Special ops, maybe? Navy SEALs?
If so, then what in hell were they doing here in coastal Maine?
Isobel slammed through the door of her surgery and snapped on the lights, only to scream when she saw Chase standing in the hallway to her house.
In an almost mirror image of Daniel, one corner of his mouth turned upward. She shed her coat as she rushed to the back room, giving a cursory glance at the phone on her way by. Had he already cut the line?
“It no longer works,” he said from right behind her.
She continued on to her desk, took out a set of keys, then unlocked her medicine cabinet and began reading labels.
“No drugs,” Chase said over her shoulder.
She looked up in surprise. “You expect me to pull a branch out of your friend while he’s awake?”
When he merely nodded, she grabbed a bottle of anesthesia. “Yeah, well, Daniel might be a tough guy, but I’m not. I refuse to work on a conscious patient.”
He reached past her and pulled out a different bottle, swapped it for the one she was holding, and put the anesthesia back in the cabinet.
“You know medicine?” She shoved the bottle at him. “Then you pull out the branch, and I’ll assist.”
“I know chemicals,” he said, walking away. “Daniel stays awake.”
Micah and the man from the backseat came through the door, Daniel shouldered between them.
Isobel rushed to her operating table, gathered up the books piled on it, and tossed them onto a nearby counter.
Chase startled her by lunging after the books, catching several of the journals as they slid off the counter. “Have a care, woman!” he snapped, shooting her a glare that should have turned her to toast.
Isobel gaped at him, only to realize the other men had also stilled, looking equally horrified. “They’re just old monthly journals,” she said as Chase carefully set them on the counter, his hands hovering to make sure they didn’t slide off again. She took down two surgical gowns. “You planning to hold him up while I pull out that branch or are you going to lay him down? Chase, you’re scrubbing up with me.” She tossed the men a surgical blanket. “Take off all his clothes, then you two are leaving so you don’t contaminate my OR.” She waved toward the reception room. “There’s a hallway that leads into my house; just watch out for Snuggles.”
“Snuggles?” Micah said, looking up from unlacing Daniel’s boot.
“My pet bunny. But instead of running from strangers like a proper rabbit, she likes to dart out at people so she can watch them trip over themselves,” she explained, slipping into her gown. “You can make a pot of coffee if you want, and help yourselves to whatever’s in the fridge. Oh, my ice cream! Would one of you go out to the truck and get it before it melts and put it in the freezer?”
The men stopped undressing Daniel to look at her.
She smiled, rather proud that she had finally stopped shaking despite the fact that there were four threatening giants in her surgery. “I know the kidnappee doesn’t usually give orders to her kidnappers, but these are unusual circumstances, wouldn’t you say, gentlemen?”
A weak chuckle came from the table. “Her surgery, her rules, gentlemen,” Daniel said. “Get Isobel’s ice cream.”
Micah leaned down next to his ear. “What’s ice cream?” he whispered.
Isobel stopped halfway to the sink. He hadn’t really just asked that, had he?
“You’ll know when you find something that’s melting,” she heard Daniel whisper.
Isobel clutched the rim of the sink and closed her eyes. She might be acting like she was in control, but honest to God, she felt as if she’d stepped out of that store and into the twilight zone. Who in hell were these brutes?
She jumped when Chase set his hand on her shoulder. “You’re doing fine, Isobel. This will be over in a few hours.”
“My patients are dogs and cats and horses and cows, not humans.”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “The biology is similar. Think of Daniel as a horse, if you like. Surely you’ve treated equine puncture wounds.”
“But if I can’t stem the bleeding when we pull out that branch, he could go into shock and die. I have no way of replacing the blood he’s going to lose.”
“We can give him a transfusion.”
“But I can’t test for his type,” she cried softly. “And even if I knew what it was, I don’t have any blood to give him.”
“The three of us can supply what you need.”
Isobel leaned away in surprise. “You know you’re all the same type?”
He turned on the water, then nudged her around to face the sink. “We’re a match,” he said, filling his hands with soap. “Wash up, Doctor. The sooner we begin, the sooner we’ll be gone.”
Isobel scrubbed up, slipped into her gloves, then grabbed two surgical masks and handed one to Chase. She walked over to her operating table as she tied her own mask in place, folded down the blanket covering Daniel, and immediately started shaking again. A piece of wood as thick as her thumb was sticking out of what looked like a shirt wrapped tightly around his midsection, leaving two inches of the branch exposed. She was relieved to see there wasn’t much blood seeping out.
Chase walked up on the opposite side of the table and started to unwrap the bandage, but Isobel stilled his hand. “I want to give him an exam first.” She moved to Daniel’s head and found him looking intently at her. “Where else do you hurt?”
“No place else. It wasn’t a long fall, and the tree . . . slowed me down.”
She touched an angry bruise on the inside of his shoulder. He tightened defensively. But when she fingered the thick metal collar he was wearing, Chase pulled her hand away.
“Don’t touch that, please,” he said.
“What is it; some sort of communication device or something?” She couldn’t tell if Chase was also wearing one, as he had on a black turtleneck—just like the other two men were wearing. She looked him right in the eyes. “Are you guys Navy SEALs? Not that it matters, because that collar needs to come off.”
