First, though, she would have to get rid of the bandages, an awkward task without a pair of scissors to start the ball rolling. Plus, her hands were trembling so badly, she might puncture some other body part if she wielded a sharp object.
“I can do this,” she repeated with conviction. “I will.”
Slipping her fingers underneath the bandage closest to her ear, she tugged, got nowhere, felt faint, and had to sit down on the toilet, awkwardly. The bandage stuck to her cheek. From the slight gap she’d made came the smell of clotted blood and antiseptic dressing, odors that sent her equilibrium spinning.
God, Chloe. You are tougher than this.
Somehow, she made it back to her feet, hardly able to draw any breath at all now, due to the pain in her chest. She must have been bruised pretty good to hurt this much. So, okay. She’d have to be more careful, rearrange her immediate goals. The bandages would have to stay put until she got to the lab. There were scissors there.
Easing forward, Chloe opened the stall door, looked out, saw no one. Clutching her jeans as if they were a talisman to get her through this crap unnoticed, she set out.
“Are you all right, Doctor?” Officer Delmonico asked from her place across the table from Parker.
“Yes, why?” he replied.
“Did you hear my question?”
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “I was thinking about the escapee.”
“Is there anything special about her?” the officer asked.
“Special? In what way?”
“I believe I asked you that question.”
Parker wrapped his hands around his coffee cup to give his hands something to do. “No. Not special, in terms of being different from any other patient who falls into my path after taking a beating.” Sarcasm, and lies.
“Can you tell me what her injuries were?”
“You don’t already know?”
“Broken wrist, cracked ribs, hole in her head,” Officer Delmonico recited. “What else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“She didn’t speak?”
“She had a tube down her throat for a while. She drifted in and out of consciousness.” Parker searched Delmonico’s face. “Do you work with Wilson?”
She nodded. “On occasion.”
“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?” He was pressing the limits of personal information here, but dammit, he felt feisty, antsy, anxious. He had work to do. He had to find the girl, then get out. He had to prepare himself for the night ahead, was already feeling the effects of the moon’s imminent rise. Nothing in the last two days had been ordinary, that’s for sure. Tonight was certain to be more of the same. The hospital felt confining. The officer across from him added to his uneasiness.
“It’s lotion,” she replied easily enough, but it was clear by the set of her jaw that she didn’t want to play games. Neither did he, really, but talking about the woman who had gotten away wasn’t in his realm of capability at the moment. He had guarded, mixed feelings about her disappearance. He still felt possessive, as if he’d just lost a piece of himself.
“Detective Wilson is in Homicide?” Parker asked, getting back to the reason he was facing an officer of the law.
“Yes,” she said. “And he is particularly interested in the area where you found the girl. There have been problems in and around the parks lately, though not as far out as that. Gang-related problems. Muggings, beatings, the violence escalating into a couple of recent deaths that were quite gruesome. One of those victims was an undercover detective, and the reason Wilson got involved.”
“So you’re worried this gang’s territory might have expanded?” Parker asked.
“We thought we had cleaned up the mess. We found a warehouse on the east side where an illegal fight club had festered. Really bad guys. Lethal drugs. Weapons cache. Some of the members of that club killed themselves before we could round them up—a sort of mass suicide generated, we believe, by the properties of the drugs they’d ingested. Others were killed trying their damnedest to kill us. In the chaos, we missed the main guy. A truly ugly fellow got away. Our concern is that he’s back in business, back in the game.”
“Does this guy have a name?”
“Chavez.”
“Distinctive appearance? For the record?”
“Black hair, dark skin, unusual eyes—at times. He has other disguises and can look completely different, which makes catching him harder. He hasn’t been seen since that raid. Before that, we had him locked up for a while for that detective’s murder, but he was released on bond. He is now wanted by everybody, but can lie low since he has a seemingly unending supply of idiots willing to do his bidding.”
Parker nodded. “You think that the five guys who turned up out there could be working for him? They fit typical gang descriptions, but didn’t really offer up any discernible leadership qualities, even though one of them acted like a king. I wouldn’t have pegged that one for a ringleader, though. He seemed more along the lines of a wannabe to me. Dangerous, yes, don’t get me wrong. He quite probably used my patient for a punching bag, and then ripped open her face, in a ‘five strapping jerks to one tiny female’ ratio, which certainly places him in the upper echelon of creeps.”
Delmonico set her cup down. “So, you and another guy chased them away?”
Parker eyed her warily. Better be careful now.
“It seems that we did,” he said.
“Did you have a gun with you?” she pressed.
“I don’t own a weapon, Officer.”
“Then the guy who helped you must have had one?”
“He didn’t brandish one if he did.”
“Was he a big man? Large enough that the two of you chased five gangbangers off, earning only minor scratches and a tetanus shot?”
“Are you questioning my ability to fight?” Parker teased, guardedly.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re intimidating enough, Doctor, in a physical scrabble. I’m just wondering why the other guy didn’t stick around. You say you didn’t know him?”
“Maybe you should read Wilson’s notebook, but the answer is no. He came out of the bushes. I’d never seen him before. I’m sure I would have noticed if I had.”
