by Anne Hope
Dedication
I’d like to dedicate this book to all the wonderful people who’ve supported me since I began my publishing journey. The friends and family members who’ve never failed to show up for a book signing. The fans who took a chance on a new author. Those of you who’ve championed my books, who’ve sent me letters encouraging me to keep writing and expressing how much my stories touched you. You are the reason I write, and I am so very grateful for you all. I’d like to thank my brother, Alex, for his brilliant suggestions, and my critique partner, Maggie, whose input I value deeply. A very special thank you to my editor, Jennifer Miller, for falling in love with Jace and Lia’s story, for her enthusiasm and invaluable advice, and to my agent, Nalini Akolekar, for believing in Soul Bound and for helping me bring this series to you.
Chapter One
Jace had always suspected that someday someone would try to kill him. He just hadn’t expected it to be tonight. Especially not in some rundown bar that reeked of beer and unwashed flesh.
He should have, though. The place was ripe with negative energy, this evening more than usual. An undercurrent of violence permeated the air and resonated from the patrons. The tattooed lump of flesh who went by the name of Viper was no exception.
“Did you say something to me, bitch?” Viper shattered his beer bottle on the corner of the bar and approached him menacingly.
The biker didn’t resemble a snake. He was big and round and lumbered more than he slithered, but there was definitely something snakelike about him, a predatory gleam in his eyes that would warn any sane man to back off.
Sanity had never been one of Jace’s strong points. He had too much anger inside him, was sick and tired of seeing men like Viper terrorize everyone around them and get away with it. “I said, leave the guy alone,” he repeated, ignoring the broken bottle aimed at his throat.
Viper’s original target had been some lanky accountant-type, who’d walked into The Hangout—a renowned bikers’ bar—dressed in a goddamn suit. Then he’d added insult to injury by ordering a glass of Chardonnay. Smelling blood, Viper had come in for the kill, incessantly poking fun at the man and not allowing him to leave when the idiot realized the error of his ways.
Jace wasn’t the kind of guy who fought other people’s battles. He usually kept to himself, tried to melt into a crowd. He was an observer, an outcast, someone who went through the motions of living even though he felt half dead inside. Darkness coursed through his veins, a shadow he’d spent most of his life trying to subdue, one that fought to break free and take him over. Maybe tonight it would finally succeed.
“Guess it’s up to me to teach you to mind your own fucking business.” Swinging his beefy arm, Viper slapped Jace on the back of the neck with a sweaty palm.
Jace downed his whisky, banged his empty glass on the bar and stood. Meeting Viper’s vicious stare, he quickly calculated his odds of winning.
Five-to-one, he guessed.
Metal studs pierced the drunk’s ears and nose, a snake tattoo coiled around his thick arm, and a fine carpet of stubble covered his shaved head. He smelled of tobacco and cognac, of beer and scotch and God knew what else. But what worried Jace the most was the cruelty and despair he sensed in him. Before him stood a man who had nothing to lose.
Jace had been born with the ability to know things about people, things they barely knew themselves. Their screwed-up lives played in his head like a freaking soap opera. He also had a knack for picking up cues in the atmosphere, and tonight his gut told him Viper hungered for blood.
His blood.
With an enraged growl, the drunk attempted to strike him with the broken beer bottle. Jace blocked him, slammed his hand against the bar to knock the makeshift weapon from his grasp, then reciprocated with a swift uppercut to the midsection.
Viper didn’t as much as flinch, his system pumped too full of adrenaline. “Is that the best you got?” He sneered.
Taking advantage of the distraction, the accountant-type sidled to the door and escaped into the warm August night. Satisfaction sped through Jace. Not because he held any real affection for the guy in the suit, but because he’d helped tip the scales in right direction for once. After a lifetime of bringing out the worst in people, particularly his old man, he felt damn invigorated to be one of the good guys.
