used the backboard anyway and maneuvered her onto it. Two of them lifted her on the gurney and he rushed her inside the ER.

“I thought your shift was over,” Lisa, head of the nursing staff, asked in confusion. “Where did she come from?”

“She walked in off the street,” he muttered as they moved her into an open bay.

Charlie went to work with Lisa by his side. The two had been a team for the past few years, and he moved with ease around her. The woman was unconscious as they checked her wounds. Most were superficial, bruises and scrapes, but he worried about the blows to her head. Lisa sighed sadly and grabbed his arm.

“Who does that shit?” she whispered.

Charlie followed her gaze to the woman’s torn pants and saw the word carved into her thigh. His anger boiled over as he threw out a stream of curses. Several nurses, including Lisa, eyed him with concern. Charlie was one of the steadiest hands in the ER. He rarely lost his temper, but this woman had been beaten up and left somewhere. Whoever had done this couldn’t leave it at bruises. No, they had carved a word into her leg. He pressed his fingers gently around the wound to see how deep it was. One of the cuts would need stitches, but there were no broken bones.

Lisa was hooking up an IV when the woman’s arms flailed and she screamed at the top of her lungs, fighting Lisa and Charlie.

“Get off me. Let me go!” she screeched, flailing on the gurney. “Get off! Get away!”

“Calm down,” Charlie urged, restraining her hands as more nurses rushed over to help. “You’re safe. You’re in the ER. You’re safe,” he repeated, but she continued to fight. She nailed him once in the face, and he grunted, shaking his head. “Sedative!”

He didn’t want to do it, but they couldn’t treat her injuries if she was this unstable mentally. She would hurt herself more, or him. The drugs kicked in and her arms and legs rested on the bed. Tears slipped from her eyes. Charlie’s heart went out to this poor woman. What had she gone through that morning? He checked her clothes again and feared the worst.

“Get our psychiatrist down here,” he told Lisa. “Just in case.”

“Do you want a rape kit ordered?” she asked quietly, and he nodded firmly. Her lips thinned, but she did as she was asked, staring sympathetically down at the woman.

If this woman wasn’t only beaten, it would be an even longer road to recovery. Charlie paid no attention to the clock as he stitched the two cuts needing stitches, cleaned out the rest, and wheeled her into an open bay along the sides. He cleared away long enough for another doctor to do the rape kit. When she stepped out, she gave him a hopeful smile, and his thoughts were positive that she hadn’t been violated. He stepped back to her bedside and checked her pupils several times, but her vitals appeared good considering the circumstances. She had no wallet and no phone on her so her name would have to wait.

“You should go home,” Millie, the ER director said.

Charlie nodded absently. “I will. I want to make sure she’s all right.”

“I heard she was a walk-in. What did the kit say?” she asked quietly, holding out her hand for the woman’s chart.

“She wasn’t, thank God, but some of those bruises are too old to be from today.”

“Psych will be down here as soon as she wakes up. You can go home, Charlie.”

“I can, but I’ll stick around, if you don’t mind.”

Millie rolled her eyes and handed the chart back. “Fine, but remember you’re going on vacation whether you like it or not.”

Charlie pulled the curtain closed around the woman’s bed to give her some privacy and sank into the chair at her bedside. He sagged in the chair, fuming silently about the bastards who did this to her. She’d fought back, he could tell from her fingers, but they’d beaten her soundly. He needed to call the cops when she woke up so they could file a report and be on the lookout for the assholes. He would’ve said it was a simple mugging, but the word carved into her thigh—bitch—made it personal. It made him think they knew her.

She shifted on the bed, and he stiffened, ready to restrain her if need be, but her face screwed up and relaxed again. Tentatively, he smoothed her burgundy hair from her face.

“What happened to you?” he whispered.

He wanted her to open her eyes and give him a smile, but she remained asleep thanks to the sedative. Technically, he was off the clock, but after an hour and the woman remained asleep, he went to check on the patients from the night before. Some of them were getting ready to go home, but a few were being moved upstairs to rooms so they could be monitored and tended to by other doctors. Charlie shuffled through the files on the counter until Lisa smacked his hand away.

