Page 5
It’s a miracle he’s made Everhart his home for over a decade. National shortage of gifted surgeons, I guess, and the hospitals will take what they can get.
But I can’t just leave him here to suffer.
He’s my superior and more importantly, he’s human.
Even if he looks more like a wild boar who’s been in a fight right now.
Despite his questionable life choices and weak bedside manner, I’m a nurse.
I walk over, ready for the backache from prying him off the ground.
“Dr. Grubert, did you fall? Are you hurt?” I lean forward to get a better look at him in the darkness. “Can I get you some—”
I stop cold.
That’s when I realize he’s not my only problem.
Before my eyes can adjust to the dark hole where the wall ends and the construction zone begins, three impossibly large men in tailored suits step out of the shadows like black ravens.
They swarm Grubert as he hunches over, covering his head pathetically.
I bite my tongue.
Shadow people.
That’s the first thing in my head, that stupid joke, except nobody’s laughing now.
Their faces are surgical steel, the same grim expression, yet they couldn’t look more different.
The man in the center, he’s the tallest.
Thick dark hair, a chest like a wall that makes his fine jacket stretch at the seams, tanned skin, and a short, trimmed beard.
Maybe in his thirties. Only, he radiates a kind of dark life ‘experience’ I can’t wrap my head around.
He looks like he just stepped off the devil’s fashion runway.
Tall, dark, and—
Jesus, those eyes.
Two frozen oceans.
The lightest and coldest of blues.
The color contrasts his face like a gravestone under the moon.
Magnetic, yet eerie.
This is so not the time to let him catch you staring, girl.
With a rough gasp, I rip my gaze away.
To his left, there’s an older man built like a bull with lines in his face, about middle age. I notice he’s massaging his very red right hand.
“Knuckle buster, the fat fuck,” he mutters.
Even in the shadows, I can see his hands are scarred, worn like leathery gloves.