Viper swung his fist, and his knuckles connected with Jace’s ribs. Jace doubled over, groaned. On second thought, maybe being one of the good guys wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
He fought back, landed a couple of punches of his own, but Viper didn’t seem to care. Rage crowded out pain, or maybe it was all the alcohol he’d ingested. The guy charged, spittle flecking his goatee, tendons the size of baseball bats bracketing his neck.
Jace sidestepped to avoid him. Viper was strong, but he was big and clumsy. Jace was swift and agile and not nearly as inebriated. Engaged in a furious dance of attack and retreat, they stumbled out into Pioneer Square. Hopefully outside the negative aura tainting the air would abate.
No such luck. The square was a battlefield, plunged in violence and chaos. A full-blown riot had broken out. Punches flew, cars were being overturned, and brutal screams perforated the night.
Jace never should’ve taken his eyes off Viper, shouldn’t have let the chaotic scene distract him. But he did.
The blade punctured his flesh, sharp and ice cold. Shocked, he brought his hand to his chest. Blood soaked his palm, seeped through his fingers. He waited for the pain to come, but it never did. Numbness spread like a drug to anesthetize him.
He drifted weightlessly to the ground. Noise thundered as he struck the concrete, but the sound was muted, as if it were reaching him through a static-filled wire. The buzz around him escalated. Voices continued to boom as sirens howled somewhere in the balmy night. Darkness rolled in, as familiar as an old friend. His mouth twitched, curled into a feeble smile.
That’s what you get for being a goddamn hero.
Chapter Two
Lia Benson was wrapping up her third double shift that week at the Rivershore Hospital when Jace Cutler was wheeled into the ER. She’d never actually met him, but she recognized him instantly because his picture graced her sister’s nightstand. Or it had until a month ago. Cassie had wasted no time getting rid of the snapshot after she’d shown her latest disaster of a boyfriend the door. It was about time, too. Based on what Cassie had told her, the guy had issues. Major issues.
Now it was Lia’s job to save him.
Wasting no time, she checked his breathing and circulation to rule out an airway obstruction. She then removed the bandages the paramedics had secured around his chest and examined the knife wound. The sucking sound the gash made whenever the patient inhaled was a sure sign his chest wall had been damaged. She hurriedly placed a sterile occlusive dressing over the wound, taping only three sides to prevent air from reentering his chest cavity each time he exhaled.
She couldn’t assess the true extent of the injury without an x-ray, but judging from the sucking sound of the gash and the patient’s impaired breathing, she concluded that Jace Cutler’s right lung had been lacerated.
“Prepare him for chest tube insertion,” she ordered Diane, one of the trauma unit nurses on duty tonight. “And draw some blood. He’s going to need surgery and potentially a transfusion.”
Diane hesitated, and Lia shot her a pointed look. “Hurry. This man is dying.”
With a flat glare, Diane did as she was told. In a matter of seconds, Jace was attached to an IV drip, a ventilator and a slew of medical monitors.
His pulse was weak, his pressure dropping fast, his skin cool and clammy. If they didn’t get him to surgery soon, his lung could collapse. “Get Dr. Adam
s.”
Diane just stood there, studying the patient.
“Now!” Lia’s voice shook the nurse out of her daze, and the woman scrambled off to find the surgeon.
Lia continued to work on Jace, curious as to why no one else had come to assist her. They were probably too busy seeing to the high number of trauma patients who had been brought in this evening because of the riot that had broken out in Pioneer Square. She didn’t have all the facts, but one of the orderlies had heard a news report and told her about it. No one seemed to know why it had started, but many people had gotten hurt, even killed.
She inserted a large-bore needle between the second and third rib, right below his collarbone. A hiss of air confirmed her diagnosis. Sliding a catheter over the needle, she placed the tube into the chest cavity and used a syringe to aspirate all the free air.
Heat abruptly traveled up her arm, a sharp-toothed flame that shot through her fingertips and snaked its way to her heart. Pressure built in her chest, tightened around her lungs. She couldn’t swallow past the lump in her throat, couldn’t breathe. The underside of her flesh burned. Dizziness overtook her, and she grabbed hold of the gurney for support.
