Julie Garwood - [3 Book Box Set]

by Gentle Warrior:Honor's Splendour:Lion's Lady

  The scent of Calvin Klein’s Obsession came floating through the grille that separated them. It was a distinct, heavy, sweet fragrance Tom recognized because his housekeeper in Rome had given him a bottle of the cologne on his last birthday. A little of the stuff went a long way, and the penitent had gone overboard. The confessional reeked. The scent, combined with the smell of mildew and sweat, made Tom feel as though he were trying to breathe through a plastic bag. His stomach lurched and he forced himself not to gag.

  “Are you there, Father?”

  “I’m here,” Tom whispered. “When you’re ready to confess your sins, you may begin.”

  “This is … difficult for me. My last confession was a year ago. I wasn’t given absolution then. Will you absolve me now?”

  There was an odd, singsong quality to the voice and a mocking tone that put Tom on his guard. Was the stranger simply nervous because it had been such a long time since his last confession, or was he being deliberately irreverent?

  “You weren’t given absolution?”

  “No, I wasn’t, Father. I angered the priest. I’ll make you angry too. What I have to confess will… shock you. Then you’ll become angry like the other priest.”

  “Nothing you say will shock or anger me,” Tom assured him.

  “You’ve heard it all before? Is that it, Father?”

  Before Tom could answer, the penitent whispered, “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

  The mocking had intensified. Tom stiffened. “Would you like to begin?”

  “Yes,” the stranger replied. “Bless me, Father, for I will sin.”

  Confused by what he’d heard, Tom leaned closer to the grille and asked the man to start over.

  “Bless me, Father, for I will sin.”

  “You want to confess a sin you’re going to commit?”

  “I do.”

  “Is this some sort of a game or a—”

  “No, no, not a game,” the man said. “I’m deadly serious. Are you getting angry yet?”

  A burst of laughter, as jarring as the sound of gunfire in the middle of the night, shot through the grille.

  Tom was careful to keep his voice neutral when he answered. “No, I’m not angry, but I am confused. Surely you realize you can’t be given absolution for sins you’re contemplating. Forgiveness is for those who have realized their mistakes and are truly contrite. They’re willing to make restitution for their sins.”

  “Ah, but Father, you don’t know what the sins are yet. How can you deny me absolution?”

  “Naming the sins doesn’t change anything.”

  “Oh, but it does. A year ago I told another priest exactly what I was going to do, but he didn’t believe me until it was too late. Don’t make the same mistake.”

  “How do you know the priest didn’t believe you?”

  “He didn’t try to stop me. That’s how I know.”

  “How long have you been a Catholic?”

  “All my life.”

  “Then you know that a priest cannot acknowledge the sin or the sinner outside of the confessional. The seal of silence is sacred. Exactly how could this other priest have stopped you?”

  “He could have found a way. I was … practicing then, and I was cautious. It would have been very easy for him to stop me, so it’s his fault, not mine. It won’t be easy now.”

  Tom was desperately trying to make sense out of what the man was saying. Practice? Practice what? And what was the sin the priest could have prevented?

  “I thought I could control it,” the man said.

  “Control what?”

  “The craving.”

  “What was the sin you confessed?”

  “Her name was Millicent. A nice, old-fashioned name, don’t you think? Her friends called her Millie, but I didn’t. I much preferred Millicent. Of course, I wasn’t what you would call a friend.”

  Another burst of laughter pierced the dead air. Tom’s forehead was beaded with perspiration, but he suddenly felt cold. This wasn’t a prankster. He dreaded what he was going to hear, yet he was compelled to ask.

  “What happened to Millicent?”

  “I broke her heart.”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “What do you think happened to her?” the man demanded, his impatience clear now. “I killed her. It was messy; there was blood everywhere, all over me. I was terribly inexperienced back then. I hadn’t perfected my technique. When I went to confession, I hadn’t killed her yet. I was still in the planning stage and the priest could have stopped me, but he didn’t. I told him what I was going to do.”

