A Hero to Hold

by Linda Castillo

“Are you hurt? Did that bastard—” His curse burned the air. Raw fury darkened his face. Intensity shone bright and hot in his eyes as his gaze raked her. “I need to know, honey. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m all right,” she heard herself say.

  He crossed the distance between them in two resolute strides. “I need to see for myself.”

  Not waiting for her consent, he reached out and touched her shoulders, a curse slipping from his lips. Hannah glanced down at her right shoulder, found herself looking at an untidy hole in the fabric. Slowly it dawned on her that she hadn’t torn her coat at all, that the damage was the handiwork of a bullet. The realization that she’d come within inches of being shot sent a wave of nausea rolling over her.

  “Hell.” Wrapping one arm around her shoulders, he drew her against him and used his free hand to pound on the door. “Open up!”

  “I’m okay, John. I’m not—”

  “Take off your coat.” Pushing her to arm’s length, he proceeded to unzip it with shaking hands. “Let me get this off you. I want to look at you.”

  “Okay, but I’m—”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “John. Easy. Calm down.”

  As if realizing he was overreacting, he stepped back and blinked at her, took a deep breath. “That was too damn close,” he said.

  A near-hysterical laugh broke free. “Have I complimented you on your timing?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Another minute and I would have—”

  “Be quiet, Red.” His jaws clamped tight as he eased the coat from her shoulders. Her nerves jumped when his hands brushed down her arms. Her waist. Her hips and thighs. “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Taking her hands in his, he squeezed them, then brought his own hands to her face. An interesting mix of emotions shone like blue diamonds in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right? You weren’t hit? Sometimes it takes a while—”

  “I’m okay.” The gentle touch of his fingers against her face had her heart rolling into an uneven staccato that made it hard to breathe.

  “Your knees are bleeding.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her knees. “I must have skinned them when I fell.” A laugh choked out of her tight throat. “In the scope of things, I figured my knees aren’t very important.”

  His jaw flexed, and he tossed a look over his shoulder at the empty street. “I hit 911 on my cell when I saw the SUV, but I didn’t get a chance to finish the call.”

  The porch light flicked on. Both Hannah and John turned toward the door as security chains rattled. An instant later the door swung open. A large African-American woman wielding a baseball bat in one hand, a cordless phone in the other glared at John. “Holy Moses! John Maitland, you’ve got some explaining to do,” she snapped. “Scaring the bejeepers out of me like that!”

  “Hi, gorgeous. I’ll answer your questions later. Right now I need to get her inside and call the police.”

  The woman clucked her mouth impatiently. “Don’t ‘gorgeous’ me.” Her gaze swung to Hannah. “Are you okay, honey?”

  Without waiting to be invited inside, John stepped forward and kissed the woman’s plump cheek. “It’s good to see you, too, Angela. You got the cops on the line?”

  “They’re on the way.”

  “Good girl.” He reached for Hannah’s hand and tugged her inside. “This is Hannah,” he said.

  Angela’s sharp gaze landed on Hannah and promptly softened. “You’re Dr. Morgan’s patient,” she said.

  “Yes.” Hannah looked over her shoulder. “Sorry about the window.”

  “Windows can be replaced.” The woman stuck out her hand. “Welcome to Angela Pearl’s Shelter for Battered Women.”

  * * *

  No matter how hard she tried, Hannah couldn’t stop shaking. Her entire body quaked as Angela Pearl led her to the kitchen and eased her onto a chair. She was still trying to digest what had happened, and get a handle on her emotions, when the other woman shoved a cup of hot tea into her hands.

  “That’s chamomile with raspberry and mint to calm your nerves. I think there’s some kava in there, too.” The large black woman crossed the kitchen and set her bat against the stove. “I’ve drank a fair share myself last couple of years.”

  “Thank you.” Hannah took the cup with both hands and sipped.

  “We haven’t had this much excitement around here since Lisa Price’s husband set her car on fire last year.”