What on earth was wrong with her? On this hot, late summer night, a strange energy rippled in the atmosphere and made her skin hum. Either that or sleep deprivation was finally taking its toll.
An ominous chime pierced the air, and a different kind of energy lanced through her. Jace Cutler had just flatlined.
“Damn it, I’m not done with you yet. Don’t force me to tell my sister you died on me.” She pumped his chest, tried to jumpstart his heart. “I need help here!” she called to the nurses scurrying down the hall. No one as much as glanced her way. She wasn’t even sure they heard her.
Only Diane came crashing in.
“Where’s Dr. Adams?” Lia asked between CPR attempts.
“I had him paged, but he didn’t respond. Surgery is filled to capacity.”
Lia couldn’t remember hearing the doctor’s name called over the intercom, but she’d been so intent working on Jace, she could’ve missed it.
She breathed into his mouth, continued to compress his chest. The paralyzing need to see him open his eyes seized her. She couldn’t remember noticing their color when she’d gazed upon his photograph, but she knew instinctively they’d be green.
“You’re wasting your time,” Diane told her.
Lia couldn’t give up. Not yet. She thrust her palms over his heart at a rate of a hundred compressions a minute. “Get the defibrillator.”
“It’s pointless. He has no—” Diane paused.
“No what?”
“Heartbeat.”
“Then it won’t hurt, will it?”
Diane reluctantly complied, fetching the device and attaching the pads to Jace’s chest. Defibrillators were generally used to treat cardiac arrest patients and weren’t necessarily proven effective once the heart stopped. Still, Lia had to try. A man’s life hung in the balance.
The current zipped through his body but failed to resuscitate him. She tried again unsuccessfully. Not even a blip disturbed the shrill, flat line running across the ECG.
Everything inside her shook as she relented and backed away. No matter how many times she witnessed death, she never got used to it. It was a black presence, as pervasive as it was cruel. It struck the young and old equally, failed to distinguish between the good and the wicked, followed no rules in its ruthless pursuit of life. And tonight it had feasted yet again.
She checked the stark, white face of the clock on the wall across from her. “Time of death, eleven fifty-five,” she whispered.
Diane approached her, her gaze narrowing, an unsettling intensity glittering in her eyes. “Why don’t you go for a walk, Lia? Clear your head, forget this ever happened.”
“What?” Lia shook the fog from her mind. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”
The intense glitter gave way to confusion. Diane raised her arms, grabbed Lia by the shoulders, began to pull her closer.
“I hear another trauma patient was just brought in?” Dr. Adams’s voice echoed through the stark emergency room, and the nurse instantly released her.
“You’re too late,” Lia said in a gravelly voice she barely recognized. “I couldn’t save him.” Moisture dampened her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure if she was sweating or crying.
Cassie. Dear Lord, how am I going to tell Cassie?
Just then, a slow, steady beep rose from the ECG. Jace Cutler’s heartbeat had resumed, strong and stable.
Impossible. Too much time had passed.
Dr. Adams hastened to Jace’s side and bent over to examine him. “This man looks perfectly alive to me.” He turned an accusing glance her way. “How long have you been here, Lia?”
“The patient was wheeled in about fifteen minutes ago—”
“No, I mean here, at the hospital.”
His meaning suddenly registered. “Twenty-four hours and counting.”
“I thought so. Maybe it’s time for you to head on home.”
Why wasn’t he rushing Jace Cutler to surgery?
“Diane, take the patient down to radiology,” he commanded. “Let’s see if he has any broken ribs. Order a CAT scan, too.”
Broken ribs? CAT scan? “What about the stab wound?”
Dr. Adams furrowed his bushy brows. “What stab wound?”
Feeling emotionally drained but oddly energized, Lia approached the gurney and lifted the bandage. Blood soaked the gauze, smeared his torso, but the wound was gone. Golden skin stretched over bone and corded muscle, smooth and unmarred. The catheter she’d inserted lay discarded at his side, as though someone had yanked it out, yet no one had.