  “Tell me, how could he have stopped you?”

  “Prayer,” he answered, a shrug in his voice. “I told him to pray for me, but he didn’t pray hard enough, now did he? I still killed her. It’s a pity, really. She was such a pretty little thing … much prettier than the others.”

  Dear God, there were other women? How many others?

  “How many crimes have you—”

  The stranger interrupted him. “Sins, Father,” he said. “I committed sins, but I might have been able to resist if the priest had helped me. He wouldn’t give me what I needed.”

  “What did you need?”

  “Absolution and acceptance. I was denied both.”

  The stranger suddenly slammed his fist into the grille. Rage that must have been simmering just below the surface erupted full force as he spewed out in grotesque detail exactly what he had done to the poor innocent Millicent.

  Tom was overwhelmed and sickened by the horror of it all. Dear God, what should he do?

  “Well, Father, aren’t you going to ask me if I’m sorry for my sins?” he taunted.

  “No, you aren’t contrite.”

  A suffocating silence filled the confessional. And then, in a serpent’s hiss, the voice returned.

  “The craving’s come back.”

  JULIE GARWOOD is one of the best-loved authors of our time; there are more than thirty million copies of her books in print. Her most recent titles include Slow Burn, Murder List, Mercy, Heartbreaker, For the Roses, the #1 bestselling Clayborne Brides trilogy (One Pink Rose, One White Rose, and One Red Rose), Come the Spring, Ransom, and The Secret.

  For more information, visit Ms. Garwood’s site at www.juliegarwood.com.

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  ONE

  The first time she slit a man’s throat she felt sick to her stomach. The second time? Not so much.

  After she cut five or six more, the blade in her left hand began to feel like an extension of her body, and she started to take it all in stride. The exhilaration subsided, and so did the nausea. There was no longer a rush of anxiety, no longer a racing heartbeat. Blood didn’t faze her. The thrill was gone, and that, in her line of work, was a very good thing.

  Dr. Eleanor Kathleen Sullivan, or Ellie as she was called by her family and friends, was just four days shy of completing a grueling surgical fellowship in one of the busiest trauma centers in the Midwest. Since trauma was her specialty, she had certainly seen her share of mangled and brutalized bodies. It was her responsibility to put them back together, and as a senior fellow, she had the added duty of training the first- and second- year residents.

  St. Vincent’s emergency room had been full since 4:00 a.m. that morning, and Ellie was finishing what she hoped was her last surgery of the day, a repair of a splenic rupture. A teenager, barely old enough to have a driver’s license, had decided to test the limits of the speedometer in his parents’ Camry and had lost control, rolling the car over an embankment and landing upside down in an open field. Lucky for him, he had been wearing a seat belt, and luckier still, a man following some distance behind him had seen the whole thing and was able to call for an ambulance immediately. The boy made it to the emergency room just in time.

  Ellie was observed by three second- year surgical residents, who hung on her every word. Sh
e was a natural teacher and, unlike 90 percent of the surgeons on staff at St. Vincent’s Hospital, didn’t have much of an ego. She was amazingly patient with the medical students and residents. While she worked, she explained—and explained again—until they finally understood what she was doing and why. No question was deemed too insignificant or foolish, which was one of the many reasons they idolized her, and for the male residents, the fact that she was drop- dead gorgeous didn’t hurt. Because she was such a talented surgeon and supportive teacher, all these fledgling doctors fought to sign up for her rotation. Ironically, what they didn’t know was that she was younger than most of them.

  “You’re off duty this weekend, aren’t you, Ellie?”

  Ellie glanced over at Dr. Kevin Andrews, the anesthesiologist, who had asked the question. He had joined the staff six months before and, since the day he’d met Ellie, had been hounding her to go out with him. He was an outrageous flirt and yet very sweet. Blond hair, blue eyes, tall and well built with an adorable smile, he could turn the head of almost every woman in the hospital, but for Ellie there just wasn’t any spark.