“Why?”
“He was unusual.”
“How so?”
“He had pale hair, platinum or silver. I couldn’t tell which in the dark. He wore it long, to his shoulders, and seemed to me like a guy who knew how to defend himself.”
And also bite an innocent woman, despite the way things had looked at the time?
Delmonico’s eyes were on her coffee cup. Quiet for minute or two, she then said, “Did he actually join you in this fight?”
Careful. “Actually, I think the sight of him, appearing out of nowhere and with all that white hair, scared the pants off those buggers. All he had to do was shout at them, give them one good look at his muscle, and they ran like hell.”
“He had a lot of muscle?”
“Enough to do the trick.”
There was that word again, trick. Was it going to stick to his brain like a Band-Aid? Was there a possibility the girl had known ahead of time about this wolf’s imminent appearance?
Delmonico tapped her empty cup on the table, the way other people absentmindedly clicked pens. “Thank you, Doctor. That’s all the questions I have, for now,” she said.
Relieved, Parker got to his feet, not sure he had fed her anything new, but ready to hit the road.
“Oh,” she said, getting up. “Sorry. One more thing, if you don’t mind?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s sort of a strange question, but I’d appreciate it if you took me seriously.”
“I’ll answer if I can.”
Her gaze met his and held. Parker saw a certain fierceness in her eyes, no doubt often easily overlooked in such a pretty face.
“When you fought these guys, did any of them try to bite you?” she asked.
Parker waited out two shallow br
eaths before answering, “No.” Then adding, “Is that some new kind of secret weapon? Teeth?”
Delmonico kept right on eyeing him. He didn’t look away.
“We believe our girl had been bitten, though,” he explained. “That chunk out of her upper arm had marks around it that Wilson wanted to take an imprint of.”
Aside from the intensity of her eye contact, Delmonico’s face remained passive. Still, Parker detected a hint of rigidity in her shoulders that suggested he had given her bad news. Obviously, Detective Wilson hadn’t yet passed that particular piece of information along to his affiliates.
“Well,” Delmonico concluded, tossing her cup in the wastebasket—a perfect shot. “I hope you find your missing patient, Doctor. Sooner rather than later. I hope she’s okay.”
Delmonico walked off, just like that, leaving Parker stumped as to whether the newest chilly breeze cooling the tender skin at the base of his throat was caused by a recently upgraded cafeteria air-conditioning unit, or by the possibility that the team of Wilson and Delmonico knew something he didn’t know…about those bites.
Chloe concentrated on the computer screen with rapt attention, sure there must have been some mistake. If she had cracked ribs, she wouldn’t be sitting upright at all. She had cut those bandages off her torso first thing after reaching the lab, then had gone for the ones on her head.
With the tape and white gauze turban removed, she looked even worse. Really bad. She’d nearly cried when she saw herself, pinched with pain and as white as a sheet. Three creases down one side of her face had been stitched together with blue nylon, near an eye swollen nearly shut. Beneath yet another bandage, she’d found a dent in her forehead, its edges zipped together with the same blue stitches.
Her hair was matted with traces of dried blood; this was, after all, a hospital, not a beauty salon. As she’d stared at herself in the tiny lab mirror, she’d felt sicker than ever, and in desperate need of a shower and toothpaste.
The only other researcher making use of the hospital mainframe, a skinny young guy in a plaid shirt, hadn’t looked up when she came in. Riddled with chills, she had swiped his sweatshirt from the back of his chair, but couldn’t get it around her shoulders due to the unwieldy wrist splint. She sat huddled in a chair. Holding her elbow elevated, she used the tips of her fingers to type, a little like a lobster with big claws might. In this slow-motion pecking at the keyboard, though, she traipsed on familiar ground, which provided a mental boost.
Finding her chart was easy. Most things were computerized these days, and notes on patients were inputted regularly. She had been the only unknown female, aka “Jane Doe,” ushered into surgery with cracked ribs, a broken wrist, surgery to sew up her head and the placement of a temporary ventilator due to possible serious side effects of the head wound.
“Tell me something I didn’t know,” Chloe murmured, continuing to type, refusing to address the seriousness of those notes. The doctors must have been off their game, tired and overly quick to diagnose. Her ribs were black, sure. Beneath that tape she had found just about every inch of her chest black-and-blue. Her ribs did hurt when she breathed, yet here she was, walking around. Sort of.
She really did feel like hell, though. Nausea had set in, more than likely from the effort and exertion needed to get here. Her right cheek pulsed terribly, as if something underneath the muscle wanted to get out.
“Important things to do here,” she whispered, ditching the chart, hacking into the human resources files, typing in the M.D. listed on her chart. Parker Madison.
A sexy name, whether her guy or not. Surely the hospital wouldn’t allow a werewolf to tend to the sick.
The screen blinked, then lit up. She’d found a page highlighting everything about Parker Madison except for his biceps measurements. Or a photo. A quick scan of that page turned up no evidence of psychological slipups or an overactive imagination. On the contrary, Parker Madison had quite a résumé.