“It stays.”
She noticed he hadn’t answered her question about whether they were SEALs. “But his clavicle might be broken, and the swelling could choke him.”
“It stays,” Daniel echoed. “Just get the damn branch out of me.”
“My surgery, my rules,” she reminded him.
All that got her was another tight smile. “Except in this instance.”
She looked at Chase again. “Okay, let’s knock him out.”
Daniel also looked at Chase. “No.”
“Not completely,” Chase assured him. “Just enough to keep you manageable.”
“No drugs. I need for my head to be clear.”
Isobel carefully pressed on his shoulder, and he snapped his gaze to her with a growl. “It won’t knock you out, it’ll just make you not care. So what do you weigh, big guy?” she asked.
“He’s around a hundred kilos,” Chase answered.
Isobel arched a brow. “What’s that in good old American pounds?”
“Approximately two hundred and twenty.”
She did a quick calculation in her head, filled a syringe with the tranquilizer Chase had chosen, and gently slid the needle directly into Daniel’s vein.
She handed Chase a pair of surgical scissors. “You can cut off the bandage while waiting for the medicine to kick in. I’m going to x-ray that shoulder and his torso.” She rolled her portable X-ray machine over to the table. “Um . . . could you look under the blanket at his lower extremities?” she asked, fighting the blush creeping into her cheeks. “I need to make sure he doesn’t have any injuries we’re overlooking.”
Chase lifted the blanket and Isobel immediately got busy positioning the X-ray machine over Daniel’s shoulder, leaning down to make sure it was aimed correctly.
“You have unusual eyes,” Daniel said.
She turned her head in surprise.
“They’re a mi
xture of green and gold,” he continued, his own blue gaze locked on hers. “And very beautiful and . . . expressive.”
She shot him a smile, then remembered she was wearing a mask. “You’re the first patient I’ve ever had tell me that.” She started positioning the X-ray machine again. “Unless you count slobbering kisses and wagging tails.”
She draped a lead apron over the lower half of his body, then stepped away, pulling Chase with her. She depressed the button in her hand, repositioned the machine along Daniel’s torso and stepped back, and depressed the button again. “So, did you find anything interesting below his waist?” she asked, only to wince at the way that sounded.
Dammit, she wasn’t used to working on humans, much less handsome giants!
Chase’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he finished removing the bandage. “I can’t say that I found anything particularly interesting,” he drawled.
Isobel studied the digital X-ray screen, wishing she’d given herself the tranquilizer. Honest to God, if her cheeks got any hotter she was going to burst into flames. She jumped when Daniel suddenly wrapped his fingers around her wrist.
He smiled up at her, his eyes glazed and unfocused. “You should look for yourself, Isobel,” he said, guiding her hand toward the blanket with surprising strength. “Maybe you will find something interesting down there.”
“Christ, how much tranquilizer did you give him?” Chase growled, prying Daniel’s hand off her wrist.
“Not enough, apparently,” she said with a slightly hysterical laugh, stepping away. She quickly sobered, however, when she finally got a good look at the fully exposed wound just below his ribs—that was now bleeding profusely. She studied the digital X-ray, positioned the screen so Chase could see it, and half filled another syringe with tranquilizer.
“It’s deep, Chase,” she said softly, sticking the needle in Daniel’s arm before either of them could stop her. “And not only are there fragments of wood floating around in there, it looks as if that branch may have nicked his kidney.” She took a steadying breath. “This is beyond my expertise. He needs a real doctor. Let me stabilize him and call for an ambulance to take him to Ellsworth.”
Chase looked from the screen to Daniel, then to her. “No. You will take out the branch.”
“Dammit. Don’t you understand that I could kill him! Is whatever you guys are hiding from so important that you’d risk your friend’s life?”
“Yes.”
The hairs on the back of her neck rose at his softly spoken answer. Whoever these men were, and whatever they were doing here, apparently was worth dying for.
And killing for?
Isobel looked down at the branch sticking out of Daniel’s side, took another steadying breath, and finally picked up her scalpel. Not that it mattered if they did kill her, because the moment she’d stuck that needle in Daniel’s arm, her life as she knew it was over. If the authorities ever found out she’d performed surgery on a human being, not only could she lose her veterinary license, she could also go to jail.
Which certainly put her dating losers into perspective, didn’t it?
Three
Isobel scooped another spoonful of ice cream out of the pint container, only absently aware of dribbling some on Snuggles sitting on her lap. Honest to God, she felt as if she’d spent the last five hours wrestling Daniel away from the devil.
And the frightening thing was, she still didn’t know if she’d won.
Her patient was sleeping peacefully—thanks to the third injection of tranquilizer she’d given him half an hour ago—and she was trying to come to terms with the fact that she had actually poked around inside a live human being.
Which was something she never, ever, wanted to do again.
Slurping down more of her ice cream, Isobel studied her surprisingly competent surgical assistant. Chase looked nearly as battered as she felt, his feet propped on the bed as he quietly slept in a chair on the opposite side of her guest room. He’d thrown his blood-stained surgical gown and turtleneck in the trash, and was left wearing a black T-shirt. There was a small bandage on his heavily muscled arm from where she’d set up a direct blood transfusion, and his hair had specks of dried blood in it.
