Page 49 of Nightfire

But…fuck!

“Okay.” It was a wonder the word came out at all, his jaws were clenched so tightly against saying no way.

While he was working it out in his head Chloe called out to the group of women on the threshold. “It’s all right. I’m fine. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

By chance, Mike was looking around the room while she spoke to ‘her’ women, trying to figure out the best way to usher her out without her bumping into anything. He happened to be looking at the wounded man when Chloe spoke and the man’s eyes flickered. Pale blue, ice cold. There was intelligence there and a reaction to the news that Chloe would be here tomorrow.

He left Chloe’s side for a moment and bent down to pull the fucker back up with his fist bunched in his shirt.

The man was badly wounded. He’d lost teeth, his nose was shattered, almost flat against his face, he had to breathe through his bleeding mouth. He was in excruciating pain. And yet, his expression didn’t change when Mike brought him up face to face.

Oh yeah. This was a soldier. A well-trained one. He knew how to maintain discipline, knew how to work through pain. Knew how to give nothing away.

Mike leaned into him, nose an inch from his. Or where the fuck’s nose had been. Crazily, through his serious injuries, the man started laughing, a grotesque wheezing sound.

“What?” Mike growled, his voice so low only the wounded man could hear him. The man was badly wounded, defeated. Cops were coming to take him away. What the fuck did he have to laugh about?

Garbled sounds came out of the wounded mouth, almost indistinguishable. But Mike had been in battle. He could follow what a wounded man was trying to say.

And what the man said chilled Mike to the bone.

“We’ll be back,” he said through torn lips.

ELEVEN

“Does it hurt?” the kindly but exhausted-looking emergency room doctor said as he finished wrapping an Ace bandage around her forearm. Which was sprained, thank God, not broken. The doctors had warned her against a third fracture.

“No,” she replied, which was a lie. Of course it hurt. But Chloe didn’t dare say anything because Mike looked so wild-eyed she was afraid he’d attack the doctor at the slightest provocation.

Mike stood by her side, every muscle tense, on the balls of his feet as if ready to spring to action any second. He looked like a force of nature.

He’d saved her life. In the ambulance, she’d tried to thank him but he’d waved it off, hovering over her with his wide shoulders as if space aliens might claw their way through to her from the roof of the ambulance van. And if they did, by God he’d be ready.

The doctor hadn’t even tried to throw him out. He looked as if he’d welcome a fight.

It was, in a strange way, reassuring. He was so vigilant, she didn’t have to be. Back in the shelter, with Cassie and Ann and Joanne and Emily and one young girl so traumatized they hadn’t yet learned her name looking on, she’d had to be strong. Chloe didn’t dare let her fear and pain show. Her shock at the near-rape and the brutal assault. The women looked to her for reassurance and hope and Chloe would rather die than let them down.

So she’d squeezed Cassie’s hand as she walked past them under her own steam, down the hall and into the waiting ambulance, leaning heavily on Mike without showing it, because Cassie was just starting to recover from a husband who’d taken a knife to her. The shelter was putting these women back together again and Chloe didn’t want to do anything at all to jeopardize that.

But later, knowing that no one who was vulnerable was looking, she leaned on Mike, who was a rock.

“Maybe we should keep you overnight for observation,” the doctor mused, writing down a prescription for painkillers.

As soon as he spoke the words, Chloe rapped out a loud “No!” So sharp the doctor raised bushy blond eyebrows and looked at her over his glasses.

She’d had panic in her voice. Chloe tried to swallow, throat dry. “No.” She tried to make her voice sound normal when a scream was rising from her gut. Tried to keep the shaking out of her voice. “I don’t need to stay overnight. I feel fine. No problem. I’d rather go home. Please.”

God, she sounded like a madwoman, and she probably was. The very idea of spending a night in a hospital, when she’d been held like a prisoner in hospitals for most of her childhood and adolescence was terrifying. She’d have a heart attack. At the very least a panic attack, of the kind she hadn’t had in fifteen years.

She looked over at her new family, a plea in her eyes. They were all there. Of course they were. The hospital staff hadn’t even tried to keep them out of the treatment room, either. It helped that RBK had donated half a million dollars toward the establishment of a Women’s Wellness Center.

They were there. All of them. Harry, Ellen, Sam, Nicole. If there was one thing Chloe had learned over the past six months, it was that they were loyal. They acted as a unit with unquestioning love and support, starting from her wonderful brother Harry.

“Honey,” he began, opening his hands in a cajoling gesture. “Maybe the doctor is right. Maybe you should stay just for one night.”

“No,” Chloe said and closed her mouth because her throat was too tight for another word.

“No,” Mike echoed, putting his arm around her shoulder. Oh God, did that feel good, to have his heavy arm around her, strong and sure. “Hospitals scare her. Quite rightly, too. And anyway, the doctor said it would be a precaution, right doc?” And he swiveled to direct his fierce scary gaze at the doctor, who looked startled.