“Go home or go sit by her bedside.”

“I’m still here, I can help out,” he argued.

“Nope. Millie left strict instructions. You can stay and help your latest patient, but that is it. Unless we hit a code black, which we rarely ever do, you’re not to help. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and backed away, his hands up.

“Good, now get.”

Grinning, he checked on the woman before heading to the doctor’s breakroom to grab a cup of coffee to wake himself up. He was pushing nearly twenty-fours, but this to be his last day before vacation. Now, he would be stuck with her a while longer. A voice told him he could leave, that the woman wasn’t his problem anymore, but leaving her side felt wrong. He stirred his coffee, staring out the windows into the ER. She’d managed to get her ass here from wherever she’d been attacked. He had found her, and he wouldn’t feel right leaving until he knew she would be all right.

When she had awakened and tried to fight them off, thinking she was still in the clutches of her attackers, Charlie wanted nothing more than to assure her she was safe, that she was away from those monsters. Even more so when he saw the faded bruises and the cut on her forehead that hadn’t been from the attack that day. They had scabbed over already. Whatever situation this woman came from, she had not let them take her down easily.

His coffee cup in hand, he meandered back to her bedside and settled in for a long morning of waiting for her to open those eyes and tell him what happened.

“Charlie,” a woman said, and his gaze flickered to one of the nurses peeking in through the curtain.

Outwardly, he smiled, but inwardly, he wished for her to go away. “Morning, Susie.”

“I thought you would’ve gone already, out on your motorcycle, enjoying your free-time.”

“Not yet. I had a last-minute case arrive,” he replied quietly, motioning to the unconscious woman in the bed. “Can I help you with something?”

“I wanted to ask if you had a chance to think over my offer.”

He sipped his coffee while his mind raced to think of an answer that wouldn’t make this situation too awkward for either of them. “I appreciate you asking me to your vacation home on the beach,” he told her, “but I think I’ll head up to Maine. See the folks and catch up.”

She pouted, her lips bright red with lipstick and her makeup flawless. For an ER nurse, she tried way too damn hard to look good. Her patients didn’t care what she looked like as long as she took care of them. She cocked her hip to the side and planted her hands on her hips.

“You’re going to take a month to see your folks?”

“I haven’t been up there in a while, so possibly.”

“And you don’t want to do anything else with your time?” she hinted.

Charlie swallowed hard as his gaze slipped over her body. She had an ample chest, a perfect ass, and hips to die for, but he’d been tempted by her once. Thankfully, some part of his mind kicked in at the last second and he’d disentangled himself from her body in the storage closet. The day had been a hard one. He’d lost a patient and his desperation was high. She’d taken advantage of it and he nearly let her.

“Sorry. If I change my mind, I’ll call you, though,” he promised.

“You better. A month off and no one to help you relax—such a shame.”

Charlie shrugged, but the woman in the bed muttered, and his attention turned to her. He stood to check her vitals and waited for her eyes to open. She blinked up at him, and he gave her a warm smile, ignoring Susie’s huff of annoyance. “Can you hear me?”

The woman blinked again, but when he spied those emerald irises, they widened in fear and she lashed out. Charlie pressed her shoulders down and called for help. Susie jumped in, trying to keep the woman’s flailing legs from nailing her in the face. A few more nurses rushed over, and they managed to give her another sedative, careful not to give her too much. Charlie watched the monitor, but her heart rate steadied and her breathing was less labored.

“Damn it,” he groused. “She’ll need that psych evaluation when she wakes up.”

“Do you want to move her to another room?” Lisa suggested. “Somewhere more private in case it gets…well, personal?”

Charlie squeezed the woman’s hand, doing what he could to comfort her. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

He arranged a room for the woman and helped move her there and out of the noisy ER. The sounds might have set her off, the beeping and crying and the random yelling of other patients. He thanked the nurses, and they let him be. He pulled a chair over and made himself as comfortable as possible, resting his head on his hand as his eyes drifted closed. As he dozed, the fear in her eyes stuck with him, haunting him. So much fear and hate in those eyes, but the emotion he saw worrying him the most was the despair. It poured off her in waves each time she lashed out. But despair over what?