But it was the thick metal collar around his neck, exactly like the one Daniel was wearing, that truly puzzled her. If these guys were military, she hoped to God they were on her side.
They certainly had the physiques of soldiers. But even stranger than dressing alike, they could almost be clones. All four of them had piercing blue eyes and short dark hair, they were all the same height—which she estimated at six-three—and they all appeared to weigh within ten pounds of one another.
Oh yeah, she’d definitely stepped into the twilight zone.
Isobel folded Snuggles’ ear around so the rabbit could clean off the mess she’d made, and wondered how grown men could not know what ice cream was. As soon as she’d finished supervising settling Daniel into bed, she’d gone straight to the kitchen to get her ice cream, fully intending to pour a liberal dose of Baileys Irish Cream over the top of it. Only she hadn’t found the pint of maple fudge in the freezer, but in the fridge!
Nor had they made any coffee, despite her asking for some at least twice during the five-hour surgery. She’d had to settle for caffeine-laced soda instead—which had been lukewarm because apparently they didn’t know what soda was, either.
As soon as they’d helped carry Daniel to bed and assured themselves she hadn’t killed him, Noah and Micah had disappeared back into her den, where they seemed to methodically be working their way through her library of textbooks and journals. One or both of them had come into the bedroom several times in the last hour and asked her to explain the physiology of some animal they were reading about.
And if that wasn’t strange enough, when she’d finally asked them why they were interested in the autoimmune systems of cats, dogs, mice, and squirrels, they’d both suddenly clammed up and left and hadn’t returned since.
Isobel drank the last of the ice cream right out of the cardboard container, then set it on the floor beside her chair. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve with a sigh, set Snuggles down, and stood up. After feeling Daniel’s forehead and checking his pulse, she headed toward the hall.
“Where are you going?” Chase asked.
She stopped in the doorway and looked back to find he hadn’t moved a muscle except to open his eyes. “I have a horse in the barn that lost a fight with a barbed wire fence, and I need to go check on him.”
Chase dropped his feet to the floor and stood up. “I’ll come with you.”
Isobel held up her hand. “No, you have to stay here and let me know if Daniel so much as moans. He’s still in critical condition and needs constant supervision.”
“Then Micah will go to the barn with you.”
“Look,” she said tiredly. “You don’t have to worry I’m going to escape and alert the authorities about what’s going on here. Whether you realize it or not, my saving your friend has put my career in jeopardy. You disappear just as soon as it’s safe for Daniel to travel, and I will simply pretend this has all been a bad dream.”
“What do you mean, in jeopardy?”
She waved toward the bed. “If anyone finds out what I’ve done, at the very least I might lose my veterinary license, and at the worst I could get arrested for performing surgery on a human.” She shot him a tight smile. “So I promise, I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“Tell what?” Micah asked from right behind her.
Isobel jumped in surprise and turned to find Micah holding yet another one of her textbooks, open to a page on . . . now he was reading about raccoons?
“You will accompany Isobel while she checks on a horse in the barn,” Chase said, also feeling Daniel’s pulse before walking over to them. “Then take her upstairs and have her pack whatever she’ll need for the next five days.” He moved his gaze to Isobel when she gasped. “Make sure you include warm clothes, as the cabin has
only a woodstove for heat.”
“Excuse me?” she whispered. “W-what cabin?”
“You intend to take her to the island?” Micah asked, apparently as surprised as she was. “But why? It’s bad enough we were forced to break our rule of not engaging the locals; you can’t mean to continue doing so.”
Chase nodded toward Daniel. “He’s in danger of dying if we don’t. Tell Noah to pack some food for them.” He looked at Isobel again. “When you’re done upstairs, gather whatever medical supplies you’ll need.”
“That wasn’t our deal. You said if I patched him up, you’d all be gone by morning. You have enough medical knowledge to take care of Daniel yourself.”
“The three of us can’t stay with him, so that leaves only you.”
“Then why can’t I take care of him here?” she cried. “I promise, I won’t tell anyone!”
Chase stepped past her into the hall. “I will allow you to make one phone call before we leave, to someone who can come tend your animals for the next five days.”
“Dammit, no! That wasn’t our deal.”
His entire countenance suddenly changed, his features hardening and his eyes turning dangerously cold. Isobel took a step back at the realization that Daniel hadn’t been bluffing when he’d said Chase would have killed anyone in the house.
“Our deal, Doctor, was for you to save Daniel’s life. And since that has not yet been accomplished, I have no choice but to take you to the island so that the three of us can continue our mission.” He reached down and scooped up Snuggles when she came hopping into the hall, and gently wrapped his fingers around the rabbit’s neck. “Continue cooperating, Doctor, and both your career and your pet,” he said ever so softly, “will remain intact.”
“You wouldn’t,” she gasped. “She’s just an innocent animal!”
“Do not test me, Isobel. All of us have sworn to do whatever we must to achieve our goal, at whatever cost to us—or anyone or any thing we encounter.”
Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 2