  Hannah nearly choked on her tea. “Her husband? Why did he do that?”

  Angela Pearl humphed. “Because she fixed pork chops for dinner and that man don’t like pork.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It never does.” John entered the kitchen after checking the front door for the fourth time in the last two minutes, his face pulled into a scowl. “You got anything more efficient than that bat to protect yourself with, Angela?”

  “John Maitland, you know I don’t keep guns around here,” she scolded.

  “Just checking.”

  Touching Hannah’s shoulder lightly, Angela Pearl sighed. “I’m going to go turn on the porch light for the police.”

  John started to go with her, but Angela stopped him by raising her hand. “Stay with Hannah, tough guy.”

  “Angela—”

  “I’ll be fine.” Waving off his concern, she left the room.

  He stared after her for a moment, then turned and began to pace the room. Hannah’s gaze followed him to the rear door, where he peered out the window, tried the knob, then spun to face her. That was when she noticed she wasn’t the only one who was shaking. John was every bit shaken as she.

  He paced the length of the kitchen twice, working off his parka as he went. It was an odd time for her to notice how well he wore those button-down jeans, but she couldn’t deny it. The man was definitely in-your-face handsome. She told herself her attraction to him stemmed from the fact that he’d just saved her life for the second time in as many days. She might have believed it if her pulse didn’t give her away every time he looked at her.

  “How are the knees, Red?”

  She started at the sound of John’s voice and looked up to find him standing a couple of feet away, staring down at her intently. “Uh, they’re…fine.”

  “I guess that’s why they’re bleeding.”

  She looked down at the torn, bloodstained fabric. “Oh.”

  “I need to have a look at them, all right?”

  “Later, okay?” A sudden gust of wind rattled the screen door, and she jumped.

  “Easy.” He took a step closer, and knelt in front of her. “He’s gone.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “I’m jumpy, I guess.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Since every time she looked at him, all she could think of was the kiss, she studied her cup. “What about you, John? You hit that SUV pretty hard.”

  “If our shooter wasn’t wearing his seat belt, I suspect he’s hurting a hell of a lot more than me.”

  “What about the Jeep? Is the damage bad?”

  “I’ve got a push bar on front. It took the brunt of the impact.”

  His eyes were dark blue and fringed with lashes that were far too long for a male. She needed to look away from his gaze, just until she got a handle on her pulse, but the power behind his eyes held her captive. She told herself the reaction was nothing more than the aftereffects of high adrenaline, but she knew it wasn’t quite that simple.

  “You’re getting into the habit of saving my life,” she said after a moment. “That’s the second time in two days.”

  “Maybe I just have good timing when it comes to you.”

  “No, it’s more than timing. If you hadn’t come by when you did, I would have—”

  “Don’t go there, Red. You don’t want to go down that road.”

  He was right. Just the thought of what might have happened if he hadn’t shown up when he did made her hands shake. “In any c
ase, thank you. Again.”

  “I’m no hero.” An emotion she couldn’t quite decipher flicked in the depths of his gaze. “You’d be wise to remember that.”

  Hannah was about to argue when Angela Pearl breezed into the kitchen. Her canny gaze swept from John to Hannah and a smile curved the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

  “We aren’t,” Hannah said, then thought better of it. “I mean—”

  “I just drove her into town from Lake County,” John finished.

  “Uh-huh.” Angela Pearl chuckled. “Whatever the case, John Maitland, I’m certainly glad you were here to help out.” Taking the head off an alligator cookie jar in the center of the table, Angela started arranging cookies on a green plate. “Officers Rodriguez and Miller love my gingersnaps. Sometimes I think that’s the only reason they get here so quick when I call.”

  If she wasn’t seeing it for herself, Hannah wouldn’t have believed the woman could be so nonchalant about getting her front window shot out. “You make it sound like you call the police often.”