Chloe read on. Top of his class at Harvard, residency there, good reputation here in the last year as an E.R. surgeon. There was a note about his parents having been surgeons of some repute. Been. Meaning that Parker Madison’s parents were deceased. Hadn’t her avenging angel mentioned that his parents were dead? She and Parker had that in common, then.
Chloe typed in more key words, found nothing about any charts of his own. No list of allergies, broken fingers, immunizations. No blood tests on record. Again, no mention about psychiatric sessions or counseling. If this was her guy, maybe he didn’t use his own hospital for treatment.
If this was the man who had helped her—and it was possible she’d been experiencing a few of those head trauma repercussions the chart suggested she might have at the time—it was also possible, she supposed, that she had imagined the werewolf part. A shock-induced brain addling, maybe, where instead of seeing stars, there were dark-haired avengers? Post-traumatic hallucinations for the over-twenty-and-still-single crowd?
Maybe this wasn’t the right man at all.
Retracing her way to her “Jane Doe” chart, Chloe checked the name of the attending doctor again. Parker Madison. No one else had touched her chart after he’d taken over the watch.
Intrigued, she combed through more of the HR files, and leaned forward intently when a photo eventually popped up. She didn’t realize how long she’d held her breath until her lungs offered up a searing protest. With the expansion of her rib cage came a blinding pain that tipped her sideways in her seat and conjured up several choice curse words.
It was him. Parker Madison. He was her rescuer, all right. And he was a sight to behold.
Even in the crummy ID badge photo, this guy stood out like a face from God’s heavenly realm. Chloe’s heart gave an unexpected lurch as she peered closer at the screen.
Parker Madison’s overtly alpha, just-the-right-amount-of-everything angelic beauty was, in fact, startling. The man was inhumanly beautiful. Seeing him brought back a discomforting lightness inside her head, along with the sensation that he was there now, behind her, watching. Chloe glanced over her shoulder, swore at the pain that movement caused.
A lumbering set of recurring memories she’d been trying to repress accompanied the curse word: the night, running, being chased, the sound of her pursuers, the progression into terror, the unique sound of breaking bones. The awful tearing of her upper arm.
After that came a clear picture of this man finding her. And of the way his voice had shuddered through her. The power of his eyes looking into hers. His whispered reassurances. His strange confessions. His larger-than-life presence.
This man. The one that long-dormant places deep inside her had recognized all along, though she’d refused to admit it. Her body called out for him now as if he had touched each and every one of her private, hidden places personally, instead of merely directing her to sleep.
Had there been a kiss?
Her hands were shaking so much now it took her a few seconds to magnify the image on the screen. She studied Parker Madison’s face, needing to internalize every detail. As if she could ever forget any part of him. There were some things a person just never forgot—such as experiencing death’s breath on your face, and then having your life saved.
Parker Madison couldn’t have been described as a hunk. He was as far from the muscled construction worker stereotype as was imaginable. He wore his black hair long, chin length, as she remembered. In the night each strand of that hair had flashed with a luminous sheen—moon-kissed waves, the opposite of the quintessential Miami sun-kissed blond. Or in her case, the Arizona-born-and-bred blonde.
There were so many other differences between them. The man on the screen was big, while she was small. Dark, while she was light. Hurtfully handsome, whereas former boyfriends had described her as “cute.” This guy was special, a doctor, the real deal, while she was a southwest transplant who didn’t care much for balmy climates or pretentious occupations, and who would have never considered lusting after a man like him in h
er past, since he’d be in a league all by himself. Like a real angel.
All six-foot-whatever of him.
So, the reason behind this ID invasion? All this reference checking? Did she want to find out where to send a thank-you note? Did she have damsel-in-distress syndrome—a condition that caused throbbing sensations in intimate places not related to the throbbing pain associated with her recent misfortunes? Insanely lustful sensations, leading to an undercurrent of desire?
She wasn’t a fool, only a scientist. The chasm separating herself and this doctor loomed as wide as the frigging Grand Canyon. The only other thing besides deceased parents that she and Parker Madison had in common was their desire to help people. His job was to heal them here in this hospital and hers was to help find and mark the viruses that brought patients here, so that there could one day be a cure.
She loved what she did for a living. He probably did, too. And although she had never allowed herself to be easily intimidated, the sheer wealth of Parker Madison’s incredibly sexy looks, with or without the physician part, rendered him off-limits.
“Hey. Are you okay?” the guy at the next desk asked, checking her out for the first time as he got to his feet.
“Yes, why?” Chloe retorted wryly, daring him to comment on her appearance by fixing him with a steady gaze, and not even trying to cover up the fact that her entire body had started to quake, vibrating her chair to the point of rattling its wheels on the linoleum floor.
“Uh, well, you were moaning,” the tech told her.
“Was I?” Was I?
“Plus you look a little bit like the bride of Frankenstein, so I’m wondering if you need help.”
“Nope. Fine. Thanks, anyway.” Chloe closed her eyes, deciding maybe she should try to stop the worsening tremors. The pain meds must be finally wearing off. Each breath hurt. Her head was close to imploding. The truth was she probably did need help, though she wouldn’t ask for it.
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