  “Yes, I am. I have the whole weekend off,” she answered. “Charlie, would you like to close up for me?” she asked one of the hovering residents.

  “Absolutely, Dr. Sullivan.”

  “You better hurry,” Andrews said. “I’m waking him up.”

  The resident looked panic-stricken.

  “Take your time, Charlie. He’s just messing with you,” she said, a smile in her voice.

  “Tuesday’s your last day at St. Vincent’s, isn’t it?” Andrews asked.

  “That’s right. Tuesday’s my last official day. I might help out on a temporary basis later on, but I’m not promising anything yet.”

  “Then you could decide to come back permanently.”

  She didn’t reply.

  He persisted. “They’ll give you anything you want. You could name your price, your hours . . . you should stay here, Ellie. You belong here.”

  She didn’t agree or disagree. In truth, she didn’t know where she belonged. It had been such a hard road to get this far, she hadn’t had time to think about the future. At least that was the excuse she used for her indecision.

  “Maybe,” she finally conceded. “I just don’t know yet.”

  She stood over Charlie, watching like a mother hen. “I want those stitches tight.”

  “Yes, Dr. Sullivan.”

  “So Monday night is my last chance to take you to heaven?” Andrews asked in a teasing drawl.

  She laughed. “Heaven? Last week you were going to rock my world. Now you’re going to take me to heaven?”

  “I guarantee it. I’ve got testimonials if you want to see them.”

  “It’s not going to happen, Kevin.”

  “I’m not giving up.”

  She sighed. “I know.”

  As she checked the last suture, she rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck to one side then the other to get the kinks out. She’d been in the OR since 5:00 a.m., which meant she had been bent over patients for eleven hours. Sad to say, that wasn’t a record for her.

  She felt wrung out and stiff and sore. A good run around the park would get those muscles moving, she decided, maybe even rev up her energy.

  “You know what would help you get rid of a stiff neck?” Andrews said.

  “Let me guess. A trip to heaven?”

  One of the nurses snorted with laughter. “He’s awfully persistent, Dr. Sullivan. Maybe you should give in.”

  Ellie removed her gloves and dropped them in the trash bag by the OR doors. “Thanks, Megan, but I think I’ll just go for a run instead.” As she pushed the doors wide, she untied her surgical mask and pulled off her cap, shaking her blond hair loose to fall to her shoulders.

  Twenty minutes later she was officially off duty. She changed into her workout clothes, a pair of faded red shorts and a white tank top. She double-tied her beat- up running shoes, grabbed a rubber band and swept her hair up in a ponytail, slipped her iPod into one pocket and her cell phone into the other, and she was ready. Walking a maze of corridors to get outside, she avoided the direct route through the ER for fear she’d get waylaid with another case.

  There was never a lack of patients rolling through the doors. Along with the usual emergencies—the car accidents, the heart attacks, the work injuries—the ER saw a steady stream of victims of violent crimes. The vast majority were young men. Gangs roamed the area east of the highway, and shooting one another seemed to be a nightly sport. Since St. Vincent’s was the largest trauma center in St. Louis, all the serious cases came to them. Weekends were a nightmare for the staff. There were times, especially during the hot summer months, when gurneys lined the halls of the ER with patients handcuffed to the railings while they waited to go into surgery. Additional police had to be routinely called in to monitor them to make certain one gang member hadn’t been placed too close to a rival.

  Ellie became a member of the One Hundred Club when she removed her one hundredth bullet. It wasn’t a club she wanted to join, but she would always remember the case. The young man was only twenty years old, and it was the third time he’d been shot. She couldn’t forget his insolence and his cold, empty eyes. They were almost as lifeless as the cadavers down in the morgue. Patching up these boys so that they could return to the streets and the same violence was heart wrenching, and she prayed, with every surgery, that this time they would learn something, that this time they would find a new life. It was a naive hope, but she clung to it anyway.