  “Unfortunately, honey, I do. Running a shelter for battered women has its days—”

  “Angela?”

  Hannah looked up to see a thin woman standing just outside the kitchen door, her pale hand on the jamb, her face in the shadows. She wore a ratty green robe and pink slippers. Her thin blond hair cascaded over one side of her face. Only when she raised her hand and shoved it aside did Hannah see the black eye and swollen cheekbone.

  “Hi, Lori.” Smiling, Angela excused herself from the table, then rose and approached the woman. “Sorry about the noise outside, but we had some trouble. How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” Her eyes flashed to John and Hannah, then she stepped back into the shadows of the hall. “I thought maybe Kerry had…you know, come back,” she said in a low voice.

  “No, child, he won’t be back. He and I had a nice talk earlier, and he promised to abide by the restraining order. I’ll walk you back upstairs. The doctor said you should rest.”

  Hannah couldn’t keep her chest from tightening at the haunted look in the woman’s eyes, the lines of pain etched into her face or the evidence of the physical abuse she’d suffered at the hands a man she knew well enough to call by his first name.

  Sadness welled like a giant tear and spilled over, clinging to her like a slick of oil on water. The emotion was so powerful that for a moment, she had to blink back tears. She risked a look at John. The smile and cocky attitude had vanished. His face had gone as hard and pale as granite. When he raised his hand to rub his temple, his hand shook. Hannah had never seen him look so unsettled. Not John Maitland with his ready grin and quicksilver wit.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He jolted. “I hate seeing that,” he said.

  “Me, too. It’s sad.”

  “It ticks me off,” he growled.

  Hannah held his gaze. He must have seen the question in her eyes, because he added, “I was a medic for a few years in Denver. Quite a few of my calls were domestic disputes. I saw a lot in those years, but it never gets any easier to look at.”

  For a moment, the only sound came from the drip of water from the faucet in the sink. Hannah wanted to ask him why his hands were shaking, why he’d gone pale, his eyes cold as ice, but she didn’t. Whatever demons had assailed him when he’d set eyes on that woman’s battered face, he obviously didn’t want to share them.

  “Why do the women stay?” she asked after a moment.

  “I asked a woman that once.” He looked down at his boots for so long, Hannah thought he wouldn’t finish. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were so tortured, she knew instinctively he wasn’t just a medic relaying a war story, but a man remembering an event that had forever changed his life. “She was a pretty thirty-five-year-old who’d once been a cheerleader. A woman with two kids and dreams of becoming an interior designer. On her tenth wedding anniversary, her husband gave her a broken jaw and a fractured wrist.”

  “My God.” The ugly words twisted Hannah’s heart like a tourniquet. “Why did she stay with him?”

  “She said she couldn’t leave him because she loved him. This man who shared her bed and hit her so hard he’d broken her bones.”

  “That isn’t love.”

  “Maybe not. But whatever the reason, nine times out of ten, the women stay.” John shook his head. “Some of them don’t have anywhere else to go. The lucky ones break the cycle. The unlucky ones end up in the hospital—or worse.”

  Hannah wasn’t sure why, but his words disturbed her deeply, made her think of her own life. She thought of her own bruises and wondered for the hundredth time if she’d suffered the same fate.

  Simultaneously something hovered at the edge of her consciousness. Something dark and menacing that pressed down on her like thunderhead in the moments before a cloudburst.

  An instant later her senses faltered and the world around her faded. Darkness closed in like a cloak, transporting her to another place, another time. She saw snow and darkness and the glare of headlights. She felt the slap of cold, the ache of bruises, the sickening realization of violence and the bitter taste of betrayal.

  The glint of memory shocked her. Terror gripped her chest like a white-knuckled fist. Dread twisted inside her so violently, a sob bubbled up from her throat. She reached for the memory, clawed toward it, but the darkness refused to relinquish its grip.