Her eyes shot to the surgeon’s face in quiet supplication. “He was stabbed. I saw the gash. I bandaged it, performed needle decompression.”
Compassion peppered with a dash of impatience swept over the doctor’s tired face.
“You saw it,” she appealed to Diane. “You saw the stab wound. You watched me struggle to resuscitate him.”
“Sorry,” the nurse lied. “All I saw was blood. It must’ve come from somebody else. God knows enough blood was spilled tonight.”
“No. He was cut.” Diane’s dishonesty rankled. “The wound was deep. An upper cut that perforated the lung.” She turned to Dr. Adams. “If you don’t believe me, ask the paramedics.”
Diane centered her dark, penetrating gaze on the surgeon. “She’s exhausted,” she told him. “She needs to rest.”
Lia shook her head in disbelief. “I know what I saw.”
Dr. Adams’s expression grew blank, distant and cold. Any compassion she’d seen on his face melted away, replaced by irritation. “Go home, Lia.” His tone was non-negotiable. “Your shift’s over.”
Lia turned the key and entered her quiet, depressingly bare townhouse. She’d lived here for two years and still hadn’t gotten around to decorating the place. She kept telling herself that she was too busy, that once she completed her residency she’d have more time, but the truth was, the hospital was much more of a home to her than this redbrick building in Portland’s North District.
This house was just somewhere to crash after a long shift, a quiet corner to retreat to before life resumed its crazy pace. There was nothing here to tether her, no one waiting to welcome her, not even a cat or a dog. Tonight, any greeting would’ve provided comfort, even a soft purr or a wagging tail. But Lia had no time to care for a pet any more than she had time to forge relationships.
The cordless phone sat on the console by the door, where she dropped her keys. Her fingers itched to pick it up, to dial Cassie’s number, but something held her back. How could she explain tonight’s events to her sister when she could barely make sense of them herself? But worse was the fear that Jace Cutler’s incident would lead Cassie straight back into his arms. Her sister had been hurt enough, by too many men like Jace. Men who only cared about themselves and who treated women like notches
on their belts.
The digital clock next to the phone reminded her how late it was, nearly one in the morning. The call could wait. What she really needed was a scalding shower.
A few minutes later she stood naked beneath the jets, scrubbing her skin raw, driven by the desperate need to wash Jace Cutler’s blood from her flesh. It was his blood that had smeared her lab coat, his blood that had covered her hands, regardless of what everyone else believed. Even the paramedics who’d brought him in had denied seeing the stab wound.
The strange energy that had rippled beneath her skin when he’d died continued to hum along her nerve endings. For some reason she couldn’t explain, it made her feel less alone.
She towel-dried her hair and body, slipped into her robe, then crashed into bed without bothering to change into her pajamas. Exhaustion clung to her, a wet blanket dragging her down, clouding her thoughts. Sleep claimed her instantly.
At first, only blissful darkness enfolded her. Then colors slowly crept in, merged to form shapes both strange and familiar—a pristine mansion nestled in an alcove of trees, the ocean whispering nearby, a fallen nest, the mournful coo of a down-feathered bird.
The sun was bright, the air cool and damp. She reached out and gathered the pigeon in her palms. Her fingers were small, like a child’s, but big enough to cradle the hatchling. The frail-boned bird shivered in her grasp. Affection and protectiveness gripped her. She hugged the pigeon close and raced toward the house, only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw the shiny black Lexus in the driveway. Her stomach lurched.
He was home.
In her hand, the pigeon squirmed. She whipped off her spring jacket and gently tossed it over the hatchling, then skulked into the house, praying the bird would remain quiet long enough for her to make it to her room unnoticed.
She was halfway up the stairs when he called to her, and her whole body tensed at the sound of his voice. Still shielding the pigeon with the jacket, she turned partially around to face him.
Please don’t make a sound, she pleaded silently with the bird.