  Like the other overworked and underpaid residents and fellows, Ellie operated on broken bodies, the consequence of violence. But she had never actually witnessed a crime . . . until today.

  It was a hot and humid late afternoon. Two medical students had caught up with Ellie just as she began her run on the one-mile track in Cambridge Park, a vast area that sat adjacent to the hospital. Heavy rain clouds hung over them, and all three panted for air. After the first mile, both students dropped out, but Ellie was determined to get in at least one more mile before calling it quits. She made mental lists as she ran. She had a million things to do before heading home to Winston Falls.

  Dear God, it was muggy. The humidity was so thick, she felt as though she were running through a sauna. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her drenched clothes clung to her body. Her friend Jennifer, a nurse in pediatrics, who was taking a shortcut across the track to get to the ER entrance, shouted to Ellie that she was crazy to run in this heat. Ellie waved and continued on. She probably was crazy, but getting any time to work out was such a luxury, she couldn’t afford to be choosy about the weather.

  Ellie could hear faint cheering coming from the new soccer field across the street to the north, and as she rounded the curve, she saw the players—high school—age girls—sprinting across the field. From the large number of fans in the bleachers, she guessed it was an important game.

  The administrator of the hospital, the board, and a plethora of attorneys had fought the soccer field. They wanted to purchase the land to build another huge parking garage, and Ellie was happy they had lost their bid. Like the track and small playground to the south, the soccer field was far enough away from the hospital that, no matter how much noise the teams and fans made, the patients weren’t disturbed.

  Ellie was a football, basketball, and soccer fan, in that order. She loved to watch most sporting events. She admired the grace, skill, and finesse of the players, probably because she didn’t possess any of those attributes herself. She had been such an awkward child, her mother had enrolled her in ballet classes, and she never got to play a sport. When she wasn’t tripping over her own feet trying to do a plié, she was reading. She was much more comfortable with her books. Her aunt Vivien liked to call her a bookworm.

  No time to watch any games today, she thought. She had way too much to do. She returned to her mental list of things to be accomplished before she could head home to her sister’s we
dding. Oh God, how she dreaded that. She wished she had another week to get ready for the ordeal; then admitted to herself that no amount of time would prepare her for the whispers and the sympathetic smiles from her friends and family. Who could blame them? After all, her sister Ava was marrying Ellie’s ex-fiancé. It was going to be a week of mortification, she decided. But, hey, she was tough. She could handle it.

  “Yeah, right,” she whispered.

  And then there was Evan Patterson. Just thinking about him made her stomach hurt. Would he dare show up in Winston Falls? God, she hoped not. But if he did, would she need to get another restraining order, even if she was going to be home for only a few days? She could feel herself getting worked up and had to force herself to calm down. She was an adult now, and she could handle anything that came her way. Even a maniac, she told herself. Besides, she was sure Evan wasn’t back in Winston Falls. If he had returned, her father would have alerted her.

  Ellie didn’t want to worry about Patterson now or think about the wedding. Instead, she chose to focus on the task at hand. Just a little more than a half mile to go, then a lovely cold shower. She took her earphones from her pocket and was about to turn on her iPod to listen to a lecture on new thoracotomy procedures when she heard a loud pop.

  Ellie stopped running. Lightning? She looked up at the ominous sky just as another pop echoed, then a third and a fourth in rapid succession. Had lightning hit a transformer? That would explain the bursts . . . except there hadn’t been any lightning.

  Gunshots? Had to be. As many bullets as Ellie had removed from gunshot victims, she’d never actually heard the sound of a gun firing. The noise came from somewhere up ahead. She glanced to the right toward the soccer field. No panic there. The game was still going on, so she had to be wrong. If not gunshots . . . then what?

  Five or six seconds had passed since the first popping sound. Ellie reached for her earphones again. Okay, she’d been mistaken.

  Then the screaming started.

  Everything happened so fast. In the span of just a few more seconds, Ellie observed the chaotic scene unfold in front of her as though it were happening in slow motion.