  “Easy, Red. Easy…”

  Vaguely she was aware of John’s voice, edged with concern, reaching out to her through the swirling mist of confusion. Her breath coming shallow and fast. The warmth of his fingers against her biceps. The press of fear all around her.

  “I’m all right,” she heard herself say. But she wasn’t all right. It was as if her senses had shut down the present and transported her back to a place she didn’t want to be, showing her just enough to terrify her, but never enough for her to understand.

  “What is it? Hannah? Are you with me? Talk to me.”

  The mist thinned. Slowly her confusion subsided, and the world around her materialized. Hannah rose abruptly, her chair grating against the tile. Breathing hard, her heart rapping against her ribs, she blinked and focused, only to find John’s gaze drilling into her, his expression perplexed and concerned.

  “You zoned out again,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah…I’m…okay.” Shaking off the fear, she eased away from him and walked unsteadily to the back door. Embarrassment and a terrible sense of vulnerability pressed down on her as she looked out the window at the snowy landscape beyond.

  “You don’t look okay,” John said.

  “I don’t have a choice but to be okay.”

  She started when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “You’re shaking. Come here and sit down.”

  “I need to just stand here for a moment.” Hannah needed a moment to pull herself together. She didn’t want to face him when she was falling apart. Not when his strong arms were so inviting—and the comfort they promised far too powerful to resist.

  “Did you…have another flashback?” he asked.

  “It was more like a moment of déjà vu.” Realizing that didn’t make much sense, she made a sound of frustration. “It’s like I’m seeing something I’ve done before.” Slowly she turned to face him, met his gaze. “I think my memory is trying to come back, only it’s coming in bits and pieces.”

  “Doc Morgan said it might happen that way.” He continued to study her. “When you…flashed back, what did you see?”

  “Just like before, when we were in Buzz’s office. I’m running through snow. It’s cold and dark. Someone is behind me. I’m terrified of him, but I don’t know why. The only thing that’s clear is that he wants to hurt me.” Saying the words aloud made the nightmare real and ugly and frightening. A shiver wracked her body. “Does that sound totally crazy?”

  She’d asked the question lightly in an attempt to break the tension t
hat had descended, but he didn’t smile. “It sounds as if maybe this wasn’t the first time he hurt you.”

  She closed her eyes, sickened by the thought, praying it wasn’t true. “I could be wrong.”

  “It’s something we’ve got to consider. Domestic violence is at epidemic proportions in our society. It doesn’t discriminate between race or income bracket or social status. It’s an equal-opportunity evil, and it almost always escalates unless someone gets help.”

  The thought twisted her heart with unexpected cruelty. Domestic violence. Sadness flowed like tears inside her. She thought of her unborn child, and outrage made her clench her fists. “I can’t stand this not knowing, John. I need to find out what happened to me. I’ve got to know who I am. I need to find out who…” She struggled to finish the sentence, but her voice box had climbed into her throat.

  “Who’s trying to kill you?” John stood less than a foot away, his gaze intense and searching and so blue, she could almost step into it and find the clouds.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What else did this flashback tell you?”

  She swallowed, determined not to let his previous question shake her. “I’m pretty sure I know the person who…did this to me.”

  A dark emotion she couldn’t readily identify flicked like hot silver in his eyes. “The man in the SUV?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. But I have a…”

  “Gut feeling?” he offered.

  She smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  The low, dangerous tone of his voice surprised her, made her wonder just how personally he was taking all this. “No. I mean, I do, but I don’t remember. I’m pretty sure he’s not a stranger to me. I think he’s someone I know or have known in the past.”

  “Someone you’ve…had a relationship with?”

  The word jolted her. Not because it surprised her, but because it hurt unexpectedly. She didn’t want to believe someone she’d cared for could breach the sanctity of love with that kind of violence. That perhaps the same man who’d fathered her child was the person who’d left her to die up on the mountain. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “This is the second time in just a few hours he’s tried to get to you.”